Jealous of Herself/La celosa de sí misma by Tirso de Molina (review)

Given the importance of the comedia in studies of early Iberian modernity, the dearth of good translations of important works from the genre is always surprising. A new translation of a relatively unknown work for the non-Spanish speaker is always welcome, especially when the translation is as well done as Harley Erdman’s Jealous of Herself (La celosa de sí misma) and is accompanied by the Spanish text on the page facing the translation. This is a translation that will open up further Tirso’s corpus to a wider non-Spanish-speaking public. Jealous of Herself, in spite of its importance and popularity among Tirso’s works, will be unfamiliar to English readers, and this translation is a further addition to the Aris and Philips Hispanic series, which has already published translations of five other works by Tirso.

The choice to translate Jealous of Herself in particular was wise because of questions surrounding the nature of identity in the work and the special importance the theme has in the postmodern world. Erdman’s analysis of this topic in the introduction is especially good and will serve to orient a new reader of Tirso to the theme. As a professor of theater, Erdman also raises some interesting questions in the introduction about how some scenes important to the issue of identity might be staged. The introduction provides the standard information in locating the comedia within its social, political, and literary context. Overall, the introductory material will be useful to the English speaker not familiar with the comedia; even so, at times Erdman assumes perhaps too much background knowledge of his reader. For instance, in the biographical portion of the essay, he uses the word comendador without explaining it, whereas on the page before he goes to the trouble of saying that the privado is a leading councilor to the king. More consistency in defining terms might aid the reader not familiar with the social conventions of Spain’s Golden Age to understand more clearly, though none of the items in question is crucial to interpreting the work.

It also would have been helpful, perhaps, to outline a bit more in the introduction how Tirso changed his putative source material (Remón’s Las tres mujeres en una). Erdman does refer to an excellent article by Luis Vásquez and cites it in the substantial bibliography at the end of the introductory material, but as the present edition is aimed at readers whose linguistic ability in Spanish is lacking, the reference may not be helpful. The summary of the play offered in the introduction likewise is not as useful as it may have been. It left me a bit confused, but in Erdman’s defense, the plot of the play does take many complicated twists and turns that are difficult to distill succinctly.

In the introduction, Erdman also explains in some detail his justification for translating from Spanish verse into English verse, a practice not universal when translating comedias. Additionally, he outlines the criteria for his selection of English rhyme and meter, a justification that rests principally upon two ideas: first, that the world that is the comedia is full of hierarchies and structure and that the verse form linguistically conveys this reality. Secondly, by using rhyme and meter in English, it forces the readers/spectators out of their comfortable linguistic world and makes them meet the Spanish work at a halfway point. The poetic form makes the English a bit foreign though still comprehensible, and the technique always reminds the readers that the comedia’s world is not their own. The verse structure of the Spanish is reflected in the English translation: whenever there is a change in verse form in the Spanish, Erdman also changes the verse structure in English. Erdman’s justification for rhyme is especially cogent. If the translator is too slavish to the rhyme scheme, he risks that rhyme becomes the filter through which...