Women and Servants by Lope deVega (review)

BARBARA FUCHS BRINGS INTO ENGLISH the first translation of Lope de Vega's recently rediscovered Mujeres y Criados (Women and Servants). The first modern Spanish edition of the play (Editorial Gredos, S.A., 2014), thoroughly edited by Syracuse professor Alejandro García-Reidy, adds yet another fine comedy to the copious dramatic works of the Fénix de los Ingenios. The comedy (circa 1613–14) exhibits Lope de Vega's mature metrical style and a well-choreographed interplay of multiple plots. This urban comedy subverts the expected social norms of seventeenth-century Madrid and gives women and servants the wherewithal to dupe nobles and fulfill their amorous desires.

The plot revolves around three love triangles. The primary triangle involves Count Próspero and his secretary Teodoro, who are both in love with a local woman, Luciana. Immediately in Act I, the subversive tone begins as Próspero becomes suspicious that his lower class valet, Claridán, is also in love with Luciana. He is tentatively relieved when he discovers that Claridán is actually in love with Luciana's sister, Violante. Próspero is quickly disappointed, however, when he learns that his secretary, Teodoro, is indeed in love with Luciana. Meanwhile Florencio, father of Luciana and Violante, schemes to have another noble, Don Pedro, marry Violante, thus setting in motion two triangles of competing love interests (the third love triangle is a sub-plot of two footmen and a servant woman). Secretive meetings between lovers occur during the required 'medicinal' walks in the park after drinking agua de acero ("steel water"), a curative for women who became too pale from lovesickness or self-induced anemia. The women, to the contrary, are not weak or sick and wield their "steel" with more efficacy than the men wield their steel swords.

In act 2, love interests collide in Florencio's house. Próspero attempts to sideline Teodoro by sending him out of town for six months, but Luciana (again) intervenes to keep her desired lover close by. Luciana pleads with Próspero to assist a young man hiding in her father's house who needs to lay low after stabbing a gallant during a quarrel. Delighted, Count Próspero now has a reason to visit Luciana frequently. The hiding man, falsely named as another Don Pedro, is actually Luciana's desired Teodoro. Great confusion (and wonderful dramatic irony) ensues in a spectacular scene when the real Don Pedro arrives. Count Prospero believes he has finally met the young gallant hiding in the house, and when he asks about wounds from a quarrel, Don Pedro assumes he is speaking about the wounds of love he feels for Violante. The exchange is hilarious, and the translation does not miss a beat.

Act 3 opens with the real Don Pedro's father, Emiliano, berating his son for getting violent in a quarrel, which Don Pedro denies (of course, since Luciana dreamed up the quarrel). Emiliano then visits Count Próspero to thank him for helping hide his son and asks for help marrying him off to Violante. The Count readily obliges since it will once again bring him closer to Luciana, and promptly visits Florencio to ask that Don Pedro and Violante marry that evening. Florencio is happy with the arrangement, but everything is undermined when the truth comes out. The real Don Pedro arrives thinking he is a groom, only to discover that another "Don Pedro" is hiding in the house, Teodoro. Florencio and the Count are furious, but in order for honor to be kept, Florencio allows Teodoro to marry Luciana and Claridán to marry Violante. Notably, the women who subvert social norms are brought back into the fold with a traditional set of approved marriages.

Translation is always a tricky task, especially of verse. Fuchs chooses to convert Lope's redondillas, octavos, and sonetos into prose because she finds it is "more conducive to successful production in an Anglo-Saxon context" (20). This is a translation with an eye for performance...