Staging the Spanish Golden Age: Translation and Performance by Kathleen Jeffs (review)

The 2004–05 season of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) consisted of the full, translated productions of four Spanish Golden Age plays (with a fifth performed for BBC 3 Radio). In Staging the Spanish Golden Age, Kathleen Jeffs guides us through the creation of this season as she analyzes the selection, translation, rehearsal, and performance processes that helped academics and theatre practitioners work collaboratively to stage works by Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Miguel de Cervantes, and Calderón de la Barca. In her capacity as a literal translator and script consultant in rehearsals, Jeffs was able to straddle the line that often separates text-oriented scholars and audiences from contemporary directors and actors, thereby facilitating effective communication with and among those making key decisions related to the performance of early modern Spanish plays for contemporary audiences.

Lawrence Boswell, the associate director of the RSC who served as artistic director for the project, created the model that would guide each production. He articulated five priorities that would govern the selection of plays: that the dramas exemplify "great dramatic literature" from the Spanish Golden Age, whose stories also speak to us in the twenty-first century; that they not have been previously produced in Britain by a professional company; that they not be readily available in English translation; that they offer strong parts for women; and that they echo the variety and generic diversity of Golden Age drama, especially in depictions of the relationships between Moors and Spaniards (23). Boswell's priorities formed the center of his approach to the play selection process. As Jeffs relates, a cadre of academic specialists in early modern Spanish theatre and translation then worked with the artistic director and dramaturg to create a list of rough, literal translations of plays that satisfied Boswell's criteria and might interest the directors. After the selection of the five plays, the academic team's collaborations continued as they helped the performance team define the translation and rehearsal methodologies they would employ. Jeffs played a key role as a script consultant who bridged the gap between the academic and performance groups. The first chapter begins with the context of performance in early modern Spain, an excellent introduction to the type of information that the team's academics provided to those staging the play.

Chapter 2 considers the literal, expert, and performance translations and their connections to Boswell's priorities. Once the thirty commissioned literal translations arrived, multiple elements of the team collaborated to select which plays were chosen, and experienced translators then entered to transform the literal translation of that play into a "textual fictionalization." The final performance script also revealed multiple editing changes, as the text, now modified by the directors and actors, moved from page to stage through the rehearsal process. Jeffs considers the related issues of translation, reception, adaptation, performance, and fidelity to the original Spanish dramatic text, which have interested scholars and theatre practitioners for decades. Utilizing relevant examples from the various stages of the translation process, she illustrates how the original Spanish version was modified from the more primitive literal translation to the performance script(s) used in rehearsal. Throughout the process, Boswell's criteria, his decision to bring together the creative strengths of both academics and theatre professionals, and his insistence on collaboration and communication created a model that has changed the way many of us think about Spanish Golden Age theatre in performance.

Jeffs's third chapter examines Spanish polymetric verse, a significant element of early modern theatre; she then describes the impact of verse change for the Golden Age season's theatre professionals. Shifts in versification helped early Spanish-speaking audiences understand the performed text through the aural elements of the verse; verse changes functioned like shifts of key or tempo in music, illuminating structural divisions and changes in mood, tone, pace, and time (69). Jeffs notes that when the Spanish...