Hercules and the King of Portugal: Icons of Masculinity and Nation in Calderón's Spain by Dian Fox (review)

The promontories on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar have long stood as place markers to signal Hercules's mythical presence in Iberia and evidence his voyages to the ends of the known Earth. No wonder, then, that the Hapsburg monarchs claimed direct descendancy from Hercules as they expanded their empire through Hercules's gates and established dominions that circled the globe. Hercules and the King of Portugal is a welcome addition to recent critical studies on the Iberian Golden Age and a helpful resource to better appreciate the cultural affinities and tensions between Spain and Portugal in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dian Fox's project is ambitious: Hercules is an icon of Iberian letters, a foundational son dating back to the Ancient Phoenicians and an especially frequent subject of medieval and Early Modern works of all genres. The special relationship between Hercules and Iberia may be seen to this day on the Spanish flag, with the Pillars of Hercules framing the shield, the pedestrian park of the Alameda de Hércules in Seville, and even in popular culture through the soccer team Hércules de Alicante. There is no doubt that Fox's study fills a relevant niche in Iberian Studies and represents an important contribution to the field that brings together her years of work on the Early Modern period.

Fox's book explains the complex situation in Spain and Portugal that arose due to the lack of an heir produced by King Sebastian of Portugal (1554-78), leading to the takeover of Portugal by the Spanish crown from 1580-1640. The author engages such disparate topics as translatio imperii, the connection between religious performance and theater during the Golden Age period, the topic of performative gender in several of Calderón's works, discourses prescribing expectations of masculinity, and the legends that arose after King Sebastian's death throughout Lusophone territories. Despite the complexity of these topics and the relatively brief critical space given to each of them, the book is quite digestible and would certainly be appropriate for advanced undergraduates to better appreciate the role that the figure of Hercules played in the rhetoric of legitimizing or undermining dynastic succession, in addition to the ways that theater and popular entertainment serve as important instruments of social reflection and control. Fox's analysis provides clear examples of the ways that Hercules played into the rhetoric of hombría and reveals anxieties about dynastic succession, the struggle to overcome vices and passion, and even challenges traditional notions of male legitimacy as Iberia transitioned into a modern state. Reassessing the ways that authors of the period employed the myth of Hercules to reflect on their own society also provides an opportunity to consider the ways that theater and popular entertainment reflect deep-seated anxieties.

The book is divided into two main parts: the first treats the role of Hercules in the Iberian Peninsula and the second section shifts the focus to examine King Sebastian of Portugal and the ways that the heir-less monarch was celebrated or condemned through the subsequent literary tradition, in particular through connections to the courageous, yet impetuous and ultimately childless, Hercules. The focus of the second part of the book elucidates retrospective readings of King Sebastian's masculinity, providing examples in Lusophone letters to salvage his honor due to his failure to produce an heir, as well as examples from Castilian works to justify the Spanish acquisition of the Portuguese crown. The Castilian works include selections of poetry by Francisco de Aldana (1537-78), Fernando de Herrera's Canción VI, "Por la pérdida del rey don Sebastián" (1585), Lope de Vega's play known as La tragedia del Rey don Sebastián y bautismo del Príncipe de Marruecos (1602 or 1603), Luis Vélez de Guevara's La jornada del rey don Sebastián en...