Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (review)

Bulletin of the Comediantes • 2008 Vol. 60 No. 2 159 Reviews____________________________________________________________________ Vega Carpio, Lope de. Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. Ed. Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Madrid: Cátedra, 2006. 152 pp. ENRIQUE GARCÍA Santo-Tomás’s recent edition the Art nuevo, with its meaty introduction and extensive bibliography, is a persuasive reminder of why we need new editions of classic texts, particularly one whose reception has been as complex and contradictory as Lope’s 1607/1608 oration to the Academia de Madrid. Of course, we can find material about the Arte nuevo on the internet and in recent paper editions from 1998 and 1999, but, for an accessible, complete, and current edition, García Santo-Tomás’s version is an excellent choice. The editor’s timing, training, and experience place him “between generations” in that his knowledge of historical material is balanced by his familiarity with contemporary literary theory and, above all, by his understanding of the issues at stake in our diverse readings of Lope’s classic treatise. His review brings a subtle balance to each era’s reception of the Arte nuevo and even to multiple perspectives on the text within particular time periods. The introduction in particular demonstrates how much this edition has been enriched by the careful scholarship that García Santo-Tomás demonstrated in his La Creación del Fénix: recepción crítica y formación canónica del teatro de Lope de Vega (2000) and Espacio urbano y creacion literaria en el Madrid de Felipe IV (2004). What emerges in this reading of the Arte nuevo is a clear sense of context as a dynamic cultural process in which the aesthetic assessments of preceptistas, Ilustración reformers, postdictatorship commentators, and others have contributed to our evolving evaluation of the Arte Nuevo. The end result—one which I believe is particularly significant to enlightening graduate students—is the notion that our cultural commentaries and literary criticism always relate to and impact each other, however indirectly, within their surroundings. For example, when García Santo-Tomás’s biographical and chronological summaries on Lope discuss his relationship with Cervantes, he brings subtle distinctions to current critical judgments on Cervantes as the marginalized and reader-oriented opponent of a mercantile-minded Lope. The editor’s careful reading of both classic authors’ views offers a more complex, yet balanced, context. This equitable evaluation of Lope and the Arte nuevo is seen from the outset when García Santo-Tomás characterizes the Arte nuevo as Lope’s discussion of the estado de la comedia at a cruce de caminos looking backward and forward while evaluating the present. The Fénix brings evidence to bear on the evolution of the dramatic arts at a particular time and place and thus creates the first modern theater manifesto. The 160 Bulletin of the Comediantes • 2008 Vol. 60 No. 2 ____________________________________________________________________ Reviews editor validates that judgment in the introduction’s main sections, tracing the evolving state of theater arts and indicating all the while the edition’s three main considerations: Lope’s motivations for the Arte nuevo, its content, and its reception. In complex yet clear prose, García Santo-Tomás weaves the three into a panorama of theater history without neglecting to highlight significant details, such as the broad resonance that theater closures had on everyone interested or involved in performances—from writers to spectators of all means. Other examples of note treat the evolution and changes in theater from Valencia to Madrid, accusations of theater’s feminization and immorality, the canon oral transformed into a canon escrito, alteration in the stage’s visual and audio coordinates with respect to machinery and gongorine verses, and, finally, Lope’s diminishing ability to reinvent himself when confronted by his aging body/mind and challenged by Calderón’s rising star. García Santo-Tomás does not forget to indicate which theorists have best understood Lope in his context: among his near-contemporaries, El Pinciano and Cascales, and, among modern critics, Orozco, Pérez Magallón, and many others. While both Menéndez Pelayo and Menéndez Pidal are noted for distinct yet non...