A Companion to Golden Age Theatre (review)

Bulletin of the Comediantes • 2008 Vol. 60 No. 2 157 Reviews____________________________________________________________________ Reviews Thacker, Jonathan. A Companion to Golden Age Theatre. Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis, 2007. 223 pp. JONATHAN THACKER accomplishes what few are able to achieve by publishing an original and valuable study relevant to varying levels of comedia studies. Steering clear of creating a history, Thacker pens a practical pedagogical resource that the most seasoned of professors will find simply outstanding. Not only does he provide an overview of the major playwrights and theatrical forms, he also incorporates performance studies. The variety of this volume’s content allows for incorporation into undergraduate courses on the comedia, and it should most definitely be a required text of any graduate student of the comedia. The thrust of the first half of the Companion is the examination of the theatrical roots of the genre along with the practitioners of the comedia. It commences with “The Emergence of the Comedia nueva” in which Thacker analyzes the usual cast of pre-Lopean playwrights. A novice will undoubtedly be enlightened by this overview and those that follow. The veteran, moreover, will discover pedagogical gems with each turn of the page. For example, subtle reminders about the complexities of the development of the comedia nueva show how easily one can become victim to the “simplifications of chronology” (21), thereby giving an overly general evolution of the comedia nueva when, in actuality, it is complex. These and other points will have experienced professors re-evaluating their teaching habits. The next three chapters analyze individual ingenios and their respective corpuses. As is deserved, Lope de Vega receives his own chapter. A short introductory and biographical sketch ends in a suggestion for a more authoritative biography, noting how Lope’s “myth-like status has tended to prevent scholars [. . .] from challenging naïve assumptions about him” (23). Although Thacker admits the chapter is reductive, with his mentioning of a mere forty plays (55), it does provide a nice overview by examining them. However, one begins to note the arbitrariness of modern day classifications of genres and particularly of subgenres, a topic discussed later in the volume. Thacker looks at Lope’s earlier works along with his political and peasant plays, his comedies, and his tragedies. No other dramatic corpus, not even that of Calderón, receives such scrutiny. 158 Bulletin of the Comediantes • 2008 Vol. 60 No. 2 ____________________________________________________________________ Reviews Chapter 3, “Cervantes, Tirso de Molina, and the First Generation,” considers Lope’s contemporaries, whose work “could not have developed without Lope,” but who are “not slavish imitators by any means” (56). After a detailed look at Cervantes and Tirso, Thacker provides shorter glimpses of the usual suspects of first-wave playwrights. However, a final analysis of both minor and female playwrights of this generation further enriches the volume, adding to the work’s distinctive flair. The fourth chapter, “Calderón and the Comedia’s Second Generation,” focuses most of its analysis on Calderón. Many of his plays are examined, but what is particularly valuable is the treatment of how Calderonian drama differs from that of the first generation. Not only is this change due to the dramatist, but it is also due in part to the change in performance space during the second half of the seventeenth century. Calderón’s contemporaries are discussed to a lesser degree. The final pages of the chapter strengthen the volume’s value by incorporating Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Bances Candamo into the discussion. The second half of Thacker’s Companion delves into sundry aspects of the comedia. The fifth chapter, “Staging and Performance,” makes observations about dramatic spaces, actors, and performance. The accompaniment of performance studies alongside the analysis of playwrights and their corpus sets Thacker’s Companion apart. Chapter 6, “Types of Comedia and Other Forms of Theatre,” catalogs the numerous genres and subgenres of the comedia along with the shorter theatrical forms. The final chapter, “A Brief History of Reception,” accomplishes what the title proposes. However, while the volume is amazingly free of typographical errors, Thacker misspeaks in this chapter when he attributes the operation of the Chamizal festival solely to the Association for Hispanic Classical...