The Stages of Property. Copyrighting Theatre in Spain (review)

autores son encajados en grupos temático-temporales. Vale mencionar que este capítulo es uno de los que Skinner había publicado anteriormente como artículo en Inti, que si bien añade profundidad al conjunto, no esconde su naturaleza de addendum un tanto aleatorio y fuera de lugar. Desde luego aquí brillan por su ausencia otras mujeres ilustres del siglo XIX que engrandecieron este género, como Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Clorinda Matto de Turner y Juana Manuela Gorriti, entre otras. Por todos los motivos expuestos, aunque Skinner hace un intento loable de contribuir al campo de la novela histórica latinoamericana, no consigue sino dar una visión limitada de la inmensidad de ésta con respecto a la identidad nacional. No es ésta una idea nueva, sino que muchos la han estudiado y analizado , como Doris Sommer, quien afirmaba en Foundational Fictions que en América Latina “The writers were encouraged both by the need to fill in a history that would help to establish the legitimacy of the emerging nation and by the opportunity to direct that history toward a future ideal.” De cualquier modo, y a pesar de una letra un tanto barroca que puede llegar a dificultar la lectura, la obra de Skinner puede ser útil como referencia general para el estudio de este género y, sin duda, es una forma de abrir camino a futuras investigaciones más específicas y detalladas. CARMEN PÉREZ MUÑOZ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Surwillo, Lisa. The Stages of Property. Copyrighting Theatre in Spain. Toronto : U Toronto P, 2008. 218 pp. Let’s say I want to stage a play. I think I’ll pick Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, since I figure I can make some money by putting it on in my hometown . But since Miller might not be so well known by my local crowd, I think I’ll publicize it as having been written by Andrew Lloyd Weber, a name that resonates more with my local theater-goers. And, ok, “Biff”? What kind of name is that? I’ll change it to Jason (sounds more modern and cool), and, as a final measure of my determination to stage a hit, I’ve decided that the ending is way too depressing the way it is, so I’m going to allow Willy Loman to be a successful salesman (of laptops, what do you say?) who ends the play by using his bonus to take the family to Disneyworld. Should I change the title? I mean, “Death” and all that. How about Mickey and the Salesman? Right. Does this scenario strike you as absurd? Well, one example provided by Surwillo from 1849 tells us that the director of Martínez de la Rosa’s La conjuraci ón de Venecia changed the ending (from Ruggiero’s death at the hands of Reseñas 97 the Consejo de Diez to an uprising in which the rebels stab the Council members to death) because he wanted his audience to go away happy. This is simply one example of many that proved the need for some standardization in copyright law for Spanish theater in the nineteenth century, since authors previously had little or no protection before the law and anyone could adjust/ adapt/change the play’s text as he saw fit. The idea that authors own their works – so fundamental to today’s concept of literary property – was a radical idea at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Spain. While the Cortes de Cádiz adopted a law that shifted power from the King (who by tradition authorized publication of a text) to the individual author of the play, Ferdinand VII annulled the statute when he returned to the throne in May 1814. “Intellectual property” did not exist as a legal concept for the theater before the 1830s. This is the story that Surwillo tells in this engaging book, chock full of surprising details. For example, fewer than ten families owned and controlled nearly every play published during the century, which by my calculation could be upwards of 30,000 titles. (The readership for plays rivaled – or surpassed – that...