Three Major Plays [Fuente Ovejuna; The Knight from Olmedo; Punishment Without Revenge] (review)

182 Reviews De Vega, Lope, Three Major Plays [Fuente Ovejuna; The Knight from Olmedo; Punishment Without Revenge], trans., intro. and notes by Gwynne Edwards (World's Classics), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999; paper; pp. xii, 300; R R P £7.99; ISBN 0-19-283337-5. Renown for his prolific output as a professional writer, Lope de Vega (15621635 ) was largely responsible for the creation of a new style of drama for the public theatres of Golden Age Spain, a drama characterized by its fidelity to the imperatives of plot, its freedom from a classicism which would have stifled it, its sheer inventiveness, and its awareness of the audience and the immediacy and power of the theatrical medium. In this Oxford World's Classics paperback, Gwynne Edwards provides the reader with a fresh,first-ratetranslation of three of Lope de Vega's most famous plays and a more than satisfactory introduction to the stage practices and major dramatic conventions of the period. The critical overview ofthe plays is necessarily brief, but offers general readers and new students alike valuable guidance and insight into major cultural issues and critical responses to the plays. Edwards furnishes the reader with a vivid picture ofthe age of Lope de Vega and the social position he occupied, and includes consideration ofthe author's literary theory, his prolific output and his use of a wide range of sources and ideas. The three plays gathered in the volume are also discussed separately, providing a good overview of historical background, and social and political implications of the plays for contemporary audiences. Edwards points to some major themes addressed by scholars, such as the ideals of honour, justice, and the ruler's proper exercise of power; he also notes Lope's complex treatment of traditional topoi, like the 'menosprecio de corte, alabanza de aldea' (the contrasted praise of the countryside and dispraise of court life). Not to detract from Edwards' capacity to refer to an enormous range of scholarly material on what are some of the most widely discussed examples of Spanish literature, his introduction to the plays is particularly impressive from the point of view of a structuralist criticism. It includes ample discussion of their richness of imagery and symbolism, and their interaction of allegorical structures and sometimes finely developed characterization; he discusses the prevalence of conventional dramatic figures and plot-motifs, while stressing Lope's capacity to add an extra layer of depth or complexity. I have one minor qualm about Edwards' critical apparatus. Though his bibliography is necessarily concise, and does, moreover, provide reference both Reviews 183 to major editions of the plays and to the work of other scholar-translators, as well as to a range of critical practices, it could have included some reference to recent examples of feminist criticism which is reshaping contemporary understanding of these plays. Edwards notes that Lope alternated between a range of verse forms and rhyme patterns, while primarily using an octosyllabic verse, which offered more fluidity and speed than didblank verse. In translating these plays, he comments that one ofhis priorities was to preserve the 'sense of flow and rhythm' ofthe original (p. xxxv). Indeed, having examined Edwards' translation of The Knight ofOlmedo in this volume, alongside Willard F. King's version of 30 years ago, I have no hesitation in recommending Edwards' as more faithful to the style, and, ultimately, the sense, ofLope's work. While King turned the text into prose, Edwards translates flie play into an elegant, octosyllabic metre which gives way to occasional lines of 9-10 syllables where required. T m e enough, King can, in places, come closer to a literal sense of the words, but the grace of the original form, which ultimately contributes to its tone and hence some of its meaning or significance, is lost. This is, ofcourse, particularly evident in the play's soliloquies and other key speeches. In similar terms, Edwards does not refrain from creating a sense of the estrangement of a foreign and historically distant text, by reproducing the archaic, sometimes metaphorical, idiom in which it was written—in such instances, the endnotes provide clarification. King, by contrast, modernized the form, making the direct meaning...