Early Modern Spanish theater

In this article, I suggest that the analysis of a few episodes in El perro del hortelano, thanks to the play's credible Mediterranean context, can help qualify its adscription to the genre of palatine comedies. My aim is to contribute to our understanding of how Lope, in a period of creative maturity, not only reshapes and updates the literary material of his sources, but also demonstrates that the blending and hybridization of genres lies at the core of his Comedia Nueva. Throughout the article, I engage diverse critical readings of the play and consider them within the context of recent contributions in Mediterranean Studies. I likewise analyze several of the play's dramatic themes related to the Mediterranean Sea and draw attention to its ingenious conclusion. Finally, I explain why Lope chooses the gracioso to end the plot by impersonating a Greek-Armenian merchant, a figure only comprehensible at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

En este trabajo sugiero que el análisis de algunos episodios de El perro del hortelano a través de su verosímil contexto mediterráneo puede ayudar a matizar su adscripción al género de las comedias palatinas. Con ello quiero aportar claves para entender cómo Lope, en un período de madurez creativa, no solo reorienta y actualiza el material literario de sus fuentes, sino que también muestra una vez más que la mezcla e hibridación de géneros está en la base de la Comedia Nueva. A lo largo del artículo complemento diversas aportaciones críticas sobre la obra con los así llamados Estudios Mediterráneos, analizo múltiples rasgos dramáticos de la pieza vinculados a este mar, e incido especialmente en su ingeniosa conclusión; finalmente propongo una explicación respecto de por qué Lope elige para resolver la trama que el gracioso encarne precisamente a un mercader intermediario greco-armenio, una figura solo entendible a principios del siglo XVII.

Francisco Agustín Tárrega (ca.1553-1602), el ilustre canónigo, es a un tiempo padre de la escuela dramática valenciana y contribuidor de peso en la formulación de la comedia nueva. Desde los estudios dedicados al autor en los años 80, volver a sus páginas para explorar las acotaciones de su corpus teatral —del que conservamos diez piezas— permite abordar un propósito múltiple: asumiendo las acotaciones como herramienta de conexión entre texto y tablado, podremos alumbrar las características fundamentales de la puesta en escena del periodo de entresiglos, profundizar en la conciencia dramatúrgica de Tárrega y sus propias estrategias de escritura, y plantear una reflexión sobre la problemática consustancial a la ecdótica de las acotaciones o los riesgos que implica aislar una voz autoral única y transparente.

The one-man adaptation of Cervantes’s entremeses, El Merolico by EFE TRES Teatro (Mexico City), is a raucous romp through three of his short interludes. El merolico sings, dances, and plays multiple characters at a time, distinguished only by his changes in voice and movement, and the occasional minor costume change. By converting the plays into pieces that can be performed by a single actor (Fernando Villa Proal), the company comments on the very elements of theatre that fascinated Cervantes in all of his writings: metatheatricality; the blurred lines between authorship and character; and the thin veil between reality and fiction. Villa Proal’s representation of the Mexican archetype of the
traveling salesman allows him to “sell” his audience on whatever it is they want to see, claiming that the secret to life, the universe, and everything, can only be found in Cervantes’s stories

Resenha crítica elaborada a propósito da publicação do volume Teatro Breve do Século de Ouro (2020), a primeira colectânea que traz para o público lusófono uma retrospetiva da produção teatral breve do Barroco espanhol -ou "Siglo de Oro"-. Nela fica exposta a diversidade de manifestações do modelo repertorial cómico entre os séculos XVI e XVII e, particularmente, o recurso barroco à burla, partindo do repertório formal mais representativo desta produção literária de formato breve, o entremês.

"In this article,  I will discuss how experiential learning can help college age learners better comprehend the Spanish comedia and achieve a higher level of analytical understanding of this genre. Experiential learning is a methodology in which the educator becomes a facilitator and mentor, allowing students to have “direct experience with the subject matter,” and to experience “things first-hand by creating, designing, building, and testing ideas” in order to understand the subject matter in depth (Wurdinger and Carlson 9). David A. Kolb, one of the leading theorists of this methodology, describes it as a “dynamic view of learning based on a learning cycle … or spiral where the learner ‘touches all the bases’—experiencing, reflecting, thinking, and acting—in a recursive process that is sensitive to the learning situation and what is being learned” (51). Taking into consideration Kolb’s concepts of experiential learning and the learning cycle, I will discuss how this learning approach can be implemented in undergraduate comedia courses through the various projects I conducted with students. During these projects, learners participated in workshops and other hands-on activities with various professional theater companies, as well as attended live productions both at our university, a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, and at the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro and the Siglo de Oro Drama Festival in El Paso, Texas. I also will share students’ reflections, as well as strategies to stimulate undergraduate understanding of and engagement with early modern Spanish plays. My goal is also to show how experiential learning helps students develop not only critical thinking and problem-solving strategies through the comedia, but also develop project management skills that they will find valuable in any field of study they choose. The difficulties entailed in teaching the Spanish comedia both to native and non-native speakers prompted me to look for innovative pedagogical approaches..."

This article introduces a dossier of two studies dedicated to surveillance, secrecy and war in the Hapsburg monarchy. I consider the ways in which early modern literary representations of women’s bodies share the conventions of the contemporaneous martial texts studied by the authors of this dossier. Bringing to bear works by Calderón de la Barca, Zayas and Tirso de Molina, I trace the ways in which the control of information, the deployment of disinformation and the biopower exerted over women’s physiology respond to shared codes and mores. The commonalities between the imperial discourses of territorial control and the patriarchal discourses of the control of women’s sexuality underscore that what is at stake in the articles that follow is not only the future of nations but also the fates of particular human subjects.

In the sixteenth century, slave trade became one of the mainstays upon which the Spanish imperial economy was built. Although some Spanish cities already had sizable slave populations, it was not until this century that authors started to include representations of black Africans and Mulattoes in their literary creations. This essay explores the linguistic development of the black African female slave in the course of the sixteenth century through a comparative diachronic analysis of her identity figuration, based on specific linguistic characterizations. Theatrical plays by Rodrigo de Reinosa (1520s), Diego Sánchez de Badajoz (1550s), Lope de Rueda (mid-sixteenth century) and Lope de Vega (early seventeenth century) will be used as case studies to show how a predetermined set of sociolinguistic features shape the behavioral figure of these women who, analyzed as a group, constitute a complex emblem of the growth of the Afro-Hispanic population, as well as a changing notion of ethnicity and linguistic legitimacy in early modern Europe.

Resumen El presente trabajo examina el espacio escenográfico del teatro navideño de Juan del Encina y Gil Vicente. Para realizar este análisis dramatúrgico, se empleará una metodo-logía ecléctica e interdisciplinar basada en la semiótica teatral y en la iconografía artística con el propósito de mostrar los recursos escenográficos empleados por los dramaturgos de ambas coronas en las representaciones de sus respectivas piezas navideñas. De este modo, se señalará la posible utilización de soportes pictóricos y escultóricos y de objetos litúrgicos en la puesta en escena de sus respectivas obras sacras. Palabras clave teatro navideño; Juan del Encina; Gil Vicente; iconografía sacra; escenografía; puesta en escena Abstract Ut pictura theatrum. Christmas scenography in the theatre of Juan del Encina and Gil Vicente This paper examines the scenographic space of the Christmas theatre of Juan del Encina and Gil Vicente. To achieve this, I will employ an eclectic and interdisciplinary methodology based on the theatrical semiotics and artistic iconography with the purpose of showing the scenographic resources employed by the playwrights of both crowns in the performances of their owns Christmas plays. Thus, I will point out the possible use of pictorial and sculptural supports and liturgical objects in the staging of their sacred plays.

El siguiente artículo asume, como punto de partida, la hipótesis de que en los siglos XVI y XVII ya se puede detectar la existencia de una identidad nacional dirigida hacia la idea de España, y que ésta se vio particularmente reforzada a partir del reinado de Felipe II. La idea de la existencia de identidades nacionales en la Edad Moderna no es por lo general reconocida en el panorama académico actual, tanto hispano como internacional. Por ello, la investigación aborda una discusión primero semántica y conceptual, y luego propiamente histórica, en apoyo de este plantea-miento. Desde esta perspectiva, la identidad nacional española se desarrolló y tomó forma a partir de diferentes discursos, construcciones simbólicas y fenómenos culturales que convergen en la época, y que serán aquí presentados y discutidos.

This review’s starting hypothesis is that in the 16th and 17th centuries there was already a Spanish national identity, which was particularly strengthened from the reign of King Philip II. The very idea of the existence of national identities in the Early Modern Age is often not accepted in the current academic debate on the matter, either in Spain and in general. This research will thus discuss this issue, first from a semantic and conceptual perspective, and then from a strictly historical one. According to this approach, Spanish national identity developed and took shape as a result of the convergence in this period of different discourses, symbolic constructions, and cultural phenomena, which will be presented and discussed here.