Comedia Performance

Comedia Performance Journal of The Association for Hispanic Classical Theater Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 20 16 http://www.wordpress.comedias.org/comedia- performance/ Comedia Performance Journal of the Association For Hispanic Classical Theater Barbara Mujica, Editor Box 571039 Georgetown University Washington, D. C. 20057 Volume 13, Number 1 Spring 2016 ISSN 1553-6505 Comedia Performance Editorial Board Barbara Mujica – Editor Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Box 571039 Georgetown University Washington, D. C. 20057-1039 [email protected] [email protected] Tania de Miguel Magro– Managing Editor Dept. of World Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics West Virginia University 216 Chitwood Hall [email protected] Sharon Voros – Book Review Editor Department of Modern Languages US Naval Academy Annapolis, MD 21402-5030 [email protected] Darci Strother – Theater Review Editor Department of World Languages & Hispanic Literatures California State University San Marcos San Marcos, CA 92096-0001 [email protected] Michael McGrath – Interviews Editor Department of Foreign Languages P.O. Box 8081 Georgia Southern University Statesboro, GA 30460 [email protected] Editorial Staff Antonio Díaz Oliva– Editorial Assistant [email protected] Valeria Meiller Editorial Assistant [email protected] Editorial Advisory Board Isaac Benabu Donald Dietz Susan Fischer Donald Larson Dakin Matthews Susan Paun de García Ángel Sánchez Jonathan Thacker Christopher Weimer AHCT Officers Susan Paun de García, President Gwyn E. Campbell, First Vice President Darci L Strother, Second Vice President Christopher Gascón, Secretary Sharon Voros, Treasurer Presidents Emeriti: Donald Dietz, Barbara Mujica, Robert Johnston Editorial Policy Comedia Performance is the journal of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater, an organization devoted to the study of the comedia and other forms of early modern Spanish theater. Comedia Performance publishes articles on diverse aspects of performance of the Span- ish comedia and other theatrical forms. Appro- priate subjects for articles include, but are not limited to, historical or modern staging of the comedia, translating the comedia for the stage, performance theory, textual issues pertaining to performance, historical issues such as audience composition, corral design, costuming, blocking, set design, and spectator response. Comedia Performance does not publish text-based liter- ary studies. Comedia Performance publishes interviews with directors and actors, theater reviews and book reviews in special sections. Purchase Information Comedia Performance is distributed without additional charge to members of the AHCT at the an- nual conference in El Paso, Texas. Individual copies are available for $20. Non-members of AHCT may subscribe for $50 for three issues. Library rates are $30 per issue and $75 for a three-year subscription. Please contact Gwyn Campbell, Managing Edi- tor, at [email protected], for additional information. Send other queries to Barbara Mujica at mu- [email protected]. Advertising Rates Comedia Performance accepts advertisements for books, plays, festivals, and other events related to theater. Rates are $100 for a full page and $50 for a half page. Send checks made to AHCT to Sharon Voros and camera-ready text to Barbara Mujica. Submission Information All submissions must be original and un- published. After publication, authors may solicit permission to reproduce their material in books or other journals. Articles may be in either English or Spanish and should be submitted electronically. We do not accept paper submissions. Articles should use MLA style and not exceed 25 double-spaced, typed pages, including notes and bibliography. Send article submissions to: [email protected] Comedia Performance is a refereed journal. A committee of experts will read all submissions. Please submit articles to the appropriate editor. E-mails of editors appear under Editorial Board. Guidelines for theater reviews: 1. Reviews should be between three and five pages long, including pictures. 2. Reviews should not include endnotes and bibliography. 3. Reviews should not include a detailed description of plot. For canonical plays, no plot summary is necessary. For lesser-known plays, a two- to three-line synopsis should suffice. 4. Avoid minute descriptions of action, costume, lighting or sets. Avoid constructions such as, “And then Don Lope comes out and says...” Instead, comment on the efficacy of the blocking of particular scenes or the effect caused by costume and decor. Do not describe details of the performance unless you are going to comment on them. 5. Avoid structures such as “This reviewer thinks...” Re- views are by definition subjective. 6. One reviewer may not publish more than two reviews in a single issue. CONTENTS Performance Studies Making Sense of Her Senses: Catherine of Aragon Revisited in Tudor History and on the Transnational Stage Susan L. Fischer 1 Verse and Structure in the Lady Boba: a Woman of Little Sense: A Dramaturgy of Poetics in la dama boba Kathleen Jeffs 31 Recasting the Collective Protagonist: A Ballet Adaptation of Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna Jonathan Wade 62 El demonio del teatro del Siglo de Oro en la escena contempóranea: la dificultad de montar El conde- nado por desconfiado Simon Breden 105 Blood Purity in Recent Productions of El retablo de las maravillas Charles Patterson 145 Interview Assaf Benchetrit’s Production of the Ballet Don Quixote: A Commemoration of the 400th Anniversary of the Publication of the Second Part of the Cervantine Chivalric Novel Jorge Abril Sánchez 169 Theater Reviews 196 Book Reviews 236 Performance Studies MAKING SENSE OF HER SENSES: CATHERINE OF ARAGON REVISITED IN TUDOR HISTORY AND ON THE TRANSNATIONAL STAGE SUSAN L. FISCHER Bucknell University For Charles Victor Ganelin, colleague and friend, who shines at making sense of the senses. “‘Sense,’ we have come increasingly to appreci- ate, refers not only to the natural corporeal endow- ments that provide access to the world, but also to the meanings we attribute to the results” (Jay 307). What sense can we attribute to the passionate nature of Catherine/Katherine/Catalina of Aragon—her strength and intensity of character—as retold in history and (re)dramatized on the page and on stage? What sense can we make of the subjectivity of the Spanish Queen (1485-1536), bound as it is by the subjectivity of chroniclers, historians, playwrights, 1 __________________________________________ 2 Comedia Performance Vol. 13, No. 1, 2016 latter-day directors and scholars; and contingent on social and political contexts? Was she “the pious victim of a cruel, selfish husband or a consummate liar hiding behind an apparently saintly exterior” (4), as Giles Tremlett queries in a new biography of the queen, published 474 years after her death? Catherine’s story will be (re)presented here in the form of reflections and projections, drawing on fresh material from Spanish archives as gleaned from Tremlett; and on early modern and (post)modern stage reeactments: Shakespeare and Fletcher in King Henry VIII (1613); Calderón de la Barca in La cisma de Inglaterra (circa 1627); and Ignacio García in José Gabriel López Antuñano’s performance version of Calderón’s play, Enrique VIII y La cisma de Inglaterra, as staged by Ma- drid’s Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (CNTC) in 2015.1 The inspiration for this reframing of history, dramaturgy, and mise en scène comes from Katherine’s death scene in Henry VIII (4.2), in which she exhorts her gentleman-usher Griffith to be her “honest chronicler” and then has a celestial vision, possibly derived from Charles de Sainte Marthe’s funeral oration for Marguerite of Navarre (Foakes xxxviii). *** Kimbolton Castle, December 1535–January 1536 Kath. After my death I wish no other herald, __________________________________________ Fischer 3 No other speaker of my living actions To keep mine honour from corruption, But such an honest chronicler as Griffith. I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith, Cause the musicians play me that sad note I nam’d my knell, whilst I sit meditating On that celestial harmony I go to. (Henry VIII, 4.2.69-72, 77-80) [Following The Vision] Kath. Spirits of peace, where are ye? are ye all gone? And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye? Griffith. Madam, we are here. Kath. It is not you I call for; Saw ye none enter since I slept? Griffith. None, madam. Kath. Bid the music leave, They are harsh and heavy to me. Griffith. She is going, wench; pray, pray. (Henry VIII, 4.2.83-86, 94-95, 99) *** “I have not long to trouble thee,” she tells the “honest chronicler” Griffith. But her mind was ar- guably “still troubled by whether she had been good to a country which, in the end, had been bad to her” (T-423). Would England have remained Roman Catholic had she consented to go silently into a convent (T-427)? She opted for peaceful defiance in not having her English supporters rise against their king, and in not pushing Charles into war with her husband over her marital rights—despite the rejec- tion of papal authority, the separation of the English Church from Rome, and Henry’s titular designation __________________________________________ 4 Comedia Performance Vol. 13, No. 1, 2016 as Supreme Head of the Anglican Church. Five years after she had appealed to Rome, the cardinals declared her marriage to Henry to be “valid and canonical” (T-389); Mary was not only legitimate but the true heiress to the crown. She, the Queen, had won the arguments, even with “Henry’s supposedly encyclopaedic knowledge of canon law” (T-390). But on the day of her moral and ideological victory in Rome in March 1534, Parliament endorsed the Act of Succession, declaring her marriage “utterly void and annulled”; Mary was a bastard; Henry’s bigamous marriage, in January 1533, to that ambi- tious and raging Anne Boleyn with her “well-filed tongue” (T-342) was proclaimed “true, sincere and perfect ever hereafter”; Anne’s children would in- herit the crown (T-390).

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