Comedia Performance Journal of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater

Comedia Performance Journal of the Association For Hispanic Classical Theater Barbara Mujica, Editor Box 571039 Georgetown University Washington, D. C. 20057 Volume 8, Number 1 Spring 2011 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] Gwyn Campbell – Managing Editor Department of Romance Languages Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA 24450 [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 Patricia Soler – Web Page [email protected] Cecily Raynor – Editorial Assistant [email protected] Editorial Advisory Board Isaac Benabu Donald Dietz Susan Fischer Donald Larson Dakin Matthews Ángel Sánchez Jonathon Thacker Christopher Weimer AHCT Officers Robert Johnston, President Susan Paun de García, First Vice President Angel Sánchez, Second Vice President Christopher Gascón, Secretary Sharon Voros, Treasurer 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 literary 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 may be purchased 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 subscrip- tion. Please contact Gwyn Campbell, Managing Edi- tor, at [email protected], for additional information. Send other queries to Barbara Mujica at muji- [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 unpub- lished. After publication, authors may solicit permis- sion to reproduce their material in books or other journals. Articles may be in either English or Span- ish and should be submitted electronically. No paper submissions will be accepted. Articles should use MLA style and not exceed 25 double-spaced, typed pages, including notes and bibliography. Comedia Performance is a refereed journal. All submissions will be read by a committee of experts. Please submit articles to the appropriate editor. E- mails of editors are listed under Editorial Board. Guidelines for theater reviews: 1. Reviews should be between 3 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 Lope de Vega’s La Muerte del rey de Suecia Glimpses from the Tuscan Embassy Shirley B. Whitaker 9 Interculturalism and the Comedia: K+S+E+C Act's adaptation of Cervantes's Numancia Elena García-Martin 42 Algunos aspectos de la vida teatral a través de cuatro entremeses de Agustín Moreto Ruth Sánchez-Imizcoz 78 El arte nuevo de traducir Lo fingido verdadero Elizabeth M. Petersen 113 From the Town with More Theaters than Taxis: Calderón, Lope and Tirso at the 2008 Almagro Festival Duncan Wheeler 151 Interview Calderón’s Dream on the London Stage: A Conversation with Jonathan Munby Maryrica Ortiz Lottman 201 Theater Reviews 226 Book Reviews 272 Performance Studies LOPE DE VEGA’S LA MUERTE DEL REY DE SUECIA ON THE MADRID STAGE AND AT EL PARDO: GLIMPSES FROM THE TUSCAN EMBASSY SHIRLEY B. WHITAKER Emerita, UNC Greensboro For specialists in sixteenth- and seventeenth- century Spanish theater, La muerte del rey de Su- ecia, or simply El rey de Suecia, was until recently little more than a comedia title occasionally noted in passing. Though the text has been lost, a record of performance at the palace of El Pardo on February 1, 1633, by the company of Antonio de Prado, with payment on March 3, 1633 (Shergold and Varey, “Palace” 236), strongly suggested that its action centered on events at the Battle of Lützen, near Leipzig, where King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was killed on November 16, 1632. At this major engagement of the Thirty Years War, Gustavus Adolphus’s Swedish army, which had been virtually unstoppable as it swept down into Central Europe, met a multinational Catholic force under the Im- perial commander-in-chief Albrecht von Wallens- 9 10 Comedia Performance Vol. 8, No. 1, 2011 tein, better known to his contemporaries by his title of duke of Friedland.1 With the publication in 1980 of Brown and Elliott’s A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV, more details came to light, based primarily on Elliott’s research in the Floren- tine archives, which centered on newsletters drawn up by Bernardo Monanni, secretary of the Tuscan Embassy in Madrid.2 Synthesizing Monanni’s re- port on the play, Brown and Elliott have this to say: On January 26, 1633, the king and the count-duke went to the theater incognito to see a play on the defeat and death of the King of Sweden, especially written by Lope de Vega. The production had to be imme- diately withdrawn because it contained in- decorous material, but the popular demand for it was so great that Antonio de Mendoza produced a hastily revised version which was performed before enthusiastic au- diences. (Brown and Elliott, 63) It can thus be inferred that the play has af- finities with a large number of Spanish plays written in the 1620s and 1630s close upon Spanish or Im- perial victories. While relaciones of these military successes might be purchased on the streets of Ma- drid, a comedia’s visual and verbal power could greatly amplify the impact of the prose accounts. A more permanent visual commemoration is the series Whitaker 11 of twelve paintings in the Salón de Reinos of the palace of the Buen Retiro on victories (though Spanish only, not Imperial) won for Philip IV while the count-duke of Olivares was chief minister. A comedia on the Madrid stage celebrated nearly every one of these Spanish triumphs and also a number of the those designated as Imperial, in which Spanish funds, and sometimes Spanish troops, played significant parts. At the Tuscan Embassy in Madrid, plays on the Madrid stage with overtly political subject mat- ter were closely followed. Dispatches and newsletters sent to Florence often included reports on their reception along with analyses of their content. In- deed, a series of embassy dispatches and newsletters furnish a remarkable account of the early stage his- tory of the play that Brown and Elliott identify as treating the death of King Gustavus Adolphus. It is, as will be shown below, indisputably the comedia bearing the title La muerte del rey de Suecia, in its shorter form El rey de Suecia. The principal writer here is Bernardo Monanni, who as embassy secretary was second in command from his arrival in the summer of 1626 until his return to Florence in 1642. An acute political analyst, Monanni drew regularly from an intricate network of sources he had devel- oped from bufones de corte on up. In the period under discussion, he had already been in charge of the embassy more than once during intervals between ambassadors. He had thus been received in audience 12 Comedia Performance Vol. 8, No. 1, 2011 by Philip IV and had conducted embassy business with Olivares. Among the questions absorbing literary scholars who study plays on subjects from contem- porary events is the length of the interval between receipt of the news and the appearance of a play on the stage. Brown and Elliott, drawing on a manu- script in Elliott’s possession, state that the news reached Madrid on Christmas Day of 1632 (Brown and Elliott, 63). Monanni implies that the earliest reports did not allow the palace to declare a victory. It was only upon arrival of the duke of Feria’s courier on December 27, with letters from the em- peror confirming the Swedish king’s defeat and death, that a decision was reached to treat Lützen as a victory, in Monanni’s words in his newsletter of January 1 1633, “la maggiore che si ha conseguita da molti anni in qua contro gli Infideli” ‘the greatest that has been achieved in many years against the Infidels’--i.e.

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