Folke Gernert Divination on stage Folke Gernert Divination on stage Prophetic body signs in early modern theatre in Spain and Europe Publication funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) ISBN 978-3-11-069574-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-069575-5 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-073480-5 DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695755 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950024 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Folke Gernert, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston The book is published open access at www.degruyter.com. Cover image: Georges de La Tour (ca. 1630), “The Fortune Teller”, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Wikimedia Commons: File:Georges de La Tour 016.jpg. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Acknowledgements The present book is mainly an English translation of the chapters about theatre of my monograph on the textualization of physiognomic lore in Spanish Golden Age literature together with an article about birthmarks in Calderón: Gernert, Folke. Lecturas del cuerpo. Fisiognomía y literatura en la España áurea.Salamanca: Universidad, 2018. Gernert, Folke. “La devoción de la Cruz desde la fisiognomía. La violencia de Eusebio entre predeterminación y libre albedrío.” La violencia en Calderón. Ed. Gero Arnscheidt and Manfred Tietz. Vigo: Academia del Hispanismo, 2014. 229–250. The first chapter of this book is a considerably shortened and revised version of the corresponding chapters (chapter 0 and chapter I) of Lecturas del cuerpo. Chapters 2 and 3 and sub-chapters 2 to 4 of Chapter 4 largely correspond to Chapter III.3 of the Spanish book while sub-chapters 1 of Chapter 4 is an English Translation of “La devoción de la Cruz desde la fisiognomía. La violencia de Eusebio entre predeterminación y libre albedrío.” Since the article on Calderón appeared some years ago, I have decided to use editions of the dramas under discussion that have appeared in the meantime and to update the bibliography. Chapter 5 is an elaborated version of Chapter II.2.3 of Lecturas del cuerpo. I would like to thank the publishers, Ediciones de la Universidad de Salamanca and Academia del Hispanismo, for the kind permission to reprint this material here. Furthermore, I would like to thank Werner Schäfer very much for the translation of the text into English and the stimulating exchange about the subtleties of the English version. Open Access. © 2021 Folke Gernert, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695755-202 Contents Acknowledgements V Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Divination and the human body 5 1 Body signs in context 5 2 History of physiognomy 8 2.1 Physiognomy in print 12 3 The interpretation of the hand 22 3.1 Palmistry marginalised: the gipsies 28 Chapter 2 Dramatic readings of the hand and the body in the theatre of the 16th century 31 1 The Italian model 31 2 The Égloga interlocutoria by Diego Guillén de Ávila 42 3 The palm-reading gipsies in Gil Vicente and other playwrights 47 4 Palmistry and physiognomy in Lope de Rueda 62 Chapter 3 17th century theatre and occultism 69 1 Palmistry in the theatre of Cervantes 69 2 The occult knowledge of Lope de Vega 76 2.1 Servir a señor discreto (1614–1615) 100 2.2 Body readings between mockery and truth 104 3 Tirso de Molina and physiognomy 120 4 Body signs in Rojas Zorrilla 126 5 Occult knowledge in Juan Ruiz de Alarcón 129 5.1 La cueva de Salamanca (1617–1620) 132 6 Agustín Moreto and Lope’s model of hand reading 137 Chapter 4 Calderón and the condemnation of the divinatory arts on the stage 143 1 Body signs in Calderón’s early work: La devoción de la Cruz (1622–1623) 144 1.1 Birth marks and analogical thinking 149 1.2 Calderón and the signatures: Julia’s and Eusebio’s birthmarks 152 VIII Contents 1.3 La devoción de la Cruz: a prodigious history? 157 2 Predetermination and free will 162 2.1 La vida es sueño (1635) 162 2.2 Apolo y Climene (1661) and El tesoro escondido (1679) 166 3 Women as bearers of occult knowledge in Calderón 170 3.1 El mayor encanto, amor (1635) 170 3.2 Los encantos de la culpa (1645) 174 3.3 Los tres mayores prodigios (1636) 178 3.4 El jardín de Falerina (1649) 180 4 Calderón and physiognomy 184 Chapter 5 Divination and marginalised women on stage 187 1 Female diviners in 17th century France: The affaire des poisons 188 2 La Voisin – a real soothsayer on the scene in La Devineresse (1679) 192 Epilogue 197 Bibliography 199 Primary sources 199 Secondary sources 206 Name index 243 Introduction Your face, my thane, is a book where men May read strange matters (Macbeth)1 Theatre and, especially, comedy, which aims at imitationem vitae and speculum consuetudinis according to the definition Donato puts into Cicero’s mouth,2 is the literary genre which best reflects contemporary attitudes towards the occult arts and science.3 As a matter of fact, sorcerers, necromancer and astrologers are reg- ular characters in the European and Spanish theatre of the Golden Age.4 Italy’s commedia erudita, which provides a new theatrical model in the 16th century, in- troduces in Ariosto’s Il negromante the prototype of the cheating magician which was to become highly successful.5 Whereas much scholarly attention has been paid to magic6 and astrology7 in the theatre, less attention has been paid to the reading of body signs, moles and lines on the forehead and hand. 1 Shakespeare, Macbeth I, 5, vv. 60–61, ed. Braunmuller (1997, 127). 2 “Comoediam esse Cicero ait imitationem uitae, speculum consuetudinis, imaginem ueritatis” (Donatus, “De comoedia”, ed. Weßner, 1902, 22) [Comedy is as Cicero says imitation of life, mirror of customs and the image of truth]. On this aspect, see Vega Ramos (1996) and (2004) as well as Chalkomatas, who observes: “Die Definition der Komödie als derjenigen Gattung, die sich am meisten auf die Darstellung des weltimmanenten Lebens konzentriert, musste also dem Konzept der Mimesis eine zentrales Rolle zuerkennen. Dafür sprechen alle aus der Antike erhaltenen Definitionen der Gattung, darunter auch diejenige, die angeblich von Cicero selber stammt” (2007, 138–139). [The definition of comedy as the genre which most focuses on the representation of ev- eryday life must concede a central role to mimesis. All definitions of this genre preserved from Antiquity, including the one which allegedly goes back to Cicero himself, support this]. 3 As Dahan-Gaida rightly observes, literature is “un formidable résonateur des savoirs irri- guant la culture, savoirs qu’elle absorbe et met en scène dans une sorte de mise en abyme du champ de la connaissance” (2006, 17) [a formidable resonator of the knowledge irrigating the culture, knowledge that it absorbs and stages in a kind of mise en abyme of the field of knowl- edge]. For science on the Spanish stage see García Santo-Tomás (2019). Physiognomics is not represented among the various disciplines dealt with in the collection. 4 On magic in French literature see Courtès (2004), and, with special attention to theatre, Friedrich (1908). On French theatre of the 17th century see Gutierrez-Laffond (1998) and for a comparison between Il Negromante and Corneille’s Illusion comique Dickhaut (2016). 5 The comedy was translated into Latin as Necromanticus by Juan Pérez Petreyo, into French as Le Négromant (1573) by Jean de La Taille. On the Latin translation see Gago Saldaña (2001) and on the French see Benedettini (2010). 6 On magic and occultism in the Spanish theatre of the Golden Age see Pavia (1959), Diago (1992) and Arellano (1996). On the character of the necromancer see Alonso Asenjo (1991) and the dissertation project by Anne Bermann. 7 On 16th century theatre see Vélez Sainz (2014) and the studies by Halstead (1939) and (1941), Lorenz (1961), Armas (1980), (1983), (1993), (2001), (2006) and (2017), Hurtado Torres (1983) Open Access. © 2021 Folke Gernert, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110695755-001 2 Introduction Most of modern studies on the textualization of physiognomic theories in fic- tion deal with the narrative literature of the 18th,19th and 20th centuries, with par- ticular emphasis on the impact of Lavater. It was above all nineteenth-century realism and its link with approaches from the natural sciences that made research- ers interested in the role of physiognomy in the construction of literary characters. The most obvious and most studied case is that of Balzac, Lavater’sreader,who repeatedly used these theories, especially when describing the physiognomy of marginalised and criminal individuals. Pérez Galdós’ interest in physiognomic studies is similar to that of the author of the Comédie humaine in Spain. The most studied medieval author with a view to the fictionalization of physiognomy is per- haps Geoffrey Chaucer,8 followed by the Archpriest of Hita.9 Regarding the Catalan Middle Ages, we have a well-documentedstudybyCarré(2010)thatdisprovesthe claims of some researchers concerning the minor importance of physiognomy in medieval narrative. On the other hand, there are very few works dedicated to lyric poetry10 which, due to its own unoriginal nature, lends itself – as Rodler (2000, 9–10) argues – less to the textualization of physiognomic theories.