Jonathan Thacker

Arte nuevo de hacer comedias by Lope deVega (review)

Lope de vega’s speech, “dirigido a la Academia de Madrid,” was first printed as the Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo in his Rimas in February of 1609. In this extensive new edition, a late-maturing fruit of the fourth centenary celebrations of the publication of the poem, the Arte nuevo receives its most minute critical scrutiny and its fullest assessment, at the hands of one of the most influential of modern-day lopistas, Felipe Pedraza. This is a mammoth volume: Pedraza’s preliminary remarks trace the gestation of the project (9–14); an introductory study situates the work and records its reception from the seventeenth century to our own (17–81); the text itself follows, unencumbered by footnotes other than the variants from the 1609, 1613, and 1621 Madrid editions (83–100); next come the “notas y escolios” for which the editor breaks the text into its thirty short sections of hendecasyllables for commentary and analysis (101–635); there follow four Latin texts which are “singularmente importantes para su intelección” (81), with their Spanish translations (on facing pages) and appended notes by Pedro Conde Parrado, and in the case of the Alfonso Sánchez text, with Xavier Tubau (637–889); and the volume ends with a bibliography (891– 964) and indices (965–78). The initial “estudio”—some of it repeated from earlier work by Pedraza on the text—proves to be a very useful overview of Lope’s poem. While the editor does not provide new evidence for its dating or the circumstances of its composition, he reviews what we do know with characteristic good sense, rejecting the theory that the Arte nuevo came about as a response to Don Quijote I, 47–48, or indeed that Cervantes was himself inspired to invent the canon of Toledo by Lope’s text. He believes that the work was first read as late as 1608 or Lope deVega. Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, edición crítica y anotada de Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez. Fuentes y ecos latinos: Pedro Conde Parrado.

Self-Construction and the Imagination in the Drama of Lope de Vega and Cervantes

Abstract In their mature drama Lope de Vega and Cervantes each produced characters of some sophistication. In spite of the conclusions of some scholars, both playwrights were able to imagine, create and sustain the illusion of character depth and development on stage. However, they did this in distinct ways and with differing aims. In this article we examine the ways characters are created and are seen to develop in the two dramatists’ work (using El castigo sin venganza and La entretenida as examples of their practice). In particular we are interested in the role of the imagination in this process: characters’ use and exploitation of earlier visual, poetic and dramatic models; the creation of theatre within theatre; the power of pre-existing images in self-construction; and the clash of the imaginary and the real world. Although it is common enough to contrast the popular theatre of Lope with the more overtly experimental Cervantes, this article moves beyond the antagonistic confines of the Lope/Cervantes debate to compare in depth their techniques of characterization.