The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus and Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III, 1598-1621. (Reviews).

Lope de Vega. El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristobal Colon / The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus

Trans. Robert Shannon. (Iberica, 34.) New York: Peter Lang, 2001. lxiix + 329 pp. $62.95. ISBN: 0-8204-4884-2.

Elizabeth R. Wright. Pilgrimage to Patronage: Lope de Vega and the Court of Philip III, 1598-1621

Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2001. 184 pp. $36.50. ISBN: 0-8387-5454-6.

Over the last two decades British and American Hispanists have undertaken a consistent re-evaluation of the theater of Calderon de la Barca. Centering on questions of polyphony, mythology, astrology and politics, these critics have come to see the ideological polyvalence of Calderonian texts. Now, these new approaches are impinging upon Lope de Vega's theater as new studies reveal that Spanish theater "no less than the English was a potential arena for subversion -- moral, religious, political. This is why it was licensed and censored, this is why it was attacked and opposed" (Melveena McKendrick, Playing the King, 107). Robert Shannon's edition and translation of Lope's El nuevo mundo descubierto por Colon as well as Elizabeth Wright's Pilgrimage to Patronage belong to this school in Comedia studies. They also exemplify a new concern with the Spanish epic.

El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristobal Colon is one the few comedias that deal with the debate over the discovery/encounter and conquest of America. Besides purely aesthetic reasons, El nuevo mundo treats many key topics of the time: power, sex, identity, the debate over conquest and conversion, faith and nationality. In his welcome edition Robert Shannon provides several introductory essays. In each one he combines general remarks (systems of economic production, the use of rhetoric in the comedia, etc.) and interpretations of the multiple peculiarities of the El nuevo mundo. In "Syncretism and the Comedia" Shannon explains how Lope meshes Spain and her Other in a contrastive manner (5). Lope compares the conquistadors and their Amerindian counterparts in order "to expose the defects of the Spanish leaders, relying on the war-like nature of the Other to refashion the political and military vitality of his nation" (8). Shannon intelligently analyzes several representations of alterity in the comedia, to con clude that difference is not tolerated. According to Shannon, the Other is utilized to recapture an identity in terms of social, political, and racial order which seventeenth-century Spanish society believed it was losing (19). "Echoes from the Epics" contextualizes the work in connection with the epics composed in the sixteenth century, from which Shannon derives El nuevo mundo's date of composition: 1600. Lope refracts both Ona's El arauco domado and Ercilla's La araucana. In "Allegory in El nuevo mundo" Shannon pays special attention to the two allegorical scenes and demonstrates how these auto sacramental characters (Faith, Providence) serve to discuss in metaphoric language problematic issues. Lope favors the Spaniards' passionate defense of faith in an attempt to derail questions of greed and power as triggers for conquest (38). In "Dramatic Columbus," Lope rescues Columbus' memory. Shannon shows how Columbus reflects Lope's own ideas on the (mis)treatment of the Indians. This makes Lope a follower of L as Casas who argued in favor of peaceful cohabitation. Finally, in "The Staging of El Nuevo mundo" Shannon describes problems of staging, stage machinery, performance, props, and special effects. According to Shannon, Lope understood and indulged the taste of his contemporaries for the spectacular. These brief essays show the ambivalence of Lope's representation of the conquest, both praising its religious function and criticizing the treatment of the Amerindians.

Although this fine edition is marred by a number of typographical errors and inconsistent citations, Shannon must be congratulated for having prepared a useful edition and an informative and well argued introduction. It also has copious annotations as well as a reader-friendly bilingual prose translation. This edition will satisfy the general reader as well as the historical and literary scholar.

Elizabeth Wright foregrounds from the start of her engaging and informative book the conflictive relationship between two spheres: "Literature and politics met in an uneasy alliance during the reign of Philip III (1598-1621) and his favorite, the duke of Lerma" (13). Her study thus deals with Lope de Vega's place in the propaganda machine created by Lerma. Taking as a point of departure studies by Norbert Elias, Richard Helgerson, Pierre Bordieu and Stephen Greenblatt, the book follows a revisionist historicism, always stressing the historical anecdote and the literary text over excessive theorizing. It interweaves two of the genres practiced by Lope: epic and theater.

Chapter one, "Setting Out: A Mirror of Princes for a New King" analyzes the seldom studied La Dragontea, the first in a series of epic poems through which Lope wishes to gain royal favor. The topic of this epic is the final defeat of the "Dragon," Sir Francis Drake, who had caused much disruption to the empire in the Caribbean. But Wright rightly questions Lope's triumphalist tone, showing how the monstrous Drake also points to Spain. The poem shows "how the pirate embodies many aspects of the aristocratic ethos that guided Spanish elites" (39). Furthermore, it is Drake who shapes the poem, rather than the Spaniards. Suarez de Amaya is but a "pale counter-weight" to Drake. Lope then utilizes several techniques to transform the troubling image of weak Spaniards. His textual magic leads the readers to focus on the past, on the loss to the Moors. Thus "the narrative transforms failed defenders into Reconquest warriors" (47). The final and crucial question then becomes how a king should act to avoid the fate of G othic Spain. Lope suggests that there is a close link between king and subject, and that the king will triumph through munificence. It should not surprise us to discover that this munificence should be directed, in part to Lope de Vega, who casts himself as a new Virgil, praising his Augustus.

While in chapter one we encounter Lope's Virgilian self-conception, in chapter two, we see the poet dressed in a red Bottarga costume, galloping on a donkey. While this may seem at odds with his earlier persona, Wright shows that Lope's voice does not disappear. He did write Relaciones of the wedding feast of 1599. Although even here there is a certain self-effacement given his courtly ambitions--his voice is there to praise his patrons. But one needs to look elsewhere to find Lope's voice -- to plays that recall the royal wedding, which "hold a distorted mirror up to the court's image making," and to certain satirical poems. Since Lope did not move to Valladolid with the court, he became "an emblem of the abandoned court city" (68). In Toledo, he would retake the image of a new Virgil telling how the king needs a chronicler, a poet laureate, a Virgil. But he does so to a crowd that did not include the king, for the royal court held its own feats to celebrate the birth of Philip IV in Valladolid.

Chapter three "A New Beginning: The Quest for Jerusalem" returns to the epic, analyzing Lope's Jerusalen conquistada (1609). Here Lope elaborates an Augustinian allegory where the sacred city represents in moral and political terms Spanish society. Lope develops a politics of popularity through which he creates a new strategy to attain patronage. This feat is accomplished through imparting value to copiousness and to the popular voice. Triumphalism is transformed into the triumphs of the self. In chapter four, Wright tackles three plays in which Lope portrays court poets and playwrights: La hermosa Ester (1604), El precio de la hermosura (c. 1614) y Los ramilletes de Madrid (c. 1614-1615). Wright argues that Lope's self-representation evolves to such a point that it eventually blurs the distinctions between theater and reality. Perhaps the chapter's most engaging pages deal with Wright's re-assessment of the relationship between Lope and G6ngora in terms of Los ramilletes de Madrid: "Critics have not, however , contemplated how the attacks rivals traded may have suited their respective patrons and bolstered their own public images" (133).

In conclusion, Elizabeth Wright provides us with an intelligent and important re-evaluation of a selected corpus of Lope de Vega's poetry and plays in terms of politics and patronage under Philip III and his minister Lerma. The work complements other studies that have centered on the relationship between Lope, Philip IV and his minister Olivares. Recent books on Calder6n as well as these and other studies on Lope de Vega are bringing us closer to an understanding of the link between politics, patronage and literary text in early modern Spain.