From Calderón's autos to Sor Juana's Divino Narciso (1690)

Autos sacramentales (sacramental one-act plays) were first developed as purely theological plays performed for the Corpus Christi festival in late May or early June. In time, this term was used to describe any play performed at the festival, even if it did not have a sacramental or even religious theme (a trend introduced by Calderón when autos became his primary genre after 1651). As we discussed, the Spanish 17th century theatre differed from those of Italy, England and France in that religious theatre continued right along the development of secular professional theatre, and in the late 17th century even pre-dominated for a time. The autos combined elements of medieval morality and mystery plays and could include human, supernatural or allegorical characters. They were produced at the festivals by professional companies and then tour local villages and even perform in the public corrales. Over the course of the 17th century, the staging conventions for autos developed from carros (wagons) to larger platform stages. By the 1690s, the auto stage was 36 feet deep and nearly 50 feet high, while the carros (which still served as architectural elements) could be 36 feet high.

Since 1623, Calderón had written plays for court as well as for the corrales. However, over the course of the late 1630s, his attentions were pulled away from the corrales. In 1635, the year he wrote La vida es sueño (1635), Lope de Vega died, and Calderón was named director of the court theatre. In 1640, however, both court and corral theatres were closed due to wars in Catalonia and Portugal, and Calderón joined the army. In 1651, he returned to religion and was ordained a priest. He returned to writing plays, but not for the public stage. Only autos for the Corpus Christi festivals. In 1663, he was reappointed court poet, and served there as director of theatre, and the sole licensed author of autos in Madrid until his death in 1681.

Sor Juana wrote El Divino Narciso in 1687 as part of a competition for a festival in Madrid to see who would write autos after the death of Calderón. So the final dialogue, in which Zeal and Religion argue about how this play would be received in Madrid speaks directly to that context. Unfortunately, the festival was canceled on account of the death of the Queen. Sor Juana published the play in 1690 in New Spain (present-day Mexico) but there is no record of it having been performed during her lifetime.

In reading this short play (Longman 620-629), think about what Sor Juana was doing in writing such a play, and how it might have been received in Madrid or even in New Spain. How does she mix the genre of sacramental play with that of "conquest literature"? How does she reconcile the conversion and conquest of Mexico? What is her attitude towards the indigenous population? Are the facts that she is a female playwright (the first we've read in this world theatre sequence), a nun and a criolla (a person of European descent born in colonial Mexico) significant to our understanding of the play? Why does she represent Aztec ritual practices (which the native population themselves were forbidden to perform in the 17th century)?

Pedro Calderon de la Barca's La Vida es Sueno (Life is a Dream, 1635)

On Monday (January 12), we discussed the general historical and political context of Siglo de Oro (Golden Age) Spain, and Felix Lope de Vega's seminal work of dramatic theory, El arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (The new art of writing comedies in this era, 1609). In this work, which is in one sense a manifesto of artistic freedom from neoclassicism, Lope demonstrates the kind of ambivalence about Stephen Toulmin had described in his book, Cosmopolis. On the one hand, Lope demands the right for himself and his contemporaries to compose new plays that do not adhere to the rules of Aristotle. On the other hand, he replaces the authority of the Greek and Roman ancients with that of Spanish tradition and custom. It is this persistent respect for authority in the creation of secular, vernacular arts that marks what Toulmin calls the "humanistic" phase of the Renaissance. Even though Lope's invocation of the "nuevo" suggests Hans Gumbrecht's third definition of the modern (the transitory "past of a future present"), his privileging of uso (Spanish custom) belies the belief in progress that we generally associate with a modern perspective.

Keep all this in the back of your mind as you read Calderon's play (Longman 588-616). For those of you who have studied earlier periods of drama, consider how the play retains aspects of classical drama in terms of dramatic structure (beginning with how the play is broken into acts and including the shape of the plot), characterization (what familiar "types" do the characters belong to?) and staging conventions called for in the text (what are the minimum requirements in terms of scenery, props, costumes, etc. to stage this play?) For everyone else, look for signs of the play's historical context. Is Spain's historical situation in 1635 evident in any way (an imperial absolutist monarcy making war throughout Europe and filling its coffers with American gold while its status as the preeminent power in Europe begins to fade in favor of England and France)? Do you see evidence of those Renaissance/Early Modern struggles between humanistic freedom and the authorities of Church, state and tradition? How do Sigismund, Rosaura and the rest compare to characters you've seen in Shakespeare? Do they behave "appropriately" to their types, or do they have more complex psychologies? Lastly, why does Calderon set his play in Poland rather than Spain?

Here are three images of corral theatres to give you a sense of where Calderon's play would have been staged. On the left is a rendering of a very early corral from the late 16th century. On the right, a photograph of a performance at Al Magra corral, a space that resembles a little more closely the mid-17th century corrales of Calderon's time. Note that, although it is still cozy compared to a large proscenium theatre, it is less intimate than the first theatre. On the bottom, a scholar's guess at how the different niches and galleries of the corral stage might have been arranged for a performance of La Vida es Sueno. How could you imagine the stage being used for a performance of this play? How might conventions of the corral (such as the location of lower-paying guests in the courtyard, nobility in the galleries and women in their own separate cazuela gallery) affect the choices available to actors in this play?