Abstract
This chapter examines Jusepe Antonio González de Salas’s manifesto on acting, Nueva idea de la tragedia antigua, published in 1633. Salas based most of his arguments on Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, positing that a good actor should condition his/her body in an effort to engage a unified body-mind—a pure, clear voice, a steadfast memory, and dynamic action. He examines the active body and its relationship with its environment. Given that women feature prominently in Salas’s analysis, it may be useful to view his treatise from an explicitly feminist perspective. This chapter, therefore, explores pedagogical approaches to the reading and understanding of Salas’s treatise and its implicit effect on women actors in early modern Spanish theater through the prism of feminist philosopher Shannon Sullivan’s notion of “transactionally co-constituted bodies,” which expands on the notion of the “lived body.” Since Salas employs both an academic and practical methodology in his examination of the art of acting, this chapter includes an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach that could enhance students’ understanding of gender roles in theater. It also offers a few simple performance arts, in-class activities aimed at engaging students’ awareness of others’ gendered bodying, heightening the layer effect of their own lived bodily experience.
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Notes
- 1.
For my translation of Salas’s chapter about the actors, “De los representantes Sección IX” in Nueva idea de la tragedia antigua, please visit www.elizabethcruzpetersen.com.
- 2.
In her book of essays, On Female Body Experience, Iris Marion Young states, “a person’s subjectivity is conditioned by sociocultural facts and the behavior and expectations of others in ways that she has not chosen” (Young 2005, 18). Hence, the lived body “can offer a way of articulating how persons live out their position in social structures along with the opportunities and constraints they produce” (25).
- 3.
For instance, Félix Lope de Vega (1562–1635) in his lifetime composed around 3000 sonnets and 9 epic poems and wrote at least 500 plays and 3 novels, far exceeding William Shakespeare (1564–1616), whose collection of writings includes approximately 37 plays (he collaborated on several more), 4 poems, and 154 sonnets.
- 4.
Other contemporary treatises include Francisco de Osuna’s Norte de los estados [The North Star of Ranks] and Antonio de Guevara’s 1868 Letra para recien casados [Letter to Newlyweds].
- 5.
- 6.
Since the twelfth century, European literature transformed the Virgin Mary into popular culture, portraying her as the admiration of feminine virtues held sacred, like purity and moral strength.
- 7.
Lisa Vollendorf reminds us that Vives and León “advocated limited educational programs for women that would create better wives, household managers, and mothers of future heirs” (Vollendorf 2005, 5); however, “bound by considerations about class and spheres of influence, prescriptions for instructional reform left out many, but unfailingly endorsed the subordination of all women” (Vollendorf 2005, 172).
- 8.
In England, for example, women rarely participated as theater professionals before 1660.
- 9.
Luis Vélez de Guevara’s La serrana de la Vera (1613) features a strong female protagonist (Gila) resolved to find justice—a warrior, hunter, head of her house, and the admiration of her community, who kills two thousand men in revenge for being seduced and abandoned. Jusepa Vaca captured the spirit of the character and the admiration of her audience, opening roles for her in other plays in which she earned top billing as primera dama.
- 10.
Fabiana Laura gave up the privileged class luxuries to join the theater in 1660. Receiving great applause from audiences and theater critics alike, she quickly became a favorite of the playwrights and the royal family.
- 11.
The bofetón is a mechanical device that rotated or sprang open, allowing actors to appear on and disappear from the stage as if by magic.
- 12.
The cloud machine, utilized mainly in hagiographic plays such as those mentioned above, created the illusion of flying by elevating actors, usually women or girls, above the stage. For more about women’s somatic role with stage machines, swordplay, and dance, see Mujica (2015).
- 13.
For more discussion on Aristotle’s view of women as “misbegotten males,” see Christina Van Dyke’s essay in this volume.
- 14.
Riley points out Salas’s extensive erudition, highlighting some of the Greek and Roman antiquity authors listed in the Nueva idea bibliography. He also notes that Salas was “well acquainted with Heinsius’s De tragoediae constitutione (Leyden, 1611) and with the writings of J.C. Scaliger and Minturno” (Riley 1951, 187).
- 15.
“Unlike the majority of his predecessors,” Lope de Vega, as Friedman observes, “is able to blend theory with practice. He seems to intuit that the humanist shift from logic to rhetoric makes sense for the theater, which is both art and craft” (Friedman 1991, 92).
- 16.
James Hutton notes: “The single word ‘gestures’ (schemata) is probably a short way of saying ‘with dramatic action,’ which would include the emotional delivery of dialogue” (Hutton 1992, 99, n. 2).
- 17.
For more on the lived bodily experience by feminist philosophers, Sullivan recommends Susan Wendel and Susan Bordo’s works. Both studies are important examples of feminist philosophy that “recognize the discursivity of bodies as they carry out projects that concretely examine lived bodily experience” (Sullivan 2001, 62).
- 18.
Dewey’s “transaction” rejects the “sharp dualisms between subject and object, and self and world” (Sullivan 2001, 1).
- 19.
- 20.
Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa in his Plaza universal de todas las ciencias y artes [1621, Universal Plaza of All Sciences and Arts] writes that “as for the women, the presence and acting of those that have been on stage is amazing: Ana de Velasco, Mariana Páez, Mariana Ortiz, Mariana Vaca, Jerónima de Salcedo, Juana de Villalba, Mariflores, Micaela Luján, Ana Muñoz, Josefa Vaca, Jerónima de Burgos, Polonia Pérez, María de los Ángeles, María Martín, who changed her name to María de Córdoba, also known as Amarilis, was celebrated as much for her acting as her beauty, la Quiñones, in addition to Mejía, María de Navas and Sabina Pascual” (Rodríguez Cuadros 1998, 206; my translation).
- 21.
Salas’s contemporary, López Pinciano, is the first philosopher to connect the use of máquinas [stage machines] with the actors’ profession (Rodríguez Cuadros 1998, 351). He exclaims: “Watch the actor and study the variety of machines and devices in which someone suddenly and miraculously appears: either as earthly magic of the arts or as divine intervention” (López Pinciano 1894, 496).
- 22.
For more ideas on performance activities that promote social justice and ethnic or racial awareness, see Midha (2010).
- 23.
I want to express my gratitude to all the participants at the international workshop, “Expanding the Canon,” for their insightful comments in the early stages of this essay. A special thank you to Amber Griffioen and Marius Backmann for their suggestions and patience during the editing process.
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Petersen, E.C. (2023). A New Perspective on Old Ideas in González de Salas’s Nueva idea de la tragedia antigua. In: Griffioen, A.L., Backmann, M. (eds) Pluralizing Philosophy’s Past. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13405-0_4
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