Bulletin of the Comediantes

Rogers, Daniel, S68. Rothberg, Irving P, S63. Rozzell, Ramón, S51, F55. St. John, Bruce, F69. Sánchez Escribano, Federico, S55, S61, S63. Sears, Helen L, S50. Sedwick, Frank B, F54. Selig, Karl-Ludwig, S60, S61, F66, S67; Bibliography, F55-S61. Shervill, R. N, F63. Silverman, Joseph H, S65, F66. Sloman, Albert E, F55. Stafford, Lorna Lavery, F50. Stern, Charlotte, S66. Taylor, Terry O, Bibliography, S-F67. Tyler, Richard W, F52, S63, F63, F65, S70. Valbuena Briones, Angel, F56. Valbuena Prat, Angel, F50. Wade, Gerald E, S53, F53, S55, F56, F57, S58, F58, S59, F60, S62, S64, F64, F66, S67, F68. Wardropper, Bruce W, F55, F61, S64. Weiger, John G, S58, F58, F63, F67. Whitaker, Shirley B, S70. Whitby, William M, S56. Williamsen, Vern G, F70. Wilson, Edward M., S52. Wilson, William E, F55, F57, S61, S67. DRAMATIC CONVENTIONS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY SPANISH THEATRE Michael J. Ruggerio, University of California, Berkeley It is well-known that the audience for which Lope de Vega and his followers wrote craved plays which were full of adventures. In order to meet this desire and still satisfy their own aesthetic taste and artistic demands, the authors had to be master craftsmen . They had to learn how to mold the many disparate elements (incidents , characters, messages, etc.) into a unified whole.1 Indeed, when all is said and done, the evolution of what is generally called the Spanish Golden Age comedia is the development of techniques which would accomplish this result. We should not assume, however, that the greater degrees of perfection2 found in Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Ruiz de Alarcón, Calder ón de la Barca, etc. were the rule in the pre-comedia theatre. There is no doubt, though, that the playwrights from Encina to Lope de Vega were faced with similar problems just as there is no doubt that these predecessors of Lope experimented with the newly popular form. They realized early — it seems almost, by intuition — that some kind of unity was a primary necessity. They similarly realized that dramatic tradition provided them with some ready-made instruments to facilitate their success at this type of composition : asides, monologues and narratives3 could help them both to complicate the plot (thereby pleasing their audiences) and to maintain control over the complications (thereby pleasing their own artistic sense). If we look carefully at some of the more important sixteenth century plays we find that experimentation is evident in the ways that the playwrights used the above-mentioned conventions. By observing the varying degrees of their frequency — and, indeed, the varying degrees of their successful employment — we shall be able to discern the presence of certain dramatic principles which will form the cornerstone of the later comedia. Despite the faulty technique in Juan 36 del Encina's Egloga de tres pastores he does seem to be aware of the potential of a monologue in an emotion-producing situation. For example, the presence of Fileno's monologue just before he commits suicide (11. 505-600) shows Encina's dramatic sense even through the speech is too long and anti-dramatic to transmit the despair of a person who is about to kill himself. Cardonio's monologue — right after Fileno's suicide — is equally ineffective : the first part (1. 601-612)4 is meant to be informative but it repeats details that we already know and mentions others that are irrelevant; the discovery of Fileno's body is also a poor scene because the language used does not reveal any emotion. In both cases the monologues should have served to characterize vividly. In both cases they fail to do so. A more successful use of monologues for characterization is found in Gil Vicente 's Tragicomedia de Don Duardos.5 The three soliloquies — all given by Don Duardos himself — come at tense places and mark the stages of his love for Flérida. The first one — after he arrives at the garden and is taken in by Julian and Costanza — shows his love for Flérida: Yo adoro, diosa mía, más que a los dioses sagrados, tu alteza, que eres dios de mi alegría, criador de mis cuidados y tristeza.(838...