The Telling Lies of La verdad sospechosa
1988; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 103; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2905340
ISSN1080-6598
Autores Tópico(s)Early Modern Spanish Literature
ResumoAll second readings of La verdad seem to begin at the end. In the play's final scene, the dramatist puts a stop to the dramatic game of mistaken identities, unraveling the tangled threads of his enredo, untying the knots produced by his characters' scheming in a denouement which promises to clear up the confusion. At the endpoint, where words must merge with deedswhere Garcia, under the threat of physical vengeance from his own father, must reluctantly produce not more ephemeral verbal offerings but the gift of his hand-, Tristaln's familiar lines combine revelation with I told you so, making-verbally-his master's bitter moment of truth the time for a common-sense philosophical truth: Y aqui veras cuan dafiosa / es la mentira y verai / el que en la boca / del que mentir acostumbra, / es la verdad sospechosa (11. 3107-1 1)'. With these verses, uttered after the jury of the offender's fictional peers, his fellow characters, has handed down its verdict, the playwright reaches out to other tribunals. While the Senate in question presumably refers to the spectators of a live performance, it inevitably extends to readers as well. Thus the phrase Y verai el Senado, in attempting to garner support for the workings of poetic justice to impose closure on a messy case, in a sense reopens it. And the judgment left to lean on the rather shaky support of a philosophical commonplace about the slippery nature of truth already concedes the grounds for an appeal.
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