Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Calderón's rebellion? Notes on El alcalde de Zalamea

1977; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 54; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382772000354215

1469-3550

J.M. Sobré,

Historical Studies in Latin America

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (London 1967), 87. 2. The Dramatic Craftsmanship of Calderón (Oxford 1958), 246. 3. In Bruce W. Wardropper, Critical Essays on the Theatre of Calderón (New York 1965), 24–60. 4. El alcalde de Zalamea (Oxford 1966), 19. References in the text are to this edition. 5. Recherches sur le thème paysan dans la ‘comedia’ au temps de Lope de Vega (Bordeaux 1965). 6. Teatro y literatura en la sociedad barroca (Madrid 1972), 31. 7. Op. cit. , chapter VIII. 8. These are basically the plays grouped by Salomon and Maravall in the works cited above. 9. In his excellent article ‘The meaning and structure of Lope's Fuenteovejuna’, BHS, XXXI (1954), 167, Professor G. W. Ribbans points out that ‘no one villager can be singled out as his [the Comendador's] killer.’ 10. See Renato Poggioli, The Oaten Flute (Cambridge, Mass. 1975), chapter VIII. 11. The musical metaphor of harmony can be taken literally in Fuenteovejuna as Leo Spitzer showed in ‘A central theme and its structural equivalent in Lope's Fuenteovejuna’, HR, XXXIII (1955), 274–92. 12. My argument should not make us blind to Lope's art. His combination of idealized shepherds and realistic villanos in the same characters is beautiful. 13. See the recent article by Javier Herrero, ‘The New Monarchy; a structural reinterpretation ofFuenteovejuna’, RHM, XXXVI (1970–71), 173–85, for an analysis of this point in the context of the play and for a very useful survey of Fuenteovejuna criticism. 14. As Northrop Frye has done in his Anatomy of Criticism (New York 1969), 163–87. 15. It is consistent with Catholic dogma that evil is independent of numbers; one may repent of thousands of sins, yet one sin is enough to earn a person eternal hell. 16. Cf. Sloman, 232. 17. In Marxist terms, the Captain's honour would be very appropriately described as a ‘condition of alienation’. See, for example, Marx's ‘Alienated labour’ in the first of the 1844 Manuscripts. For the distinction between vertical and horizontal honra, see Gustavo Correa, ‘El doble aspecto de la honra en el teatro del siglo XVII’, HR, XXVI (1958), 99–107. 18. In a recent article, Alexander A. Parker notes the series of confrontations that make act III in El alcalde, but offers no conceptual comment; he simply argues that the play's structure ‘no puede llamarse realista’. See ‘La estructura dramática en El alcalde de palomea’, in Homenaje a Casalduero, ed. R. P. Sigele and G. Sobejano (Madrid 1972), 411–18. 19. Sloman argues, convincingly, that the conflict between morality and the law is resolved in the King's declaration ‘que no importa errar lo menos / quien acertó lo demás’ (III, 939–40), a phrase that echoes Pedro Crespo's own formulation (III, 923–24). Other critics, notably J. M. Aguirre, cannot be reconciled to a viewpoint of justice. Aguirre (‘El alcalde de Zalamea, ¿venganza o justicia?’, Estudios filológicos,VII [1971], 119—32) concludes: ‘El resultado es triunfal. El alcalde de Zalamea ejecuta su venganza de forma tan astuta, que el mismo rey la elogia y premia como justicia, y los críticos de su drama le aclaman como prototipo del hombre justiciero’ (132). Earlier he had singled out eight points that make don Álvaro's execution illegal. These areno fabrication, but our approach will make clear, I hope, that Calderón is all the more insistent on separating the letter of the law from its spirit ; he wants to stress the human, not the alienated element. 20. For the date of the play see Dunn's introduction to his edition, p. 7.