Abstract

In many Calderón’s tragic plays, a room or a hall can turn into a space of violence, if locked or opened against the will of the character (mostly a woman) who lives in it. That is what we can observe in La gran Cenobia, El médico de su honra, El pintor de su deshonra, El mayor monstruo del mundo, La vida es sueño. In comic plays, on the contrary, dramatic situations like these use to turn out well, thanks to ingenious solutions or favorable chance: it is what happens in Amor, honor y poder and La dama duende; whereas the case of No hay cosa como callar confirms the generic ambiguity of this play.

Abstract

This article aims to describe and characterize space in Lope de Vega’s biblical play La hermosa Ester (1610). With the exception of two comic interludes found respectively in cuadros E and H and set in a hamlet near to the Persian capital, the remaining 11 cuadros are set in the city of Susa. The city is represented by a palace with a garden, a throne room and the king’s chambers) as well as an urban space (Jewish quarter, the favorite minister’s residence, and streets), both of which are linked by a square that is situated in front of the palace, a square that is of prime importance in the dramatic action. In contrast to Danielle Crivellari’s recent study on space in the work, this new proposed reconstruction, fashioned according to implicit stage directions, brings to light the dubious fragility of spacial elements when considering the play’s system of segmentation, that can find firmer bases in the metrics

Abstract

The work as a playwright of Joan Timoneda was reviled until the 1980s because of the relevance that criticism gave to its alleged lack of originality. It was interesting that when critics tried to correct this judgment was not done from an aesthetic point of view, much less dramaturgic. In this paper I will try to evaluate this facet based on criteria that are much more objective, coherent and contextualized. For this purpose, I will carry out the analysis of purely theatrical parameters such as the space, time and dramatic action with which Timoneda constructed eight religious pieces.