Abstract

Calderón’s autograph comedia-manuscripts which have been preserved are not rough drafts, but versions prepared by the author to be delivered to a user, normally a theatre company. They should therefore be studied as final products of the process of composition. The authorial corrections they contain are nearly always the fruit of the revision of a previously composed text, and aim to be intelligible for an outsider. The abridgements tend to have no other end than abbreviating the text and thus, also, the memorization of the texts by the actors and the duration of the performance. Finally, various passages Calderón copied on a folio he glued on top of the earlier version, the two drafts preserved of two pages of El mágico prodigioso, and the relocated passages of Yerros de Naturaleza y aciertos de la Fortuna bear testimony of the zeal with which Calderón polished his verses even as he copied them.

Abstract

Lope de Vega’s autographs allow us to approach the genesis of a play, analyse the cross-outs, changes and additions of the playwright and understand his modus operandi. Moreover, these documents also contain annotations and corrections of other agents involved in the Golden Age Theatre market that could substantially modify the text. On many occasions, the philological and codicological analysis only allows making hypotheses about what happened and does not offer reliable solutions to questions about the composition of theatrical text. Through this paper, we present the results of the analysis of several of Lope de Vega auto-graph manuscripts done with techniques and instruments related to photography and spectroscopy ranging from spectral photography to X-ray fluorescence. We shall demonstrate that the application of these techniques to the study of manuscripts from the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age will also make it possible to obtain information that is relevant to and valuable in delving into the development and circulation of a particular work, but also in gaining a much more complete understanding of the formation of Spanish classical theatre.