The Weight of Law in Calderón

Abstract From La vida es sueño to El postrer duelo de España and El pintor de su deshonra, Calderón repeatedly explores the weight of law on the individual, dramatizing the conflict between desire and law on both sides of the sexual divide. Law, invoked in its multiple variants—divine, natural and human—collides with the honour code, love, loyalty to friends, to family and to the king and institutions of the state and of power frequently abuse concepts of justice. The fact that Calderón never wrote the promised second part of his only two dramas with eponymous titles, Judas Macabeo and Luis Pérez el gallego, suggests that the dramatist never found a satisfactory resolution to the fundamental human dilemma therein, that of finding a perfect individual balance between desire and the many faces of law. Keywords: Calderón de la Barcalawdesirejusticepowersubjectgenderduel Notes 1Pedro Calderón de la Barca, En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira, ed. D. W. Cruickshank (London: Tamesis, 1971). 2A preliminary version of this study was presented at a conference on ‘Ley y transgresión en el teatro renacentista’ at the Universidad de Huelva, 7–8 March 2011. 3María M. Carrión makes a useful distinction between these categories by using ‘Law’ to refer to legal codes and theories and ‘law’ for their concrete application in Subject Stages: Marriage, Theater, and the Law in Early Modern Spain (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2010). 4Carrión, Subject Stages, 16–31, which draws on Richard Kagan, Lawsuits and Litigants in Castile 1500–1700 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1981). 5Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Ensayo sobre la vida y obras de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca, ed. facsímil al cuidado de Ignacio Arellano and Juan Manuel Escudero (Madrid: Iberoamericana/Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2001 [1st ed. Madrid, 1924]), 82–83. 6Henry W. Sullivan, ‘Jacques Lacan and the Golden Age Drama’, in El arte nuevo de estudiar comedias: Literary Theory and Spanish Drama, ed. Barbara Simerka (Lewisburg: Bucknell U. P., 1996), 105–24 (p. 116). My thanks to Professor Sullivan for reading this article and for suggesting a number of improvements. 7Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Felipe C. R. Maldonado, revisado por Manuel Camarero (Madrid: Editorial Castalia, 1995), 713. 9 Diccionario de Autoridades [1a ed. 1726–1737], ed. facsímil, 3 vols (Madrid: Gredos, 1990), II, 394. 8Stephen Rupp, Allegories of Kingship: Calderón and the Anti-Machiavellian Tradition (University Park: The Pennsylvania State U. P., 1996), Chapter 2. 10Madrid: Chadwyck-Healy España, 1998. Internet resource that requires a subscription. 11Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La vida es sueño, ed., intro. y notas de José Ma Ruano de la Haza (Madrid: Castalia, 1994), 1. Subsequent references are drawn from this edition, indicated by line numbers. 12The underlines affecting ley and leyes here and in other quotations are, of course, mine. 13Sullivan, ‘Jacques Lacan and the Golden-Age Drama’, 114. 14Margaret R. Greer, ‘A Tale of Three Cities: The Place of the Theatre in Early Modern Madrid, London and Paris’, in Calderón 1600–1681: Quatercentenary Studies in Memory of John E. Varey, ed., with an intro., by Ann L. Mackenzie, BHS, LXXVII:1 (2000), 391–419 (pp. 418–19). 15Margaret R. Greer, ‘An (In)convenient Marriage? Justice and Power in La vida es sueño, comedia and auto sacramental’, in Golden-Age Essays in Commemoration of A. A. Parker, ed. Terence O'Reilly and Jeremy Robbins, BSS, LXXXV:6 (2008), 55–68. The focus therein differs from the one presented here, however. 16Sullivan, ‘Jacques Lacan and the Golden-Age Drama’, 118. 17Don W. Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2009), 263, 311. 18Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Judas Macabeo, in Calderón, Comedias, II, ed. Santiago Fernández Mosquera (Madrid: Biblioteca Castro, 2007), 303–86 (p. 363). Further references are to this edition. 19Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, 75. 20Santiago Fernández Mosquera, ‘Introducción’, in Calderón, Comedias, II, ed. Fernández Mosquera, ix–lxxxvi (p. xxxix). 24I. A. A. Thompson, ‘Hidalgo and pechero: The Language of “Estate” and “Classes” in Early Modern Castile’, first published in 1991, and reprinted in his War and Society in Habsburg Spain (Aldershot: Variorium/Brookfield: Ashgate, 1992), 53–78 (p. 69), cited in Donald R. Larson, The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1978), 71. 21A. A. Parker, ‘The Father-Son Conflict in the Drama of Calderón’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2 (1966), 99–113, and ‘Segismundo's Tower: A Calderonian Myth’, Memorial Number, BHS, LIX:3 (1982), 247–56: Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, 51–54. 22Antonio Regalado, Calderón: los orígenes de la modernidad en la España del Siglo de Oro, 2 vols (Barcelona: Destino, 1995) I, 226. 23Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El alcalde de Zalamea, ed., intro. y notas de J. M. Díez Borque (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, 1981), 312. Further references are to this edition. 26Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Painter of His Dishonour/El pintor de su deshonra, ed. and trans., with intro., by A. K. G. Paterson (Warminster: Aris & Phillips,1991), 166, 168. 25Exodus 20:13, in The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, ed. Samuel Sandmel (New York: Oxford U. P., 1972), 76. 27Sullivan, ‘Jacques Lacan and the Golden-Age Drama’, 117. 28Henry W. Sullivan, ‘Jacques Lacan and Tragic Drama in the Golden Age of Spain’, in A Companion to Early Modern Hispanic Theater, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming 2014). 29Scott K. Taylor, Honor and Violence in Golden-Age Spain (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2008) 194–225; Renato Barahona, Sex Crimes, Honor and the Law in Early Modern Spain: Vizcaya, 1528–1735 (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2003). 30Taylor, Honor and Violence, 9, 223. 31Anthony J. Cascardi, Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age (University Park: The Pennsylvania State U. P., 1997), 1–3. 32Damaris Otero-Torres, ‘Amor y silencio: ecos del discurso minoritario en Amar después de la muerte’, in El escritor y la escena, VI: Estudios teatrales de la comedia, ed. Ysla Campbell (Ciudad Juárez: Univ. Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, 1999), 195–203. 33Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El Tuzaní de la Alpujarra, ed., con prólogo y notas, de Manuel Ruiz Lagos (Alcalá de Guadaira: Ediciones Guadalmena, 1998), 2541–42. 34Teresa Ferrer Valls, Diccionario biográfico de actores del teatro clásico español (DICAT) DVD (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2008), records for Antonio García de Prado. DICAT documents its performance by eight different companies from 1684 to 1717. 35Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Octava parte de comedias del célebre poeta don Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Madrid: Francisco Sanz, 1684), 474–516. 36Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Luis Pérez el Gallego, in Primera parte de comedias escogidas de los mejores ingenios de España (Madrid: Domingo García y Morras, 1652), fols 201v–223v. The edition will be cited henceforth by folio number. I have modernized the spelling and added accents. 37Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, 106. 38Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, 105. 39Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, 106. 40Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, 64–67, 97–100, 277. The description ‘hot-headed’ is his (66). 41Ferrer Valls, DICAT, records for Roque de Figueroa, documents by name only one performance of El burlador in Seville about 1625, but his troop surely performed it in other years in many more cities; see Don W. Cruickshank, ‘The First Edition of El burlador de Sevilla’, HR, 49:4 (1981) 442–67. 42Taylor, Honor and Violence, 112–19. 43Taylor, Honor and Violence, 84–85. 44I. A. A. Thompson, ‘Hidalgo and pechero: The Language of “Estate” and “Classes” in Early Modern Castile’, reprinted in Thompson, War and Society in Habsburg Spain 1560–1620, article XV, and cited in Larson, The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega, 14. 45I. A. A. Thompson, ‘A Map of Crime in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, Economic History Review, 21:2 (1968), 254–67 (pp. 257–59). 46José Santos Torres, El bandolerismo español: una historia fuera de la ley (Madrid: Tema de Hoy, 1984), 221–31. 47Taylor, Honor and Violence, 21–29, 238–39; Claude Chauchadis, La Loi du duel: le code du point d'honneur dans l'Espagne des XVI e –XVIII e siècles (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1997), 395–401. 48Taylor, Honor and Violence, 93. 50Taylor, Honor and Violence, 86. 49Taylor, Honor and Violence, 86. 51Taylor, Honor and Violence, 72–73. 52Taylor, Honor and Violence, 199; Carlos Eire, From Madrid to Purgatory: The Art and Craft of Dying in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1995). 53The c.1651–53 date is that suggested by Hilborn. There are also several manuscript copies dated 1665, on one of which Calderón wrote in changes to Act II, altering the version copied by Sebastián de Alarcón. See <www.manosteatrales.org> records for BNE MSS 14.884, 14.922 and 15.273 and see also note 62. 54G. Rossetti, ‘Introduction’, in Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El postrer duelo de España, ed., con intro. y notas, de G. Rossetti (London: Tamesis, 1979), 16–24. This edition is cited hereafter, by page-number. 56Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Primero soy yo, in Sexta parte de comedias, ed. Juan de Vera Tassis y Villarroel (Madrid: Francisco Sanz, 1683), fols 137r–178v (fols 137v–140r). 55Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón, 211, 213–14. 57P. Halkhoree, ‘Satire and Symbolism in the Structure of Tirso de Molina's Por el sótano y el torno’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 4 (1968), 374–86. My thanks to Henry Sullivan for calling my attention to this article. 58See Margaret R. Greer, The Play of Power: Mythological Court Dramas of Calderón de la Barca (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1991), 120–21. 61 Manual de historia del derecho español, 4th ed. (Madrid: Tecnos, 1983), 15 (cited in Carrión, Subject Stages, 45). 59Taylor, Honor and Violence, 16–32; Chauchadis, La Loi du duel, 46–48. 60See Carrión, Subject Stages, 58–60. 62The alterations in Calderón's hand are in the second act of BNE MS. 15.273, but the deletion of the reference to the royal presence in the last line was made by another hand, as Rossetti notes (p. 206), as does José María Ruano de la Haza in ‘Two Seventeenth-Century Scribes of Calderón’, MLR, 73:1 (1978), 71–81. 63C. A. de la Barrera y Leirado, Catálogo bibliográfico y biográfico del teatro antiguo español desde sus orígenes hasta mediados del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1860), 16. That biographical information is also included in the title of the suelta in which the play was published, in Seville, by Francisco de Leefdael.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.