<i>Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain</i>. Edited by Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. Pp. viii+278.

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewScience on Stage in Early Modern Spain. Edited by Enrique García Santo-Tomás. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. Pp. viii+278.Chad M. GastaChad M. GastaIowa State University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs a scholar who is very interested in scientific and technological discourses of the early modern period and their manifestation in the Spanish comedia, I was intrigued by the prospect of reviewing Enrique García Santo-Tomás’s well-articulated collection of essays, Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain. I was not disappointed: the collection brings together eleven essays that trace the history of science and technology in the early modern period, the impact of science on sociocultural events in early modern Spain, its ubiquity in everyday life during the era, and its representation on the stage.Readers eager to learn about the various historical studies on science in early modern Spain as well as recent approaches to integrating the study of science into the literature of the period will be quite impressed by García Santo-Tomás’s introduction, “Great Theatres of the World.” As García Santo-Tomás points out, in the past decade or so literary and cultural critics have begun to view science and drama alongside one another as a means to better understand the “relationship between technical innovations in stagecraft such as optics, sound effects, and mechanics, and theatrical events that incorporated scientific content into their dramatic plot lines” (4). For García Santo-Tomás, early modern Spanish theater is not only a versatile medium but also a very scientific one: hundreds of plays pivot on science and technology in their plot, characterization, or staging. The essays contained in the volume seek to showcase how “technical knowledge was embedded into texts, but also how theatre in itself could deploy scientific knowledge through the empirical use of new findings in optics, mechanics, acoustics, hydraulics, and other important discoveries” (9).The essays of the first section, “Technologies of Knowledge,” explore the historical circumstances and intellectual circles of the day that provided the impetus for dramatists’ portrayal or integration of science into Spanish drama. Ryan Szpiech’s “From Mesopotamia to Madrid: The Legacy of Ancient and Medieval Science in Early Modern Spain” provides a solid overview of the origins of scientific inquiry starting in the Neolithic era (Babylonia, Sumer, Egypt) followed by its advancement in Greece and Rome and the legacies of Baghdad and Toledo. Alejandro García-Reidy’s chapter, “The Technological Environment of the Early Modern Spanish Stage,” is a splendid historical review of the construction of performance spaces (playhouses) by theater engineers and their use of technological advancements (carpentry and stage machinery) to show how “the architectonic and technical foundation of performance spaces was an essential element in the creation of theatre” (59). The final essay of this section, John Slater’s “Gridded Fascinations: Early Modern Drama’s Geometric Synthesis,” highlights the rising significance of geometric forms (grids, squares, rectangles, etc.) as a feature in treatises about gardening, geography and mapping, tailoring, fencing, and fortification and the conceptual appearance of these forms in plays of the period, which serve as “a reminder of a geometric world” (94), whether on a stage or a city grid.The three essays comprising the second section of the volume, “Stages of Science,” are less thematically unified than those in the first or third sections of the volume. In “Curing the Malady of Lovesickness: Medicine and Physicians of Early Spanish Theatre,” Julio Vélez-Sainz examines various writings on lovesickness since the Middle Ages to illustrate the general belief that lovesickness could be diagnosed and cured like any other illness and how lovesickness was a key theme in plays by Juan del Enzina, Lucas Fernández, and Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, where a cure might be found through the actions of the plays’ protagonists. Lourdes Albuixech’s “Poison(ing) and Spanish Comedia” explores the history of poison and toxicology in early modern Spain to elucidate actual everyday social concerns about poison and the reflection of these fears in several plays where women, Jews, Moors, or Italians are blamed. Stephen Rupp’s “The Soul under Siege: Strategy and Neostoicism in Calderón de la Barca’s El sitio de Bredá” takes a composite look at Ambrogio Spinola, the Genoese leader who commanded the armies in Flanders, who was compassionately portrayed in Calderón’s El sitio de Bredá and in Velázquez’s La rendición de Breda. For Rupp, Spinola’s Neostoic qualities and strong engineering skills allow both playwright and painter to depict a heroic figure who behaves magnanimously toward the vanquished, which is an empirically rational technique to temper society’s attitudes against siege warfare.The final section, “Performing Numbers,” centers on mathematics, automatons, and the visual arts. In “Figures of Arithmetic: Numeracy, Calculation, and Accounting in the Comedia,” Elvira Vilches reveals that numeracy, including mathematics, was crucial for theater companies, the corrales, charitable organizations, playwrights, and actors to understand the seemingly hidden circulation of money relevant to scripts, costumes, wages, taxes, and loans in an age of new monetary instruments and practices. Seth Kimmel’s “Automatons and Early Modern Drama of Skepticism” explores how increasingly sophisticated uses of mechanical engineering, hydraulics, pneumatics, and clockmaking could only be understood using the rhetoric of performing miracles, which led to anxiety about how to explain, in an era of heightened skepticism, that machines were not deceptive instruments but rather ingenious inventions that brought great splendor to the comedia stage. Matthew G. Ancell’s “Daedalean Epistemology: Staging the Labyrinth of Knowledge in Velázquez’s Las Hilanderas and Calderón de la Barca’s Los tres mayores prodigios” studies how “the comedia consists of frames within frames, a labyrinth. The viewer’s attention can oscillate between all these frames” (238), which suggests that the myth central to Calderón’s play and Velázquez’s painting represent limitations on how the world was perceived.In the conclusion, “Looking Behind the Curtain: Clues of Early Modern Spanish Science,” María M. Portuondo assesses the current state of the study of science vis-à-vis early modern Spanish literature, particularly drama. She engages with the various essays in the volume as emblematic of “the ‘disorder’ of the Baroque theatre, with all its technical wonders and automatons,” which “was in reality a celebration of epistemic uncertainty—an uncertainty also shared by natural philosophers” (271).Taken as a whole, the volume offers myriad approaches to the various disciplines and subdisciplines that emanated from the scientific revolution of the time and find their reflection in drama. If there is anything that detracts from what is a splendid collection of essays, it is that there are a couple articles that are excellent literary and performance analyses but engage much less with the overarching theme of the book (science, technology, and medicine). However, that is a minor quibble. There is a great deal of illuminating and insightful analysis in this volume, and the approaches espoused by the various authors provide a blueprint, so to speak, for other scholars to approach the Spanish comedia from a necessary vantage point—to consider the interplay of the scientific discourses of the day within the larger study of the comedia. Solidly written, well documented, and meticulously researched, Science on Stage is no doubt an important addition to comedia scholarship. Furthermore, I applaud the editor, authors, and press for a very readable text, free from unnecessary jargon, typos, or errors. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 117, Number 4May 2020 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/708342HistoryPublished online February 14, 2020 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

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