Actividad teatral en la región de Madrid según los protocolos de Juan GarcÃa de Albertos, 1634-1660: Estudio y documentos by Charles Davis, J. E. Varey

MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 569 his self-presentation, yet in his encounter with Don Quixote he shows a surprising capacity foropenness and wonder. His admiratio again demonstrates thatparadox can challenge and expand the categories that informour judgements and actions. Like the other explorations of paradox inDon Quixote, Don Diego's reaction toDon Quixote offers amodel for the reader's response toCervantes's complex and dialogic text. Adventures inParadox follows a significant trend incurrent criticism ofCervantes by interpreting interactions among the characters ofDon Quixote as allegories of the reading process. Presberg refers frequently to the reader's responses to the text, and he makes eclectic use of reception theory.This theoreticalmaterial, however, isnot always convincingly integrated into the larger analysis. Presberg defines paradox at times as a general construct, and at times as a pattern of thought or discourse that can be traced through thehistory ofEuropean literature.His theoretical understanding of paradox isnotably broad, and extends toaspects ofDon Quixote thatcritics have often explicated inother terms, such as the ambiguities of the relationship between history and fictionand the uses of interlaced narratives. A more limited and specific view of paradox might be developed, with reference to the traditional paradoxes thatappear inCervantes's text,and an explicit consideration ofCervantes in relation towriters outside Spain would be helpful. Although Presberg is understandably reluctant to pursue the vexed question ofErasmian influence on Cervantes, his analysis indicates marked parallels between The Praise of Folly and Don Quixote which clearly place Cervantes's work in theEuropean tradition. These are, however, small reservations about a study that makes an important contribution toour understanding of the forms of thought and rhetoric that informDon Quixote. Presberg offers valuable insights when he aligns Cervantes's novel with thegenre of themock encomium and when he describes Don Quixote as a paradoxical figure who induces a response ofwonder and openness inother characters. Adventures inParadox is an essential study for readers interested in the puzzles of logic and storytelling thatCervantes presents to us. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO STEPHEN RuPP Actividad teatral en la regi6nde Madrid segin losprotocolos deJuan Garcia deAlbertos, I634-I660: estudio y documentos. By CHARLES DAVIS and J.E. VAREY. 2 vols. (Fuentes para la historia del teatro en Espana, 35-36) London: Tamesis. 2003. Vol. 1: 596 pp.; vol. II: 575 pp. kioo (the set). ISBN 978-I-85566-o62-5 (vol. I); 978-I-85566-079-3 (vol. II). In theArchivo Hist6rico de Protocolos deMadrid are housed the registers of legal documents overseen inSpain's capital by the scores ofnotaries who worked in the city. Charles Davis and JohnVarey were not the firstto see thepotential of thisarchive for shedding lighton thehistory of the theatre in earlymodern Spain, whose day-to-day operation depended on the creation of a variety of legal contracts, and the editors acknowledge asmuch in dedicating theirvolumes toCristobal Perez Pastor (i833 I908). Perez Pastor's toils amongst theseprotocolos fed into thepublication a century ago of, interalia, important volumes on Lope de Vega and Calder6n, but, although many of the documents reproduced and studied here had already been published under his name, hismain interest was not in the functioning of theworld of the theatre. By investigating in detail the registers of one of the notaries Perez Pastor had worked on, JuanGarcia de Albertos, Davis and Varey are able tocorrect thedeficien cies of the early twentieth-century publications-some edited from Perez Pastor's notes-and, above all, expand theamount ofmaterial available to scholars. The fuller picture produced sheds a different lighton theatrical activity in and around Madrid in theperiod. Although other notaries' registerswill produce (indeed are already pro ducing) furtherfascinating documents todo with the theatre, the choice ofGarcia de 570 Reviews Albertos is made because in i639 he purchased amonopoly on thewriting of contracts todo with the theatre.Thus his theatrical contracts are particularly numerous in the I640s and i65os, forming a high proportion of the content of his protocolos, and they are fascinatingly rich. Davis and Varey have edited all the 2358 documents, forobvious reasons, by cut ting the legal formulae and limiting their transcriptions to themost relevantmaterial they contain. Nevertheless, in one appendix they provide full transcriptions of ten sample documents of themost common types.These record...

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