Drawing the Curtain: Cervantes's Theatrical Revelations ed. by Esther Fernández and Adrienne L. Martín (review)

Reviewed by: Drawing the Curtain: Cervantes's Theatrical Revelations ed. by Esther Fernández and Adrienne L. Martín Brian M. Phillips Fernández, Esther and Adrienne L. Martín, eds. Drawing the Curtain: Cervantes's Theatrical Revelations. U of Toronto P, 2022. 371 pp. ISBN: 978-1-4875-0877-7. Drawing the Curtain is as much an edited volume of essays detailing Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra's dramaturgy as it reflects the reciprocal influences of his theater on his prose and poetic oeuvre and vice versa. The volume's editors, Esther Fernández and Adrienne L. Martín, skillfully construct a coherent layout of chapters authored by both well established and budding Cervantine scholars within the field. In their words, "The essays that constitute Drawing the Curtain scrutinize this seminal writer's diverse literary productions mainly within the expansive multidisciplinary paradigm of cultural studies" (11). By encompassing such a wide array of cultural studies approaches throughout the volume, the authors are permitted a certain freedom of exploration into Cervantine theatricality that, until now, has not been explored. [End Page 176] The book is divided into two thematically driven sections that, in general, explore narrative and poetic influences on Cervantine theater, on the one hand, and, on the other, theatricality within Cervantine prose and poetry. Part one, "Alternative Theatricalities in Cervantes's Drama," initiates this collection of essays with Bruce R. Burningham's study on Cervantes's failure to capture a jongleuresque space for actors to carry out their respective roles on stage. In "Cervantes and the Simple Stage," he maintains that "while Cervantes may be heavily invested in the imaginative space of his fictions, [. . .] he seems to struggle with the jongleuresque sphere that he [. . .] needs to sell to any theatre company interested in producing his plays" (34). Chapter 2, John Slater's "Queer cambalaches in El rufián dichoso," takes aim at narrated and staged transvestism and gender fluidity in Cervantine theater as an intentionally written and performed element of El rufián dichoso. Meanwhile, Sonia Velázquez, investigates this same play in Chapter 3, "of Players and Wagers: The Theatricality of Gambling for Salvation in El rufián dichoso." Velázquez highlights the socioreligious controversy of gambling in the play against Pascal's Wager to suggest that there may be more than one way that theater can aid us in interpreting religious convictions. Moving on from this, Julia Domínguez focuses on the theatricalization of memory based on the traumatic experience of being a captive in Chapter 4, "The Phantasms of Captivity in El trato de Argel." According to Domínguez, "the catalogue of places and mental images drawn from his [Cervantes's] trauma, treasured in the space of his memory, reveals how personal experiences come to life on the stage" (115). Following suit with memory's effects on the theater and its audience, Chapter 5, "Captivating Music, Memory, and Emotions in Los baños de Argel" by Sherry Velasco, investigates the relationship between carefully arranged music within the play utilized to evoke emotional responses in spectators. Keeping in line with the thematic of captivity, Ana Laguna explores the space occupied by the Cervantine women of the harem in La gran sultana compared with those of the Mediterranean Christian world in Chapter 6, "In the Name of Love: Cervantes's Play on Captivity in La gran sultana." Rounding out Part one, Esther Fernández and Adrienne L. Martín's "Revolving Sets: Spatial Revelations in the entremeses," explores the Cervantine interlude as social criticism framed "in a highly reflexive sense of burla or mockery" (179). Part Two, "Acts of Disclosure in Cervantes's Prose," rings up the curtain with B.W. Ife's Chapter 8, "Coups de théâtre in the Novelas ejemplares." Ife's investigation into four of Cervantes's novellas considers them as the author's attempt at crime fiction writing, ultimately revealing theatricalized masculine toxicity as it relates to female captivity, rape and abduction. Catherine Infante's Chapter 9, "Captive Audiences: Performing Captivity in Cervantes's Prose Narrative," continues to delve deeper into the theatricality of the captive motif by examining "the performative nature of recounting experiences of captivity and freedom," and the required...

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