Susan Paun de García & Donald Larson 
The Comedia in English 
Translation and Performance

How should a seventeenth-centry Spanish verse play be presented to a contemporary English-speaking audience?


For many reasons, but most usually the lack of playable modern translations, the plays of the seventeenth-century Spanish
Comedia have appeared infrequently on the stages of the English-speaking world. Once such translations began to appear in the final decades of the twentieth century, productions followed and audiences were once again given the opportunity of discovering the enormous riches of this theatre.

The bringing of Spanish seventeenth-century verse plays to the contemporary English-speaking stage involves a number of fundamental questions. Are verse translations preferable to prose, and if so, what kind of verse? To what degree should translations aim to be ‘faithful’? Which kinds of plays ‘work’, and which do not? Which values and customs of the past present no difficulties for contemporary audiences, and which need to be decoded in performance? Which kinds of staging are suitable, and which are not? To what degree, if any, should one aim for ‘authenticity’ in staging? And so on.

In this volume, a distinguished group of translators, directors, and scholars explores these and related questions in illuminating and thought-provoking essays.


EDITORS: Susan Paun de García and Donald Larson are Associate Professors of Spanish at the Universities of Denison and Ohio State respectively. OTHER CONTRIBUTORS: Isaac Benabu, Catherine Boyle, Victor Dixon, Susan Fischer, Michael Halberstam, David Johnston, Catherine Larson, A. Robert Lauer, Dakin Matthews, Anne Mc Naughton, Barbara Mujica, James Parr, Dawn Smith, Jonathan Thacker, Sharon Voros

Table of Content

The
Comedia in English: An Overview of Translation and Performance

Translating
Comedias into English Verse for Modern Audiences – Dakin Matthews

Translating the Polymetric
Comedia for Performance [with Special Ref erence to Lope de Vega’s Sonnets] – Victor Dixon

Lope de Vega in English: The Historicised Imagination – David Johnston

Found in Translation: María de Zaya’s
Friendship Betrayed and the En glish-Speaking Stage – Catherine Larson

Transformation and Fluidity in the Translation of Classical Texts for Perfo rmance: The Case of Cervantes’s
Entremeses – Dawn L. Smith

Translation as Relocation – Ben Gunter

Rehearsing
Spite for Spite – Michael Halberstam

Directing
Don Juan, The Trickster Of Seville – Anne Mc Naughton

Directing the
Comedia: Notes on a Process –

Tirso’s Tamar Untamed: A Lesson of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Producti on – Jonathan W. Thacker

The Loss of Context and the Traps of Gender in Sor Juana’s
Los empeños de una casa/House of Desires – Catherine M. Boyle

Tirso’s
Burlador de Sevilla as Playtext in English – James Parr

Anne Mc Naughton’s
Don Juan: A Rogue for All Seasons – A. Robert Lauer

Aspectual, Performative, and ‘Foreign’ Lope/Shakespeare: Staging
Capulet s & Montagues and
Peribáñez in English and
Romeo and Juliet in ‘Sicilian’I> in ‘Sicilian’ – Susan L. Fischer

Zaya’s Comic Sense: The First Performance in English of La traición en la amistad – Sharon D Voros

María de Zaya’s Friendship Betrayed à la Hollywood: Translation, Transculturation, and Production – Barbara Mujica

About the author

JONATHAN THACKER is King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish Studies at the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.