Esther Fernández and Adrienne L. Martín, eds. Drawing the Curtain: Cervantes’s Theatrical Revelations

As articulated in the editors' introduction, the aim of the collection, divided into two parts, is to "further demonstrate from a series of diverse perspectives precisely how and to what effect Cervantes exploits theatricality" (5). Best known as the author of Don Quixote, the contributors to this book demonstrate both individually and collectively the extent to which Cervantes's love for the theatre imbues his oeuvre across genre.Part One ("Alternate Theatricalities in Cervantes's Drama") commences with a chapter by Bruce R. Burningham, "Cervantes and the Simple Stage," which encapsulates the rationale behind the overarching project with the observation that "Cervantes's theatre is an enigma, if not an afterthought" (17). Burningham draws upon the simple stage as defined by Hollis Huston: "'the circle the street performer opens in a crowd,' a space paradoxically constituted by the very performance it is said to contain" (18). Cervantes struggled with the jongleuresque, a characteristic Burningham adds to Hollis's notion, which this chapter contends was instrumental to his lack of success as playwright (33). John Slater's, "Queer cambalaches in El rufián dichoso" is the first of two chapters dedicated to Cervantes's quasi-hagiographic play. The critic characterizes it as "confounding" (42) given its violation of the traditional of time and space and inability or unwillingness to adhere to certain accepted norms of the genre. Slater calls this play a work "identity crisis" (43), focusing on gender-bending, cross-dressing, generic ambiguity, and narrative fluidity. Innovatively, he also focuses on linguistic cross-dressing and how El rufián dichoso "creates a textual spectacle of narrative metatheatricality" (62). In Chapter 3, "Of Players and Wagers: The Theatricality of Gambling for Salvation in El rufián dichoso," Sonia Velázquez studies the act of gambling in this play, written in a hagiographic style reminiscent of the comedias de santos. Velázquez points out an ostensible contradiction: the moral code of the times negatively deemed those who lost money gambling as "blinded" to their "social and spiritual duties" (73) and yet in El rufián dichoso, Cervantes "harnesses the structure of gambling . . . to religious ends" (76). This play, as the chapter reveals, embodies another manifestation of Cervantes's tendency to manipulate conventional generic and social structures to present his audience with real-life scenarios.In "Writing to Rescue from Oblivion: The Phantasms of Captivity in El trato de Argel," Julia Domínguez explores Cervantes's dramatic refashioning of his memories of five long years of captivity in El trato de Argel. The play was either written in captivity or shortly after his return to Spain. The playwright expounds on the physical and emotional trauma he suffered personally, whilst relating his individual tribulations into a wider collective narrative of suffering. Domínguez discusses how the author was "quite familiar with such exercises of memory that generated mental spaces—in the style of virtual ones today—and that relied upon the power of visual imagination" (103). Cervantes employs the stage as an extension of his memory. In the particular case at hand, he delivers "an excellent example of the theatricality of memory clearly derived from the art of memory and its techniques" (115). "Captivating Music, Memory, and Emotions in Los baños de Argel" by Sherry Velasco explores the mechanisms by which sad music stimulates emotion. Drawing on concepts from the period, Velasco analyses the scene halfway through Act II in which the Christian prisoners are granted permission to halt their labors and indulge in festivities to suggest that melancholic music served a cathartic function, easing the pain and sorrow of captivity. The dramatist was also sure to include songs designed to evoke parallel emotions amongst audience members: "Cervantes was keenly aware that certain details of our memories are archived by our ears and eyes, even when we are not consciously aware of the process" (142).Ana Laguna's "In the name of Love: Cervantes's Play on Captivity in La gran sultana" delves into the dramatic critique of the West's association of the Sultan's harem with moral and political corruption. The harem is representative of the "political and racial frictions" (151) occurring throughout the Mediterranean region in the era. Here, the "confines of a private space end up functioning as sites of personal and collective negotiation, where intersectional distinctions between gender, race, and faith appear as blurry and fleeting as desire itself" (8). In contrast with the orgiastic depiction of the Ottoman ruler that prevailed at the time, Cervantes portrays a Sultan who is devoted to his Christian wife, Catalina. Laguna advances her hypothesis even further by discussing the institution of marriage in Cervantine drama as a form of captivity and subjection, with references to El celoso extremeño as well as El juez de los divorcios, the famous entremés that turned social convention on its head. The entremeses were published alongside the Ocho comedias in 1615. In Chapter 7, "Revolving Sets: Spatial Revelations in the entremeses," Esther Fernández and Adrienne L. Martín characterize them as perhaps the most characteristically "Cervantine" of his theatrical works. Homing on domestic space, the urban street, the supernatural, and the invisible backstage, they reveal how Cervantes's theatre engages with social spaces from real life; the depiction of characters and complex plot structures; and how the entremeses serve as yet another example of Cervantine generic experimentation. This critical analysis allows Fernández and Martín to bring the first part of the book to a close with the identification of a common generic thread across the disparate entremeses: "all serve a purpose and provide an implicit (never explicit) moral lesson that extends beyond individual behavior" (192).Part Two is titled "Acts of Disclosure in Cervantes's Prose." As promised in the introduction, "the latent theatricality of Cervantine prose stressed in these studies reveals further the personal and social concerns that the author secludes between the lines" (9). "Coups de théâtre in the Novelas ejemplares" by B. W. Ife underlines the co-existence of the dramatic and novelistic, analyzing how strategies of concealment and disclosure interact with the primordial value placed on truth across Cervantes's fiction. Ife focuses on four novellas, justifying the corpus by virtue of them all constituting "variations on the same theme of captivity and redemption" (202). In each case study, a sudden revelation of a hidden truth illustrates the theatricality underpinning this collection of Cervantes's writing in prose. As indicated by the title, Catherine Infante's "Captive Audiences: Performing Captivity in Cervantes's Prose Narrative" returns to themes of physical imprisonment discussed earlier in relation to the stage. Infante examines three incidents in Cervantes's prose (the scenes concerning Captain Ruy Pérez de Viedma and the puppet show of Maese Pedro from Don Quixote; alongside the episodes of the false captives from Persiles y Sigismunda). Infante explores the responses of the fictional audiences described in the novels in relation to broader social anxieties concerning captivity in a far-reaching chapter, which provides both literary and socio-historical insight for the twenty-first-century reader. Chapter 10, "Painting into Theatre: 'The Suicide of Lucretia' as a tableau vivant in El curioso impertinente" by Mercedes Alcalá Galán explores the concept of dramatized paintings in one of the interpolated tales from Don Quixote. Having convincingly made the case that "this evocation of an image that synthesizes a story pertaining to the common cultural heritage serves to incorporate the pictorial culture of his time and to enrich the novel's plot" (10), Alcalá Galán explores the dramatic dimensions in "The Suicide of Lucretia" to demonstrate how and why Cervantes uses powerful images in order "to actualize mythological, historical, or biblical themes in his narrative" (270)."'Muchas y muy verdaderas señales': The Theatrics of Truth and Sincerity of Fiction in La Galatea" by Paul Michael Johnson returns to the perennial notion of truth in relation to various theatrical episodes contained in Cervantes's pastoral novel. Specifically, he looks at how gestures invoke questions of reliability. Johnson reminds us at the outset that La Galatea is often omitted in discussions of theatricality in Cervantes's prose (277), but makes the case that this is a mistake given repeated connections made in the novel between truth and stage drama. In "Eavesdropping or Spying? Secret Places and Spaces in Don Quixote," Eduardo Olid Guerrero identifies numerous episodes from Cervantes's masterpiece in which characters theatrically demonstrate the practice of espionage. From benignly domestic scenarios to political and diplomatic settings, spying and information was pervasive in early-modern Spain. Olid Guerrero applies this basic insight to multiple incidents and characters including but not limited to Cardenio, Maese Pedro, the Duchess, the pirate Avellaneda edition, and the Enchanted Head. Chapter 13, "Don Quixote and the Performances of Aging Masculinities in Early Modern Spain," by José A. Cartagena Calderón, takes us to the end of Cervantes's life to discuss the author's frequently observed obsession with old age in relation to normative discourses of the time. The critic reminds us how Cervantes, acutely aware of his own mortality, often referenced the urgency he felt to complete his remaining works. Cervantes was not alone amongst writers of his time for characterizing old men as, say, cowardly, jealous, hopeless or incredulous but Cartagena Calderón makes a strong case that, as epitomized by Don Quixote, "Cervantes's distinctly theatrical novel" (346), much remains to be explored as regards this complex topic.Don Quixote ranks amongst the most studied books in literary history, but this remarkable edited collection marks new ground by revealing some of the myriad ways in which its author, although failing to triumph on the stage, remained indebted to and influenced by theatre. Drawing the Curtain not only makes a significant contribution to the field of Cervantine studies, bus is also destined to become a key reference point for anyone interested in the complex interactions between page and stage in Golden Age Spain. It should, in other words, have a captive audience amongst the contributors to and readers of Comedia Performance.