Pedro Conde Parrado and Xavier Tubau Moreu have given us a new volume in the Prolope series, on the Expostulatio Spongiae. Described as one of the most cited yet least read works by specialists of Lope de Vega, the Expostulatio is an assemblage of varied texts written in Latin in 1618 by a pseudonymous author, Julio Columbario, to rebuke the controversy raised by Pedro de Torres Rámila’s Spongia (1617), a now-lost anti-Lopean tirade.

The volume is divided into three sections: an extensive and well-documented introduction, two appendixes, and the text and translation of the Expostulatio. The introduction clarifies some of the circumstances that gave birth to the work and reconsiders the importance of Neoaristotelianism to the dispute between the Spongia and the Expostulatio without discarding its Gongorist element. The study also shows that the author of the Expostulatio helps himself to various Latin works of several contemporary foreign authors, including Clarus Bonarscius’s Amphitheatrum Honoris (1606), John Barclay’s Satyricon (1605), and Claudius Musambertius’s Commonitoria (1607). After carefully examining several phraseological coincidences between the texts of the Expostulatio, on the one hand, and coeval Latin texts, on the other, the editors identify Juan de Fonseca y Figueroa as the individual behind Julio Columbario.

The second section of the volume is made up of two appendixes. The first contains the Franciscus Antididascalus (late 1617) by an anonymous member of the Academia de Madrid. The piece, regarded as the first counterattack against the author of the Spongia, seeks to demonstrate two points: first, that Torres Rámila’s Latin is grammatically incorrect; second, that the critic himself is incapable of speaking Latin. The second appendix examines the irregularities of content and the disparities of organization among the seven extant versions of the text, in which the editors propose the copy at the Biblioteca Nacional (BC 3/52677) as the best exemplar to constitute the text of the present edition.

The final section includes an accurate reproduction of the Expostulatio in its Latin original, with corrected punctuation and a masterful Spanish translation. Consisting of five varied parts—Elogia Illustrium Virorum pro Lupo a Vega Carpio, the Expostulatio Spongiae, Varia Illustrium Virorum Poemata, the Oneiropaegnion Sive Locus, and an Appendix ad Expostulationem by Alfonso Sánchez—plus a dedication to Don Luis Fernández de Córdoba and a prologue (portico) to the reader, the text of the Expostulatio as a whole is a direct response to the vicious accusations of the Spongia. In the part labeled the Expostulatio, for example, Columbario quotes extensively from Torres Rámila’s lost polemic in order to respond directly to the impetuous “sponge” with which the critic sought to obliterate the works of Lope’s genius, including the Arcadia (1598), La hermosura de Angélica (1602), La Dragontea (1598), and the Jerusalén conquistada (1609). Of particular interest is how Columbario contends that Torres Rámila not only was iniquitous and ignorant as a critic, but also had misinterpreted Aristotle completely when he accused Lope of disregarding Aristotelian notion of unity in Lope’s epic.

This new edition, translation, and study of the Expostulatio invigorates the pioneering work of Joaquín de Entrambasaguas as well as Julián González-Barrera’s recent scholarship on the subject. One wonders, however, whether a closer dialogue with the latter’s work would have enriched the volume’s otherwise impeccable work. González-Barrera, after all, made the first complete edition and Spanish translation of the work with excellent explanatory endnotes (2011). His scholarly endeavors should be taken as complementary to the present volume. These minor critical suggestions do not diminish my admiration for the high level of this publication. The editors have equipped the Latin text of the Expostulatio with judicious and well-informed footnotes, not only to keep the reader abreast of its classical and humanist sources, but also to provide helpful commentaries and interpretations to explicate difficult passages. Likewise, they have ably translated the work into Spanish and provided a useful bibliography. The volume will be essential to those engaged in research on Lope de Vega.