María Carrión has written an insightful monograph on the relationship that existed between the institution of marriage, the comedia, and the law during the Spanish Golden Age. The book's main premise is that while heavily codified legal regulations existed to control subjects with a marital formula, namely that the union of a man and woman was strictly for the purpose of procreation, people in theatres, courthouses, and their homes saw and lived a different reality.
The author dedicates the first two chapters, “Marital Law and Order in Early Modern Spain” and “Marriage Scenes in the Archives,” to period legal texts. Here she shows how legislative codes of law and dictionaries tried to control the subject while bureaucracy, litigation, and arguments and theatrical language opened up new questions about these so called fixed identities.
The following chapter, “The Birth of the Comedia and the Bridge Onstage,” considers the theatre of the second half of the sixteenth century and its association with the crown. Focusing on a 1570 landmark stage production performed in Burgos, the author shows the political theatrics of the monarchy and how it is closely connected to the regal values of one faith, one race, and one kingdom. Chapter 4, “Foundational Violence and the Drama of Honour,” centers on how honor and its great potential for high drama became a theatrical convention defined by the male's suspicion that the female had been unfaithful. Extremely popular for audiences and critics alike, these casos de honor delighted audiences for the element of suspense and the spectacle of punishment in the courts and in society. This chapter discusses Calderón's El médico de su honra and instead of focusing on the wife's impotence and execution, the author centers on her performance of law as litigation. It is shown that the soon-to-be-dead wife uses litigious discourse in her thoughts on marriage as a primal scene of human violence.
In “Punishing Illicit Desire,” Carrión then discusses the theatrical convention of the comedia platina, which considers the legal and theatrical potential that is involved in the illicit desire between a nobleman and a woman of lesser social value. While the onstage conflict is always resolved by finding a legal means to join the two lovers, underneath it is evident that ideologies and the question of limpeza de sangre limit marital unions with another subject from a lower social stratum. The author articulately discusses these issues in her analysis of Lope de Vega's complex El perro del hortelano.
Chapter 6, “Women in Breeches” explores the attraction that the illicit figure of a woman dressed as a man exercised over audiences. This mujer varonil represented a manly woman who sought to restore her honour. Carrión analyses Tirso de Molina's Don Gil de las calzas verdes, a play that engages in a radical critique of marital laws and economics. This chapter concisely revises one of the most popular and least understood characters of the comedia, who, according to the author, contributed to further the development of the institution of marriage in Spain.
In the coda, “The Musical Chairs of Divorce,” the author analyzes the multifaceted image of divorces and music staged in the entremés. She underlines that these short works represented the bawdy where music, dance, foul language, desire, and sexual innuendo were paramount and staged a full range of transgressions of the clearly defined boundaries of marital legislation. Here the farcical characters in Cervantes’ El juez de los divorcios are shown to be unconcerned with reproduction, the main reason for marriage according to the law of the day. The author also presents her idea of a production of this play where the back stage wall functions as a tic-tac-toe board or even a game of musical chairs that plays with the inaccessibility of divorce.
Carrión's is an excellent study, which sheds light on a topic that has to this point been overlooked even though it is central to many of the most important themes and plays of the comedia.
