“Un autor madrileño recuperado: Juan Pérez de Montalbán” is a research project that Claudia Demattè has directed since 2010 and that gathers first-class researchers in Spanish Golden Age drama. The project, in which the present volume is included, has already published since 2013 most of the volumes of Montalbán's extensive complete works. Demattè intends to join the dozens of academic teams that, for years, have been recovering the textual heritage of Spanish classical drama through publishing critical editions of the complete works of the most outstanding Spanish Golden Age authors: Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Mira de Amescua, Vélez de Guevara, Ruiz de Alarcón, Godínez, Calderón de la Barca, Rojas Zorrilla, and Moreto. This project has published many of the Madrilenian works (Primer tomo’s volumes 1.1 and 1.2 appeared in 2013 and 2014, Comedias Varias’s volume 3.1 in 2016, which I recently reviewed in RQ), although because of the large production of Juan Pérez de Montalbán, more than half of his work remains without modern publication: Primer tomo’s volume 1.4, Segundo tomo’s four volumes, the remaining volumes of Comedias Varias, and those of Para todos, as well as the volumes Estudios de literatura and Bibliografías y catálogos are forthcoming.

The present volume (1.3), which includes the comedies Olimpa y Vireno, El señor don Juan de Austria, and the author's most famous work, Los amantes de Teruel, is the third of the Primer tomo, but does not close it, since a fourth and final volume (1.4) collecting El mariscal de Virón, La toquera vizcaína, and Amor, privanza y castigo is expected very soon. As happened with the others published to date, the three comedies collected in this volume are followed by interesting reflections on their textual transmission, reception, and some key aspects of their date of composition and authorship, as well as a useful list of annotated voices (Variantes) that, hopefully at the end of the project, will end up meeting in a single index allowing a joint consultation (a need already claimed by Gonzalo Pontón in his review of the first two volumes published, and to which I can only agree). It is important to highlight that each comedy is presented in critical edition with a preliminary study that puts it in relation both with the other works of Montalbán and with those of other authors of the Spanish seventeenth century.

Marcella Trambaioli edits Olimpia y Vireno, a real Ariosto's Orlando Furioso spin-off that transforms the courageous heroine into a true warrior woman. Spain's Golden Age enjoyed the literary motif of Olimpia, an abandoned woman lamenting with Ovidian despair, although Montalbán gives the story a true Copernican turn by bringing her closer to the model of the Ariostean Bradamante. Roberta Alviti edits El señor don Juan de Austria, a historical drama directly drinking from Lorenzo Vander Hammer's biography of the natural son of the emperor Carlos V, who aroused true fascination at the time and became an early literary motif, with the action situated between Madrid and Flanders. Especially interesting here is the discussion on the sources of the biographies used by the author. And, finally, Teresa Ferrer Valls edits Los amantes de Teruel, Montalbán's best-known piece to date. The discussion about the paternity of the work in relation to Tirso is fascinating and revealing, since the latter published at the time a comedy with the same name, and several indications collected here would lead one to think that the one published by Tirso would be Montalbán's original.

In conclusion, this volume makes the reader fervently desire the arrival of the missing volumes to complete the comprehensive edition of the work of this magnificent Spanish playwright. If the quality is maintained, which is to be expected, the collection will undoubtedly become a bench mark in the field of classical Spanish Golden Age drama.