La traicion el la amistad/Friendship Betrayed

Renaissance Quarterly, Spring, 2001 by Marina S. Brownlee

Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor, CEd. Valerie Hegstrom. Trans. Catherine Larson. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1999. 197 pp. $17.95. ISBN: 0-8387-5441-4.

Research centered on works by early modern women playwrights in the Spanish empire continues to yield a wealth of fascinating material -- much of it unstudied or unknown until now. Of this little-known area of theatrical production, no fewer than fourteen women authors of comedias (writing from Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Mexico) are attested to in records, with at least ten of their comedias surviving into the twentieth century.

The coproduced publication of Maria de Zayas's La traicion en la amistad, with introduction and Spanish edition by Valerie Hegstrom, and facing English translation by Catherine Larson, is a fine example of the fruits of this new field of investigation. Professor Hegstrom's introduction is concise but illuminating; situating Zayas's only surviving play in the context of the other key female dramatists such as Ana Caro Mallen de Soto and Sor Juana Ines de Ia Cruz. While Caro is undoubtedly the most widely disseminated, with her play El conde Partinuples becoming "the only female-authored comedia in more than a hundred 'partes' printed in the seventeenth century and thereafter"(13), these female-authored works are intellectually and aesthetically stimulating. Sor Juana's Los empenos de una casa is another case in point, with its boldly ironic treatment of Calderon's comedias.

Hegstrom's analysis of the play (ca. 1632) conveys the obsession with love, honor, and jealousy that consumed the nobility, underscoring Zayas's desire to expose the duplicity and generally ignoble nature of the court, which, of course, centers on relations between the sexes -- the global theme of her Novelas amorosas of 1637 and 1647. Citing the work of such critics as Matthew Stroud and Constance Wilkins, Hegstrom presents Zayas's play as engaged in witty dialogue with Tirso's El burlador de Sevilla, with Fenisa, the mujer varonil of the piece, behaving as a "Dona Juana." Like Don Juan, Fenisa claims to have "dozens of lovers": "I love them, esteem and adore the ugly and the handsome ones, young boys and old men, rich and poor, and only because they are all male. I have the same disease that heaven has, because since God has room for everyone near him, I can make room for all those men inside my heart"(169).

What is particularly intriguing about this comedia is the question of the degree to which it offers a gendered perspective, a logical issue given that women writers are addressing a number of hegemonic patriarchal institutions and attitudes. Not surprisingly, like Zayas's extensive novelistic production, this play has generated a number of interpretations. Citing such critics as Teresa Soufas, Susan Paun de Garcia and Sharon Voros, Hegstrom illustrates the range of readings to which the play has given rise; from those who see it as a bold instance of female bonding to other readers who find the work to be ultimately inconclusive with respect to gender issues. Hegstrom is right in saying that La traicion en la amistad "questions either/or readings and problematizes women's responses to patriarchy and to dramatic theatrical convention" (23).

The "Editor's Note" provides a clear discussion of the criteria Hegstrom has adopted, e.g., a judicious balance between the original text and modernized spelling that makes the play more accessible to the non-specialist reader. Professor Larson's "Editor's Note" is equally well reasoned, explaining her choice of English prose rather than verse (Zayas's medium) in order to guarantee greater coherence and readability for her audience. The translation succeeds very well in communicating the Spanish -- its semantic nuances, diverse linguistic registers, and jokes.

This collaborative effort is further enhanced by explanatory footnotes detailing literary allusions, grammatical ambiguities, and manuscript issues. A helpful metrical scheme of the various poetic forms Zayas exploits, as well as a bibliography of editions, translations, and critical essays provides further resources.

This is a very welcome volume, not only for Hispanists, but for English readers of continental European theater, of comparative literature, and of gender studies as well.