Place, Space and Public Formation in the Drama of the Spanish Empire

An attractive story-if perhaps not quite true-is that drama was reborn in Spain in the annus mirabilis of 1492, when the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella, ending its long “reconquest,” when Columbus “discovered” a New World and when Juan del Encina supposedly performed his Primera Égloga in the palace of the Duke of Alba. Encina’s performance probably took place three years later,1 and was not such a uniquely transformative event.2 The story does have a deeper truth, however, in the synergy between the development of the Spanish empire and that of the vibrantly popular drama of Spain’s “golden age.” Italy was, of course, the wellspring of the spread of Renaissance culture across Europe, stimulating the renewal of theater with translations and commentaries on Aristotle’s Poetics, the example of Roman comedy,3 development of staging techniques in court theater and the model for professionalization of theater in the travelling commedia dell’arte troops. The transit of those cultural stimuli was facilitated in the case of Spain by the inclusion of Sicily, Sardinia and Naples in the Crown of Aragón, Spanish control of the Duchy of Milan after 1540 and more general involvement throughout Italy in defense of its Mediterranean interests and of the “Spanish Road” to the Netherlands and Vienna.4.

Duke Scholars

Author Margaret Rich Greer Romance Studies