Bulletin of the Comediantes

THE TWO TITLES UNDER REVIEW HERE are the first installments published in the new Juan de la Cuesta series entitled the “UCLA Center for 17^th- and 18^th-Century Studies: The Comedia in Translation and Performance.” A Wild Night in Toledo, the translators’ fluid rendition of Lope de Vega’s La noche toledana, makes for a genuinely enjoyable read. Not everyone has heard [End Page 189] of this comedia urbana, which offers such enticements as its plum role of leading lady, Lisena, and her entertainingly faithless lover Florencio. These roles could prove a boon for actors and audiences searching for new comedies with great opportunities for both men and women. The text is based on three principal versions of Lope’s comedia: a 1612 copy plus two editions, the first by Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1853) and the second by Agustín Sánchez Aguilar (Comedias de Lope de Vega, Parte III, vol. 1, edited by Luigi Giuliani, Milenio, 2002, pp. 57–251; the editor’s first name is mistakenly given as Ignacio instead of Agustín in the introduction to the translation on p. 20). The play has been collectively rendered into prose by the editors, members of UCLA’s Working Group on the Comedia in Translation and Performance. It would have been interesting to learn more about their collaborative process, but this aspect is not explored in the note on the translation. However, this publication certainly contributes directly toward the stated aim of the Diversifying the Classics project to “make this rich tradition accessible to students, teachers, and theater professionals” (7).

La noche toledana is an excellent choice for translation and production because it has a rip-roaring plot sure to grip readers and audiences and because it features rich, fugal references to mythology, geography, history, and scripture that engage the mind and heart via the witty dialogue. For example, the recurring references to the use of water, simply as a handwashing ritual familiar to travelers, offer moments that work on the page as gorgeous text but deepen in meaning for the stage as our play’s principal lovers, Lisena and Florencio, pretend not to recognize each other. A moment like this is the work of a master dramatist, providing so many opportunities for stage business: pouring the water, the action of washing, handling the towel, all of the opportunities for meaningful touching and not touching of hands in this delicate but seemingly everyday sequence of events. The translation captures the shifts of register within the exchange as Lisena laments, perhaps to the audience: “Keep scrubbing, / for even if you washed in my tears, / you’d never wash away the stain of your sins” (67–68). Florencio, perhaps having half heard or pretending not to know she is talking about him, tees up his curt reply with perfect timing: “Give me the cloth” (68). The potential for subtext is rich. Rather than continue to serve him, she quips back, “It’s over there,” in a moment that offers a classic mix of comedy, basic pragmatic preoccupations, and the sharp pangs of love, all in three short words (68).

The quick changes of plot are easy to follow in the translation. Our heroine, Lisena, pursues her man, Florencio, who runs from the law after a jealous duel with a competing suitor. The lovers reunite in Toledo at an inn, where the festivities are commencing for the birth of little Philip (who will one day become Philip IV, the son of King Philip II). The wildness of the Wild Night is tamed by the keepers of order in this world, who manifest...