Bulletin of the Comediantes

Abstract:

A majority of the critics who have written about Coello's El conde de Sex have expressed surprise at the play's depiction of Elizabeth I, holding it to be a sympathetic portrayal that eschews the prejudices concerning the English queen held by seventeenth-century Spaniards. Ann Mackenzie reads the character as praiseworthy even. This essay builds upon María Cristina Quintero's reading of the play and supports her contention that, contrary to this majority view, El conde does partake of many of these prejudices and presents a character, Isabela, who is far more ambivalent than has generally been recognized. Whereas Quintero focuses on the physical presentation of the queen, this essay considers her interior life. A close analysis of Isabela's thought processes demonstrates that Coello—known for his subtle characterization—presents his Isabela as an akrates, morally incontinent. Far from being a praiseworthy figure, this places the queen in the company of Phaedra, Macbeth, and Medea. Drawing on Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza and Calderón's La cisma de Inglaterra, this essay subsequently considers whether Isabela's akrasia should be attributed to the period's misogyny or to the Spanish view of the English queen's reformed religion. It concludes with an analysis of further evidence from El conde that points to the latter as the more likely reading. Quintero notes how in her Tilbury speech, Elizabeth urged her nation to recognize in her the heart and stomach of her father, Henry VIII. Perhaps influenced by Calderón, Coello shows how, more worryingly, she inherited her father's weakness of will.