Bulletin of the Comediantes

WHEN CONSIDERING ANGLO-SPANISH RELATIONS, the early modern historian will likely think immediately of Spain's infamous Gran Armada (1588) or perhaps of Prince Charles's clandestine visit to Madrid in his attempt to wed the Spanish infanta (1623). Literary scholars may point to Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess (1624) or Cervantes's "La española inglesa" (1613). Yet these moments of political and textual connection scratch only at the surface of the complex, multinational relations that brought Spain and England together in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Radicals in Exile sheds light within the depths of these relations, demonstrating the profound connections that had real impact on the politics of Spain during the reign of Philip II.

This book follows other recent publications that highlight the significance of Anglo–Spanish relations in early modern Europe, but Domínguez traces the lineage of his work directly back to Albert J. Loomie's The Spanish Elizabethans: The English Exiles at the Court of Philip II (Fordham UP, 1963). As Domínguez states, his work follows Loomie's both in terms of its primary actors and its historiographical aim to separate the study of English Catholics from the "stubborn dynamics of national and confessional historiography" (12). Domínguez's book does indeed illustrate the significance of extending our consideration of early modern history beyond national borders, making a powerful argument for a transnational understanding of the period. He additionally furthers Loomie's work by expanding upon the latter's definition of Spanish Elizabethans: for Domínguez, they are not merely English Catholics who lived in Spain but those who "played a role in Spanish political culture" (8). This role was active and adaptable, and it made its impact through the circulation of texts both in manuscript and print in the final decades of Philip II's reign.

Within the introduction, Domínguez defines his key terms and places the English Catholics he studies within their historical context. He is interested specifically in the years between 1585, when Spain began preparations for the Armada, and 1598, when Philip II died. Since Philip's ascension to the Portuguese throne in 1580, tensions between Spain and England had begun to rise, yet Spain remained perpetually undecided between action [End Page 171] and inaction. Philip II was reticent to intervene militarily against Elizabeth's Protestant regime. It was this indecision that English Catholic exiles sought to upset. Spain's intervention against English heresy took on both political and messianic dimensions, and Domínguez argues that it was thanks to Spanish Elizabethans' efforts that action was taken during Philip's reign. In his discussion of the public sphere, Domínguez underscores the strategies that Spanish Elizabethans employed to promote Philip's intervention. The authors he studies shared a desire to speak to, influence, and at times create a public that favored their goal: "the (spiritual) reconquest of England" (16).

As Domínguez describes it, this shared goal—with "(spiritual)" and "reconquest" separated by not insignificant parentheses—points to one of the central dichotomies his study examines. The English Catholic authors of this book straddled the space between the spiritual and the political. They had to maintain the religious tenants of their mission to re-Catholicize England while also advocating for overt political action by their allies, in this case Philip II. At the same time, these authors were unafraid to walk the line between praise and critique when adapting their message to the needs of the specific historical and political environments in which they wrote. Ultimately, Radicals in Exile reveals "the extent to which Spanish Elizabethan narratives profoundly affected the Spanish mind-set" (208–09).

Domínguez studies the impact of Spanish Elizabethan narratives in three separate "kinds of textual interventions" made by English Catholics during the years in question, each corresponding to a different part of the book: part 1 explores texts used to "affect behavior," part 2...