Bulletin of the Comediantes

FOLLOWING A HANDFUL OF ENGLISH-LANGUAGE performances of Guillén de Castro's The Force of Habit in her own translation, Kathleen Jeffs, with Melissa R. Machit, delivers a fine English-language translation of Castro's play, which is about two siblings raised separately—the brother as a girl and the sister as a boy—whose gender identities are ultimately reversed by the end of the play. Jeffs, who authored the translation, has created a blank verse version that is close to the Spanish, while the materials written by Machit render the comedia accessible as both a literary text and for performance. While the play was written nearly four hundred years ago, likely in the 1610s, Machit and Jeffs present it as a story that engages with modern notions of gender through its use of cross-dressing as well as "gender and identity categories in general" despite "a serious cultural anxiety about the instability of gender/sex categories" in the period (26–27).

The introduction covers biographical information on Castro, a plot summary, the play's textual history, editorial methods, and a metrical analysis. Following this introduction, a four-part critical essay, "Bad Habits: Gender Made and Remade in La fuerza de la costumbre," contextualizes the play, addressing issues of gender in both it and the Spanish Golden Age more generally. The introductory material closes with a bibliography, a translator's note, and production stills; following the translation itself is a list of textual variants.

In each part of the critical essay, Machit addresses different aspects of gender in relation to the play's contents and reception. These materials all serve to introduce a play that, as Jeffs argues, "examines the performative aspects of gender" (94). [End Page 167]

Machit first introduces the dramatic tradition of cross-dressing in early modern Spain. She points to examples of other plays from the period in order to reveal how the practice ultimately caused controversy and raised fears of emasculation and effeminization, the "masculinity crisis" (84), citing Ursula Heise's foundational essay on the subject, yet ultimately prevailed as a popular subject among playwrights. Machit then turns to the notion of masculine perfection—the historical belief that masculinity was the more perfect version of femininity—in order to better understand "the allure of female actresses in men's clothing" (34). She reminds us that cross-dressing in daily life was seen as immoral, citing the trials of Eleno/a de Céspedes and Catalina/Alonso/Antonio de Erauso as real-life examples in the period. She concludes that Félix's feminine performance, which dips into effeminacy, "puts his life and the family name at risk" (43). As his father Don Pedro says, "He is, in short, a chicken. / And for a Moncada, by God, / this is unheard of. / It will be necessary to change him / back to his own nature" (1.460–64). Hipólita, on the other hand, becomes "a source of quiet pride for her father" (43); in his words, his daughter's manly feats "are the miracles performed / by the force of habit" (1.269–70). In essence, Machit argues that a greater unease over effeminate men compared to masculine women motivated Castro to create a more ambiguous gender identity for Félix than for Hipólita.

Machit's next focus is on modern notions of gender in relation to the play, where gender "is shown to be constructed, heavily regulated, and violently imposed" (50). Drawing on the writings of Plato, Juan Luis Vives, and Lope de Vega, as well as Judith Butler's notion of gender as performative, Machit shows how the play interrogates the relationship between one's outward gender "performance" and internal "identity," pointing out, ironically, that it is "when Félix and Hipólita attempt to bring their exterior gender signs into conformity with their assigned genders … that they become completely illegible" (48). Their gender performances...