CERVANTES, ShAkESpEARE y LA EDAD DE ORo

Cervantes, Shakespeare y la Edad de Oro de la escena

Cervantes, Shakespeare y la Edad de Oro de la escena Edición de JORGE BRAGA RIERA JAVIER J. GONZÁLEZ MARTÍNEZ MIGUEL SANZ JIMÉNEZ

Madrid 2018

Teatro Cervantes.indd 3

14/2/18 12:25

Cervantes, Shakespeare y la Edad de Oro de la escena Eds.

JORGE BRAGA RIERA JAVIER J. GONZÁLEZ MARTÍNEZ MIGUEL SANZ JIMÉNEZ

Prólogo de

JAVIER HUERTA CALVO

FUNDACIÓN UNIVERSITARIA ESPAÑOLA Madrid, 2018

Publicaciones de la FUNDACIÓN UNIVERSITARIA ESPAÑOLA Monografías– 175

FUNDACIÓN UNIVERSITARIA ESPAÑOLA Alcalá, 93. 28009 MADRID Tf: 91 431 11 22 – 91 431 11 93 Fax: 91 576 73 52 e–mail: [email protected]

ISBN: 978–84–7392–897-7 Depósito legal: M–4863 - 2018

Índice

Javier Huerta Calvo: PRÓLOGO...............................................................

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I. CERVANTES Miguel Ángel Albújar Escuredo: LA IMPORTANCIA DEL FINGIMIENTO TEATRAL Y SUS CONSECUENCIAS EN EL QUIJOTE DE CERVANTES .........

15

Aroa Algaba Granero: CERVANTINA (2016), DE RON LALÁ: UNA PUESTA EN ESCENA DESDE EL HUMOR Y LA MÚSICA ......................................

29

Héctor Brioso Santos: LOS ENTREMESES DE CERVANTES Y EL GÉNERO BREVE HACIA 1600..................................................................................

47

María Gray: CLAVES Y ESTRATEGIAS METATEATRALES EN EL RETABLO DE LAS MARAVILLAS DE MIGUEL DE CERVANTES ..............................

67

Purificació Mascarell: LAS COMEDIAS CERVANTINAS EN LAS TABLAS DESDE 1975: MODELOS DE TRANSGRESIÓN PARA LA REPRESENTACIÓN DE LOS CLÁSICOS ESPAÑOLES .................................................................

81

Isabel Navas Ocaña: LOS PERSONAJES FEMENINOS DEL TEATRO DE CERVANTES Y LA CRÍTICA ROMÁNTICA ..................................................

101

Roxana Recio: ¿QUÉ QUIERE DECIR EL RETABLO DE LAS MARAVILLAS?: LA FUERZA DEL ESPECTADOR EN EL TEATRO DE CERVANTES ................

121

Enrique Rodrigo: CERVANTES Y LA SUPERACIÓN DE LA LLAMADA NOVELÍSTICA SENTIMENTAL: LA TEATRALIDAD EN LA HISTORIA DE LA PASTORA MARCELA ................................................................................

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II. SHAKESPEARE Juan José Fernández Villanueva: SHAKESPEARE EN LOS ASTILLEROS DE GDANSK. LA MIRADA ESCÉNICA DE JAN KLATA SOBRE HAMLET Y LA IDENTIDAD CENTROEUROPEA DEL SIGLO XXI ....................................

153

Elisa Martínez Garrido: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE EN LA NARRATIVA ITALIANA DEL NOVECIENTOS ..................................................................

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Peter Osterried: LINGUISTIC SUBTLETIES IN SHAKESPEARE’S “SONNET 116”. A CASE OF GEDANKENLYRIK THROUGH A GENUS-TO-SPECIES MAPPING ..................................................................................................

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Paula Grueso Pascual: LA ADAPTACIÓN DEL PERSONAJE DE HAMLET POR KENNETH BRANAGH ........................................................................

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Christian Santana Hernández: DESMONTANDO A SHAKESPEARE...........

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Adrián Pradier Sebastián: PENSAMIENTO TRÁGICO Y TRAICIONES ESCÉNICAS ..................................................................................................

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III. CERVANTES Y SHAKESPEARE Ana Contreras Elvira y Alicia Blas Brunel: DRAMATURGIA DE ESTADO Y ESTADO DRAMATÚRGICO. ESPACIO MÁGICO Y ESPACIO POLÍTICO EN EL TEATRO DE SHAKESPEARE Y CERVANTES ....................................

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Erik Coenen: CERVANTES EN INGLÉS, SHAKESPEARE IN SPANISH .........

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María del Pilar Couceiro: DE LA TRAGEDIA SHAKESPERIANA AL ENTREMÉS CERVANTINO .............................................................................

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Marcos García Barrero: LOS PERSONAJES DE DON QUIJOTE Y HAMLET: ASPECTOS ESPECULARES, PARADIGMÁTICOS, CULTURALES Y PROSPECTIVOS.........................................................................................

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Isabel Guerrero: THE EXCHANGE OF NATIONAL AUTHORS: PERFORMING SHAKESPEARE IN ALMAGRO AND CERVANTES IN STRATFORD .......

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IV. SHAKESPEARE EN EL ÁMBITO HISPÁNICO Daniel M. Ambrona Carrasco: W. SHAKESPEARE’S RICHARD III ON THE SPANISH STAGES (2005-2016).........................................................

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Frederick A. de Armas: REESCRITURAS DE LA ÍNSULA FIRME: AMADÍS DE GAULA Y THE TEMPEST ......................................................................

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Simon Breden: SHAKESPEARE EN ESPAÑA EN LOS SIGLOS XX-XXI: TRADUCCIÓN Y ADAPTACIÓN A LA ESCENA DE HAMLET TRADUCIDO POR MARÍA FERNÁNDEZ ACHE ...............................................................

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César Oliva: SHAKESPEARE EN LA ESCENA ESPAÑOLA ACTUAL ............

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John D. Sanderson: ¿TENÍA EL ALMA BLANCA? REPRESENTACIÓN DE OTELO DURANTE EL FRANQUISMO ..........................................................

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V. CERVANTES FUERA DE NUESTRAS FRONTERAS Ian M. Borden Y Kerry K. Wilks: TRANSLATING AND PERFORMING SPANISH CLASSICAL THEATER: HOW TO BATTLE SHAKESPEARE’S GHOST ON THE AMERICAN STAGE ..........................................................

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Esther Lázaro: DOS MONTAJES CERVANTINOS VISTOS DESDE LA MIRADA EXILIADA DE MAX AUB ................................................................

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Raquel López Sánchez: ENTRE DOS ESCENAS. LA HERMENÉUTICA DEL DISTANCIAMIENTO A LAS TABLAS: LA RECEPCIÓN DE LOS ENTREMESES CERVANTINOS EN LA DRAMATURGIA DE BERTOLT BRECHT ............

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Oana Andreia Sâmbrian: DEL LIBRO AL ESCENARIO: LAS ADAPTACIONES DEL QUIJOTE EN RUMANÍA ..............................................................

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VI. MISCELÁNEA M.ª del Rosario Charro García: DE LO QUE APENAS SE HABLA Y LO PRIMERO QUE SE VE ................................................................................

491

Juan Coll Gómez: LA RECEPCIÓN EN ESPAÑA DE EDUARDO II DE CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: CINE Y TEATRO DE TEMÁTICA HOMOSEXUAL ...................................................................................................

507

Francisco José Cortés Vieco: EPÍSTOLAS ENTRE BASTIDORES EN THE SECRET LOVE LIFE OF OPHELIA DE STEVEN BERKOFF ............................

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Alberto Escalante Varona: DEL ROMANCERO Y LAS CRÓNICAS, A LA COMEDIA BARROCA: REFORMULACIONES DE LA LEYENDA DE FERNÁN GONZÁLEZ EN LA LIBERTAD DE CASTILLA................................................

543

Domenico Giuseppe Lipani: LA COMEDIA ÁUREA ESPAÑOLA EN FERRARA EN EL SIGLO XVII .........................................................................

561

Ben Gunter y Kerry K. Wilks: EL MUERTO REVIVED IN THE USA.........

579

Javier Ilundain Chamarro: LA LEYENDA DE SANCHO EL DE PEÑALÉN: DE LAS CRÓNICAS AL TEATRO .................................................................

597

Magdalena Figzał: THE CIRCLE OF OUTCASTS: KRZYSZTOF WARLIKOWSKI’S AFRICAN TALES BY SHAKESPEARE ........................................

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Vicente León: HABLA ESCÉNICA Y ELOCUENCIA ...................................

633

Emilie Ricoux: DEL TEATRO A LA POESÍA: FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA Y ARTHUR RIMBAUD ANTE EL MITO DE OFELIA .....................................

639

Raúl Saugar: SOBRE ESTATUAS Y FANTASMAS. APUNTES ACERCA DE LA MELANCOLÍA EN EL TEATRO DE SHAKESPEARE Y CALDERÓN ....................

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László Scholz: MODELOS Y FUNCIONES DE LA TRADUCCIÓN TEATRAL EN EL SIGLO XIX. CALDERÓN EN HÚNGARO ............................................

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Francesca Suppa: VOLTAIRE ENTRE SHAKESPEARE Y LOPE DE VEGA ...

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ANEXO: Programa del Congreso Internacional.....................................

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THE EXCHANGE OF NATIONAL AUTHORS: PERFORMING SHAKESPEARE IN ALMAGRO AND CERVANTES IN STRATFORD ISABEL GUERRERO Universidad de Murcia

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the Shakespearean production Las alegres casadas (2015), by the company Tdiferencia, and on Cervantes’ Pedro, the Great Pretender (2004), by the RSC. The article examines the fortunes of Shakespeare and Cervantes in 21st-century theatre practice, paying special attention to the approach to classical plays, the use of theatricality, the reinvention of characters or the implications about the global/local status of the two authors. Key words: William Shakespeare, Cervantes, performance, adaptation, global/local.

RESUMEN El presente artículo analiza la adaptación de la obra de Shakespeare Las alegres casadas (2015), de la compañía Tdiferencia, y de la cervantina Pedro de Urdemalas (2004), producida por la RSC. El propósito del artículo es examinar la fortuna de Shakespeare y Cervantes en la escena contemporánea, prestando especial atención a la adaptación de los clásicos, el uso de la teatralidad, la reinvención de personajes y el carácter local y global de ambos autores. Palabras clave: William Shakespeare, Cervantes, puesta en escena, adaptación, global/local.

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Exchanging national authors IN THE ENTREMÉS DE LOS AUTORES, the company Ron La Lá presents Shakespeare as the original author of Don Quixote and Cervantes as the author of Hamlet. Fed-up with their respective authors, who do not cease to modify their lines (Cervantes insists that Hamlet should use “question” instead of “dilemma” for the “To be or not to be” speech, Shakespeare asks Don Quixote not to call Sancho by his surname, for instance), the characters decide to exchange places, going down in history as we know them today. This comic sketch leads to the idea of how a Spanish Hamlet, one actually written by Cervantes, or an English Don Quixote, one created in Shakespeare’s mind, would be. Spanish and English theatre companies have played a similar exchange: not in terms of characters, but of national authors. In 2016, the Royal Shakespeare Company produced a stage version of Don Quixote to mark the 400th anniversary of Cervantes’ death, and the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico toured intensively with Miguel del Arco’s Hamlet to commemorate Shakespeare’s death anniversary in the same year. The Royal Shakespeare’s commemoration of Cervantes with the staging of a version of Don Quixote has interesting connotations: the choice to stage a dramatized version of Cervantes’ popular novel and not one of his pieces of dramatic writing puts the emphasis on celebrating the author, not the playwright. This commemoration of Cervantes with a theatrical adaptation of his novel is not unique to the UK stages. Of the seventeen Cervantine productions programmed at the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro to commemorate the 2016 anniversary, only four were theatre plays (Pedro de Urdemalas, dir. Dennis Rafter; La conquista de Jerusalén, dir. Juan Sanz; and two productions of El cerco de Numancia, one directed by Paco Carrillo and another by José Ramón de Moya under the title Nwman Cia), whereas the rest were adaptations from other prose works, above all from Don

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Quixote and the Exemplary Novels1.These figures, which are not an exception, but the rule when it comes to speak about Cervantes on the stage, confirm the claim by Javier Huerta Calvo and José Ramón Fernández [2015], who have already noticed that “El Cervantes novelista, el de El Quijote pero también el de las Novelas ejemplares, ha tenido mayor fortuna en los escenarios que el Cervantes dramaturgo”. On the other hand, Shakespeare’s commemoration with another Hamlet as that by Del Arcoenters the now long performance tradition of the play on the Spanish stages, whose first performance dates back to 1772, being the first Shakespearean drama ever staged in the country [Portillo and Salvador 2003: 180; Gregor 2010: 5]. This article, however, aims to explore a more exceptional exchange of national authors: one in which Cervantes’ dramatic works are taken to the English stage and, likewise, one staging of, not Hamlet, but a much less familiar Shakespeare’s play on the Spanish theatrical landscape. This exchange takes us back to 2004, when Cervantes’ Pedro, the Great Pretender (known in Spanish as Pedro de Urdemalas) premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s hometown, as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company Golden Age Season. The example of a Spanish Shakespeare is more recent, dating from 2015, with the production Las alegres casadas, an adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor performed by the company Tdiferencia including the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro in their national tour2. In Stratford, Pedro, the Great Pretender was performed for audiences well-acquainted with Shakespeare and his 1

2

There were six adaptations of the Exemplary novels (Rinconete y Cortadillo, dir. Salva Bolta; El viejo celoso, dir. Adriano Iurissevich; Escrito en las estrellas, dir. Emilio Gutiérrez Caba; Cervantes ejemplar, dir. Laila Ripoll; El licenciado Vidriera, dir. Jaime Santos; y Perra vida, dir. Jose Padilla), four of Don Quixote (Misterios del Quijote, dir. Rafael Álvarez; Kijote Kathakali, dir. Ignacio García; Don Quijote en la patera, dir. Antonio Campos; y Quijote, el vértigo de Sancho, dir. José Ramón Martínez), two productions about women in Cervantes (Las Cervantas, dir. Fernando Soto y Mujeres cervantinas, dir. Luciano González Sarmiento), and one production mixing different Cervantes’ texts (Cervantina, dir. Yayo Cáceres). Part of the description of Las alegres casadas appears in a previous theatre review. See Guerrero [2016].

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contemporaries, but not so familiar with other foreign works of the same period. In Almagro, a festival devoted to 16th and 17th-century theatre (the period of the Spanish Golden Age), Shakespearean productions are frequent but, in contrast to other plays as Hamlet or Macbeth, The Merry Wives had only been staged once before Tdiferencia’s performance in 2015. This article, thus, focuses on the fortunes of Shakespeare and Cervantes in 21stcentury theatre practice through the exchange of national authors of the RSC and Tdiferencia.

Staging the classics The Royal Shakespeare and Tdiferencia display contrasting approaches to the staging of classical plays. Some of these differences have to do with the companies themselves: Pedro, the Great Pretender was produced by a stable, subsidized company as the RSC, whose aim is not purely commercial but to preserve and promote the dramatic heritage of Shakespeare, his contemporaries and other authors. The characteristics of the company influence the conditions of production in Pedro, the Great Pretender, with a cast of twenty actors working in repertoire in the other three plays of the Golden Age Season —Lope de Vega’s The Dog in the Manger, Tirso’s Tamar’s Revenge and Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz’s House of Desires. In contrast, Tdiferencia is an independent enterprise, with a more limited budget and a more commercially-oriented focus, whose productions range from theatre to cabaret. The company is formed by three actors, employing two extra actors plus the acclaimed director Andrés Lima for this specific production. These differences affect several aspects of the productions: while the RSC Pedro, the Great Pretender has a large cast and runs for almost three hours, with the whole production conceived as an experiment in Golden Age drama, Tdiferencia’s approach denotes the need of the company to create a product that is economically viable to adapt to the market forces of commercial theatre, with a reduced cast an a shorter duration (less than two hours).

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The RSC tries to preserve the Spanish flavour of Cervantes’ work in its mise-en-scène. Under the direction of Mike Alfred, the RSC tells the story of Pedro, an articulate trickster who, in the course of the play, helps young lovers to marry, deceives a widow and a farmer and, at the end, gets enrolled in a theatre troupe. The mise-en-scène evokes a Spanish ambience: low-class characters appear in humble peasant costumes (with the women in black knitted shawls and Belica in a bodice and skirt, which differentiate her among the rest), bulrush chairs and wooden tables are situated upstage, where actors and the band remain visible all through the production, and the action is played against a red-brick wall. Even the language, a specially commissioned translation of the play in rhymed verse by Philip Osment, sounds foreign to English ears, not used to this type of language in classical theatre but to Elizabethan’s blank verse. Despite the fact that the production is inevitably filtered through an English lens, the mise-en-scène transmits a clear idea of period (17th century) and, above all, location (Spain). While the RSC preserves the original location of the play, Las alegres casadas seems fully detached from its English setting. In this adaptation, which focuses on the main plot of Shakespeare’s play involving Falstaff and the merry wives, little of Shakespeare’s only English comedy remains truly English3. The action is delocalised, placed in a contemporary setting that is never completely defined. Whether the dialogues still refer to the town as Windsor, the mention of the locale disappears from the title. Instead of Las alegres casadas de Windsor, or Las alegres comadres de Windor, as the title has frequently been translated into Spanish, the production is simply called Las alegres casadas, suppressing the reference to the locale4. Andrés Lima [2016], the director of the production, comments on this deliberate delocalisation of the action from its original English setting: “Windsor, Inglaterra, mil seiscientos y pico. Y sin embargo podría ser Teruel, España, dos mil y pico. O Sevilla o Pamplona o Ámsterdam o Londres o Madrid: cualquier lugar donde exista el deseo, la moral, el juego y el interés”. As the 3

The Merry Wives of Windsor is the only of Shakespeare’s comedies taking place in England. Only the history plays are also set in this country. 4 The translation and adaptation were by Andrés Lima, who added his own directorial interpretation in the title.

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director indicates, the mise-en-scène attempts to delocalise the action from 16th-century England, presenting a story that could take place anywhere in our western society5. In order to transfer desire, morality, playfulness and interest to our days, as Lima suggests, the production relies on elements of contemporary popular culture. The puns, set and soundtrack unveil the intention to situate the plot in a present-day context. The surname of the Pages, for instance, is altered, renaming them as Ferrari, which connects the surnames of the two families (the Ford and the Ferrari) to popular car brands and suggests that they are, if not Italian, at least wealthy families. To situate the onstage action, three different sets of marquee lights are employed, indicating the location with the words bar, bosque [forest], and the shape of the sketch of a house to represent Ford’s house. The aspect of these marquee lights evoke old-fashion movie theatres and cabaret shows, an aesthetics that is reinforced with the cabaret touch in the outfits of the costumers of the Garter Inn. Instead of “Greensleeves”, the traditional English folk song that Mrs Ford and Falstaff mention in Shakespeare’s play6, the soundtrack includes songs by Paolo Conte, Patty Pravo or the Rolling Stones. The music does not only accompany the action, but also comments on it, as happens, for instance, when the wives enthusiastically decide to play their final revenge on Falstaff with the lyrics of the Rolling Stones’ song “Satisfaction” (whose chorus goes “I can get no satisfaction”) in the background. The combination of the wives’ enthusiasm and the effect of the music suggest that their desire for revenge has no limits. Thanks to the updating of the music, the aesthetics of the setting or even the alteration of the surname to Ferrari, the references to 16th-century England go unnoticed. The introduction of elements from popular culture to delocalise or, more precisely, contextualise the play in the 21st century brings the action closer to the audience. As Douglas Lanier argues, “popular audiences often engage 5

This approach was in keeping with Andrés Lima’s previous work on Shakespeare, an adaptation on Macbeth under the title Los Mácbez (2014). This production appropriated Shakespeare’s play, setting the action in present-day Spain and introducing several references to current politics. 6 Mrs Ford refers to the song in act II scene i, and Falstaff does the same in act V scene v.

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Shakespeare through the lens of pop culture, because pop provides mass audiences widely shared models of plot construction, character, style, and ideology” [2002: 85]. Even if festival-goers at the Almagro Festival cannot be exactly defined as mass audiences (more identified with the audiences of mass media than with those attending theatrical performances), the references to popular culture provide spectators with a common referent that they can relate to their everyday realities. The approaches of the RSC and TDifferencia productions exemplify two widespread trends in the staging of classical works. Pedro, the Great Pretender brings to the foreground the original historical context of the play, whereas Las alegres casadas updates the contextual information to modernise the play. On the one hand, the RSC rediscovers —or rather discovers— Golden Age theatre set in Spain for an English audience. On the other, TDifferencia presents a relatively unknown Shakespeare’s play to a Spanish audience. Both approaches point out at the adaptability of Shakespeare’s and Golden Age plays on the 21st-century stage.

Theatricality: announcements and structure In spite of their contrasting styles, both productions share a similar approach to theatricality, relying on analogous strategies to emphasise the structure of the plays. In Las alegres casadas, the sets of marquee lights function as visual announcements, marking the change of space without reproducing the realistic appearance of the location. The marquee lights are movable, changing in the transitions between scenes to signal a different location; while the music sounds, the characters bring the marquee lights into the stage. The adaptation reduces most of the action of the play to two basic locations: the bar (the Garter Inn) and Ford’s house. In this way, the action shifts between the tricks of the merry wives in the house, and the consequences of those tricks on Falstaff and Master Brook —Mr Ford in disguise, who is renamed as Monsieur Cendrier in this production— at the Inn. Only the last scene takes place in a different location, the forest, where the merry wives and their husbands execute their last revenge on Falstaff.

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The shifts of the marquee lights highlight the structure of the adaptation, situating the action between two spaces —the house and the bar— until the final resolution in the forest. Apart from reinforcing the structure, the marquee lights challenge the audience to accept a theatrical convention in which the change of location is indicated by a song. In Pedro, the Great Pretender, the director decided to accentuate the episodic nature of the playscript by making Pedro step forward and announce each new episode to the audience, providing basic information about the action of the scene. In Cervantes’ text, the action has no continuity all through the play, but develops in a series of episodes showing Pedro in different situations (i.e. arranging the marriage between Pascual and Benita, pretending to be blind to get some money from a widow, etc). Only the plot of the gipsies and Belica and the presence of Pedro himself offer some continuity [Casalduero 1974: 169]. The succession of episodes leads to an unresolved ending in which Belica and Pedro do not marry; instead, the characters part to live as a princess and actor respectively. The separation of the action into episodes does not appear in Cervantes’ text —only divided into three jornadas —but was introduced here as a means to guide the audience through the unusual structure of the play. The thirteen episodes were: 1. Pedro and the shepherds; 2. Pedro tells his story; 3. The night of St John; 4. Gipsy Life; 5. The mayor’s dance; 6. The blind men and the widow; 7. Pedro joins the gypsies; 8. The wounded heart; 9. Pedro comes from purgatory; 10. The court in the country; 11. Marcelo’s secret; 12. Pedro’s prophecy; 13. Pedro finds his true vocation [Osment 2007: 96-97]. These oral announcements create an even more explicit separation between the different events in the play. According to Osment, “this quasi-Brechtian device had the effect of allowing John Ramm [the actor performing Pedro] as storyteller to have a complicity with the audience. It was as if he was enticing them into the story with a wink” [2007: 97]. This strategy constantly reminds the audience that the actions on stage are part of a play breaking the usual rules of dramaturgy. As Osment explains, the announcements functioned as an alert for the audiences “so that they wouldn’t sit in the auditorium expecting something much more conventional” [2007: 96]. The possibility of a conventional ending is actually denied by Pedro in his closing speech:

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Mañana, en el teatro, se hará una [comedia],/ donde por poco precio verán todos/ desde principio al fin toda la trama,/ y verán que no acaba en casamiento,/ cosa común y vista cien mil veces/ ni que parió la dama esta jornada,/ y en otra tiene el niño ya sus barbas,/ y es valiente y feroz, y mata y hiende,/ y venga de sus padres cierta injuria/ y al fin viene a ser rey de un cierto reino/ que no hay cosmografía que le muestre./ Destas impertinencias y otras tales/ ofreció la comedia libre y suelta,/ pues llena de artificio, industria y gala,/ se cela del gran Pedro de Urdemalas [Cervantes 1962: 473]7.

As Pedro states, there is no wedding or magical solution to close the action. Pedro’s speech refers not only to the play that the audiences have just witnessed, but is also a direct response to Lope’s rules of the commedia nueva8. Instead of enhancing the suspension of disbelief, Cervantes’ text and the directorial decisions work together to impose a critical distance between the stage and the audience. Many of Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ plays have in common their focus on theatre as a form. According to Maestro, “Shakespeare nos ha dado muchas metáforas destinadas a hacer comprensible y coherente el complejo significado del concepto de teatro, en el cual trabaja de forma constante. En A Midsummer Night’s Dream, por ejemplo, el tema esencial es la propia obra. Algo muy semejante podemos decir de Pedro de Urdemalas en el caso de Cervantes. En estas y otras piezas la atención del espectador se orienta incesantemente hacia la obra como tema” [2003: 33]. The RSC production accentuates the reflection on theatre with Pedro’s final declarations: to his decision to become an actor, already present in Cervantes’ text, the production adds that he is going to change his name into Miguel de Cervantes. This announcement transforms Pedro not only into the 7

CERVANTES, Miguel de (1962): Obras de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. II. Obras dramáticas, ed. Francisco Ynduráin, Madrid, Atlas. 8 Castillo and Spadaccini comment on Lope’s promotion of illusion and Cervantes’ critical distance: “Si el teatro de Lope, en su afán de sostener la ilusión, promueve la ‘identificación total’ del espectador, su integración dentro del espectáculo, el de Cervantes —tanto en El retablo de las maravillas como en Pedro de Urdemalas y el episodio del retablo de maese Pedro— parece producir el efecto opuesto, parece promover un distanciamiento crítico” [2003: 159].

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actor of the play, but also into his writer, suggesting that the character is —at least at the end, when he exposes his ideas on theatre— an extension of Cervantes. The Merry Wives of Windsor is certainly not the most meta-theatrical of Shakespeare’s plays; however, this production of Las alegres casadas manages to bring some attention to theatre as a form. Apart from the visual announcements of the marquee lights, the story of the merry wives is told in flashback, adding a frame story in the opening and closing scenes. The opening scene shows Falstaff having fun with the costumers of the Garter Inn. The conversation between him and the host of the inn reveals that this is a meeting of old friends and, together, they remember that old story of Falstaff and some merry wives of the town that took place years ago. The closing scene, after Falstaff has been humiliated in the forest, returns to the initial situation, suggesting that the whole play has been just the product of remembrance. The play-with-in-the-play generated by the frame story prompts a reflection on the mechanisms of theatre to convey meaning.

Reinventing the trickster The mise-en-scène influences as well the recognition and interpretation of the main characters, Pedro and Falstaff, offering two visions of the same character type, the trickster. As with other elements in the production, Las alegres casadas updates Falstaff into a recognisable contemporary character. Miguel Munárriz, the actor in Falstaff’s role, comments on the topical aspect of this character type in Spain: “Es muy actual… en este caso Shakespeare te saca el saber vivir, la picaresca y estamos rodeados de picaresca, casi nos ahogan” [Noticias de Navarra 2015]. As someone who tries to enjoy himself at the expense of deceiving others, this Falstaff brings to mind the numerous cases of political corruption in the country, which have been repetitively connected to the picaresque nature of Spaniards and which Falstaff, even if English in origin, is made to represent when performed in 21st-century Spain. Remedios Perni [2015: 144] notices that the comparisons of politicians with Shakespearean characters have been recurrent during the recession. Whether

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Perni refers to specific comparisons of politicians to the character Richard III, Munárriz’s reference is less specific, his words just point out at a certain similarity between Falstaff’s tricks and equivalent attitudes in contemporary Spanish society. Perni’s examples are of real politicians with a Shakespearean character; however, Munárriz’s comparison works in the opposite direction: it is not a public character the one that evokes Shakespeare, but a fictional one which calls to mind current affairs. In contrast to those politicians compared to Richard III, Falstaff is a more amiable trickster, one that tries to deceive but does not succeed and, in the end, nobody but him suffers the consequences of his actions. The RSC production introduces its own interpretation of Pedro, drawing a direct parallel between him and Cervantes. Osment finds some coincidences between the life of the fictional character and that of his author. In spite of their misfortunes —Pedro is a boy of uncertain origin who has not much to lose, Cervantes was a hostage in Algiers for five years and died a poor man— both are able to face adversity and be somehow successful. According to Osment, “like Pedro, Cervantes seems not to have succumbed to bitterness and is able to use his experiences to rich effect” [2007: 91]. Osment goes as far as to compare some of the events in Cervantes’ life with those in the play: “When we listen to Pedro enumerating the sufferings of the widow’s deceased relatives we can’t help remembering the five years Cervantes spent in his own personal purgatory in Algiers. However, the tormented souls, the fake alms collector and the actual hostages referred to in the episode with the farmer are figures in Pedro’s repertoire of tall stories. They illustrate his imagination and wit –his much-famed ingenuity– as a conman” [2007: 91]. An episode running the risk of becoming too close to a real event in Cervantes’ life provides evidence of Pedro’s —and, by implication, Cervantes’— witness and creativity. Moreover, Pedro’s announcement about his name change materialises the connection between author and character in the production9. This trickster is not just the one of the picaresque Spanish tradition, but also one who, to some extent, represents Cervantes himself. 9

The resemblance of the events with those in Cervantes’ biography does not go unnoticed by

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Global Shakespeare, global Cervantes? The RSC’s choice to maintain the Spanish flavour of Pedro, the Great Pretender, while Tdiferencia updates and delocalises the play, gives rise to the question of whether it is possible to speak about global Cervantes in the same sense as we refer to global Shakespeare. The term “global Shakespeare” is used to denominate the multiple appropriations of Shakespeare’s works by cultures worldwide, often placing the plays in a different cultural realm, as Tdiferencia does10. The Globe to Globe Festival exemplifies the outreach of this phenomenon: the festival gathered the 37 Shakespeare’s plays performed in a different language by companies from all over the world on the occasion of the 2012 Olympic Games. A similar celebration of Cervantes’ theatre is, needless to say, impossible. For a start, Cervantes did not write as many plays as Shakespeare and, as explained above, his plays, even in Spain, are rarely performed. Among the few examples of global Cervantes stand the Kijote Kathakali, performed at the Almagro Festival in 2016, and Ktsec Act’s Numancia (2007). Unlike Pedro, the Great Pretender, these two productions did appropriate Cervantes’ works in a different setting and in a foreign theatrical style: the first retold Don Quixote’s story in the Indian style of kathakali, the second placed the action in present-day Japan. As happens on the Spanish stage, Cervantes’ theatre falls short in the international panorama, with the global outreach of the writer coming not via his theatre, but through his novel Don Quixote11.

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reviewers. The citric for The Daily Telegraph describes Pedro as “a ragged chancer who, as the impoverished Cervantes himself did, lives on his wits, adapting to whatever fate thrusts his way” [Cavendish 2004]. Sam Marlowe, writing for The Times, also stresses that “the stage underlines the parallels between Pedro and Cervantes himself, whose own colorful life was full of extraordinary reversals of fortune” [Marlowe 2004]. The study of global Shakespeare is now firmly established within Shakespeare studies thanks to contributions such as those by Kennedy [1993], Massai [2005] or Huang [2009]. The dozens of translations of Don Quixote into different languages are an example of Cervantes’ global outreach as a novelist. The website of the Biblioteca Nacional de España has a special section devoted to these translations, providing examples of the novel in twenty-four different languages. See Biblioteca Nacional de España, Quijotes. Recopilación de las ediciones del Quijote de la Biblioteca Nacional de España.

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The limited global projection of Golden Age theatre in foreign styles is not exclusive of Cervantes, but extends to more prolific and popular playwrights of the same period. Lope de Vega, who could be considered the equivalent to Shakespeare in Spanish theatre [Bate 1997: 340], has not achieved such a global dimension either, in spite of his more frequent performance both in Spain and abroad. Jonathan Thacker [2007: 22] has brought the attention to how the director Adrian Mitchell abandoned the idea to set his version of Fuenteovejuna in South America, as the National Theatre argued that the audience was not familiar enough with the play to understand this new take. The pretext was that familiarity with the classics is, if not strictly required, at least desirable before such departures as the one proposed by Mitchell are taken to the stage. This is precisely one of the widespread problems that most adaptations and appropriations of Spanish classics face; as they are not staged as often as Shakespeare’s works, it is difficult for them to become familiar enough to the audiences and allow the same degree of experimentation as Shakespeare’s plays12. Keeping the Spanish setting in Pedro, the Great Pretender is a good solution to provide audiences with a stable point of reference. Nevertheless, its performance in English by the RSC results in the unavoidable blend of two theatrical traditions. Thanks to the translation, the production is free from some of the limitations to which Golden Age plays have been subjected on the Spanish stage, such as the endless discussion about how to recite rhymed verse. The Spanish setting, added to the exoticism introduced by the English language, is useful to find a new perspective in the performance of Spanish classics. As Catherine Boyle puts it, when the RSC Golden Age works toured to Madrid “some saw the season as being free from a sacrosanct archaeology of culture or from the other extreme of dramaturgical or directorial excess” [2007: 71]. Liberated from the trends in Spanish theatre, the RSC displays its own

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Gregor [2005: 240-241] has argued that another difficulty for the adaptation of Spanish works has to do with the topics they address. Whereas some of the topics, such as love or vengeance, can have a universal and contemporary appeal, others have lost their currency, like those dealing with honour or religion.

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new take on the plays of the Golden Age Season, with Pedro, the Great Pretender presenting its own vision of a long-forgotten Spain.

Conclusions The RSC and Tdiferencia productions typify the performance of Shakespeare’s and Cervantes’ works beyond the borders of their countries of origin. Shakespeare’s plays are constantly reimagined into all sorts of settings and times, a product of the widely accepted performativity of the plays. Nevertheless, the performance of Cervantes’ dramatic works remains an exceptional occasion —not only abroad, but also in Spain. When they are put onto the stage, they are not appropriated as frequently as Shakespeare’s works, constantly updated and modernised; instead, Cervantes’ works are used to evoke Spain’s past. Both Shakespeare and Cervantes were celebrated in 2016 as national and universal authors; however, the approaches and outreach of their theatre indicate that, while Shakespeare is constantly reclaimed as a global author, Cervantes the playwright remains inherently Spanish.

BIBLIOGRAPHY BATE, Jonathan (1997): The Genius of Shakespeare, London, Picador. BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA, Quijotes. Recopilación de las ediciones del Quijote de la Biblioteca Nacional de España, [last access 24 September 2017]. BOYLE, Catherine (2007): “Perspectives on Loss and Discovery: Reading and Reception”, in The Spanish Golden Age in English: Perspectives on Performance, ed. C. Boyle and D. Johnston (London, Oberon Books), 61-74. CASALDUERO, Joaquín (1974): Sentido y forma del teatro de Cervantes, Madrid, Gredos.

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CASTILLO, David and Nicholas SPADACCINI (2003): “Cervantes y ‘la comedia nueva’: lectura y espectáculo”, in Theatralia. El teatro de Miguel de Cervantes ante el IV, ed. J. G. Maestro (Pontevedra, Mirabel Editorial), 153-163. CAVENDISH, Dominic (2004): “World of silliness and majesty finally comes to life Theatre. Pedro, the Great Pretender. Swan Theatre, StratfordUpon-Avon”, The Daily Telegraph (13-Sep-2004). GREGOR, Keith (2005): “Contrasting Fortunes: Lope in the UK/Shakespeare in Spain”, Ilha do Desterro, 49, 235-253. ___ (2010): Shakespeare in the Spanish Theatre: 1772 to the present, London, Continuum. GUERRERO, Isabel (2016): “Review of Las Alegres Casadas. 2015. Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Almagro”, SEDERI, 26, 227-231. HUANG, Alexa (2009): Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange, Columbia, Columbia University Press. HUERTA CALVO, Javier and José Ramón FERNÁNDEZ (2015): “Introducción”, Cervantes a Escena, Don Galán, 5, [Last access 2 July 2016]. KENNEDY, Dennis (1993): Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. LANIER, Douglas (2002): Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, Oxford, Oxford University Press. LIMA, Andrés (2016): “Las Alegres Casadas. Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Almagro”, http://www.festivaldealmagro.com/obra_actual.php?id=174 [Last access 6 March 2016]. MAESTRO, Jesús G. (2003): “El triunfo de la heterodoxia. El teatro de Cervantes y la literatura europea”, in Theatralia. El teatro de Miguel de Cervantes ante el IV, ed. J. G. Maestro (Pontevedra, Mirabel Editorial), 19-48. MARLOWE, Sam (2004): “Pedro, the Great Pretender”, The Times (13-Sep2004).

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