<div dir="ltr"><div class="" style="margin:0px 0px 1.17647em;padding:1.17647em;border-width:0px 0px 1px;border-bottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:rgb(203,56,39);outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" id="block-delta-blocks-page-title" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><h1 id="page-title" class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.61765em;line-height:1.2em;letter-spacing:-0.05em">Diversifying the Classical Canon</h1></div></div></div></div><div class="" id="region-content" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 10px;padding:0px 10px 80px 0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:17px;line-height:26px;font-family:Merriweather,Georgia,Times,serif;overflow:hidden;display:inline;float:left;color:rgb(0,0,0);height:4946px;background-color:rgb(215,215,215)"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:1.17647em;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;overflow:hidden;height:auto!important"><font face="inherit"><span style="font-style:inherit;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;outline-color:initial;outline-style:initial;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;line-height:inherit"><a id="main-content" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;color:rgb(203,56,39)"></a></span></font><div class="" id="block-system-main" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit"><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1em;line-height:1.52941em;font-family:inherit"><i>Posted in Cafe Onda April 2, 2016 by Barbara Fuchs. This post taken from HowlRound. </i></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1em;line-height:1.52941em;font-family:inherit"><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit">Why should this seem so hard? In part, because Shakespeare has been granted exceptional powers—what other playwright could stave off the invading hordes, as Shakespeareans at the turn of the twentieth century promised, or suture together the nation, as the more recent</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit"> </span><a href="http://www.shakespeareinamericancommunities.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit;color:rgb(203,56,39);text-decoration:none">NEA projects to present Shakespeare in all fifty states</a><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit"> </span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit">optimistically imply? Despite the fact that the Shakespeare-US connection is a willed fantasy, and that the playwright is certainly no more native than any other European in the New World, Shakespeare is treated as a national property and a given for US audiences.</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit">In recent years, theatres across the United States have announced a strong commitment to greater diversity in their personnel. More people of color on stage and behind the scenes—this is all for the good. Yet there has been no corresponding diversification of the plays we turn to when we want the</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit"> </span><em style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit">classic</em><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit">, the tried and true. Instead, we have a largely undiluted diet of Shakespeare, Shakespeare, and more Shakespeare, with the occasional nod to the Greeks. Particularly given the US population today, could we not envision instead a turn to the vibrant tradition of Hispanic classical theatre? The lively</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit"> </span><em style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit">comedia</em><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit">—the theatrical corpus developed on both sides of the Atlantic by playwrights such as Spaniards Félix Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca, or Mexicans Juan Ruiz de Alarcón and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz—should not remain in the wings. As it moves center stage, it could show not just Latino audiences but all theatregoers that the classics come in different flavors.</span></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1em;line-height:1.52941em;font-family:inherit"><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">Meanwhile, even four hundred years after the time of Shakespeare and Cervantes, Spain is still considered somehow different. Exotic, too religious, obsessed with honor—isn’t Spain, and particularly the Spain of the Golden Age, all of those things? Well, yes and no: around a thousand Hispanic classical plays survive, over four hundred by Lope de Vega alone (compare to Shax’s thirty-eight, or, better yet, don’t compare, just go read some). This makes it very difficult to categorize them all as any one thing. But generations of Anglo-American critics knew what they were looking for in Spanish theatre, and, no great surprise, found exactly what they expected to find: plots obsessed with honor and the defense of sexual virtue, plays in which wives were murdered to preserve their husbands’ reputations even if they had done nothing wrong. Great theatre, to be sure, but neither exactly uplifting nor in line with current mores. The otherness of Calderón’s “wife-murder plays,” as they are known, might well give a director pause. A play such as Lope de Vega’s</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><em style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit">Fuenteovejuna</em><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">, for its part, involves villagers avenging the sexual wrongs done by their overlords, and so speaks more readily to contemporary audiences, but even its relative popularity is the exception that proves the rule.</span></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1em;line-height:1.52941em;font-family:inherit"><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">When one steps back from the Anglo-wish-fulfillment canon of honor and violence, however, it turns out that many Spanish</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><em style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit">comedias</em><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">are witty, urbane, self-aware, and intensely concerned with the theatricality of life in the big city. These were plays for the people: performances took place in open-air theatres, where audiences of all classes and both sexes commingled. Many</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><em style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit">comedias</em><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">are sophisticated urban dramas, offering pointed reflections on the constructed nature of class and gender as well as the social role-playing required by life in the city. They often feature women on top, and include fantastic female roles. Consumed with the problem of how to represent oneself to the best advantage,</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><em style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit">comedias</em><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">are skeptical about essences or absolutes. As in Cervantes’s masterful interlude,</span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit"> </span><em style="font-family:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-weight:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-stretch:inherit">El retablo de las maravillas/The Marvelous Puppet Show</em><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">, they peer behind the arature of the system and cry, “The emperor has no honor!” </span></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1em;line-height:1.52941em;font-family:inherit"><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;line-height:1.52941em;font-weight:inherit">READ THE ENTIRE POST AT  </span><span style="font-family:inherit;font-size:1em;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;line-height:26px"><a href="http://howlround.com/diversifying-the-classical-canon#sthash.yzXKc06G.dpuf">http://howlround.com/diversifying-the-classical-canon#sthash.yzXKc06G.dpuf</a></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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