Lope de Vega
Viuda, casada y Doncella
edited by Ronna S. Feit and Donald McGrady

Another enjoyable secondary play by Spain’s greatest dramatist is Lope’s Viuda, casada y doncella (Widow, Married and Virgin), which dates from 1597. The text comes from a copy made in 1762 from the lost autograph, under the supervision of a certain Gálvez. This version is much more faithful to the original text than those printed in 1617 (and later reprinted in 1725-30 and 1756-57), which were taken from actors’ copies; these latter omit some 55 lines, adding eight unauthorized ones, and introduce hundreds of variant readings, all inferior to the authentic text. The play’s plot is very old, going back in its original treatment to the Arabian Nights (of the eighth or ninth century); the immediate source of the play is a story in the Decameron (X, 9); thus Viuda, casada y doncella becomes the tenth play of Lope known to descend from Boccaccio’s popular masterwork. To make the text entirely accessible to the reader of the twenty-first century, Feit and McGrady annotate hundreds of historical, geographical, lexical and literary allusions.

Ediciones críticas #24
isbn: 1-58871-083-1 (PB)
318 pp. (2006) $26.95