Honor, Love, and Religion in the Theater Before Lope de Vega
by Elaine C. Wertheimer

This study examines the origin of a new theater that began to develop in the late 15th century with Juan del Encina, Lucas Fernández. Diego Sánchez de Badajoz, Gil Vicente and Bartolomé de Torres Naharro.
    Their work can be understood in the context of the controversy regarding the conversos and the pure blood statutes which were aimed at them. Whether or not these dramatists were themselves ex illis cannot be confirmed or denied but what can be shown is that concerns arising from the converso problem led to their taking a stand on the value of a person, of his honor and of the relationship they hoped might be established among all Christians, Old and New.
    Using the recurrent themes of honor, love and religion, the prelopistas express and attempt to resolve the socio-religious problems facing them, that of a group of individuals who were claiming social pre-eminence based on their religious purity. These plays were written, be it noted, not for a popular audience, but for a public who would be sensitive to this threat.
    Encina is the first to present honor as a struggle between social classes. His theater begins with a search for a personal sense of honor, based on poetic talent, a new class of natío. From there, he proceeds to connect this new understanding of lineage to the possibilities of equality and harmony among all Christians. Fernández presents us with a burlesqued genealogical honor. Sánchez develops more fully the concept of the New Law as the fulfillment of the Old to find a place for New Christians in the community of the faithful. Vicente, living and working in Portugal, mirrors the special circumstances of the Portuguese society, which permitted the most overt treatment of the converso problem. Torres Naharro in Italy broadens the honor concerns to show how a man’s honor is vulnerable not only through his own actions but also through those of others, and specifically how women’s actions affect men’s honor.
    Unlike the comedia nueva where the rustic is portrayed as a person of dignity and worth, in this early theater, he is most often shown as a ridiculous and gross buffoon, whose claims to honor based on his Old Christian lineage are mercilessly satirized. We may well imagine that the noble audience, many of whom were themselves of suspect origin, would enjoy seeing these disparaging portraits. Public spectacle becomes possible when a community of interests between dramatist and audience can be exploited. Thus we see that the sudden burgeoning of theater in a Spain which had no medieval antecedents is a direct consequence of the limpieza obsession.

ISBN: 1-58871-032-7, (PB), 221 pp. 2003, $19.95