Leading Golden Age theatre experts examine the ways that comedias have been adapted and reinvented, offering a broad performance history of the genre for scholars and practicioners alike. This volume brings together twenty-six essays from the world's leading scholars and practitioners of Spanish Golden Age theatre. Examining the startlingly wide variety of ways that Spanish comedias have been adapted, re-envisioned, and reinvented, the book makes the case that adaptation is a crucial lens for understanding the performance history of the genre. The essays cover a wide range of topics, from the early stage history of the comedia through numerous modern and contemporary case studies, as well as the transformation of the comedia into other dramatic genres, such as films, musicals, puppetry, and opera. The essays themselves are brief and accessible to non-specialists. This book will appeal not only to Golden Age scholars and students but also to theater practitioners, as well as to anyone interested in the theory and practice of adaptation. Harley Erdman is Professor of Theaterat the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Susan Paun de García is Professor of Spanish at Denison University. Contributors: Sergio Adillo Rufo, Karen Berman, Robert E. Bayliss, Laurence Boswell, Bruce R.Burningham, Amaya Curieses Irarte, Rick Davis, Harley Erdman, Susan L. Fischer, Charles Victor Ganelin, Francisco García Vicente, Alejandro González Puche, Valerie Hegstrom, Kathleen Jeffs, David Johnston, Gina Kaufmann, Catherine Larson, Donald R. Larson, Barbara Mujica, Susan Paun de García, Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez, Veronika Ryjik, Jonathan Thacker, Laura L. Vidler, Duncan Wheeler, Amy Williamsen, Jason Yancey

"Jack Benny became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century--by being the top radio comedian, when the comics ruled radio, and radio was the most powerful and pervasive mass medium in the US. In 23 years of weekly radio broadcasts, by aiming all the insults at himself, Benny created Jack, the self-deprecating "Fall Guy" character. He indelibly shaped American humor as a space to enjoy the equal opportunities of easy camaraderie with his cast mates, and equal ego deflation. Benny was the master of comic timing, knowing just when to use silence to create suspense or to have a character leap into the dialogue to puncture Jack's pretentions. Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering "showrunners" combining producer, writer and performer into one job. His modern style of radio humor eschewed stale jokes in favor informal repartee with comic hecklers like his valet Rochester (played by Eddie Anderson) and Mary Livingstone his offstage wife. These quirky characters bouncing off each other in humorous situations created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors' products in comic commercials beloved by listeners, and how he dealt with the challenges of race relations, rigid gender ideals and an insurgent new media industry (TV). Jack Benny created classic comedy for a rapidly changing American culture, providing laughter that buoyed radio listeners from 1932's depths of the Great Depression, through World War II to the mid-1950s"--Provided by publisher.

Drawing on the groundbreaking Spanish scholarship and editions of earlier generations and relying on research conducted in Spanish archives, this pioneering group of English-speaking scholars offers a new treatment of familiar material. The editors yoke together widely varying critical practices, including incisive New Critical readings and far-reaching explorations that draw on the most current European critical thought. In addition to these more strictly literary studies, there are interdisciplinary essays focusing on seventeenth- and twentieth-century reception and the social makeup of the comedia audience. The whole thus presents a balanced picture of the many ways in which the comedia can be viewed, and the contributors complement each other's work in often surprising ways, illuminating the same corpus from a number of perspectives.

Reproduction of the original: Cynthia ́s Revels by Ben Jonson

"This anthology of "new" approches to literary study takes its name from Lope de Vega's Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. Like Lope's poem on poetics, this volume also operates as a defense, in the sense that many of the articles include a defense of the usefulness of literary theory in general, and of their chosen approach in particular, for enriching the study of the comedia." "In these essays, it is the not quite new art of "estudiar" rather than "hacer" drama that is the central concern, the contributors defending theoretical innovations approximately twenty years after James Parr, in the pages of Hispania, issued his challenge to Hispanists to update their approach. This volume, which combines innovative scholarship with the "metacriticism" that many critics advocate in all literary study, is directed both the students of literature and to scholars who wish to expand their knowledge of the many different areas of theoretical inquiry that comediantes are currently exploring."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

These dialogues express different world visions. If the expected cultural exchange takes place, then an enduring relationship of tolerance and understanding forms between the two worlds. Bonds that surpass temporal, geographic, and philosophical specificity attest to humankind's universal and atemporal need for myth. The questions, proposed answers, and subsequent revisions will, it is hoped, coexist in an ongoing dialogue among ancient, Golden Age, and contemporary individuals.

The plays are in Spanish. Los papeles están en el español.