Tirso de Molina: the Dramatist in the Crisis of the Succession of 1621

Abstract

The crisis is the political upheaval that accompanied the ascent of Olivares to power. Its repercussions on the religious and literary career of Fr. Gabriel Téllez/Tirso de Molina are examined. The primary documents analysed include the two passages in Téllez’s Historia de la Orden de la Merced (one from the early 1630s. the other revised towards the end of the decade) containing his hostile criticism of the struggle between the two groups, Lerma’s associates and those of Olivares. This hostility relates to the sentence issued by the Junta de Reformación (1625) and to be meted out as its response to the notorious case of Fr. Gabriel Téllez oka Tirso de Molina, etc. This connection confirms our seeing Tirso as a notable political victim. Yet in the thirties, Tirso’s position is complex. To offset the clear indications of a major if not terminal disruption to his activity as dramatist, the circumstances attendant on the Parte tercera de las comedias (1634) are examined to show how Fr. Gabriel came to the defence of his creation Tirso de Molina, by ensuring his survival in print. The text of the Junta’s sentence informs us of the reason its judges had to silence the dramatist; it concerns his writing plays which are profane and give bad examples. This information invites us to ask to which plays can the harsh sentence of the Junta refer? The reply to this question forms the main theme of the study. It is argued that La venganza de Tamar is a work seriously involved in the turbulent politics of the succession. This argument is preceded by an essential study on the text as authorized by Tirso and subject to the editorial scrutiny of Lucas de Avila. The nexus of images referring to physical hunger that develops into sexual and political hunger is coordinated with the recurring image of the body, presented in a series of progressively morbid pathological states. The human body receives focus in a spectacular way, as a conspicuous object on stage. The climax to the series is the banquet where Amón’s mutilated corpse is both guest and dish, a scene that evokes the Thyestes of Seneca, the tragic example of how a royal house is destroyed by violence from within. The image of the sick body, punctuating the play, stands for the sickness in the body politic. The dynamic of the play consists in moving the audience to see in Tirso’s reconfiguration of the biblical story the pathological condition of the State.

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References

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