Bulletin of the Comediantes Pub Date : 2024-09-27 Julia C. Hernández
- Prologue
- Julia C. Hernández
A Suelta State of Mind
A stroll down early eighteenth-century Seville’s short but bustling Calle de Génova, a long-disappeared market street that had linked the Plaza de El Salvador and the Plaza de San Francisco since the city’s Castilian conquest in 1248, would bring the comedia enthusiast to the heart of the historic printing district (fig. 1).1 Inside the densely packed bookshops, readers shopping for plays would find a variety of partes de comedias, anthologies bundling a dozen plays as loosely gathered pages not yet ready to read. Sold straight from the press with edges uncut, they required an additional trip to the binder to be enjoyed properly.2 However, outside the shop or in its windows, strung from lines alongside romances de ciego, relaciones de sucesos, and other forms of literatura de cordel, hung individual comedias in unbound, ready-to-read suelta form.3 Among these, our shopper may have eyed the pages of Calderón’s El galán fantasma, featured on this volume’s cover, hanging outside the establishment of printer José Antonio de Hermosilla (figs. 2 and 3). Across the way, in the window of his competitor, Diego López de Haro, the cover of the same playwright’s Tambien hay duelo en las damas might have captured their gaze (figs. 4 and 5).4
Sueltas, cheaply printed and priced to move, brought the purchase of wildly popular comedia texts within reach of readers of almost all walks of life: not every comedia fan to visit the shop could afford the twelve-in-one package deal the parte offered, but, just as almost anyone could afford to visit the corral to see a comedia performed live, almost anyone could buy at least one comedia to enjoy in the form of a suelta. The format allowed for easy reading, whether at home by an individual, out loud to non-literate members of the household or community,5 or, when purchased in multiple copies, as “party pieces,” in Don Cruikshank’s words, performed by guests at fashionable tertulias (“Comedias Sueltas”). Representing for printers an opportunity to make a quick, low-overhead profit, sueltas abounded in markets throughout the Spanish-speaking world—from Madrid to Mexico City to Manila.
Back on the book-lined Calle de Génova, just as the voices of merchants hawking wares fought to stand out in the market’s cacophonous soundscape, Hermosilla and López de Haro’s sueltas, with their eye-catching layouts and bold design elements, would have vied to cut through the street’s deluge of [End Page 5] visual—and more specifically, textual—noise. As seen on the pair of Calderón sueltas mentioned above, the enormous double pica capitals of the stock phrase “COMEDIA FAMOSA,” larger than the name of the author and title of the plays themselves, announce these pliegos’ content, even from a distance. However, it is the ornamentation—the botanical woodcut headpiece that precedes Hermosilla’s title; the Maltese crosses dividing Haro’s dramatis personae from the first jornada; the ivy column divisions both use to organize the play text on the page—that truly capture the eye and draw the viewer to the suelta. Printers—especially those of eighteenth-century Seville—used a spectacular range of such typographic ornaments not merely to decorate their sueltas, but also to help them stand out as they hung in the crowded market space, vying for buyers’ attention.6
The bustling Call de Génova, its bookstalls strung with sueltas, is long gone, having been razed to make way for Seville’s Avenida de la Constitución in 1911. However, an ocean away, a stroll down another famously bustling market street, New York City’s own Fifth Avenue, brings the comedia enthusiast to the current home of Hermosilla’s and López de Haro’s Calderón sueltas: the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at the corner of 42nd Street off Bryant Park. Just as in the days of Hermosilla and López de Haro, these sueltas—along with the NYPL’s 1262...
中文翻译:
序幕
以下是内容的简短摘录,以代替摘要:
- 序幕
- 朱莉娅·埃尔南德斯
苏埃尔塔的心态
沿着 18 世纪初塞维利亚短暂但熙熙攘攘的热那亚街 (Calle de Génova) 漫步,这条早已消失的市场街道,自 1248 年卡斯蒂利亚人征服该城以来,一直连接着萨尔瓦多广场和旧金山广场,将喜剧爱好者带入了这座城市。历史悠久的印刷区中心(图 1)。 1在拥挤的书店里,购买戏剧的读者会发现各种各样的喜剧部分,即把十几部戏剧捆绑成尚未准备好阅读的松散页面的选集。直接从印刷机上出售,边缘未切割,它们需要额外去装订机才能正确享用。 2然而,在商店外面或橱窗里,与《ciego》 、 《relaciones de sucesos 》和其他形式的《cordel》文学作品并列的线条上,悬挂着未装订的、即读式的喜剧形式的个人喜剧。 3其中,我们的购物者可能已经看过卡尔德龙的El galán fantasma的页面,该书的封面上有特色,悬挂在印刷商 José Antonio de Hermosilla 的店外(图 2 和 3)。对面,在他的竞争对手迭戈·洛佩斯·德·哈罗 (Diego López de Haro) 的橱窗里,同一剧作家的《Tambien hay duelo en las damas 》的封面可能吸引了他们的目光(图 4 和图 5)。 4
Suelta 的印刷成本低廉,价格低廉,几乎各行各业的读者都可以购买广受欢迎的喜剧文本:并非每个访问该商店的喜剧迷都能负担得起该方提供的十二合一套餐优惠但是,就像几乎任何人都可以负担得起去畜栏观看现场表演的喜剧一样,几乎任何人都可以购买至少一部喜剧以苏尔塔的形式欣赏。这种格式便于阅读,无论是个人在家阅读,还是向家庭或社区中不识字的成员大声朗读, 5或者购买多本时,作为“派对作品”(用 Don Cruikshank 的话说),由客人表演在时尚的tertulias (“Commedias Suelta s”)。苏尔塔为印刷商提供了一个快速赚取低管理成本利润的机会,它在整个西班牙语世界的市场上随处可见——从马德里到墨西哥城再到马尼拉。
回到书籍林立的 Calle de Génova 街上,正当兜售商品的商人的声音在市场的喧闹声中脱颖而出时,Hermosilla 和 López de Haro 的suelta s 以其引人注目的布局和大胆的设计元素,势必会展开竞争。消除街道上充斥的[第 5 页]视觉(更具体地说,文字)噪音。正如上面提到的那对卡尔德隆·苏尔塔 (Calderón suelta ) 中所见,常用短语“COMEDIA FAMOSA”的巨大双皮卡大写字母比作者姓名和戏剧本身的标题还要大,即使从远处也能宣布这些pliegos的内容。然而,埃莫西拉头衔之前的装饰物——植物木刻头饰;马耳他十字将哈罗的戏剧人物与第一部乔纳达分开;常春藤栏划分都用于组织页面上的播放文本,真正吸引眼球并将观众吸引到suelta 。印刷商——尤其是十八世纪塞维利亚的印刷商——使用了一系列令人惊叹的印刷装饰品,不仅是为了装饰他们的苏尔塔,而且是为了帮助它们在拥挤的市场空间中脱颖而出,争夺买家的注意力。 6
熙熙攘攘的 Call de Génova 书摊早已不复存在,1911 年被夷为平地,为塞维利亚的宪法大道 (Avenida de la Constitución) 腾出空间。然而,在大洋之外,沿着纽约市另一条著名的繁华市场街道漫步即可到达。第五大道,将喜剧爱好者带到 Hermosilla 和 López de Haro 的 Calderón suelta目前的所在地:纽约公共图书馆 (NYPL) 标志性的 Stephen A. Schwarzman 大楼,位于布莱恩特公园附近 42 街的拐角处。就像 Hermosilla 和 López de Haro 的时代一样,这些suelta以及 NYPL 的 1262...