Costume dramas may still enchant television audiences, but as the editors of Remaking the Comedia point out, directors of Spanish Golden Age plays have had it with “museum piece[s]” (9). “Always seek newness” is the resounding call of this volume, nearly a manifesto on the way to stage comedias today (26). Harley Erdman and Susan Paun de García's collection is a bracing work of polemic that combines an impassioned argument for the relevance of early modern Spanish drama with some very sensible notes of caution. Bringing together critics, literary historians, directors, dramaturgs, and translators, the volume achieves three notable goals: it analyzes recent performances of plays by seventeenth-century playwrights; provides abundant advice for directors and translators; and charts a course for the future of the Spanish comedia on English- and Spanish-language stages. The collection covers a range of subjects, from puppetry to cross-gender casting, and offers an important evaluation of the current state of the comedia in performance.

In order to combine as many voices and approaches as possible, Remaking the Comedia gathers together brief chapters by twenty-six authors. Their diversity of perspectives demonstrates that the life cycles of early modern Spanish plays have entered a new phase. Productions no longer reverentially commemorate departed playwrights; instead, the efforts of directors, critics, translators, and actors—coupled with the attention paid to this work by critics—are lending old plays new vitality. Spanish plays are gaining new vigor in the bodies of living actors.

The sense that the plays of Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, María de Zayas, and other playwrights have sprung to new life is reflected in Catherine Larson's helpful chapter, “Terms and Concepts.” Larson adopts Julie Sanders's idea that the adaptation of plays is akin to biological evolution. Adaptation or refundición—a formerly disparaging term that the editors reclaim to good effect—is on the minds of almost all of the contributors. Of course, from an evolutionary standpoint, most mutations are not for fitness, and change is not necessarily improvement. To address this concern, Erdman and Paun de García select contributions that explore multiple dimensions of a limited number of successful adaptations. For example, Laurence Boswell recounts his direction of Lope's The Dog in the Manger in one chapter, while in another, David Johnston dispassionately analyzes successive drafts of his translation of the same play. Nearly all of the contributors agree that adaptation and not “fidelity”—a term that is used almost as contemptuously as “museum piece”—is crucial to the comedia’s longevity.

There are, however, significant points of disagreement among the contributors. One recurring question is just how much adaptation is warranted. Some contributors (e.g., Boswell) clearly believe that comedias continue to speak to audiences about love, heartache, and jealously; the director's job is to render those messages comprehensible. Others (e.g., Gina Kaufmann and Karen Berman) contend that comedias speak best when they are turned to innovative ends. A few chapters go to improbable lengths to underscore differences between the seventeenth century and the twenty-first: readers are asked to believe that concepts such as monogamy (179) or jealousy (204) are incomprehensible today. This is part of a process of active othering of the seventeenth century through which some directors find the freedom to adapt (precisely the sort of truthful deceit of which Lope was fond). Disagreements among the contributors also indicate a lack of consensus about the capacities of the comedia: Can it do more than entertain?

The answer used to be a resounding “yes.” For centuries, literary historians characterized the plays of Calderón de la Barca as the great philosophical statements of the Spanish baroque. Lately, it has been the plays of Lope and not Calderón that have been produced most often, partly due to their lightness, charm, and eroticism. However, Erdman, Kaufmann, Berman, and others suggest ways in which works by Tirso and Zayas can be used to transgress the boundaries of audience expectation. Remarkably, in this volume's discussions of the capacities of the Spanish comedia, only Rick Davis and Robert E. Bayliss question the representation of Spain as a culturally monolithic nation-state (whether on the seventeenth- or twenty-first-century stages). In unfortunate instances, comedias have been used to reinforce folkloric idealizations of a Spain full of bullfighting and flamenco dancing. Jonathan Thacker calls these representations “domesticated” comedias that mystify as they entertain (97).

Bruce R. Burningham warns that complete domestication may never be possible: the native powers of a comedia cannot be entirely stripped or controlled in an adaptation. We may cut, rewrite, translate, or recast, but once the actors take the stage, comedias become living things that call to one another across time. In this instance, Burningham suggests that Amaya Curieses Iriarte's adaptation of El caballero de Olmedo invoked—perhaps inadvertently—the visual codes of Calderón's sacramental allegory, El gran teatro del mundo, turning tragedy into political hagiography. Despite Curieses's radical adaptation—which she describes movingly in her own article—El caballero de Olmedo could not be abstracted from the early modern world of its creation. Comedias bring with them the capacity for new life, yet Burningham shows that they also harbor an old magic whose power has not been extinguished.