Women Playwrights of Early Modern Spain

Winner of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women's 2017 Josephine Roberts Award for a Scholarly Edition published in 2016

This volume presents ten plays by three leading women playwrights of Spain’s Golden Age. Included are four bawdy and outrageous comic interludes; a full-length comedy involving sorcery, chivalry, and dramatic stage effects; and five short religious plays satirizing daily life in the convent. A critical introduction to the volume positions these women and their works in the world of seventeenth-century Spain.

"This timely edition of three women playwrights of Spain’s Golden Age fills a gap in the study of early modern Spanish theater. The plays have never been translated in any language and they have the potential to be taught in undergraduate and graduate courses. A biographical sketch and plot summary introduce each of the three authors, while the introduction elaborates on the varied experiences of these playwrights and their works. An overview of the different sites of theater and performance (corral, palace, and convent) effectively contextualizes the whole."

-Sarah Owens, Professor of Spanish, Department of Hispanic Studies, College of Charleston

NIEVES ROMERO-DÍAZ, Professor of Spanish at Mount Holyoke College, has published on Early Modern prose, women writers, and the bilingual edition of Maria de Guevara’s works, also in the Other Voice series (Chicago, 2007).

LISA VOLLENDORF, Dean of Humanities and the Arts and Professor of Spanish at San José State University, has published five edited volumes and two monographs on women’s literary and cultural history in Spain and the Ibero-American Atlantic.

HARLEY ERDMAN, Professor of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is playwright, translator, and dramaturg, and the author or editor of four books, including translations of Tirso de Molina’s plays.

REVIEWS
Bulletin of the Comediantes 69.2 (2017): 193–195. Reviewed by Alexander Samson.
Early Modern Women 13.2 (2019): 95–98. Reviewed by Valerie Hegstrom.
Renaissance Quarterly 70.3 (2017): 1214–1215. Reviewed by Veronika Ryjik.
Revista de Escritoras Ibéricas 5 (2017): 185–190. Reviewed by Blanca Vizàn Rico.
The Sixteenth Century Journal 48.4 (2017): 1072–1074. Reviewed by Rachael Ball.