(Un)True Colors: Pintura as Pharmakon in Tirso’s La vida y muerte de Herodes

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Bulletin of the Comediantes, Volume 47, Number 2, 1995, pp. 291-309 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\%XOOHWLQRIWKH&RPHGLDQWHV DOI: 10.1353/boc.1995.0003

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/boc/summary/v047/47.2.weimer.html

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THE OEDIPAL DRAMA OF TIRSO'S

LA REPÚBLICA AL REVÉS

CHRISTOPHER B. WEIMER

Oklahoma State University

To observe the importance of classical mythology in the Golden Age comedia has by now become a virtual commonplace, whether we are speaking of mythology as a source of plots, of themes, or of verbal imagery. Thanks to the post-Renaissance revival of interest in the classics, educated men and women of the 16th and 17th centuries, including both playwrights and portions of their audiences, were well-acquainted enough with classical lore that the comedia as a genre virtually overflows with mythological texts and subtexts. With the exception of Calderón, whose dramatizations of myth account for seventeen of his plays, most dramatists relied almost entirely on mythology as a source of imagery, symbol, and metaphor rather than as a direct source ofplotlines. Such direct and indirect classical references are in fact so ubiquitous in the comedia and often so idiosyncratic in the work of various playwrights that one contemporary scholar, Alfredo Rodriguez López-Vásquez, has attempted to use these references as an indicator of authorship for disputed texts including El burlador de Sevilla and La Estrella de Sevilla. Tirso de Molina likewise followed this practice of referring to myth more than directly dramatizing it. His surviving corpus includes only one mythological play, El Aquiles; though its ending promises a sequel, no evidence exists that Tirso ever fulfilled that promise. However, Tirso's works, which repeatedly invoke recondite as well as commonplace mythological characters and events, leave little doubt that he was well-versed in the classics.

Given this enormous popularity of classical themes and metaphors in Golden Age literature, it is somewhat surprising that the Oedipus story is so 291

292BCom, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 1995) conspicuous by its absence in those texts, even Tirso's. The myth was certainly extant in Spain during this period. Amongst classical authors, Homer

might well have been the first to refer to Oedipus, relating his mother's mis-

fortune and subsequent suicide in the Odyssey (1 1.271-80) and referring to

Oedipus' s own tomb in the Iliad (23 .679). ' Hyginus and Apollodorus re-

count the Oedipus legend in their compilations of Greek myth, works which served as the bases of mythological manuals for centuries to come. By the mid- 16th century, Don Cameron Allen notes, Apollodorus was one of the authors "who furnished the warp for most mythographers' webs" (201). At least some of the manuals which furnished Golden Age playwrights with much of their mythological erudition would have contained the Oedipus story. Another source was Greek drama itself, the study of which had benefited from renewed European interest in classical literary and philosophic texts. While rarely imitated by Spanish playwrights, the Greek tragedians and their dramas are repeatedly mentioned in scholarly dramaturgical treatises of the time. Spanish translations of these plays appeared with relative infrequency, although a small number of works by Sophocles and Euripides were indeed rendered into the vernacular and published in Spain during the 16th century (Crawford 160-61). According to Gilbert Highet, familiarity with Greek drama throughout Europe at that time could instead most often be attributed to "the existence of handy Latin translations, such as those by Erasmus and Buchanan" (120). With specific regard to Sophocles's Oedipus The King, Lope de Vega was familiar enough with that work to cite a specific point of its construction in El arte nuevo de hacer comedias (lOlOa-b). This tragedy is not known to have been translated into Spanish prior to or during the Golden Age, and exactly how Lope came by his relatively detailed knowledge of it cannot be ascertained; a Latin edition might well have been his primary source, perhaps supplemented by Aristotle's analysis of the work in the Poetics. Whatever the true explanation might be, the use of Oedipus as an illustrative example in the Arte nuevo suggests that Lope took for granted his intended audience's first- or at least second-hand acquaintance with the work. Since Lope originally wrote the treatise for the Academia de Madrid, this implies that Spanish intellectuals of the period knew enough about Sophocles's play to be familiar with details of its plot. Jocasta also laments her family's horrible fate in the opening lines of another play not known to have been translated into Spanish but which could have been otherwise accessible: Euripides's Phoenecian Women (Edmonds

49-50).2 Finally, a post-classical dramatization of the Oedipus legend was

penned by Seneca, whose Cordobán birth and enduring popularity in Europe from the twelfth century onward made his influence on Spanish theater

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a significant one.3 Lope, again in the Arte nuevo, cites Seneca as the exemplar oftragic drama in his famous prescription for blending classically separate genres:

Lo trágico y lo còmico mezclado, y Terencio con Seneca, aunque sea como otro minotauro de Pasífae,

harán grave una parte, otra ridicula; que aquesta variedad deleita mucho. (1009a) This citation once again takes for granted the erudition of Lope's educated target audience. Karl Alfred Blüher asserts that this assumption was wellfounded:

La señal más inequívoca de la extraordinaria revitalización de Séneca en el siglo XV la constituyen las traducciones que entonces se hicieron al catalán y al castellano, de las cuales todavía hoy se conserva un elevado número de manuscritos en las bibliotecas españolas. Algunas de las versiones castellanas alcanzaron difusión hasta más allá de la mitad del siglo XVI en numerosas impresiones, y no cabe duda de que, por esta razón, en muchos casos fueron leídas en España incluso en el siglo XVII. (126) Most significant among the Spanish translations of the Tragedies were those possibly commissioned by the Marqués de Santillana and executed by an unknown translator, 15th-century manuscripts ofthese anonymous translations, all of which include complete renderings of Seneca's Oedipus, can still be found today in the Biblioteca del Escorial, the Biblioteca de Palacio, and the Biblioteca Nacional (Blüher 152). In addition, Jean-Louis Flecniakoska writes, "On sait d'autre part que les traductions de Sénèque parues à Ferrare, à Venise, à Anvers et à Lyons aux environs de 1484 étaient connues des humanistes espagnols. Cependant ce sont les traductions et imitations de Ludovico Dolce, en 1560, qui semblent avoir eu le plus d'influence sur les auteurs espagnols" (62). The Oedipus myth, in short, must have enjoyed significant currency in Golden Age Spain, if only among the intelligentsia. Despite all these transmissions of the Oedipus legend available to Spanish Golden Age dramatists, however, the story appears either to have failed to arouse their interest or to have been an unacceptable subject for dramatic

294BCom, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 1995) treatment. Given the public's appetite for the sensational (as often exemplified by Seneca's bloody tragedies and their Spanish descendents), the latter explanation seems more likely. Myths, as Melveena McKendrick asserts, had long been popular with "late medieval and Renaissance scholars eager to claim them as préfigurations of Christian principles and values" (163). Mythological drama, though it dramatized pagan sources, could thus affirm orthodox ideology. Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine any suitably "Christian" yet faithful approach to a Greek legend which begins with patricide, depicts an incestuous mother-son marriage producing four children, then concludes with a suicide — all illustrating the impotence of human free will when confronted with an inescapable prophecy. It is significant that one of the most Oedipal of all comedias, Calderón's La vida es sueño, springs from a similar initial situation but develops and resolves it in an utterly different manner: Basilio, like Laius, may take drastic and ill-advised measures to avoid a predicted destruction at his son's hands, but the Polish king survives his folly because Segismundo, unlike Oedipus, ultimately affirms the redemptive force of libre albedrio. Oedipus's famous tragedy, it seems, could not fit the ideological framework of the Spanish stage without vast alterations in its fundamental dynamics. Tirso, however, may have come closer than either Lope or Calderón to composing a drama with an abundance of striking parallels to the works by Sophocles and Seneca: La república al revés (161 1). As I have argued elsewhere, this is an unjustly neglected play critically handicapped by its resemblances to the better-known La prudencia en la mujer, of which it is too often considered a mere bosquejo ("A Comedia Re-Viewed"). The playwright-priest derived Republican plot from events which took place in the Byzantine Empire during the late 8th-century reigns of Constantine VI and his mother, the Dowager Empress Irene. As the Mercedarian's play begins, Constantino is crowned at the insistence of a Greek Senate uneasy with female rule, despite — or perhaps due to — Irene's evident talent for statecraft and warfare. Constantino's behavior makes it clear from the first that

he is immature and unworthy of the throne. His lack of fitness is confirmed upon the arrival of the Princess Carola, daughter of the King of Cypress and Constantino's betrothed in a diplomatic alliance. Among the bride-to-be's retinue is her conniving maid Lidora, who successfully ensnares the young

emperor with her beauty and psychological manipulations.4 Dominated by

his many passions, especially his lust for Lidora, Constantino proceeds to transgress repeatedly against temporal and divine laws alike; at the peak of his depravity, he imprisons Irene and attempts to have her murdered in order to safeguard his power. This misrule tranforms Byzantium into the

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eponymous república al revés. The drama ends with Constantino's cathartic punishment and with Irene's welcome return to the throne, this time as re-

gent for her newborn grandson.5

The first parallels between Oedipus and Constantino can be discerned in their family situations. Both protagonists are essentially fatherless. In the Oedipus plays of Sophocles and Seneca, Oedipus's murder of his father precedes the dramatic action and Laius consequently never appears — though in Seneca's version, Creon relates an offstage rite in which the dead king's shade is summoned. Constantino's father, Emperor Leo IV, has likewise been long dead when República begins, since Constantino's assump-

tion of power follows a lengthy regency by Irene.6 The former emperor's

absence from the text — especially from the rhetoric of both his widow and his son — seems especially striking in the context of the comedia, a genre in which fathers are notoriously far better-represented than the rarely-seen mothers. This invisibility of the father figure leaves the protagonists alone with their mothers in analogous familial configurations, immediately suggesting an obvious parallel, not only between Oedipus and Constantino, but also between Jocasta and Irene. In addition, Irene's intertextual status is rendered more complex by a comparison of the circumstances through which the two male rulers assume power: specifically, the interregna which passed before events elevated both men to the thrones once held by their deceased fathers (a fact of which Oedipus, obviously, is ignorant at the time of his coronation). Following Laius's death, his wife's brother Creon ruled Thebes until Oedipus's victory over the Sphinx gained him the crown; similarly, Irene served as empress regent after her husband's death until the Senate demanded that she relinquish the throne in favor of her son. Irene thus combines in herself dramatic functions served by Creon as well as by his widowed sister Jocasta. The text of República reinforces this duality with its emphasis on Irene's noteworthy integration oí varonilidad and conventional femininity. Tirso's stage directions make the empress's first entrance an emblematic one: "Salen marchando soldados, y detrás de ellos, IRENE, armada con bastón y corona de emperatriz" (382a). Irene's command of the victorious army, symbolized by her field marshal's baton, makes it clear that she has successfully assumed the military responsibilities customarily considered the exclusive province of male rulers; later in the drama, the army's active support of the deposed empress and opposition to Constantino are instrumental in her resumption of power, further emphasizing her traditionally male-identified success. In addition, that resumption of power begins with her escape from prison, a flight made possible only by her assumption of masculine garb as a disguise with which she deceives

296BCom, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 1995) Constantino's henchman Andronio. On the other hand, Irene associates herself with a classical icon of conventional womanhood when she asserts that,

if a Persian invasion had not forced her to lead the troops into battle, she would have gladly remained "Penèlope tejedora, / no Semiramis guerrera" (383a). As this study will show, Irene's simultaneous resemblance both to the Theban king's uncle and predecessor on the throne and to his mother is fundamental to Tirso's use ofthe Oedipus myth and its dramatic treatments. Oedipus's first and most extreme transgression upon defeating the Sphinx and thereby gaining the crown of Thebes was unwittingly to marry the one woman whose bed he sought to avoid — his mother — and then father her children. No incest occurs between Constantino and Irene in

República, though the text paints his aggression toward her with subtly sexual hues which will be discussed later in this study. Tirso's young emperor, however, does fall victim to a similarly ironic tum of events. Both Sophocles and Seneca emphasize Oedipus's efforts to escape the incest predicted for him. Sophocles's Oedipus declares: I must be exiled, and even in exile never see my parents, never set foot

on native soil again. Else I am doomed to couple with my mother and cut my father down ... (912-15) Seneca's protagonist likewise laments: Apollo bids me fear ... my mother's bed (This to her son!), a marriage bed of shame, Unlawful and incestuous matrimony! This terror drove me from my father's kingdom. (209) In República, Constantino's passion for Lidora, his intended bride's ambitious maidservant, leads him to swear that Carola will never be more than

his empress in name only and to vow that he will spend his wedding night with Lidora in her place (389a). Neither ruler succeeds in bending the course of events to his will. Oedipus's resolve to escape Apollo's prophecy is thwarted by the human strategems of Laius and Jocasta, who themselves sought to prevent their son's prophesied patricide and incest by condemning him to death, and by the kindhearted Theban shepherd who sent the royal infant to another kingdom rather than letting him perish of exposure

as commanded.7 These deceits resulted in one ofthe myth's great tragic ironies: that Oedipus's attempt to escape his fate in fact brought it upon him.

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Constantino's designs are also subverted by human deception. His counselor Leoncio, ordered to arrange the emperor's assignation with Lidora, secretly bums with an equally intense passion for her. He tricks Constantino into spending his wedding night with Carola while Leoncio himself goes to Lidora's bed, and the darkness prevents Constantino, Carola, and Lidora from realizing the identities of their partners. Constantino thus unwittingly consummates his marriage to the wife he detests, impregnating her in the process, just as Oedipus unwittingly consummated his marriage to his own mother.

Though Constantino lacks the tragic grandeur which characterizes Oedipus, they share certain personality traits: most significantly, they are quick to anger and prone to egotistic paranoia. René Girard has observed that Oedipus's short temper in Sophocles's drama constitutes his tragic flaw, that it leads him to irrational, impulsive behavior like his murder of Laius and his harsh, mistrustful treatment of his brother-in-law Creon and the blind seer

Tiresias (Violence 68-72). In both Seneca and Sophocles, Oedipus demonstrates this weakness when he rashly and without proof accuses the former king ofplotting with Tiresias against him in order to regain the crown: ...................... Yes, here I have it!

The treacherous conspirators are here! The priest devised this lie, using the gods As screen for his deception, and to you He means to give my sceptre. (Seneca 235) You, plotting to kill me, kill the king— I see it all, the marauding thief himself scheming to steal my crown and power! (Sophocles 596-8) By the same token, when the Byzantine legislature officially protests Constantino's imprisonment of Irene on the valid political grounds that the adulation she still enjoys from the army and the people might result in "algún popular motín" should she not be released (398b), the young emperor immediately imagines a senate conspiracy seeking to return his mother to the throne:

Ya sé que quiere que torne al trono Imperial que pierde, y que con el lauro verde

su frente otra vez adorne. (399a)

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Both Oedipus and Constantino react to these perceived but nonexistent threats with defensive assertions of their sovereignty and rejection of any moral or legal constraints on that power. In Seneca, Oedipus orders Creon's imprisonment for his alleged treason: "Arrest this guilty man, and in a dungeon keep him confined!" (237). Although the Theban monarch lacks even the slightest evidence with which to justify the arrest, he subordinates the demands of justice to the self-serving imperative of preserving his crown from even a suspected threat: CREON Is it not possible that I am guiltless? OEDIPUS A king must guard against the possible As against certain danger. (236) Oedipus similarly demands Creon's exile or death in Sophocles's tragedy, boldly overriding his brother-in-law's protestations of innocence with declarations ofhis own absolute power: CREON

What if you're wholly wrong?

OEDIPUS No matter — I must rule.

CREON

Not if you rule unjustly.

OEDIPUS Hear him, Thebes, my city!

CREON

My city too, not yours alone!(703-5)

In República, when Constantino's legislature sends an emissary to reproach him for his treatment of Carola as well as of Irene, he responds with a burst of fury recalling that of Oedipus:

¡Qué donosa petición para gobernar mi Estado! H[o]y verá el griego Senado en mí un Cómmodo, un Nerón.

¿El ha de regirme a mí? (399a) Not only is Constantino's description of Byzantium as his nation reminiscent of Sophocles's defiant king, his promise of retribution invokes the figures of rulers known not for their justice but rather for their megalomania and tyranny. These references neatly connect Constantino's repudiation of any limits to his authority with that of Oedipus in both Seneca and Sophocles.

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In Sophocles's version of the myth, furthermore, Oedipus also personally challenges Tiresias himselfwith his accusation of treason: You think you'll stand by Creon when he's king? You and the great mastermind— you'll pay in tears, I promise you, for this, this witch-hunt. If you didn't look so senile the lash would teach you what your scheming means! (455-9) This confrontation has an especially close parallel in La república al revés: the scene cited above in which the senator Honorato, whose great age immediately associates him with the elderly, blind seer, comes before Constantino as the Byzantine legislature's envoy. After Honorato protests Constantino's rejection of Carola and his imprisonment of Irene, the young emperor accuses Honorato and his fellow senators of conspiring to depose him and crown Irene in his place: Si a mi madre tengo presa es porque viva en sosiego mi Estado e Imperio griego, y si al Senado le pesa de que la tenga en prisión, no ignora la deslealtad que en dándola libertad ha de intentar su traición. (399a) Nor do the parallels end here. Oedipus cruelly mocks Tiresias for his age and lack of earthly sight, derisively calling him "old man" and describing him as "Blind, / lost in the night, endless night that nursed you!" (425-6). Constantino rails likewise at Honorato, exclaiming, "¡Calla, / no digas más, viejo loco!" (399a) and utterly rejecting the counsel offered by what he calls his "Senado ciego" (399b). Significantly, Constantino orders the rebellious senators humiliated by having his soldiers dress them as women and parade them through the city streets. This curious punishment evokes echoes of Tiresias's fabled dual sexual identity: according to myth, the seer had lived as both man and woman at different times in his life, and was even

called on by the gods to settle their dispute concerning which gender found more pleasure in sexual intercourse. Constantino's political paranoia, the specific insults he hurls, and his singular retaliation against the legislature

300BCom, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 1995) create an unmistakeable link between the figure of blind, aged Tiresias and the Byzantine senate represented by the elderly Honorato; the newly augmented resemblance between Sophocles's Oedipus and Tirso's Constantino is equally remarkable. Clearly, neither Oedipus nor Constantino enjoys a reign of peace or prosperity. Both, whether knowingly or unwittingly, violate temporal and divine laws. These transgressions, by virtue of the time-honored bond between ruler and realm, inevitably result in the chaos which afflicts their

kingdoms.8 René Girard points out that a true plague, historically speaking,

frequently serves as the catalyst for cultural decay. On the level of metaphor, plague can serve as an apt symbol for anarchy, for a relentless annihilation of the cultural distinctions and interpersonal differences which in fact constitute social order ("The Plague" 136-9). Oedipus's murder of his father and incestuous marriage to his mother strike at the deepest foundations of sociocultural order; the breakdown of that order, Girard argues, is symbolized by the plague afflicting Thebes (Violence 76-7). Oedipus himself declares early in Sophocles's play that Laius's unknown killer is "the plague, the heart of our corruption" (276). Seneca's Oedipus, stricken with fears and forebodings, suspects even at the beginning of the Roman drama that he is the source of his people's misfortune: he demands rhetorically, "Who could expect a sinful man / to be rewarded with a healthy kingdom?" (210) and even describes Thebes as "this doomed kingdom, which my touch of death has blighted" (212). Thus the monarch's inner moral taint physically pollutes his nation. La república al revés features no such symbolic epidemic, for Tirso prefers to dramatize directly the sociocultural

breakdown triggered by Constantino's wilfully perverse misrule.9 In an ex-

tended audiencia, for example, the young tyrant abolishes laws against theft and fraud, annuls the existing laws of marriage in order to permit "el mudar como camisa / la mujer cada semana" (416b), and commands that all statues and icons of the saints be destroyed in a public burning. These edicts, moreover, pale beside Constantino's usurpation of the crown, his abuse of Carola, his adulterous relationship with Lidora along with her resulting social elevation, and his imprisonment and attempted murder of his own mother. Helen F. Grant asserts that República "shows how an immoral prince can bring not only individuals but his whole land to disaster by his conduct" (120). John Lyon likewise declares that Tirso "clearly sees a link between private moral disorder and social chaos, particularly when it affects those who hold the reins of power" and regards República as a prime example of this theme in action:

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Having begun by deposing his mother from the throne and sending her into exile, Constantino's actions breed discontent, rebellion and anarchy which inverts what Tirso saw as the natural hierarchy of authority. Constantino's monstrous villainy is revealed more through action than character analysis and his machinations create a tangled web of plot, counterplot, intrigue, lies and deception which eventually permeates the whole fabric of the society. Natural justice is subverted, the guilty are rewarded and the innocent punished. (12) Tirso repeatedly emphasizes the sociocultural breakdown resulting from Constantino's inner corruption with the text's constant descriptions of Byzantium as a república al revés. Indeed, as John B. Wooldridge points out, "Virtually every character in the play echoes this declaration of disbelief at the chaotic, upside-down world that Constantino has created" (163). The afflicted empire becomes another Thebes as the chaos triggered by its ruler's misdeeds spreads. Plagues and other sociocultural crises, Girard notes, often bring about the quest for Tipharmakos, or sacrificial victim whose death or expulsion is considered the proper cure for a community's affliction ("Plague" 144-48). Apollo's oracle in Oedipus The King declares this remedy explicitly at the outset ofthe play: Relief from the plague can only come one way. Uncover the murderers of Laius,

put them to death or drive them into exile. (109-1 1) Creon likewise reports to Oedipus in Seneca's version of the myth: The god's instruction is that we avenge The murdered king; let banishment atone For Laius's death; not until that is done

Will day once more ride brightly in the sky Or the world's air be safe and clean to breathe. (217)

The remainder of the tale details the resulting manhunt, one initiated and led by Oedipus, unaware at first that he himself is the culprit whose arrest and exile he seeks. Sophocles's text repeatedly emphasizes the imagery of

302BCom, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 1995) pursuit in Oedipus's description of the quest for Laius's killer; the king speaks of the "long hunt / without a clue in hand" (250-5 1) and his determination to "stop at nothing, search the world / to lay my hands on the man

who shed his blood" (302-3).10 He also offers a "handsome reward" to any

citizen who reveals the murderer's identity (264). In Sophocles and Seneca, Oedipus attempts in vain to force Creon to bear the pharmakos\ burden. We have already noted how, in both plays, Oedipus's paranoia leads him to accuse Creon of fomenting disorder in order to regain the throne. In the Greek version, Oedipus's unconcealed desire for his brother-in-law's death or exile associates Creon with the figure of the sacrificial victim whose cathartic expulsion from the community was achieved by one of those two means (715-7). In the Roman tragedy, Seneca links Creon with the pharmakos even before Oedipus accuses him oftreason. When Creon is reluctant to divulge the summoned Laius's condemnation of his son, Oedipus threatens him thus: Your miserable life

Will be the one dispatched to Erebus For all our sakes, ifyou refuse to tell The hidden meaning of our sacrifice. (229) The communally redemptive purpose and the explicitly religious context of the threatened execution makes its sacrificial nature apparent; when Oedipus later declares Creon guilty of treasonous conspiracy and orders his brother-in-law's imprisonment, there can be no doubt that Creon's anticipated punishment will likewise be sacrificial in essence, intended to alleviate the plague.

Constantino likewise adopts the belief that the appropriate invididual's death — that of his mother Irene — would eliminate any threat to his continued tyranny and restore the social order he himself had disrupted: "no seré el primer hijo," he rationalizes, "que dé la muerte a su madre" (400a). This decision once again links Tirso's comedia with its Greek and Roman predecessors. Constantino's condemnation of his mother corresponds to Oedipus's edict that Creon must suffer a sacrificial punishment for his alleged betrayal, while Tirso's protagonist, who assembles a royal hunting party and designates his mother as the prey for which the hunters are to compete, also echoes Oedipus's offer of a reward and concretizes Sophocles's imagery ofpursuit: ¡Alto, amigos! No quede peña o planta

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que no busquéis, pues de los cazadores el que hoy lo fuese de mi madre Irene ser cazador mayor por premio tiene. (423a) Not only does Irene's pharmaL·s-like treatment parallel that suffered by the equally persecuted Creon, Constantino's efforts to murder his mother bear distinctly sexual overtones; it is here that Oedipus's incest with Jocasta manifests itself, albeit very subtly, in Tirso's comedia. Dawn L. Smith notes, "Sexual tension and threat are present throughout the play," citing several plot developments in which those elements can be discerned: among them are both of Constantino's attempts on Irene's life (251). Prior to the emperor's assembly of his hunting party, he had first commanded his trusted courtier and lieutenant Andronio to garotte the imprisoned former sovereign. Andronio's loyalty to his monarch notwithstanding, the royal edict appalls him: "¡Que quiera hacerme bárbaro homicida, / el César, de su madre y su señora! / ¡La vida quite a quien le dio la vida!" (406b-407a). Nevertheless, Andronio's revulsion does not prevent him from attempting to turn this situation to his own advantage; the officer, surrendering to his long-suppressed lust for Irene, now decides to coerce the deposed Empress into satisfying that lust before slaying her (407a). As Smith discerns, "Andronio's presumptuous aspirations are prompted by Constantino's own sexual indiscretions" (251). However, the courtier's initial reluctance to carry out the death sentence also emphasizes the fact that he is acting at Constantino's command rather than on his own initiative when he goes to Irene's prison. Andronio's resultant status as Constantino's surrogate becomes problematic and suggestive of displaced incest when he combines his own illicit lust for Irene with the emperor's wish for her death. After Irene escapes Andronio with the shepherd TaTso's assistance, Constantino then sets the royal hunters on his mother's trail. Smith writes that the sexual tension and menace

which permeate the comedia reach their peak in this "repellent" scene (25 1). The hunt, after all, traditionally served as a literary allegory for erotic pursuit (Rogers 15). Constantino's method of pursuing his mother, then, imbues his homicidal aggression toward her with sexual implications which are again reminiscent of Oedipus's incestuous relationship with Jocasta. Oedipus and Constantino ultimately come to understand that divine forces have already designated them as the scapegoats whose sacrifice is required for the restoration of sociocultural order. Sophocles's Oedipus realizes that he has fulfilled all the tragic prophecies and laments that Apollo himself ordained his agonies (1467). In Seneca's less subtle treatment, Cre-

304BCom, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 1995) on reports to Oedipus Laius's words during the rite which summoned the murdered ruler's shade from the underworld:

People, expel your king!

Drive him immediately from your land; Soon as your soil is rid of his curs'd feet, Its springtime will return, its grass be green, The beauty ofthe woods will bloom again, And pure air fill you with the breath of life. With him, as his fit companion, shall go Death and Corruption, Sickness, Suffering, Plague, and Despair.(234) Constantino arrives at a similar realization during a dream sequence in which the goddess Fortuna appears to him and prophesies his downfall. His lament signals his new status as the pharmakos against whom divine and earthly forces are uniting in order to purge the empire of the corruption he represents:

¡Todos son contra mi! Mas no me espanto,

que he sido contra todos: ¿No hay do pueda huir la muerte, pues el cielo santo es mi enemigo y su favor me veda? (425a) When reality crashes down on Oedipus, he puts out his own eyes; in Seneca his last royal act is to exile himself from Thebes (251) and in Sophocles he begs Creon, who has now assumed his authority, to order his expulsion from the city-state (1571-2). This exile is clearly that of the scapegoat, whose banishment cleanses the community. Oedipus's self-blinding is of still greater significance: Freud argued that it constitutes an act of self-castration in which the eyes represent the testicles (433-4, nl). G. Deveraux, in an exhaustive survey of Greek tradition, confirms that blinding was a common punishment for sexual transgression in that cultural context and that it did indeed serve as a symbolic form of castration (40-2). Interestingly, Deveraux cites the example of Tiresias, whose blindness has two traditional explanations: that he was punished for the voyeurism of watching Athena bathe or that Hera blinded him for indiscreet sexual utterances (44). The ironic parallel drawn by Sophocles between the blind seer and the soon-tobe-blind king in the text strengthens Freud's interpretation of Oedipus's loss of sight. Constantino suffers a nearly identical fate: after the army returns Irene to power, she orders his eyes put out and commands that he be

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imprisoned forever in a tower.11 Given how many of Constantino's transgressions are either specifically sexual in nature or else are motivated by his lust for Lidora, his blinding is an appropriate punishment, as was Oedipus's. Furthermore, Constantino's imprisonment in the tower, that symbol of isolation and oblivion utilized so effectively by Calderón in La vida es sueño, is equivalent to Oedipus's banishment, which fulfilled the Theban king's plea in Sophocles that he be forever hidden from the people's sight (1545-6). This parallel between the ultimate fates suffered by the two Greek sovereigns represents one of the strongest connections between the Oedipus plays and Tirso's comedia. Finally, the restoration of order in Sophocles's Oedipus the King is achieved not only through the protagonist's cathartic expulsion from Thebes, but also through Creon's resumption of power; though this character does not appear at the end of the Roman playwright's Oedipus, his status as the last surviving member of the royal family makes it obvious that he will reclaim the crown. Thus, the state of affairs that existed in Thebes be-

fore either play began, even before the arrival of Oedipus or the Sphinx, is ultimately restored. In La república al revés, Irene likewise reclaims the crown she held before Constantino deposed her at the beginning of the comedia. This return to a reality prior to that depicted by the drama represents a final structural parallel between Tirso's text and its predecessors. Naturally, it is clear that La república al revés is far from a Greek tragedy. Tirso combines history with elements supplied by the Oedipus myth and its dramatizations to create a very different kind of play, one in which the Oedipal protagonist is a true villain rather than a tragic hero. Constantino knowingly and deliberately commits grave transgressions that throw his empire into chaos; when cathartic retribution comes, Constantino attempts to flee from it, in stark opposition to Oedipus's moving acceptance of his pharmakos status. Likewise, Irene possesses certain parallels to both Jocasta and Creon yet differs sharply from them, not least in her centrality to the action and in her embodiment of the principles ofjust rulership which her son rejects. Despite such divergences of plot, characterization and theme, however, República's debt to the entire Oedipus canon is fundamental to this underrated comedia.

306BCom, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Winter 1995) NOTES

1.Lowell Edmunds points out that there are two main traditions recounting Oedipus's death. The one followed by Homer has Oedipus killed in battle at Thebes and buried there (16). 2.Euripides also authored an Oedipus of which only scant fragments survive. 3.See Blüher 31 8-30, Flecniakoska, MacCurdy, and McKendrick 55-72. 4.The historical counterparts of Carola and Lidora were Constantine's wife Maria and Irene's lady-in-waiting Theodote. After divorcing Maria with his mother's covert and duplicitous encouragement, he married Theodote and crowned her Empress. This action horrified many on religious grounds and helped bring about Constantine's downfall and Irene's assumption of sole power, which had been her intention from the outset (Ostrogorsky 160; Diehl 83-4). 5.In reality, Constantine's many weaknesses as ruler resulted in Irene's return to power as co-emperor with her son in January of 792. This situation lasted until August of 797, when Constantine's scandalous behavior permitted his mother to depose him and to enjoy sole sovereignty until the imperial treasurer Nicephorus seized the throne and exiled her in 802. Tirso's portraits of Constantine VI and Irene are consistent in spirit if not in fact with the historical perspective of his day, which regarded Constantine as a corrupt sybarite and his mother as a paragon of wise and just rulership. This perspective derived primarily from a chronicle of the Byzantine Empire from 284 to 813 written by the monk Theophanes and completed little more than a decade after Irene's death in 802. Ostrogorsky asserts that Theophanes's chronicle "formed the basis of all later Byzantine annals" and "became known in the West through the Latin translation made by the papal librarian Anastasius in the seventies of the ninth century" (80). Like nearly all monks of the era, Theophanes and his successors idealized Irene for her opposition to the anti-monastic religious oppression practiced by iconoclasts such as her tyrannical father-in-law Constantine V, his father Leo III and her son. As a monk himself, Tirso might well have studied Theophanes's chronicle in the original or in Anastasius's translation; his sympathies would almost certainly have lain with Irene, under whom monastic life had flourished after years of brutal iconoclastic persecution. Modern historians, however, regard the undeniably ruthless and tyrannical Irene with a more jaundiced eye. 6.Historically, Irene's regency lasted from September 780 to October 790, at which time the army forced her to abandon the throne in favor of her twenty-year-old son. 7.Curiously, Tirso also includes a shepherd in the cast of República: the heroic gracioso Tarso, who helps Irene to escape from prison and to whom she entrusts her infant grandson to prevent Constantino from harming him. Tarso thus serves the same function as the more famous Greek herdsman who took pity on the new-born Oedipus when his father Laius sought his death.

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8.This belief in a monarch's mystical symbiosis with his/her realm is ancient in its origins and stems from theories of natural magic. As Frazer explains in The Golden Bough, many traditional societies would kill kings at the first sign of any decay of their health or physical vitality in order to prevent that decay from manifesting itself in the kingdom (228). Nor is this durable idea restricted to such traditional cultures; it repeatedly appears in Seneca's dramas (Henry 75-91) and can be discerned at the heart of more modern political precepts arguing that a ruler's personal immorality can undermine the prosperity of his realm. The frequency with which Felipe IVs various sensual self-indulgences provoked references to this ideology testifies to its currency in Tirso's Spain (Kennedy, "Prudencia" 1 150-53). 9.Ruth Lee Kennedy points out that dramatic conflicts resulting from an immoral monarch's destructive misrule enjoyed fresh currency during the reign of Felipe IV, reflecting the public concern with the young king's sensual self-indulgences (Studies 55). For this reason she believes that the playwright made some politically pointed revisions in the text during the early years of Felipe's reign ("Tirso's La república " ). 10.See Vernant for a more detailed discussion of how Sophocles manipulates this hunting imagery as the plot unfolds (482). 1 1 . Chittenden considers Irene's failure to privilege maternal feeling toward her depraved son over her sense ofjustice to be a negative characteristic (44-5). However, Irene's function in the play demands that she embody the abstract principles ofjustice which Constantino, in thrall to his passions, has sought to subvert and destroy; their conflict is nothing less than the conflict of order versus corruption. Appropriately, Irene's mythological namesake was the goddess of peace; she was the sister of Astraea, goddess ofjustice, and the daughter of Themis, the "personfication of the order of things established by law, custom and equity" (W. Smith 289).

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Deveraux, G. 'The Self-Blinding of Oidipous in Sophokles' Oidipous Tyrannus." Journal ofHellenic Studies 103 (1973): 36-49. Diehl, Charles. Byzantine Empresses. Trans. Harold Bell and Theresa de Kerpely. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.

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_____. Violence and the Sacred. Trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1977.

Grant, Helen F. "The World Upside-Down." Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age, presented to Edward M. Wilson. Ed. R.O. Jones. London: Tamesis Books, 1973. 103-36.

Henry, Denis and Elisabeth Henry. The Mask ofPower: Seneca 's Tragedies and Imperial Rome. London: Aris & Phillips, 1985. Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition. Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1949.

Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961 . _____. The Odyssey. Trans. Albert Cook. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1967. Kennedy, Ruth Lee. "La prudencia en la mujer and the Ambient that Brought It Forth." Publications ofthe Modern Language Association ofAmerica 63 (1948): 1 13-90. _____. Studies in Tirso, I: The Dramatist and his Competitors, 1620-26. Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Department of Romance Languages, 1974. _____. "Tirso's La república al revés: Its Debt to Mira's La rueda de ¡afortuna, Its Date of Composition, and Its Importance." Reflexion 2.2 (1973): 39-50. Lyon, John. Introduction. Tamar's Revenge. By Tirso de Molina. Trans. Lyon. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1988. MacCurdy, Raymond R. "La tragedie néo-sénéquienne en Espagne au XVIIe et le thème du tyran." Les tragédies de Sénèque et le théâtre de la Renaissance. Ed. Jean Jacquot. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1964. 73-86. McKendrick, Melveena. Theatre in Spain: 1490-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State. Trans. Joan Hussey. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1957.

Rodríguez López-Vázquez, Alfredo. "The Analysis of Authorship: A Methodology." Heav-

Weimer309 enly Bodies: The Realms of La estrella de Sevilla. Ed. Frederick A. de Armas. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, forthcoming. . Andrés de Claramonte y El burlador de Sevilla. Teatro del Siglo de Oro. Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 1987.

Rogers, Edith Randam. The Perilous Hunt: Symbols in Hispanic and European Balladry. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1980. Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Oedipus. Four Tragedies and Octavia. Trans, and intra. E.F. Watling. New York: Penguin, 1966. 205-51. Smith, Dawn L. "Women and Men in a World Turned Upside-Down: An Approach to Three Plays by Tirso." Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 10 (Winter 1986): 247-60.

Smith, William. Smaller Classical Dictionary. Ed. E. H. Blakeny and John Warrington. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1958.

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Vega, Lope de. Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. Obras escogidas. Ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles. Vol. II. Madrid: Aguilar, 1973. 1007-1 1. Vernant, Jean-Pierre. "Ambiguity and Reversal: On the Enigmatic Structure of Oedipus Rex." New Literary History 9 (1978): 475-502. Weimer, Christopher B. "A Comedia Re-Viewed: An Alternative Reading of Tirso's La república al revés." Looking at the Comedia in the Year ofthe Quincentennial: Proceedings ofthe 1992 Symposium on Golden Age Drama at the University of Texas, El Paso, March 18-21. Ed. Barbara Mujica and Sharon D. Voros. Lanham, MD: UP of America, 1993.219-25.

Wooldridge, John B. "The Topsy-Turvy World of Tirso's La República al revés." Estudios 43 (1987): 155-65.