The Playwright's Perspective. Innovative Dramaturgy and its Poetics in Early Modern Spain.

The relationship between Golden Age theater theory and practice, illustrated through the study of representative works by six playwrights, is the topic of this study. The impact of practice on theory is as irrefutable as the impact of theory on practice. In fact, many prominent playwrights wrote treatises (re)affirming their decisions to stray from traditional norms and to create new dramatic art forms. Without exception these defenses were written after the playwright had enjoyed success and introduced his and, in the case of Golden Age Spain, the theatrical world was overwhelmingly populated by men particular pioneering contribution to the theater. By examining the ways which theatrical practice was influenced by performance and audience reception, their impact on shaping theatrical theory becomes clear, not only in the well known case of Lope s Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo, but throughout sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. Of course, all playwrights continually face the challenge of creating original works for a dynamic and demanding public who must be kept at the forefront when writing a play, since they are the receptors of the message that is transmitted by means of the performance of the dramatic text. This realization, however, does not downplay the importance of the script, but elevates all three aspects: the text, performance, and reception, to equal ground. These factors have led me to concentrate on the connection between performance and reception in this study of early modern Spanish dramatic theory, and although performance and reception can be dealt with in a mutually exclusive manner, it is more feasible to look at them collectively with the dramatic text in the attempt to reproduce the entire dramatic spectacle.