In The Comedia of Virginity, Mirzam Pérez examines plays by Lope de Vega, Ángela de Azevedo and Agustín Moreto y Cabañas that feature the figure of the Virgin Mary. She also includes a chapter on the 1618 Relación de fiestas, an account of the festivities in honour of the University of Salamanca's pledge to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which signals the popularity and widespread devotion to this article of faith in seventeenth-century Spain. Such a treatment of these topics is long overdue. Pérez focuses on the representation of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, a doctrine and an icon that were essential for the Hapsburg family's self-imaginary. As she indicates, this manifestation of the Virgin was ripe for political use by playwrights and civic organizations seeking to garner favour from the monarchy; the Hapsburgs were devout to the Immaculate Conception and promoted the conversion of the doctrine to dogma. Not surprisingly, therefore, writers and artists of the period produced representations of the doctrine that exceeded expected parameters and reveal ‘a complex, strong figure tucked away in her many Hapsburg avatars’ (p. 1).
Unfortunately, Pérez's effort falls short in several respects. Structurally, the book has some immediately evident problems. Chapter three, which analyses the imaginary maps drawn after the festivities at Salamanca, is only tangentially connected by Pérez to the figuration of the Virgin and does not fit the larger framework of the book. Moreover, despite its centrality to the book's argument, the iconography of the Immaculate Conception is not well understood by the author, who generalizes the ways in which visual representations are deployed and simplifies the unstable meanings of the crescent moon, among other symbols. There are also areas of concern at the level of interpretation and of historical research. For example, it is proposed that Azevedo's play correlates the Immaculate Conception with Isabel de Borbón, but the implications of this connection are grounded in perfunctory statements regarding the queen's ‘maternal regency’ (p. 61). Likewise, Lope is said to want to garner favour from Phillip III, and yet the play in question is interpreted as a challenge to Spanish discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities. While this argument is possible, the author does not address its contradictions satisfactorily. A similar issue arises with Moreto's play, as Pérez does not convincingly argue for the centrality of the Virgin beyond maternal figuration; for example, she does not recognize the implicit citation of the Apocalyptic Woman in the final act of the play. Moreover, Pérez does not acknowledge Phillip II's and Phillip III's efforts in the promotion of the doctrine in Rome, Sor María de Ágreda's role in Phillip IV's defence of the doctrine, and the implications for the court and the papacy given the opposition by the Dominicans.
This book serves as a basic introduction to an alternative representation of the Virgin in Spanish early modern literature. However, the complex intersection of theology, politics and aesthetics around the figure of the Virgin in Counter-Reformation Spain merits further discussion.
