Printing and origins of commercial theatre in Spain (1560-1605)

Abstract

The period of emergence of commercial theatre in early modern Spain produced only a little amount of printed plays. The present article describes, from the perspective of textual and cultural bibliography, the ideological and commercial strategies made by stationers and authors in a non-codified context, before the crystallization of an hegemonic editorial pattern. The analysis is constituted by three case-studies: the editorial agency of Juan Timoneda, the books of the so-called generation of the tragic poets, and the printing manoeuvres around Lope de Vega's plays in the first years of the 17th century, with a final analysis on Virues' and Cervantes' printed plays. Instead of a pattern of continuity, what these books and their paratexts reveal is a number of strategies oriented by specific circumstances and goals. Nonetheless, it is possible to recognize two main legitimization discourses: one on the creators' literary authority, and other on the relationship between staged and printed theatre.