Spain's Golden Age of Theater

While Shakespeare was reshaping English drama, a parallel theatrical revolution was unfolding in Spain. During the Spanish Golden Age, playwright Lope de Vega pioneered the comedia nueva, a bold new dramatic form that broke classical rules in favor of fast-paced plots, emotional intensity, and popular appeal. In this episode, scholar and translator Barbara Fuchs shares how the theatrical innovations of Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Ana Caro Mallén de Soto, and others, including a three-act structure, blended genres, and complex female roles, helped redefine early modern theater and influenced the kinds of stories told on the English stage. Fuchs traces the rich cultural exchange between Spain and England and the work that she is doing now with Diversifying the Classics to bring plays in Spanish from both sides of the Atlantic to new audiences. Fuchs also discusses her adaptation for young audiences of de Vega’s Fuente Ovejuna, a powerful story of collective resistance, whichwill be featured at the Folger’s Reading Room Festival on Saturday, January 24. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published January 12, 2025. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode was produced by Matt Frassica. Garland Scott is the executive producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. We had help with web production from Paola García Acuña. Leonor Fernandez edits our transcripts. We had technical help from Hamish Brown in Stirling, Scotland, and Voice Trax West in Studio City, California. Final mixing services provided by Clean Cuts at Three Seas, Inc. Barbara Fuchs, trained as a comparatist (English, Spanish, French, Italian), Professor Fuchs works on European cultural production from the late fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, with a special emphasis on literature and empire, and on theater and performance in transnational contexts. As part of her commitment to the public humanities and collaborative work, she directs the UCLA “Diversifying the Classics” initiative and edits the series “The Comedia in Translation and Performance” for Juan de la Cuesta. She is also director of LA Escena, Los Angeles’ biennial festival of Hispanic classical theater, founded in 2018. Currently, Professor Fuchs serves as one of the articles editors for Renaissance Quarterly. Professor Fuchs’ recent books include Knowing Fictions: Picaresque Reading in the Early Modern Hispanic World (Penn 2021); The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs (Juan de la Cuesta 2021), a collaborative translation of Ana Caro’s Valor, agravio y mujer; and The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe (Toronto 2020), co-edited with Mercedes García-Arenal. She is also one of the editors for the Norton Anthology of World Literature (2012, 2018). Her Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a time of Pandemic, one of the first studies of how theater was transformed by COVID-19, was published by Methuen in September 2021. She is currently working on a translation and critical edition of Ginés Pérez de Hita’s Las guerras civiles de Granada with Payton Phillips Quintanilla. In 2021, Professor Fuchs served as President of the Modern Language Association. She was recently awarded the inaugural “Premio Ñ” from the Instituto Cervantes, for the promotion of Spanish language and culture.