The Wallenstein Play of Calderón and Coello, Las proezas de Frislán, y muerte del Rey de Suecia [?] (1634): Conjectural Reconstruction

• Published in: Bulletin of the Comediantes 2000, Vol.52 (2), p.93-111
• Main Author: Sullivan, Henry W
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Calderón de la Barca, Pedro; Coello, Antonio; Court theater; Reconstructions; Spanish Theater
• ISSN: 0007-5108; 1944-0928; 1944-0928
• DOI: 10.1353/boc.2000.0009

The study attempts to reconstruct the lost Buen Retiro court play written by Pedro Calderon with Antonio Coello and mounted in February I 634. It celebrated the career and exploits of the Catholic Commander-in-Chief of the Thirty Years' War, Albrecht von Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland (1583-1634). Though all traces of any MS, prompt copy, or suppositious suelta have disappeared, it is possible to form a remarkably clear idea of the play from contemporary reactions to Wallenstein' s career, historical facts concerning the progress of the War in the year 1634, as well as from two priceless eye-witness testimonies to performances of the play in late February and/ or March of 1634. The first is from the pen of the then Tuscan Ambassador, one Serrano, in a dispatch from Madrid dated March 4, 1634. The second is from the memoir (Stuttgart, 1658) of the Lutheran traveler and diarist, Hieronymus Welsch (1610-1675?), which recalled his twelve-month stay in Spain (1633-1634) and gave a German-language account of the play in question. Since Wallenstein was known in Spain by his hispanized ducal title of Frislán (a corruption of Friedland), I speculate that the play probably bore the title Las proezas de Frislán , with the subtitle Y muerte del rey de Suecia . The study has an Appendix conjecturally reconstructing a suppositious suelta , designed to summarize everything claimed about the play and its characters in the main article (with some invented octavas reales and romance modeled on Calderon's El sitio de Bredá ). The study builds on two articles of Václav Cerny from 1962, one in Czech ( Sbornik historicky the other in French ( Revue de Littérature Comparée ), which have received little attention to date. Cerny assumed a fluent knowledge of Renaissance Italian and archaic, seventeenth-century German in his readers, factors which helped put these magnificent contributions to Calderon studies beyond the reach of most students of the comedia .