¿Monstruos de apariencias llenos? Las escenas de descubrimiento y la cortina de apariencias en los manuscritos teatrales de Gondomar y de Palacio

Abstract

Lope de Vega wrote that the theatre of the dawn of comedia nueva was made of “monsters full of apariencias”. The apariencia means, in Lope’s Arte nuevo, the scenography and its machines. But it has also been defined in 1611 as ‘a mute representation shown by drawing a curtain in front of people, and immediately hiding it again’ (Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana). In a corpus from the time when Lope de Vega wrote his first plays, composed by the count of Gondomar’s theatrical collection and the dramatic manuscripts of the Royal Library in Madrid (manuscritos de Palacio), we describe the structure of the apariencia, understood as a discovery scene, focusing on the association of other scenographic effets in this sequence of unveiling. The apariencia reveals itself as a visual spectacle that provides the sensible evidence of wonder.

Keywords

• apariencia
• tableau vivant
• performance of unveiling
• scenography
• Gondomar count of
• manuscripts of Palacio.