Women's Acts

Seventeenth-century Spain witnessed a rich flowering of dramatic activity that paralleled the Renaissance stage in other European countries. Yet this Golden Age traditionally has been represented in print almost entirely by male playwrights. With Women's Acts, Teresa Scott Soufas makes available eight plays by five long-neglected women dramatists: Angela de Azevedo, Ana Caro Mallen de Soto, Leonor de la Cueva y Silva, Feliciana Enriquez de Guzman, and Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor.

In her introduction, Soufas reviews the development of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish drama while focusing on the position of women during this period, the significance of these plays, and the issues the playwrights address. Each dramatist's section opens with an overview of the author's life and professional activity, a synopsis of her work(s), and a selected bibliography.

In a modernized edition that is consistent, readable, and suitable for use by both students and scholars, the plays in Women's Acts will at last earn their rightful place in the canon of Renaissance drama.