Spanish Comedy

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 871, 13 April 1956, Page 15

Spanish Comedy

NEAT week YC stations will present an NZBS production by William Austin of the Spanish play, The Dog in the Manger, by Lope de Vega. This famous and prolific dramatist is credited with over 2000 plays, though the number of known titles is 752, and the existing texts about 470. Not surprisingly, he was called a "monster of mature," or more kindly, "phoenix of

genius." His own life story is a drama in itself. Of low birth, he was a precocious scholar, a soldier at fifteen, a member of the ill-fated Spanish Armada, a clerk in minor orders, twice married, a devoted father, a wit, dramatist and novelist. All this served as matter for his invention, in true Renaissance fashion, and he wrote plays ranging from. lives of the saints to the flimsiest farces. He excelled in the traditional cloak-and-sword plays, with their "point of hondur" motif, and The Dog in the Manger illustrates this style well, although it is a comedy. Diana (Linda Hastings), the lady of the house, secretly loves her poor but handsome. secretary, Teodoro (Alan Jervis). She is jealous of his attentions to Marcela (Pamela James), one of her ladies-in-waiting, but she will neither let him go to Marcela nor bring herself to have him until she learns that he is the long-lost son of a noblemana matter engineered by Teodoro’s servant Tristan (Michael Cotterill).