This volume features the first-ever English translations of Felipe Godínez’s Queen Esther and Antonio Enríquez Gómez’s Abigail the Prudent. These lively Old Testament plays by conversos – 17th-century Christian writers of Jewish-heritage – show playwrights delivering inspirational messages to converso audiences in the face of censorship and oppression. Both these playwrights, who had numerous family members persecuted by the Inquisition for covertly practicing Judaism, were themselves imprisoned by the Inquisition for the unorthodox beliefs put forward in their writings. In fact, Godínez’s Queen Esther was cited by the Inquisition as heretical at the time of the playwright’s arrest. This book invites such questions as: is there such a thing as an early modern converso dramaturgy? If so, how do these plays manifest it? If we imagine the audiences these plays were intended for as partly “New Christian,” how do the works speak distinctly to that audience? What in terms of style, theme, and characterization give these plays a converso stamp? And why do these writers focus on heroines from the Hebrew Bible as exemplars of ideal behavior?
Author Biography
Harley Erdman is Professor of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. A playwright, translator, and dramaturg, he is the author or editor of six books.
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