Personal information

Surname: Torres Naharro
First name: Bartolomé
Born: sometime between 1475 and 1485, Torre de Miguel Sesmero, Spain
Died: sometime between 1520 and 1533

Biography

Torres Naharro was born between 1475 and 1485 in Extremadura, but wrote most of his important works in Italy. He was imprisoned in Algiers and freed thanks to the protection of Pope León X, after which he became a priest in Rome, serving the cardinal Bernardino de Carvajal in Rome and Fabricio Colonna in Naples.  He worked as a court playwright, providing entertainments for a private audience and larger-scale works for religious festivities. He was a classically-inspired playwright, developing his style from the ancient tradition of Plautus and Terence. His plays were known to the early comedia playwrights such as Lope de Vega, as Torres Naharro’s works were published again in 1573 in Madrid, having been originally published in a collection called the Propalladia in Naples.  The preface to that collection marks one of the first tracts on dramatic theory and its practice in Europe.  His early works include the dialogue of the Birth of Christ (Diálogo del nascimiento) and its sequel, and he wrote eight plays or comedias. In his theoretical preface, Torres Naharro describes his plays as dividing into two types: the comedia a noticia, more ‘realist’ in nature and featuring lower classes of society and ‘real-life’ characters and situations; and the comedia a fantasía, more overtly fantastical works which play upon the emerging potential of the stage to capture the imagination. He died between 1520 and 1533.

See  Hesse and Valencia, 1971: 207, McKendrick, 1989:  27-35 and Zimic 2003: 349-69.

• Everett W. Hesse and Juan O. Valencia, 1971. El teatro anterior a Lope de Vega. Madrid, Alcalá (in Spanish)

• McKendrick, Melveena. 1989. ‘Bartolomé de Torres Naharro (1485?-c. 1520)’. In Theatre in Spain 1490-1700, pp. 27-35. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

• Zimic, Stanislav. 2003. ‘Torres Naharro’. In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 349-69. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

Themes

Torres Naharro wrote plays while living in Italy; although he was likely from Spain, he didn’t write any of his extant plays there. He was thus influenced heavily by the classical writers of comedy and tragedy. He was also a theorist; in his introduction to his Propalladia, which was repeatedly published, he shows off his knowledge of Cicero and Horace but also declares his independence from them. He demonstrates how his theatre builds on that of the ancients, but is not a slavish reproduction of ancient styles. This will be a sentiment echoed by Lope de Vega in his Arte nuevo when he locks up the classical principles ‘with six keys’. Some elements of Torres Naharro’s drama that will not carry through past the sixteenth century include the number of acts (five will be reduced to three); the unity of place (the comedias that come later will change rooms, even countries, unexpectedly); and the lack of plot complexity. The sexual innuendo (some of which was censored by the Inquisition in Torres Naharro’s early works) will also be toned down somewhat in the plays to come by Lope de Vega and his contemporaries. What does carry on into the future is the capitulation of the figure of authority to allow the happy ending, such as the Marquis giving way to allow the lovers to marry at the end of this play; the close calls and scrapes the lovers get into, involving violence; the concern with ‘honour’; the cowardly servants; and the independent heroine who speaks her mind.  These will all develop in plays as we move into the days of the corrales and away from this style of drama geared for a private, courtly audience. (Thacker 2007)

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘The Emergence of the Comedia nueva’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 1-22. Woodbridge, Tamesis

Style

Torres Naharro split playwriting into two groups: the comedia a noticia, (‘documentary play’), of which his Comedia Soldadesca (The Military Comedy) of 1510 is the prime example, featuring the adventures of Spanish soldiers in Italy. That play’s themes satirise the upper classes’ tendency to enjoy life while the soldiers work to protect them and enable their lifestyle. Also in that category are his Comedia Trophea (The Triumphant Comedy) of 1514, and the Comedia Tinellaria (The Mess Hall Comedy) of 1516 (Lihani 1998: 220-1). His second group of plays, comedias a fantasía, treat similar themes to the later comedia nueva, in depicting the lives of lower-class citizens alongside their noble masters’ love intrigues. The Himenea of 1516 is a good example of this type: honour, swordplay, night scenes and the obstacles of love are frequently seen in these comedias. Other ‘fantastic’ or fictional plays in this category include the Serafina (Serafic Comedy) of 1508-9, the Jacinta (Hyacinth Comedy) of 1509, the Calamita (Calamita Comedy) of 1519, the Alquilana (Alquiline Comedy) of 1520-3). Torres Naharro also wrote two pastoral plays which share themes with the comedias a noticia, the Diálogo del nascimiento (Christmas Dialogue) and the Addición [2 d’s in Lihani’s text] al diálogo (Addition to the Christmas Dialogue) of 1505-7. The plays are about pilgrims venturing to Rome and the adventures on the way, focusing ultimately on the theme of the mystery of the birth of Jesus (Lihani 1998: 220).

• Lihani, John. 1998. ‘Bartolomé de Torres Naharro’. In Spanish Dramatists of the Golden Age: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, ed. Mary Parker. Westport, Connecticut and London, Greenwood Press

Plays in the database

• Comedia Himenea (1516) / The Himenea

Useful reading and websites

• Chaytor, H. J. ed. 1925. ‘Torres Naharro’ and ‘Prohemio to Propaladia by Torres Naharro’. In Dramatic Theory in Spain, pp. 1-4. Cambridge, University Press (Cambridge) (in Spanish)

• Everett W. Hesse and Juan O. Valencia, 1971. El teatro anterior a Lope de Vega. Madrid, Alcalá (in Spanish)

• Gillet, Joseph E. 1930. ‘Torres Naharro and the Spanish Drama of the Sixteenth Century’. In Estudios eruditos en memoriam de Adolfo Bonilla y San Martín 2, pp. 437-68. Madrid, Imprenta Viuda e hijos de J. Ratés, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

• Gillet, Joseph E. 1937. ‘Torres Naharro and the Spanish Drama of the Sixteenth Century: II’, Hispanic Review, 5.3, 193-207

• Lihani, John. 1971. ‘New Biographical Ideas on Bartolomé de Torres Naharro’, Hispania, 54.4, 828-35

• Lihani, John. 1979. Bartolomé de Torres Naharro. World Authors Series 522. Boston, Twayne

• Lihani, John. 1979. ‘Play-Audience Relationship in Bartolomé de Torres Naharro’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 31,  95-102

• Lihani, John. 1998. ‘Bartolomé de Torres Naharro’. In Spanish Dramatists of the Golden Age: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, ed. Mary Parker. Westport, Connecticut and London, Greenwood Press

• Malinak, Edward Michael. 1991. ‘Torres Naharro’s Innovative Dramaturgic Contributions to the Spanish Theater’, pp. 140-8. In Estudios alfonsinos y otros escritos en homenaje a John Esten Keller y a Anibal A. Biglieri, ed. N. Toscano. New York, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Hispanic Foundation for the Humanities

• McKendrick, Melveena. 1989. ‘Bartolomé de Torres Naharro (1485?-c. 1520)’. In Theatre in Spain 1490-1700, pp. 27-35. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

• Romera-Nevarro, Miguel. 1921. ‘Estudio de la Comedia Himenea de Torres Naharro’. Romantic Review, 12, 50-73 (in Spanish)

• Surtz, Ronald E. 1979. The Birth of a Theater. Madrid, Castalia

• Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. ‘The Emergence of the Comedia nueva’. In A Companion to Golden Age Theatre, pp. 1-22. Woodbridge, Tamesis

  For Juan del Encina see p. 3-8, for Gil Vicente see p. 9-11. For La Numancia see pp. 20-1

• Wickersham Crawford, J. P. 1967. Spanish Drama before Lope de Vega. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania

• Zimic, Stanislav. 2003. ‘Torres Naharro’. In Historia del teatro español, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, pp. 349-69. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 13 October 2010.

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