Andrés de Claramonte


Andrés de Claramonte y Corroy was a playwright of the Spanish Golden Age.
Very few facts are known about his life. As an actor, he worked for the most important companies, such as Baltasar de Pinedo's or Alonso de Olmedo's. As a playwright, he wrote dramas with great epic style, in which he showed his talent for visual and theatrical effects.

Major Works

Five of Claramonte´s plays, among those that are of undisputed authorship, have attracted most critical attention: Deste agua no beberé, El nuevo rey Gallinato, La infelice Dorotea, El secreto en la mujer, and El valiente negro en Flandes. Deste agua no beberé is a tense and dramatically striking honor play, featuring King Pedro I who was called both "el cruel" and "el justiciero". In spite of forebodings, he chooses to rest at don Gutierre's castle. Even though he is away, his wife, Mencía asks him to spend the night. The king is so bold as to enter her bedroom and offer to kill her husband and make her Queen. When she rejects him, his cruel side of his personality is unleashed as he tries by several means to have her dishonored and killed. As opposed to most honor plays, this one ends when, being shown his many mistakes, the King reunites Gutierre and Mencia. El nuevo rey Gallinato is best known for being one of the few plays of the Golden Age that include a voyage to American. In addition, critics such as De Armas and Zugasti have remarked that there is a confused geography as lands from America and Asia are juxtaposed. La infelice Dorotea deals with the tragic fate of Garcinuñez, Dorotea and Fernando, the first being upset from the start at a Moor´s prediction, in the manner of magical words upon a wall. As Charles Ganelin points out, it is a play about astrological prediction, the reverses of fortune and the workings of poetic justice. Forebodings are also important in El secreto en la mujer. Here, Lelio breaks all three commands given by his father, and this leads inexorably to his doom. El valiente negro en Flandes is the work by Claramonte that has elicited most responses. It deals with the valor of a black slave. Manuel Olmedo Gobante, for example, discusses Afro-Hispanic swordsmen in the context of Claramonte’s play.

Other dramatic plays

Other less known plays are El Gran rey de los desiertos, San Onofre, which is evidently related to El Condenado por desconfiado, as it has been shown by Ciriaco Moron and Alfredo Rodriguez Lopez-Vazquez. Recently, Alejandro Garcia Reidy has discovered an unpublished play by Claramonte, Las dos columnas de San Carlos, in which is shown Charles Borromeo's life, a play that has the particularity to have in the first scene the character of Marin Luther.

Critic's considerations about Claramonte

The Spanish Scholar Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo looked down on Claramonte, but nowadays he has been reconsidered by the critics, particularly Alfredo Rodriguez Lopez-Vazquez, Charles V. Ganelin, Frederick A. de Armas and Fernando Cantalapiedra Erostarbe.Some of these support the idea that he wrote some of the most important plays of the Spanish Golden. Although attributed to Lope de Vega The Star of Seville was first considered to be the work of Claramonte by Sturgis E. Leavitt, in his 1931 book. A symposium on the play held at Pennsylvania State University some sixty years later, in 1992, paved the way for the reconsideration of this play his in the United States. A book based on the findings and edited by Frederick A. de Armas was published in 1996.The Trickster of Seville'' which was traditionally attributed to Tirso de Molina is now considered to have been penned by Claramonte. Leading this claim is Alfredo Rodrigues Lopez-Vazquez whose edition in Cátedra has changed the perception of a number of critics.

Studies