Shakespeare in La Mancha: Performing Shakespeare at the Almagro Corral

Abstract

Shakespeare is one of the most often performed playwrights at the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro [The Almagro Festival of Classical Theater], an event initially created to celebrate Golden Age drama in which, nowadays, Shakespearean productions often outnumber those by individual national authors. Throughout the history of the festival, several Shakespearean productions have been staged in the Corral de Comedias, an original seventeenth-century venue that reactivates the use of space encoded in the playtext due to its similarities with Renaissance playhouses. This article has a double purpose: first, to examine the abundance of Shakespeare in Almagro as a phenomenon that finds its explanation in factors ranging from Shakespeare’s popularity to the role of modern translation and, second, to focus on how Shakespearean productions at the Corral de Comedias have
negotiated new meanings of Shakespeare in performance, generating an interplay between Renaissance and Golden Age venues in contemporary performance.