The Value of Sueltas as Textual Witnesses
C. George Peale
This essay provides an overview of various ways in which sueltas can provide insights into the transmission and reception of plays, with examples from among the works of Luis Vélez de Guevara. Taken individually, they can provide crucial evidence for scholars preparing critical editions; taken collectively, they can illuminate the history of a work's dissemination and circulation, from the bookshops of Madrid to the Peruvian highlands.
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Comedias sueltas: An Introduction
D. W. Cruickshank
An introduction to crucial aspects of comedias sueltas, including discussion of their reception and use by readers and performers, the economic motives behind their publication, typical print runs, format and layout, orthographic and typographic conventions, and the challenges presented to modern scholars in locating copies that belong to this corpus.
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Four Editions of Cada uno para sí: A Bibliographic Challenge
D. W. Cruickshank
This brief essay presents the problems inherent in relying solely on bibliographic records to determine the exact nature of a given copy. The four editions of this play by Calderón look identical in a typical online catalog record—and, indeed, in printed catalogs that do not describe subtle typographic differences in detail.
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