The House of Trials

One possible convention of the Spanish Golden Age comedia could be the characters’ asides to the audience. This practice is different from what we have read in the well-made play so far. In The Glass of Water, for example, the characters stay within their own world. The characters only speak to each other and do not break the fourth wall. However, in House of Trials, the characters often break the fourth wall to tell the audience what they are really thinking. When the characters in Love! Valour! Compassion! break the fourth wall, it sometimes appears to be a way for their future selves to narrate information that they learned later. However, in The House of Trials, the characters’ asides are always in the present moment, conveying the characters’ limited knowledge at one particular time and place. Since this play is full of secrets, the characters must constantly deceive each other. When the characters make asides to the audience, the playwright is able to let the audience know the characters’ true thoughts and increase the dramatic irony.

Another possible convention of the comedia could be the dialogue written in verse. In The Glass of Water, the characters speak in naturalistic prose. However, in The House of Trials, the characters speak in poetry, going out of their way to tailor their language to certain conventions. In the footnotes, the translator goes into detail about the different verse forms Sor Juana uses. For example, in footnote 12 at the end of Act I on page 68, the translator describes the romance form, which is the form used for “81.6% of the lines in The House of Trials.” The translator explains that the romance form consists of four-line stanzas with assonant rhymes at the end of the second and fourth lines. Since I haven’t read the original Spanish text, I don’t know how Sor Juana’s original dialogue would sound. However, after reading the footnotes about the verse forms, I get the impression that the dialogue might sound less naturalistic than that of the well-made play.