The critical edition of "Mujeres y criados" ready to be staged

The official event included the participation of Alejandro García Reidy, who discovered the work, as well as of Alberto Blecua, director of the Prolope Group; José Manuel Martos; director of Editorial Gredos; and Rodrigo Arribas, representing the theatre company Fundación Siglo de Oro (RAKATá), in charge of staging the play. The conference offered by García Reidy included a dramatised reading of selected passages by actors of Fundación Siglo de Oro (RAKATá).

The work will be launched simultaneously on paper and online, both editions produced by Prolope. Editorial Gredos will publish the critical edition as part of the Universal Classics series and as part of the Anejos series of the Lope de Vega Library, which includes all critical editions of the author's works carried out by the research group with their usual scientific features (prologue, notes, appendixes, etc).

The electronic book was created thanks to a collaboration agreement between Prolope and the Spanish National Library (BNE). It can be consulted at www.prolope.es. It includes a video clip as a prologue to the book, the text and transcript of the manuscript, as well as images of the work in high resolution. In addition to the introduction by Alejandro García Reidy, there were presentations by María José Rucio, head of the manuscripts at the BNE; Teresa Ferrer, director of the DICAT group (University of Valencia); Margaret Greer, director of the group Manos Teatrales (Duke University) and Prolope, made up of research institutes and groups related to its discovery and dissemination. The edition allows to search for words and enlarge the images without losing quality; it can also be consulted on tablets and mobile phones.

In addition, the online edition will offer the script of the play free of charge to those interested in staging it, as long as they form part of a non profit initiative, such as an amateur theatre performance or for educational purposes.

“We wanted ‘Mujeres y criados’ to be available to everyone and in all types of formats, so we thought of all possible variables. Making the works of the great Lope de Vega known is a priority to the researchers at Prolope. And it makes perfect sense to meet this objective by being able to disseminate an exceptional new work such as this one”, says Ramón Valdés, co-director of Prolope.