Converso Plays of Seventeenth-Century Spain

Felipe Godínez's Queen Esther and Antonio Enríquez Gómez's Abigail the Prudent

Erdman, Harley (ed.)

This volume features the first-ever English translations of Felipe Godínez’s Queen Esther and Antonio Enríquez Gómez’s Abigail the Prudent. These lively Old Testament plays by conversos – 17th-century Christian writers of Jewish heritage – show playwrights delivering inspirational messages to converso audiences in the face of censorship and oppression. Both these playwrights, who had numerous family members persecuted by the Inquisition for covertly practicing Judaism, were themselves imprisoned by the Inquisition for the unorthodox beliefs put forward in their writings. In fact, Godínez’s Queen Esther was cited by the Inquisition as heretical at the time of the playwright’s arrest. This book invites such questions as: is there such a thing as an early modern converso dramaturgy? If so, how do these plays manifest it? If we imagine these plays were written in part for “New Christian” audiences, how do they speak to those audience members?