Staging Penance: Scenes of Sacramental Confession in Early Modern Spanish Drama

Abstract

Scholars now recognize that the language of casuistry pervades early modern Spanish school dramas, comedias and autos sacramentales , due to the Jesuit education received by a majority of Renaissance Spain’s renowned playwrights. A closer scrutiny of a corpus of 800 digitalized plays from this period – supplemented by plays held in manuscript at Madrid’s Royal Academy of History – reveals an even closer connection between the ritual act of the Catholic Church’s sacrament of confession and the early modern Spanish stage.