The Comedia in English is hardly a new phenomenon. Soon after appearing on the boards in Spain, many plays found their way across the Channel, some directly, others by way of France. Given the popularity of Spanish plays in the seventeenth century, it seems ironic that reviewers today consistently marvel at the fact that the rich dramatic tradition of the Golden Age is little known and rarely performed. The two favorites, Fuenteovejuna and Life Is a Dream, have of course been included habitually in modern anthologies for study, but until recently even they had little presence on the Englishspeaking stage, either in translation or adaptation. However, as we will show in this brief overview of translation and performance, the turn of the millennium saw a marked increase in interest, and consequently a proliferation in productions by professional companies not only of these two standbys but of a surprising number of other comedias as well. Many of the same reasons that attracted seventeenth-century playwrights and audiences to the genre can help to explain its reemergence of late. What we will emphasize in the present discussion is not only the sameness, then and now, of the process of creating an English playtext from a Spanish original, but also the newness of some of the trends that have led to a number of successful productions in the last twenty-five years.

Despite this success, the inconvenient truth of the matter is that the Comedia is still produced infrequently in the English-speaking world. Four centuries ago, however, it was a source for more English plays than we might suppose. A few of these come from the first half of the seventeenth century. The vast majority, however, are products of the second half. Interestingly, virtually none of these plays, whether of the first part of the century or the last, derive from works of the dark and brooding sort that many modern audiences associate with Spanish theatre. Rather they spring from comedias de capa y espada, amusing cloak and sword plays, with their plethora of plots and fast-paced action. It is these plays of “Spanish plot,” to use Dryden's term, that initiated what John Loftis has called the “the Spanish strain in [English] drama” (Plays 3).