This essay focuses on Lope de Vega's strangely problematic
tragedy El castigo sin venganza (1631) and the reasons for possible
censorship. In order to better understand the play's political mysteries,
it will be argued that the Italian setting (Ferrara) both hides and
reveals the actual location of the action: the city of Mantua. The
appearance in the play of the Gonzagas, the ruling family of
Mantua, confirms this and sets the action at the time of the War of
Mantuan Succession (1628-30). The war had been triggered by the
death of the last of Vincenzo, who died without an heir. While this
moment marked Spain's declining influence in Italy, the naming of
a Gonzaga as first Duke of Mantua a century earlier by Charles V
stands as the pinnacle of Spanish influence and the moment of
greatest artistic flowering in Mantua. In a doubling of history, both
of these moments are presented in the play. While the latter foregrounds
Spain's defeat, the earlier one allows the spectator to transform
mythological allusions into artistic canvases by Correggio and
Giulio Romano. These ekphrases form a permissive museum of
pagan sensuality in which the main characters of the play mirror
themselves. While Correggio's Ganymede and Giulio Romano's
decorations for the permissive Palazzo del Te, where Federigo
Gonzaga feasted with his mistress, reflect the forbidden sexualities
at play, Giulio's Hall of Giants seems to lash out against license, as
Jupiter tries to contain those that threaten his heavenly Court. The
bloody denouement, although seeming to delimit the zones of licit
desire, actually problematizes the relationship between eros and
power, thus enriching the images with a deeper textuality. Lope's is
indeed a play that storms the walls of heaven, of the Court, as it
searches for a new erotic and political freedom to say and picture
that which was forbidden. (FAD)