Ângela de Azevedo
Ângela de Azevedo (1650?-1700?)
Also known as Ángela de Acevedo.
Miscellaneous Works by Ângela de Azevedo
Biography
Perhaps no Spanish Golden Age writer embodies the nature of the Baroque in their person more than Ângela de Azevedo. Azevedo, a Portuguese born author who wrote in Spanish during the 17th century, certainly did not enjoy the fame nor produce as much material as some of her contemporaries, male or female; however, she may occupy the position of most intriguing and enigmatic among them. Most of the existing information about Azevedo lacks detail and different sources often contradict each other regarding details of her parentage, her places of residence, her positions within society, her final days, and even the spelling of her name.
We have three extant plays, all published as sueltas, from the Portuguese playwright: Dicha y desdicha del juego y devoción de la virgen, La Margarita del Tajo que dio nombre a Santarem, and El muerto disimulado. The texts themselves may offer the greatest evidence of and the avenue to discovering what we can about Azevedo in the plays’ settings, themes, and the words used to bring the comedias off the page and onto the stage. Through a literary analysis of the text and a linguistic analysis of the playwright’s native Portuguese on the Spanish employed in her texts, we hope to pry open the mystery of Ângela de Azevedo and reveal the pearl that is her life story.
Annotated Bibliography
Finn, Thomas P. "Virgins to the Rescue: Male Abdication and Female Empowerment in Angela de Azevedo." Laberinto: An Electronic Journal of Early Modern Hispanic Literatures and Culture, vol. 8, p. 15-42.
According to this article, Ângela de Azevedo uses her plays La margarita del Tajo que dio nombre a Santarén and Dicha y desdicha del juego y devoción de la Virgen to provide social commentary on the status of women in the seventeenth century. Finn argues that Azevedo makes a comparison between the expected subjugation of women to men and the subjection of people to their governments. He claims that instead of simply trying to make this evident in her works, Azevedo focuses on elevating the status of women through a strong emphasis on their connection with Heaven or a higher power, at the same time, deemphasizing men. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
Gascón, Christopher D. "Female and Male Mediation in the Plays of Angela de Azevedo." Bulletin of the Comediantes, vol. 57, no. 1, p. 125–45.
Ângela de Azevedo explored the idea of men and women as mediators in her seventeenth-century plays. In arguably her most famous play, El muerto disimulado, the character Don Rodrigo makes numerous attempts at meditation and fails every time. The play represents Don Rodrigo—and perhaps by extension—as inept at something that is necessary for society. Conversely, throughout the play female characters are constantly successful at mediating to stop violence. The play suggests that women are superior to men at peaceful mediation. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
Hegstrom, Valerie. "Comedia Scholarship and Performance: El muerto disimulado from the Archive to the Stage." Comedia Performance: Journal of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 152-78.
In this article, Valerie Hegstrom explores how a performance text enriches our understanding and critique of Azevedo’s dramatic text El muerto disimulado. Azevedo shapes standard comedia conventions, such as controlling fathers or brothers, cross-dressing, and the jilted woman, in surprising ways that are unlocked to audiences through the unique devices of performance text. The Brigham Young University 2004 staging of the work allowed for humor to be found in exaggerated violence transforming otherwise threatening situations (such as the actions of Rodrigo and Alvaro) into comical or ridiculous portrayals of male insecurity not easily noted in the written text,. Not only humor, but human fallacy and the power of the feminine space and discourse were also uncovered in the actors’ representations of the cross-dressing siblings Lisandra and Clarindo. Hegstrom concludes that Azevedo wrote with the intention of performance and that through performance text her work is given new meaning and her unique use of comedia conventions can be brought to life for audiences to experience in what might have been a female theatrical space. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
Maroto Camino, Mercedes. "Transvestism, Translation and Transgression: Angela de Azevedo’s El Muerto Disimulado." Forum for Foreign Language Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, p. 314-25.
Ângela de Azevedo's play, El muerto disimulado, provides a powerful commentary on gender roles and transvestism in the 17th century. Her play questions the normal gender role society of the time by having male actors play females but also female actresses play male characters, engaging in comical and ironic dialogue between each other. Azevedo seems to use her characters as symbols for women as a whole, who wanted to experience different facets of life and opportunity that were limited to those of the patriarchal society. Azevedo ends the play by concluding that women, like her characters, had to be both man and woman in her society, in order to fully achieve all that they could. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
Provenzano, Serena. "La carrera vital de Ángela de Azevedo: Estado de la cuestión y nuevas aportaciones." Anagnórisis: Revista de investigación teatral, vol. 19, p. 78-100.
In this article, Provenzano gives us an in-depth study of Azevedo’s life, refuting previously accepted claims and providing new evidence that places the playwright in a time and space not presumed by most scholars. After thorough investigation of parish and other local records, Provenzano places Azevedo as a native of Paredes da Beira, Portugal, in the second half of the 17th century. It appears that she never moved from this region of Portugal and died sometime before her husband’s death in 1723. This means that she would have not served Queen Isabel of Borbón in the Spanish royal court, nor would she have joined a convent after being widowed. Although living in Portugal, she wrote her plays in Spanish; therefore, Azevedo intended her plays for an audience that understood the language. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
Soufas, Teresa S. "Marriage Dilemmas: Dicha y desdicha del juego y devoción de la Virgen and La margarita del Tajo que dio nombre a Santarén (Azevedo)." Dramas of Distinction: Plays by Golden Age Women, The University Press of Kentucky, p. 70-104.
This chapter dives into Ângela de Azevedo’s commentary on the status of women in seventeenth-century Spain as commodities with nothing but economic exchange value via marriage. Analyzing the actions of unchecked patriarchal authority in her two plays Dicha y desdicha del juego y devoción de la Virgen and La margarita del Tajo que dio nombre a Santarén, Teresa Scott Soufas finds that Azevedo challenges the gender roles of this patriarchal system. Through her negative depictions of gender inequality with the characters of María, Irene, Rosimunda, and their male counterparts, we see that only disaster results from the male hierarchy and those who unjustly suffer are the disempowered women with no space to be valued as subjective individuals, as seen in the relationship between María and Fadrique. In these works, women move from one male-dominated space to the next, and if a woman is resistant, then a man destroys her, as Irene was destroyed never having found a space in which she fit. Although women are the subject of all decision-making and economic exchange for men, there is no space for women as anything more than commodities in any social order, be it secular or divine. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
Wade, Johnathan. "Patriotism and Revolt: Uncovering the Portuguese in Angela de Azevedo." Bulletin of the Comediantes, vol. 59, no. 2, p. 325-43.
In the 17th century, Ângela de Azevedo used her three comedias, El muerto disimulado, La Margarita del Tajo que dio nombre á Santarén, and Dicha y desdicha del juego y devoción de la Virgen, to glorify her home country of Portugal and to subtly revolt against to Spain. While Azevedo's plays did not show a direct opposition to Spain, they showed a strong preference to Portuguese literary writers, geography, ideas, etc. This article strongly suggests that Azevedo was very patriotic and expressed many revolutionary ideas in her works. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
de Armas, Frederick A. "Dreams, Voices, Signatures: Deciphering Woman’s Desires in Angela de Azevedo’s Dicha y desdicha del juego." Women in the Discourse of Early Modern Spain, University Press of Florida, p. 146–59.
This essay challenges the social practice of viewing women on stage as sources of sexual impulse and disorder. De Armas argues that in Dicha y desdicha del juego, Azevedo portrays women as chaste, intelligent, and capable, while male figures are imbalanced, driven by anger, greed, or lust, and lacking the ability to control their desires. Developing her characters in this way, Azevedo critiques the male attempt to contain women’s desires and underscores the male character’s inability to control their own passions. (Annotation by Raquel Macías Del Valle)
Posted
17 August 2021
Last Updated
18 April 2025