Resumen de Interpreting the Gitana: Translation and Cross-Dressing in Lope de Rueda’s Medora
This study examines translation and cross-dressing in Lope de Rueda’s play, Medora. While Medora is translated from Gigio Artemio Giancarli’s play Zingana, whose title showcases the Gypsy, Rueda’s title announces transformation—Medora is a perpetually feminized version of the gender-bending Medoro. The play’s central drama involves the shifting identities of Gargullo and the Gitana. Building on Sidney Donnell’s perception of the early modern audience’s metatheatrical response to the male actor playing the Gypsy, which underscores a male actor playing the Gitana, I argue that in Medora, cross-dressing functions within an even larger system of translation that encompasses the fluid exchange between Spanish and Italian theatre. This study suggests that Lope de Rueda’s Medora—exemplified by a Gitana cross-dressed ostensibly in traditional Gypsy garb and the self-declared converso and indiano, Gargullo—underscores the importance of transformation, translation, and cross-dressing in the genesis of the emerging Spanish Comedia.
