ABSTRACT
Women playwrights have been relegated to the critical margins as "minor" figures; nonetheless, as Lisa Vollendorf points out, their "plays challenge many fundamental assumptions scholars have made for years about Spanish literature". They also call into question many critical commonplaces about European theatrical history, including the common identification of Aphra Behn as the first European professional woman playwright. In 1994, a year after Luna published separate volumes of Ana Caro's two extant comedias, the Asociacion de Directores de Escena de Espana published the first anthology to focus on the theater of multiple early modern Spanish women playwrights, Teatro de mujeres del barroco. In the depiction of women's perpetuation of patriarchal patterns of violence, the dramatists echo concerns expressed by women writing in prose. Critical insights into violence in the prose works of Maria de Zayas and others also illuminate these dramatic texts. The female dramatists display their artistic prowess through the skillful manipulation of generic conventions established by male dramatists.
