El castigo sin venganza

<p><i>El castigo sin venganza</i> (1631) is Lope de Vega's greatest tragedy. The play dramatises the story of the adulterous relationship between the beautiful Casandra Duchess of Ferrara and her step-son Federico and the reaction of her husband the Duke himself a flawed and ambiguous figure. The dramatist at the height of his powers re-works an earlier Italian short story to explore the complexities of human desire and the grim consequences of giving in to temptation. <br><br>Aimed principally at undergraduates who are new to Spanish Golden Age drama this edition includes a substantial commentary on the text explanatory footnotes and a selected vocabulary. The introduction sets the play in its contexts - historical and dramatic - and focuses too on elements of the genre with which new readers might be unfamiliar: performance norms the poetry of the play and the linguistic differences in Golden Age Spanish.<br><br>It is informed by up-to-date scholarship on the play from Spain and the Anglophone world.</p>