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Cervantes, Miguel de. The Bagnios of Algiers and The Great Sultana: Two Plays of Captivity. Edited and Translated by Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2010. xx + 175. ISBN: 978-0-8122-4209-6.
Miguel de Cervantes published Los baños de Argel [The Bagnios of Algiers] and La Gran Sultana [The Great Sultana] in Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, nunca representados (1615). Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika chose to translate these two plays because they "offer very different Mediterranean locales and visions of captivity" (xiii). In the introduction, Fuchs and Ilika explain why Cervantes published a collection of plays never performed: "This highly unusual venture, in a period where plays were generally published only after having been exhaustively performed, served Cervantes as an alternative to the theatrical success that eluded him" (ix). While Cervantes never achieved the high acclaim as a playwright he hoped would be his legacy, his Mediterranean captivity plays established, according to Florencio Sevilla Arroyo and Antonio Rey Hazas, a "mini-genre," which Cervantes "perfected and enriched" (xiii). Fuchs and Ilika base their prose translation on Sevilla Arroyo and Rey Hazas's critical edition of the plays, because, among other reasons, "this solid edition corrects the errors in the original texts of the plays and provides variant readings from all the manuscripts as well as noting corrections by previous editors of the collection" (xxvii).8
Fuchs and Ilika's translation of The Bagnios of Algiers and La Gran Sultana, which they intend to be a source of study not performance, begins with a lengthy introduction that provides for the reader the necessary literary, historical, political, and social background to appreciate and enjoy...