The Life and Death of Herod: A Christmas Tragedy and Epiphany

by Frederick H. Fornoff

This book makes available to students and scholars of Spanish Golden Age Drama a carefully prepared semi-critical edition and verse translation of Tirso de Molina's Herod play, a little known masterpiece fusing the two Herods - the historical protagonist of Jewish and Roman history whose life is narrated by Flavius Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews and the tyrant-ogre depicted in Biblical and liturgical sources - into a tragic protagonist of archetypal dimensions, a vegetation daimon or year-spirit whose life history prepares the way for the more sublime year-spirit whose nativity and epiphany coincide with Herod's ritual implosion at the end of the play. Professor Fornoff's introduction and notes show us how to read through the plot to the sacramental action which it signifies.

365 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1991