Beyond Performance: Cervantes's Algerian Plays, El trato de Argel and Los baños de Argel

Reading Cervantes's Algerian plays, El trato de Argel and Los baños de Argel , in the light of available information about Cervantes's experience with the theaters of Madrid in the 1580s and thirty years later in 1615, suggests that Los baños de Argel was written without the expectation of an actual performance, as an exploratory text to test the limits stagecraft as Cervantes knew it. While El trato de Argel and La Numancia were performed before live audiences, the autores never chose to stage Los baños de Argel apparently because there are many elements in the script which made it very difficult and, in the autores' opinion, perhaps unwise to bring before an audience. More than a strong response to Lope de Vega's appropriation of the theme for his own Algerian play entitled Los cautivos de Argel , Cervantes's Los baños de Argel disregards the limitations that, according to Cervantes, live performances impose on dramatic texts, in order to direct the attention of readers to a lack of public concern with a problem that persisted, the enslavement Spaniards in North Africa. While acknowledging in Los baños the foolhardiness of an armed attack against Algiers, Cervantes dramatizes for his readers the need for continued public support of the Mercedarian Order's efforts in seeking donations to pay ransoms. Unique in this regard among Cervantes unperformed Ocho comedias, Los baños de Argel presents staging difficulties which evidently appeared to be insurmountable to the directors of theatrical productions.