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Abstract
Privanza, a political institution in which the monarch relinquishes his authority to a favorite, brings the concept of subjectivity to the forefront in seventeenth-century Spain by introducing questions of manipulation, control, and self-representation. Using theater as means of exploring political favoritism, seventeenth-century playwrights Lope de Vega and Antonio Mira de Amescua present privanza as a test against a kings ability to maintain his autonomy against an institution which, it was thought, owed its very existence to a courtiers ability to manipulate the monarch into submission. Lope and Mira internalize this struggle and offer scenarios in which the kings voluntarily hand themselves over to bondage. By presenting a series of week kings who allow their voluntades to become enslaved, the playwrights suggest that the monarchs true power emanates from his ability to recognize and to control his internal self. Privanza, however, proves to be a constant danger to a kings efforts to realize this potential, and offers example after example of kings who fail to enforce their own autonomy.