Dennis Tedlock’s is the third scholarly translation and exegesis of this Mayan dance–drama script in the past decade. One might ask, do we really need another version? The answer would seem to be yes. What does Tedlock bring to this edition that is new? First and foremost, a new translation. All translations necessarily reflect a set of presuppositions about the ethnohistoric and cultural background of a work. Tedlock makes his presuppositions explicit in the notes elucidating and in the chapters following his translation. Moreover, Tedlock is careful not to leave the text in the past he documents but also to situate it in its current sociopolitical milieu. He examines continuity and change, not just of text and textual interpretations, but also in the ideological ends of the performance.

Second, the translation is not based on a single version of the text or a single performance but is textured with nuance gained by careful examination of two written versions, that of Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg and that of Manuel Pérez (the latter being an incomplete copy and reworking of the former), two complete live performances, and a plethora of private practice sessions with the performance troupe leader and manuscript caretaker, José León Coloch, as well as group rehearsals. Tedlock’s close collaboration with León Coloch enriches the text.

Third, pictures of actions within the scenes, diagrams of the actors’ movements, stage directions within the spoken–written word, elaboration of costume design and evolution, and attention to the musical and ritual accompaniments of the enactment bring the performance to life.

Fourth, the scholarly exegesis exemplifies the position of this script among autochthonous performances of political and social identity, arguing for an unbroken, though plastic, tradition harking back to the Classic Mayan era.

Part 1 is the script of the play, complete with stage directions, information on musical accompaniment, and style of declamation. The text is laid out visually to emphasize the poetic and oratorical style. Tedlock has discovered that the timing of the lines is learned aural–orally and it is not directly deducible from the grammatical structure or reducible to the famous Mayan coupleting. In chapter 4 he provides oscillographs, which show timing and loudness; as loudness and pitch covary, these graphs chart the auditory structure of the utterance, revealing a triadic structure, composed of a couplet with a lead-in or a coda, in beginning orations, which then speeds up into more dyadic or quadratic forms.

In chapter 1 Tedlock draws parallels between eighth-century Mayan (as well as Mixtec and Nahuatl) courtly practice as revealed on stelae, ceramics, and murals and the paraphernalia and symbolism within the modern dance performance. Eerie perserverances and transformations surface: the god K mannequin scepter becomes an axe; nose and lip plugs become mustaches and goatees. In chapter 2 Tedlock explores the precontact survivals within the dance forms and the speeches: the dance within the arena physically re-creates the solar year and its interaction with the 260-day count, establishing four year bearers, and Kaweq’s speeches number the solar months.

In chapter 3 Tedlock outlines the ideological adaptation of the play under Spanish rule, syncretism with the martyrdom of Paul perhaps allowing the survival of the play, while its ratification of the indigenous social order is affirmed and inverted by a counterplay, an indigenous satire on the Rabinal Achi, which is also performed within the dance–drama cycle of festivities. In chapter 4, Tedlock examines the role of the script and the performance in constructing text and meaning. Careful attention to aural recordings reveals the crucial role of silence in scansion. Finally, in chapter 5, Tedlock situates the play within its ritual context, following the players through private and public ceremonies, preparatory to and bracketing the performance. This attention to the social setting of the drama mediates the seeming contradiction between the play’s cultural import and the relative inattention of audiences, which may be small, may drift in and out of the area, or may not be present at all.

In his notes and final glossary, Tedlock gives analyses of personal names, titles, place names, and idioms that might not be transparent (even to modern speakers of Achi). Although interesting, the absence of the complete Achi text leaves these observations floating.

Photographs, drawings, and graphs help bring the performance to life and tie it not just to Mayan but also to Mesoamerican culture, past and present.