MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA SUPUESTO RETRATO DE CERVANTES Atribuido a Juan de Jduregui y A guitar lfoeatb'0 fiDofcern Xansuaae Series TEN SPANISH FARCES OF THE 16th, 17th AND 18th CENTURIES EDITED WITH NOTES AND VOCABULARY BY GEORGE TYLER NORTHUP, Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF SPANISH LITERATURE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO COPYRIGHT. 1922, BY D. C. HEATH & Co. 2o2 PRINTED IN U.S.A. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNI SANTA BARBARA PREFACE ALTHOUGH the list of classic Spanish plays edited for the classroom is constantly becoming more extensive, the farce genre has been wholly neglected by our writers of textbooks. And yet the student cannot properly understand the comedia as a whole if his attention is directed exclusively to serious plays, to the neglect of those humorous trifles without the accom- paniment of which the longer pieces were never acted. The present book is an attempt to supply this lack. It is intended for students of the older drama and, like any other book of the sort, should be used only by those grounded in modern Spanish. The selections illustrate the development of the Spanish farce as it grows out of the paso into the entremes, out of the entremes into the sainete. It is believed that the injection of a little more humor into the Spanish Drama Course will in- crease the student's interest in this form of literature. The plays chosen, though possessing much of the sabor de la tierruca, have comic situations universal in their appeal. In view of the success with which several of Cervantes' farces have been acted in a number of our Universities, it is hoped and believed that most of the selections in this book will prove suitable for dramatic representation by Spanish Conversation Clubs. Some teachers may wonder at the inclusion of such a piece as El entremes de refranes. This was chosen because it offers a convenient approach to the study of proverb lore. Proverbs run through nearly the whole of Spanish literature. An understanding of them is essential to the appreciation of almost any Spanish masterpiece. At some point in his course iv PREFACE the student's attention should be especially focused upon them. The Vocabulary is the work of my wife, Emily C. Northup. I desire to thank the following gentlemen for the valuable advice they have given me on certain difficulties of detail: Professor Karl Pietsch, University of Chicago; Professor E. C. Hills, University of Indiana; Professor F. O. Reed, University of Wisconsin; Mr. Carlos Castillo, University of Chicago, and Dr. Alexander Green of D. C. Heath & Company. G. T. N. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE iii INTRODUCTION vii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE xxxiv PASO SEPTIMO (LOPE DE RUEDA) 3 LA CUEVA DE SALAMANCA (CERVANTES) n Los Dos HABLADORES (ATRIBOTDO A CERVANTES) . . 29 ENTREMES DE REFRANES (ATRIBUIDO A CERVANTES) . 41 EL DOCTOR Y EL ENFERMO (QUINONES DE BENAVENTE) 53 OBRAS ANONIMAS: ENTREMES DEL ESPEJO Y BURLA DE PABLILLOS . . 69 JUAN RANA COMILON 81 Los BUNUELOS 91 EL HAMBRIENTO 101 LAS TERTULIAS DE MADRID (RAMON DE LA CRUZ) ... in NOTES 139 VOCABULARY 185 s INTRODUCTION /. THE ENTREMES Entremes and Paso. Among the various etymologies sug- gested for the word entremes that most commonly accepted is inter + missum, " something placed between." Like its French cognate, entremets, it was first used in a culinary sense. An entremes was a " dainty " served between the principal courses of a dinner. Even after the word had taken on other mean- ings this primitive significance was borne in mind. Quinones de Benavente writes: Entremes es una salsa para comer la comida. (Entremes de las nueces) The word came into Spanish through the Catalonian and Valencian tongues. Fifteenth century documents use it to designate entertainments, theatrical or otherwise. The plays so called are not necessarily farces; on the contrary, religious, allegorical plays were sometimes termed entremeses. In these senses the word comes into Castilian about the middle of the fifteenth century. Lope de Rueda in the next century called his farces pasos, " incidents." He uses entremes to mean a comic, irrelevant episode inserted in the main body of a play, just as Italian playwrights of the time made like use of the terms intermedia and intermezzo. His friend and imitator, Juan de Timoneda, uses paso and entr erne's synonymously. In the closing decade of the sixteenth century entreme's becomes the recognized name of a fixed dramatic form. We may translate it either " farce " or " interlude." An entremes was a one-act farce, either in prose or verse, written to be played between the acts of a longer and more vii Vlll INTRODUCTION serious play. Unlike the comedia with its complicated in- trigue, plot is here reduced to its lowest terms. The merest comic incident suffices. Interest depends upon the char- acters, their jokes and horse-play. These characters were plebeian, and this, to Lope de Vega, was the prime distinction. In his Arte nuew de hacer comedias, he speaks of an entr ernes as, siendo una accion y entre plebeya gente, porque entremes de rey jamas se ha visto. Drawn from low life, the personages of an entremes were por- trayed with a realism passing readily into burlesque. They rapidly became conventionalized comic types. Tirso de Molina tells us (Tanto es lo de mas como lo de menos, Act II, scene 6) that the older entremeses ended with a slap-stick scuffle, for which the later ones substituted the dance. But while it is true that the song and dance soon became the inevitable finale of every farce, it must not be supposed that beatings and clubbings were suppressed; on the contrary few farces lack these mirth-provoking expedients. The Origins of the Spanish Farce. Long before the word entremes was restricted in meaning to designate a playlet of the sort described, the thing itself existed. The origins of the Spanish farce are to be sought in the juegos de escarnios against which the clergy declaimed and statesmen legislated as early as the thirteenth century. We have no very clear idea as to what these plays were like; but their name suggests realistic satire, and we know that their licentiousness scan- dalized the pious. They probably differed little from the comic scenes acted in connection with the mediaeval miracle and mystery plays that have come down to us in other litera- tures. The oldest Spanish farce preserved is Juan del Encina's Auto del repeldn, 1496. Though called an auto, " act," this playlet is in every essential an entrants. Two Salamanca students play tricks upon two stupid peasants who have come INTRODUCTION IX to town to sell vegetables. The students throw the country- men's vegetables into the mud, drive away their donkeys, and pull their hair. Much of the humor depends upon the peasant dialect, the naive expressions of the rustics, their negro-like misuse of long words. We find here already two of the com- monest farce types; the student and the bobo, or simple, the rural simpleton. Diego Sanchez de Badajoz, who lived through the first quarter of the sixteenth century, introduces many comic episodes and parts into .his religious allegories. The sacristan, the negro, the Moor, the boastful soldier, the page, the blind man and his boy, the alguacil, and other types known to the later farce appear in his works. None of these plays is a typical entremes; Sanchez de Badajoz is to be regarded as a connecting link between the old religious drama and the secular theater which followed. Similar comic parts may also be observed in the works of Lucas Fernandez, Gil Vicente, and other early dramatists. II. THE COM MEDIA DELL'ARTE In its development the Spanish entremes was undoubtedly influenced to some extent by the Italian commedia dell'arte, to how great an extent is unknown. This is a matter still awaiting research. The Commedia dell'arte^ the Improvised Comedy, or Comedy of Masks, as it is variously styled, was a form of the drama which came into full existence in Italy about the middle of the sixteenth century. It had been developing for two or three generations previous to that time. Its most marked charac- teristic was that the author provided only a plot-scenario; the dialogue was supplied by the actors themselves. In connec- tion with it there developed a number of conventionalized roles, or masks, so called because each part had its appro- priate mask and costume. X INTRODUCTION These characters were always undergoing modification, and new parts were frequently invented. The most important, however, were the following: The old man part, Pantaloon, who represented the merchant class of Venice, and spoke the dialect of that city; the Doctor Graziano, the doctor of law of the University of Bologna; the captain, or braggart soldier, descended from the Miles gloriosus of Plautus, and who under the fantastic names of Matamoros, Spavento, Fracassa, Coccodrillo, etc., typified the swaggering, boastful, Spanish conqueror of Italy, whom Italians depicted as a coward at heart in spite of his brave words; the two zanni, or clowns, one of whom, often called Harlequin, was intelligent, while the other was a simpleton; Brighella and Pulchinella, varieties of the zanni type; the seroetta, the sprightly servant maid, often named Columbine. There were other minor parts, and the names frequently varied. Every troupe had a pair or two of young lovers, innamorati and innamorate. These were not counted among the masks. They appeared with uncovered faces, and spoke good Tuscan. They were not comic parts. Their diction was high-flown and euphuistic. The part which improvisation played in these comedies has been somewhat exaggerated. In the first place, each actor had his stock part which he never abandoned. The clown was always a clown, the doctor always a doctor. A new play did not demand the acquisition of a wholly different role. Each actor, moreover, committed to memory a large number of passages, either in verse or in prose, fitted to meet any situation which might arise in any play. There were entrance speeches, wooings, soliloquies, rebukes, compliments, conceits, bits of advice, boastings, etc. Every clown was provided with a large number of lazzi. A lazzo was a comic incident or succession of incidents acted in pantomime or with dialogue. It differed little from the paso, and like the paso was inter- calated in the main plot, which it interrupted. The pro- duction of a new play was "therefore merely the piecing to- INTRODUCTION XI gether of odd tags of memorized lines that recurred in endless combinations in a great variety of plays, just as the cards of a deck are shuffled and dealt into new combinations with- out themselves changing. The audience of the time was trained not to expect much novelty of detail. Perhaps the constant repetition of the same jokes and rhetorical figures in the Spanish comedia may be ascribed in part to the influence of the commedia dell'arte. No play was produced without a careful rehearsing of exits and entrances and the action de- manded by the scenario, at which time the special lazzi to be used were carefully considered. Extemporization was there- fore restricted to a few commonplace, connecting sentences. The Entremes de repente. We know from allusions in sixteenth century writers that Spain also had its improvised farce, the entremes de repente. In some of the earlier inter- ludes collected by Cotarelo y Mori the stage directions show that the actor was expected to supply dialogue, even when most of the speeches were furnished by the author. To quote one such stage direction: " Here the rustic applies to him such abusive epithets as suit him best, and begs permission to sing him a few stanzas, and the other replies to him." Im- provised comedy never scored a great success in Spain; but that the Italian influence upon comedia and entremes alike was profound, cannot be doubted. Entremes and Commedia dell'arte. In comparing the entremes and the commedia dell'arte the investigator is handi- capped. Only a comparatively small number of the Spanish farces in existence have been published; and the number of published scenarii and lazzi is even more restricted. And when we are fortunate enough to be able to read a scenario, what we have before us is only a skeleton. But even the material available has never been studied in detail. This is a virgin field still awaiting an investigator. Only a few generalizations can now be made. In form there is little in common between the three-act Xll INTRODUCTION commedia dell'arte, with its elaborate plot, and the brief, uncomplicated entremes. The division into three acts doubt- less influenced Cervantes and later writers of comedias who followed Italian models. Italian influence, too, helped to make the Spanish drama one of intrigue rather than of char- acter. The entremes is to be compared not to a complete Italian play but to a single lazzo, or better still to the inter- media or intermezzo, the names Italians gave to the developed comic situation, introduced either into the body of the play or produced between the acts. So far as form is concerned, the most undeniable evidence of Italian influence upon the entremes is the versification employed in them after the first third of the seventeenth century. The standard meter from this time on is the hendecasyllable for which is substituted at pleasure a heptasyllable. These lines rime in couplets (sihas pareadas), with an occasional blank verse interspersed. Now this is precisely the metrical scheme of most of the rimed, memorized passages introduced into the commedia dell'arte. There is much similarity between some of the Spanish masks, if we may so term them, and their Italian counterparts. Of the two zanni the clever one suggests the gracioso of the co-media, the stupid one has much in common with the Lorenzos and the Periquillos of the entremeses. The Vejete is very similar to Pantaloon. The braggart soldier is the same type in both literatures. The " lovers " have their counterparts; the servetta has hers. But we must not be too hasty in draw- ing conclusions. The commedia dell'arte is a popularization of the Plautine comedy, and Plautus was known to the early dramatists of Spain. It is in the Latin comedians that we are to seek the sources of the braggart soldier, the intriguing servant, the credulous old man, and other parts. Some of these, too, are too universal to need explanation. Spain had unquestionably developed a large number of comic types before the dramatic influence of Italy was felt. These were INTRODUCTION Xlll retained, although Italian influence determined certain modi- fications in them. What and how great this was is still to be studied. Such Italian parts as depended upon dialect for their humor could not be transferred to another stage. We shall soon see that Spain had its native, dialect types to sub- stitute for them. Direct Influence. The chief borrowings from the corn- media ddVarte were in the matter of plot, comic situation, and the many jokes capable of translation into a cognate language. Spanish writers found the Comedy of Masks a rich mine, and they exploited it to the full. Here are two concrete instances. The Entremes de un viejo ques casado con una mujer moza (No. 14 in Cotarelo's collection) contains the same situation found in a scenario printed by Bartoli, Gli Intrighi d'Amore owero La Finestra Incantata. In each case, a credulous husband witnesses through a window his wife's flirtations, and is made to believe that the fault lies wholly in the " enchanted " window; because, the moment he enters the house, the lover has disappeared. The present editor has noted the " cure for the toothache " joke in several entremeses. A simpleton demands a cure for his toothache. He is told to put an apple in his mouth, and then to stick his head into a hot oven. By the time the apple is baked the toothache will have disappeared. Now this is one of the best known of the Italian lazzi. Numerous borrowings of a similar kind could be cited. Italian actors drew upon novels and folk-lore for much of their material. Some of these sources were open to Spaniards, so that it is not always easy to trace a plot or joke; but that a great deal came directly into Spanish plays from the Improvised Comedy cannot be doubted. Contact with Italian actors was direct and continuous. Muzio's company appeared in Seville about 1538. The great actor Ganasa visited Spain in 1570, and met with such success that he returned many times in the years following. Other Italian companies did likewise. Numerous Spanish writers, xiv INTRODUCTION like Cervantes, had visited Italy and had become familiar with Italian comedians in their native land. The strolling Italians too, learned much from their residence in Spain. Many a later commedia dell'arte plot was inspired by a Spanish play. The influence was reciprocal. Few sixteenth century entremeses have come down to us, although in the last two decades of that century they began to be written in great numbers. Two were regularly pro- duced between the acts of each serious play. They were mostly in prose, although some writers, like Juan de Timoneda, Lope de Rueda's friend and editor, wrote them in verse. ///. WPE DE RUED A Lope de Rueda. Lope de Rueda is the first entremesista whose work has been preserved to any considerable extent. He was born in Seville in or about the year 1510. Tradition says that he was a gold-beater by trade, but early in life he turned actor and rose to be manager and playwright. He was strongly under Italian influence, and, as there is no record that he ever set foot in Italy, there is plausibility in A. L. Stiefel's conjecture that he may have learned his stagecraft from Muzio's Italian troupe which gave performances in Seville in or around 1538.* For many years, until his death in 1565, Lope was a strolling manager. There is a record that he once performed before Philip II, but in the main his audiences were democratic. It is his chief service that he brought the drama to the people and created that demand to which his followers so lavishly catered. Lope's serious plays, his Comedias and Colloquios are little more than translations of Italian, models. We are here con- cerned solely with his farces. * Cf. Stiefel, Zeitschrijt fur romaniscke Philologie, XV, 320. INTRODUCTION XV Lope's pasos. The word paso, " incident," fitly describes the action, which is of the simplest. A husband and wife quarrel over the price to be asked for a crop of olives, though the tree has just been planted. Two rogues get a free dinner by bamboozling a stupid servant out of the provisions he is carrying. A doctor's servant impersonates his master and prescribes to various patients. The pasos preserved number thirteen, not counting the doubtful Farsa del sordo. This last is in verse, but all the authentic pasos are in prose, lacking the final song and dance of the later entremes. A. L. Stiefel believes that the pasos are as Italian in their inspiration as Lope's other work. There may be an element of truth in this conjecture, but one finds it hard to believe that anything more than the comic situations were taken from non-Spanish sources. The language is so idiomatic as to preclude the idea of mere translation, and many of the types could have developed nowhere but on Spanish soil. Lope's Comic Types. With Lope de Rueda the gallery of comic types, the beginnings of which can already be seen in the works of Juan del Encina and of Diego Sanchez de Badajoz, is almost complete. Cervantes and his followers invent little new in the way of farce personages; and most of them were already traditional in Spain before Lope's time. Let us now indicate the more important of these types and their characteristics. Few farces lack the bobo, or simple. He is usually a servant, and in most cases is named Lorenzo. He is an easy butt of ridicule, arousing mirth through his ignorance and stupidity. He is the opposite of the gracioso, clown, of the comedia, who is nearly always intelligent. Never- theless, the bobo often turns the tables on his tormentors, and sometimes the simple combines mother wit with extreme ignorance. The bobo is hopelessly stupid; the simple may be intelligent within his limited sphere. Another butt of ridicule is the vejete, or old man, a less dignified figure than the barba of the comedia. He is the deceived husband of a giddy young XVI INTRODUCTION wife, or the outwitted father of a headstrong daughter. He is miserly, suspicious, and credulous. He and the bobo receive the major portion of the beatings. Few farces lacked the barber, merry, talkative, fond of danc- ing and guitar-playing. He was indispensable to the success of song and dance. The sacristdn, or sexton, is equally im- portant. He is a lady's man whose wooing is seldom without success. He has a propensity to drunkenness, and, when not in the presence of the educated, interlards his lines with scraps of bad Latin. This dissolute rogue is the sole representative of the clergy. Actors of the later period did not dare intro- duce priests and monks upon the comic stage. Such darts of satire as were directed against the church had to fall upon this figure, half priest, half layman. The doctor is always pedantic, unskilled, wholly without heart and conscience, a murderer of his patients. The lawyer has none of the shrewd- ness associated with the legal profession; he is an ignora- mus easy to deceive. The student is always an unscrupulous young rogue, slovenly in attire, and suffering from the itch and chronic starvation. The Page, too, is starving, but gluttonous when he gets the chance. His mischief is of a more childish sort. The alguacil was cruel, tyrannical, and venal. It de- lighted an audience to see the representatives of the law treated with a lack of respect. There were other types who raised a laugh by the dialects they spoke; such as the French pedlar whom the authors in their ignorance frequently made to speak Italian. The negro and the negress had many of the traits which we associate with the race. They were extravagant in ideas, fond of big words, and spoke an amusing jargon. The Moor is represented as overfond of pork and wine, the Koran to the contrary notwith- standing. His patois is rich in sibilants. But nobody mur- dered the king's Castilian to quite the same extent as did the Biscayan. He shares with the montanes an amusing pride of ancestry. The Galician has always been an object of mockery INTRODUCTION XV11 in Spain for his thickheadedness and uncouth demeanor. Gypsies frequently appear, usually to display their characteristic dances. Other common types are the apothecary, the miser, the astrologer, never taken seriously, the arbitrista, the man fertile in expedients to promote the welfare of the State, poor country hidalgos, starving victims of a mistaken pride, rustic alcaldes, ignorant of the duties of their office, makers of Solo- monic decisions, the love-lorn Portuguese, and others of lesser importance. Many an entremes had a pair of lovers, essential to the feeble plot, but hardly to be classed as comic parts. The lively maid servant also plays an important role. Paso Septimo. This paso is the seventh included in the collection of Lope de Rueda's plays called El deleitoso, Valencia, 1567, edited and published by Juan Timoneda. The title here given is correct, though the farce is commonly called Las aceitunas, a name invented for it by Leandro Fernandez de Moratin, who was the first modern scholar to make the little play widely known by including it in his Origenes del teatro espanol, post- humously published, Madrid, 1830. The present text is in the main that of Cotarelo y Mori. In one instance a variant read- ing, supported by Fuensanta del Valle and Moratin, has been adopted. There are several variations from Cotarelo's punc- tuation. No exact source for this farce has ever been indicated, but it appears to be the dramatization of a folk-lore theme closely related to the stories comprised in the " Castles in Spain " cycle. The most famous analogue is the fable of the milkmaid and her pail of milk. The oldest known form of this story, The Monk and his Plans, first appears in the Oriental Kalilah. In Spanish literature we find it in the Calila et Digna. It was later retold by Juan Manuel, Enxiemplo VII, De lo que contescio a una muger quel dizian donna Truhana. The Portuguese, Gil Vicente, used this theme in his Auto da Mofina Mendes. La Fontaine has given the subject its most artistic treatment. To the same group belong Ihe Story of the Barber's Fifth Brother in the Arabian Nights' Entertainment and Lazy Harry (der faule Heinz), No. 164 in Grimm's Household Tales. Numerous other analogues are XV111 INTRODUCTION instanced by the following authorities: Chauvin, Bibliographic des outrages arabes, Liege, 1897, II, 101, and Liege, 1901, V, 162; Juan Manuel, El libra de los enxiemplos del Conde Lucanor el de Patronio (edited by Knust), Leipzig, 1900, pp. 316-8; The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry (edited by Crane), London, 1890, p. 155; Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop, London, 1875, IV, US- The following translations are useful: The Olives, translated by G. H. Lewis, in The Spanish Drama, London, 1845; The Seventh Farce of Lope de Rueda, translated by W. H. H. Chambers, in The Drama, Vol. VI, London, 1903; in German, Die Oliven, translated by Moriz Rapp, in Spanisches Theater, Leipzig, n.d. For English translations of Spanish plays in general, see E. C. Hills, A Catalogue of English Translations of Spanish Plays, in Romanic Review, X, July-Sept., 1919, and reprinted, with additions, in Hispania, March, 1920. IV. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA Cervantes. The next great figure in this genre, after Lope de Rueda, is Cervantes (1547-1616), who was most active as a dramatic writer between the years 1582 and 1587. Whether any of the twenty or thirty plays then written, and which were so fortunate as to be acted " without offering of cucumbers or other missile substance," were entremeses, we do not know. His eight authentic farces, published in Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, nunca representados, all belong to his later years. Nearly all contain allusions showing that they were written in the early seventeenth century. All but two are mostly in prose. El rufian viudo and La election de los alcaldes de Daganzo are written in eleven syllable blank verse. All end with the song and dance which had become general since the actor Alonso Martinez invented the baile cantado at some time around 1 500. This innovation appears to be only an extension of the mllancico ending which Encina and some of the older dramatists had used. INTRODUCTION xix Cervantes' entremeses owe much to Lope de Rueda's pasos. The comic types are the same; there is the same racy use of the popular language by both writers. But Cervantes is the superior in humor and universality. As a writer of serious plays Cervantes ranks low. As a writer of entremeses he is superior to all his predecessors and successors. The restrictions of the dramatic form embarrassed a writer who loved to let his thoughts flow at random, and who wrote with- out previous, careful planning. If he lacked the dramatic sense, he had at the same time one of the dramatist's most priceless gifts, the art of making his characters live, of causing them to converse naturally and vivaciously. In the most formless of dramatic forms he excelled. Next to his Don Quijote and the Novelas Ejemplares, the Entremeses are the best work of Cervantes. Every one of these is good. The two best are La cueva de Salamanca, included in this collection, and La guarda cuidadosa, describing the rival suits of a sacristan and a soldier for the favors of a fregona. But it is difficult to make a choice. El Vizcaino fingido is amusingly true to human nature. El retablo de las maravillas tells a folk-lore story familiar to readers of Juan Manuel and Hans Christian Andersen. The most thoughtful of all is El juez de los divorcios, in which one is tempted to see a reflection of the author's own marital troubles, cheerfully accepted with the thought that " the worst agreement is better than the best divorce." The Rufidn viudo is among the best for its convincing realism. La election de los alcaldes 'de Daganzo pokes fun at those rustic officials with whom Cervantes had had so many unpleasant dealings. El viejo celoso treats in jesting wise the same theme more seriously developed in the story of El celoso estremeno. Menendez y Pelayo thinks that Cervantes' entremeses suggest sketches made in prepara- tion for the finished pictures of the Novelas ejemplares. This characterization is apt, except for the evident fact that the pictures preceded the sketches. XX INTRODUCTION If Cervantes' entremeses were not acted during his lifetime, time has brought its revenge; for they are possibly the only farces of the period ever acted at the present day, and no other plays of the sort were so often copied by subsequent entremesistas. Meanwhile farces were being written by the hundreds and thousands. Most of them were shorter than Cervantes' interludes, and as the century wore on, those in prose became fewer, and the typical meter of eleven and seven syllable lines, varied with the frequent use of the native ballad verse, became the standard farce form. La cueva de Salamanca. Mediaeval and Renaissance writers never tired of telling the various devices by which flirtatious young wives, aided by their lovers, contrived to deceive their doting husbands. It is the stock situation of the French fableaux and the Italian novelle. Many of these tales are of Oriental origin, but the variations invented by later writers are without number. Schack and Klein have pointed out certain similarities between Cervantes' farce and Hans Sachs' Fastnachtsspiel, Der jarendt Schuler im Paradeiss, in which a student deceives a simple country couple by pretending to possess magic powers. Giannini points out certain similarities with the second novel of the seventh day in Boccaccio's Decamerone. But it is easy and profitless to multiply such analogues. Cervantes has taken one of the most hackneyed of themes and made it original by combining it with a well known Spanish legend. The story is that there existed near Salamanca a cave in which sorcery was taught. A head of bronze, placed over a chair, imparted " superhuman magic in a human voice." Of every seven persons who visited the cave for instruction, one never returned. The earliest literary allusions to the Cueva date from the fifteenth century. Ruis de Alarc6n's Cueva de Salamanca and Rojas' Lo que queria ver el Marquis de Villena are other plays treating of this legend. The best study on the subject is Waxman, Chapters on Magic in Spanish Literature, in Revue Hispanique, XXXVIII, 356-366. The belief in the marvels of the Cueva de Salamanca was so persistent among the common people that in the eighteenth century the Padre Feijoo INTRODUCTION Xxi felt called upon to write a Discurso sobre las Cuevas de Salamanca y Toledo to explode this widespread superstition. Biblioteca de autores espanoles, LVT, 374. At least eight other entremeses were written in imitation of this. The most notable was Calder6n's Dragoncillo. It also furnished libretti for comic operas in Spain, France, and Germany. For full information, see Armando Cotarelo y Valledor, El teatro de Cervantes, Madrid, 1915, Pt. Ill, ch. ii. No English translation has ever been made. Little good can be said of the French translation found in Royer, Theatre de Michel Cervantes, Paris, 1862. There are two good German versions: Schack, Spanisches Theater, Leipzig, 1845, an d Kurz, Spanisches Theater, Vol. II, Leipzig, 1868. There is also one good Italian translation: Giannini, M. Cervantes, GV Intermezzi, Lanciano, 1915. The text here published is that of Schevill-Bonilla modernized as to spelling. Los dos habladores. Besides Cervantes' eight authentic farces, others have been attributed to him. The most likely attribution is that of Los dos habladores. It was first printed in the Seventh Part of the Obras de Lope de Vega, Madrid, 1617, and attributed to that author. Lope, however, on a later occasion expressly denied the authorship of the farces included in that volume. In 1646 it was reprinted, under the name of Cervantes, in a miscellaneous collection edited by a bookseller of Cadiz. Nobody who knows how careless the publishers of the time were in assigning authorship, will attach much weight to this evidence; nor is the style alone a sufficient criterion to enable one to decide one way or the other. One can only say that the playlet .is worthy of Cervantes, and is not unlike his manner. This, one of the most genial of Spanish farces, is one of a vast number of " diamond cut diamond " plays, the underlying idea of which is that the proper method of dealing with a perverse woman is to treat her to a liberal dose of her own medicine. In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare provides a masterful husband for a cantankerous wife. It was a commonplace in the Spanish drama that the love of a scornful beauty could only be gained by one who affected equal indifference. A Beatrice 3001 INTRODUCTION required a Benedict. Of the many plays which treat this theme in Spanish literature, Moreto's El desden con el desdtn is the most celebrated. Naturally, a talkative woman could only be cured of her vice by a superior talker. No entremes was oftener copied than this. Quinones de Benavente imitated it in his Las habladoras. Ram6n de la Cruz used the idea in two sainetes: El hablador and El padrino y el pretendiente. Ventura de la Vega wrote: Un hablador sempiterno. In the National Library of Madrid there exists in manuscript a play, El hablador, by Jos6 Vall6s, a seventeenth century author. For other imitations, see Cotarelo y Valledor, El teatro de Cer- vantes, Pt. IV, ch. iv. An excellent English translation has been made by Edith Fahnestock and Florence Donnell White, The Talkers, in The Colonnade, XII, July, 1916. Henri de Curzon has given a lively French rendering, Les deux bavards, Toulouse, 1900. This supersedes Royer's previous poor translation. Hermann Kurz has achieved a very good German translation: Die beiden Plapper- zungen, Spanisches Theater, Vol. I, Leipzig, n.d. The text here given is based upon that of Bonilla y San Martin, Entremeses de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Madrid, 1916. Bonilla follows the manuscript of the Biblioteca Colombina, whose readings are more authentic than those of the first edition, Septima parte de las obras de Lope de Vega Carpio, Madrid, 1617. Bonilla's reprint is sparingly annotated. This entremes is not reprinted in the Schevill-Bonilla edition. The best reprint of the 1617 text is that of Cotarelo y Mori, Coleccidn de entremeses. El entremes de los refranes has also been fathered upon Cervantes, but with no good reason. In fact the evidence points the other way. Cervantes, to be sure, had a rich stock of proverbs, but his use of refranes was entirely different. He would distort them, twist them inside out, and introduce them in hit or miss fashion without the slightest application. In the Entremes de los refranes, on the contrary, each proverb is pat and to the point. This farce may stand as a specimen of a special kind of entremes where the interest depended not upon the char- acters but upon some triumph of ingenuity. To make a set of characters talk almost exclusively in proverbs was a tour de INTRODUCTION XX111 force. In the Entremts de los romances the dialogue is a piecing together of ballad fragments. El entremes de los apodos is a vast collection of abusive epithets. El entremes de las civilidades is a collection of hackneyed idioms. There were others whose lines were nothing more than a stringing together of the titles of favorite plays. Such freakish efforts are curious rather than important. This farce was first printed from a manuscript hi the Biblioteca Colombina by its discoverer, Jose Maria Ascensio, who pub- lished it in 1870, confidently assigning it to Cervantes. In spite of any sufficient evidence in support of this claim, Adolfo de Castro upheld the same view when he reprinted the work in his Varias obras ineditas de Cervantes, Madrid, 1874. Sbarbi, too, published it in his Refranero general, Vol. VII. Subsequent critics have been more cautious. The anonymous author uses his proverbs very differently from the way Cervantes used his. The evidence is against rather than for Cervantes as an author. The only translation of the piece is one into Catalan: Cayetano Vidal de Valenciano, El entremes de refranes es de Cervantes? Ensayo de su traduccldn. Estudio critico-literario, Barcelona, 1883. This author strove to prove that Quevedo wrote the piece, and Quevedo certainly achieved something very similar in his Cuento de cuentos. Others have suggested Quinones de Benavente. To be frank, one guess is as good as another. Whoever the unknown author was, he was a man of ingenuity and cleverness. Despite the richness of the Spanish refranero, it was no easy task to write a dialogue wholly in proverbs, save for a few linking phrases. Each proverb is pat and furthers the thought. The whole device is artificial, but less so than might be supposed. The Spaniard tends so naturally to express his thoughts in proverb form that with only a slight degree of ex- aggeration we may imagine a whole conversation so conducted. Plot and characters have, however, been sacrificed. The whole interest in this farce lies in the proverbs themselves. No other language is so rich as Spanish in its proverbs and proverbial expressions. We find these in the earliest literary monuments, the Poem of the Cid, Juan Ruiz's Libra de buen amor, and the Corbacho of the Archpriest of Talavera. In the Renais- XXIV INTRODUCTION sance period they are abundant in such works as Celestina and Don Quijote. Even to-day most Spanish authors make liberal use of them. The first formal collection dates from the early fifteenth century, Refranes que dizen las viejas tras el fuego, attributed to the Marqu6s de Santillana; see Revue His- panique, XXV. The best dictionary of proverbs is Gonzalo Correas, Vocabulario de refranes, Madrid, 1906. This monu- mental work was written about 1626 and was only recently printed. It contains many thousands of proverbs, and is a mine of information, but should be reclassified and printed in a form less difficult to use. Much information is also to be found in Sbarbi's bulky but unscholarly Refranero general, 10 vols., Madrid, 1874-1878. The origins of the proverbs are most diverse. Some refranes are the outgrowth of folk tales. Sometimes the stories on which they are based have been preserved, sometimes they are lost. Other proverbs are aphorisms of Classic or Oriental origin. Others embody popular superstitions. Still others are snatches from ballads or popular songs. Some originated in historic happenings or events of local significance. Nearly all give evidence of the wit, common sense, and native sagacity of the peasant class. Cervantes defines them as " brief maxims drawn from long and intelligent experience." And he makes Don Quijote say: " It seems to me, Sancho, that there is no proverb which is not true." Cotarelo's reprinting of the farce in his Coleccidn de entremeses is based upon De Castro's text. We, too, follow De Castro, accepting a few of Cotarelo's corrections. V. LUIS QUI NONES DE BENAVENTE Benavente. Next to Cervantes, the greatest name in the history of the entremes is that of Luis Quinones de Be- navente (i58g?-i65i). We know little about Benavente's life. He was a native of Toledo, a man of kindly disposition who never engaged in the acrid literary controversies of the time. Tirso refers to him as one " who has never spoken ill INTRODUCTION XXV of poet." Hence all dramatists of the time sing his praises; and well they might, for a Benavente farce between the acts of a mediocre play often saved the latter from disaster. Ac- cording to contemporary accounts, he never wrote a comedia; but his activity as a writer of entremeses and bailes was pro- digious. He began writing farces for the stage about 1609. Tirso, in his Tanto es lo de mas como lo de menos, supposedly written in 1620, tells us that by that time Benavente had written 300 entremeses. Cotarelo estimates that his total output of farces was about 900. Besides these he wrote nu- merous bailes. What Lope de Vega did for the comedia, Bena- vente did for the entremes. He gave it its definitive form. Like most of the writers for the stage of his time, he cared little for the children of his fancy. We are indebted to the good offices of a friend for the preservation of 36 farces, pub- lished under the title of Jocoseria in 1645. Others have sur- vived in manuscript form, or were published, often attributed to another, in miscellaneous collections. Benavente's Innovations. Taking the stock characters of the Spanish comic repertoire, he makes them speak and move upon the boards with a grace hitherto unknown. He had a genius for comic situation and dialogue. In addition, he is noted for his fertility of invention though, to be sure, some of his plays are the reworking of old material. Nobody was his equal in supplying the verse of bailes, that slightest of dramatic forms, the dramatized dance. He invented new forms of the entremes, such as the entremes cantado, a miniature comic opera, the forerunner of the modern zarzuela. He is credited with many another innovation besides. Cervantes and Benavente. Benavente was the king of Spanish farce comedy for over 30 years. No other was so successful in tickling the popular fancy. If he knew no serious rival during his lifetime, the same may be said with reference to his predecessors and successors, with the single exception of Cervantes. And yet Spanish critics have probably over- XXVI INTRODUCTION estimated his literary worth. We may freely admit that Benavente had wit, grace, charm, lightness of touch, delicacy of fancy, native refinement, dramatic sense, skill in the use of dialogue; but he lacked universality. For this alone he ranks second to Cervantes as an entremesista. Cervantes is uni- versal in his appeal when writing farces, as when writing novels, because the source of his comedy is human nature. While distinctly a Spaniard of his day and age, Cervantes' understanding of human nature makes him, like Moliere, a writer for all peoples. Benavente's humor depends too much upon allusions to events of the day, to customs peculiar to the passing moment. The point of many of his jokes escapes us. He is local and temporary in his appeal. The qualities which endeared him to his generation alienate him from us. The words used by Fitzmaurice-Kelly in making a similar com- parison between Cervantes and Lope de Vega apply equally well in this case.* El Doctor y el enfermo. This farce will give a good idea of the way doctors were satirized during the seventeenth century. The plot is a commonplace one and was repeated in many sub- sequent entremeses. Very similar are Moreto's La burla de Pantoja, the anonymous El doctor Soleta (published 1691), and that side-splitting farce of Jos6 Julian de Castro, El informe sin forma. The plot of this last is almost identical, although it is a lawyer instead of a doctor who is wheedled out of his daughter. The present text is based upon that of Cotarelo y Mori, Coleccidn de entremeses. A few obvious errors have been corrected. VI. OTHER ENTREMESISTAS Nearly all the great Spanish dramatists of the Golden Age attempted the entremts. Curiously, we have no single farce of undoubted authenticity from the pen of Lope de Vega. Tirso has given us only a few, and most of those attributed * Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Litterature Espagnole, Paris, 1913, p. 316. INTRODUCTION XXV11 to him are the work of other authors. Calderon wrote several excellent ones. Quevedo, Luis Velez de Guevara, Cancer, Matos Fragoso tried their hand at it. Moreto was one of the most successful of the entremesistas. His farces still await a collector. In gathering entremeses for this book the editor has been surprised to see how many of the best are anonymous. Now and then some obscure writer surpassed the farces of more distinguished authors. Entr ernes del espejo y burla de Pablillos (Anonymous). This entremes is composed of two distinct episodes which recur separately in many different farces. Cotarelo traces the second episode back to a sixteenth century entremes, El capeador. He also indicates points of similarity in another play of the same century, Los ladrones. The mirror episode was used by Quinones de Benavente in El boiicario. This last farce is clearly subse- quent in point of time to the one here printed, which, lacking as it does a final letra, must be very old. I have also found the mirror device in another old farce, El entremes del espejo y de la oisita de la cdrcel. La Barrera lists two other farces, El espejo and Los espejos with whose content the editor is unfamiliar. Our play was first printed in the Arcadia de entremeses, Madrid, 1723. The present text is based upon that of Vicente Garcia de la Huerta, Theatro Hespanol, Madrid, 1785. We have collated this carefully with two other suelta editions found in the Ticknor Collection: Madrid, 1812, For la viuda de Ibarra, and another without indication of place, year, or printer. Garcia de la Huerta's text is on the whole very accurate. This farce has been translated by Rouanet, Intermedes es- pagnols du XV IP siecle, Paris, 1897. Juan Rana comilon (Anonymous). This farce is one of the infinite variations of the " deceived husband " theme. The plot moves with such swiftness and comic force that one almost for- gets the impossibility of its central situation. An admirable French translation of it may be found in Leo Rouanet, Inter- medes espagnols du XV IP siecle, Paris, 1897. This was one of those plays written especially for Juan Rana, Johnny Frog, the most famous of Spanish clowns. Juan Rana XXV111 INTRODUCTION was the stage name of a certain Cosme P6rez, born in Madrid toward the close of the sixteenth century, and dying in 1672. He was already a famous gracioso in 1617, and continued to act comic r61es until over eighty. We are told that his mere appear- ance on the stage sent an audience into convulsions of laughter before he spoke a word. Cosme Perez was a man of property and reputed to be an excellent citizen. A few years before his death, 1668, the aged actor was recalled from his retirement to play in the palace gardens before Charles II in a specially pre- pared entrem.es, El triunfo de Juan Rana. Juan Rana was king of the clowns for over 50 years. The origin of his stage name is not wholly clear. He made it as famous a name as that of Harlequin or Brighella. He was a real Spanish mask. For the biography of Cosme P6rez, see Cotarelo y Mori, Coleccion de entremeses, pp. clvii-clxiii. This play was first printed in the Arcadia de entremeses, Pamplona, 1700, and was reprinted in a similar collection with identical title, Madrid, 1723. These early collections were as a rule nothing more than villainously printed broadsides, sueltas, bound together. We have based our text on a very unreliable suelta, published in Sevilla, without date, by Joseph Padrino, and now in the Ticknor Collection, Boston. Rouanet's original seems to have had the same faults. The National Library, Madrid, possesses an eighteenth century manuscript of this play; see Paz y Melia, Catdlogo, no. 1674. Entr ernes de los bunuelos (Anonymous). This farce seems to hark back to Lope de Rueda's Paso quinto of El deleitoso. La Barrera invented for it the title, La tierra de Jauja. It relates how two sharpers obtained a free dinner at the expense of a bobo. Quinones de Benavente's Talego-nino likewise comes from Lope's paso. Our play, in turn, was rewritten under the title La burla (or baile) de los bunuelos. It has been translated by Rouanet in his Intermedes espagnols. The National Library of Madrid possesses two eighteenth century manuscripts of Los bunuelos, both differing slightly from the text here given, to judge by the first and last lines. See Paz y Melia, Catdlogo, no. 421. It was first printed in the Arcadia de entremeses, Pam- plona, 1700. The editor has based the present text on a suelta, INTRODUCTION XXIX lacking all indication of place, date, and printer, possessed by the Ticknor Collection. This text is far more reliable than was the case with that of Juan Rana comilon. El hambriento (Anonymous). This is a variant of the celebrated " Barmecide Feast " story, as told in The Story of the Barber's Sixth Brother of the Arabian Nights' Entertain- ment. The barber's brother, a beggar, enters one day the palace of a prince. The latter receives him with every sign of hospitality, and invites him to sit down at table. Servants bring a succession of empty dishes and glasses, and the prince praises in turn each of the imaginary viands. The beggar, seeing he is being made the victim of a practical joke, so enters into the spirit of the trick that he unites in his host's praises of the imaginary feast. Finally, pretending to be intoxicated, he strikes the prince in the face. The latter, instead of being offended, is pleased by this evidence of wit, and lavishes hos- pitality upon the beggar for a period of twenty years. Varia- tions of this theme, many like the present one only remotely similar, are frequent among the entremeses. Among these may be mentioned Quinones de Benavente's El convidado, Calder6n's like named play, and Luis V61ez de Guevara's La sarna de los banquetes. Moreto's El hambriento is a wholly distinct play. Villaviciosa also has a play with the same title. See Cotarelo y Mori, Coleccion de entremeses, p. cxlvi, for a list of starving- student plays. The text is based upon that of Vicente de la Huerta. The present editor has collated with it a suelta edition, Madrid, 1812, For la viuda de Ibarra, found in the Ticknor Collection. The Sainete. The eighteenth century was a period of degeneration for every form of Spanish literature. The entremes, like more ambitious genres, underwent decay. It continued to be written after the old pattern, and was dear to the populace, though despised by critics under French influence. As time went on entremeses became so obscene as to create scandal. The Council of Castile suppressed them in 1780. But in dying the entremes gave birth to a new form, the sainete. XXX INTRODUCTION The word sainete originally meant " titbit." Theatrical titbits were of many kinds. During the Renaissance period the term is loosely applied to any sort of theatrical diversion, and was often exactly synonymous with baile or entremes. Later, sainete was the designation of the entremes produced between the second and third acts. The word acquired its specialized meaning toward the end of the eighteenth century. It may now be denned as follows: a comic, one act theatrical piece, longer than the entremes, introducing more characters, and with a somewhat more ambitious plot, portraying real- istically various social types, and satirizing human vices and foibles. It is commonly acted after a longer play. The chief exponent of this genre is Ramon de la Cruz y Cano. VII. RAMdN DE LA CRUZ Y CANO Ramon de la Cruz (1731-1794) was an aristocrat with demo- cratic leanings. He began his literary career with a conscien- tious attempt to write tragedies according to the French formula. They were as insipid as most plays of the sort written in Spain. He sought relief by translating Hamlet into Castilian, 1772, thus giving Spaniards their first opportunity to make ac- quaintance with Shakespeare. These early exercises taught him his limitations. He learned that he could succeed as a dramatist solely by departing from current literary dogma, by treating Spanish subjects for the amusement of Spaniards, by adapting old forms to present conditions, by uniting realism with humor after the fashion of his race. He chose as his form of expression the sainete. Ramon de la Cruz's Critical and Dramatic System. In his prologue in reply to a hostile critic, the Italian, Signorelli, Ramon de la Cruz expounds his critical system with acuteness.* * Ramon de la Cruz, Coleccion de sainetes (ed. by Agustin Duran), Madrid, 1843, xxxi-xlvi. INTRODUCTION XXXI Like Lope de Vega he writes for the vulgo; but he does not hold with Lope that the masses are wrong. On the contrary, he trusts the instinctive judgment of the people rather than the pronouncements of the critical defenders of modern pseudo- classicism. He appeals constantly from these to the ancient writers whom they had. as he thought, misinterpreted. He prefers to seek his classicism at the fountain-head. He holds with Montaigne that humanity is prone to frame for every- thing laws which it is incapable of observing. That, he says, is what French and Italian critics have done. The ancients dared to copy nature, to observe and describe. If the old entremeses, he asks, paint exactly the civil life of the Spaniards, and rebuke vice and triumphant folly, was not this the aim of Menander, Plautus, Terence, and all great comedians ancient and modern? He has no doubt regarding the truthfulness of his own dramatic portraits. He asks proudly: " In a word, all those of you who have seen my sainetes reduced to the short space of twenty-five minutes of acting . . . say whether or no they are copies of what your eyes see and your ears hear . . . and whether my pictures do not represent the history of our century." He appreciated, what subsequent critics have never ceased to proclaim, that he, Ramon de la Cruz, is the best historian of Spanish culture as it existed toward the end of the eighteenth century. He boldly defends his realism in putting common, ungrammatical, and sometimes low expressions into the mouths of his personages. " To copy vulgar actions and turn them into ridicule, the poet must think like the sages, and talk like the common people." This strikes the keynote of the dramatic system of Ramon de la Cruz. Observe human nature and manners closely, transfer real life to the stage so that its realism will be convincing, but let the whole be informed with the spirit of philosophy. As a critic, Ramon de la Cruz is original for his time, modern in his point of view, and fundamentally sound. As a dramatist he deserves a niche adjacent to that of Goldoni. XXX11 INTRODUCTION Ramon de la Cruz's Gallery of Types. Ramon de la Cruz's portrait gallery is far richer than those of the earlier enlreme- sistas. His characters are no longer the conventionalized types, but photographic in their truthfulness to nature; photographic, not stereotyped. All social classes, all walks of life are de- picted. The author reveals to us the frivolous lertulias of his own aristocratic circle; snuff -taking gentlemen with rapier and wig, wearing the knee breeches of the period; young fops dancing attendance upon their beribboned and beflounced sweethearts, vying with the inevitable abate and the ever- present French perruquier for a moment of the fair one's time. We see a futile society seeking vainly to conceal its ignorance beneath a veneer of French culture. Like other observers of his time, Ramon de la Cruz found the nation's real strength in the primitive virtues of the lower classes. He seems to have had most affection for his lowly characters. But he does not flatter demos. His manolos and manolas are only a degree less brutal as he depicts them than they were in real life. He chooses by preference for the scene of a sainele some teeming street in the Lavapies or Mara- villas district, the courtyard of some overcrowded tenement, a public promenade, the site of some fair along the banks of the Manzanares. He crowds the boards with merchants, artisans, beggars, charlatans, peasants in from the country, their wives and sweethearts. All these wrangle, make love, exchange repartees, converse in dialect, slang, and bad gram- mar. There is much bustle and animation; for Don Ramon knew how to handle a crowd. Out of the hurlyburly emerges some slender plot, seldom without its thesis or attack upon some abuse or folly. Now that the types described have dis- appeared forever, we still feel the fidelity of these Goyaesque portraits. Las tertuliasde Madrid was first produced in Madrid in 1770. It was one of the most popular and frequently acted of the author's works. It exposes the hollowness and insincerity of INTRODUCTION XXX111 high society, and preaches the simple moral that " A friend in need is a friend indeed." In comparing this sainete with the earlier entremeses we feel at once that we are moving in a more modern atmosphere. The hearty robustness of the old farces is replaced by a subtler humor, greater refinement, and lightness of touch. The situation portrayed is scarcely probable; neither is the character of Dona Ines well handled. She is rendered too odious in the early portion of the play ever to recover a place in the reader's esteem. The sainetes dealing with the popular types of Madrid are better specimens of Ramon de la Cruz's manner; but difficulties of language make them less available for text-book purposes. The present text is that of Agustin Duran, Coleccion de sainetes tanto impresos como ineditos de D. Ramon de la Cruz, Madrid, 1843- The Zarzuela. Another service of Ramon de la Cruz was the popularization of the zarzttela, the form which, as we have seen, evolved out of Benavente's entremes cantado. In the course of the eighteenth century the zarzuela had become more and more the exclusive possession of royalty and the aristocracy, its new name deriving from the Zarzuela Palace. The playlet so designated is a happy combination of dialogue, song, and dance. The zarzuela continues to-day the most popular and distinctive form the Spaniards have. This is not the place to trace the nineteenth century development of the g&nero chko. The popularity of the short play has been so great as to menace the very existence of the longer ones, a regrettable circum- stance, in spite of the literary excellence of many of these shorter productions. Originally subordinate to the three-act play and seldom acted apart from a longer production, to-day it is the short play that holds the stage. Many Spanish theaters produce only short pieces. The evening's enter- tainment is divided into " sections " of one hour each, each section devoted to a different playlet. This arrangement is popular with those who lack money, time, or patience to devote a whole afternoon or evening to the theater. Most of such XXXIV INTRODUCTION plays are trifling and without literary merit, but occasionally a little masterpiece appears. Even the worst have a grace and charm wanting in the forms of theatrical entertainment provided for the masses in our country. And in view of what Spanish dramatists are achieving, the danger that the more ambitious drama will be crowded out may be dismissed as slight. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE I. GENERAL WORKS Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Coleccidn de enlre.meses, has, bailes, jdcaras y mojigangas desde fines del sigloXVI a mediados del XVII I, 2 vols., Madrid, 1911 (vols. XVII and XVIII of La nueva bi- blioteca de autores espanoles). The introduction contains a mass of information concerning the short dramatic forms for the period treated. It is the most extensive work on the entremes yet printed, but is often uncritical, and leaves certain important aspects of the subject untreated. All of Cervantes' Interludes are printed, and it is the best work to consult for the early anonymous farces, and those of Quinones de Benavente, Salas Barbadillo, Castillo Sol6rzano. Contains many has, bailes, etc. Leo Rouanet, Intermedes espagnols duXVII e siecle, Paris, 1897. The introduction is the most delightful study on the enlremeses ever written. Students able to read French should not fail to consult it. Nineteen farces are translated into French, with notes. The translator has been guided by a fine, discriminating taste in making his selections. Winifred Smith, The Commedia deWarte, New York, 1912. The best introduction to the subject of the Italian improvised comedy, for English-speaking students. An excellent bibli- ography of the subject. Bartoli, Scenari inediti della commedia dell'arte, Florence, 1880. A collection of scenarios, with a valuable introduction. Emilio del Cerro, Nel regno delle maschere, Naples, 1914- One of the most recent and valuable treatments of the subject. INTRODUCTION XXXV II. LOPE DE RUEDA Lope de Rueda, Obras, edited by Fuensanta del Valle, 2 vols., Madrid, 1895-1896. Unsatisfactory as to text. Lope de Rueda, Qbras, edited by E. Cotarelo y Mori, 2 vols., Madrid, 1908. Little, if any, better as to text. The vocabulary is especially unreliable. Lope de Rueda, El registro de representantes, edited by Bonilla y San Martin, Madrid, 1917. Much better as to text. A. L. Stiefel, " Lope de Rueda und das italienische Lustspiel," \nZeitschriftfiir romanische Philologie, XV, 183-216 and 318-343. The most important scholarly article devoted to Lope. His Italian sources are indicated. III. CERVANTES Entremeses de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, edited by Bonilla y San Martin, Madrid, 1918. The text is a decided improve- ment upon that of earlier editions. The eight authentic farces and Los dos habladores are included. Many of the notes are valuable. No attempt has been made to solve a great many difficulties in the text; to do so is probably beyond the power of any single editor. Obras completas de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Comedias y entremeses, Tomo IV, Edited by Schevill and Bonilla, Madrid, 1918. Virtually a reprint of the above. A few notes have been added. Los dos habladores is omitted. Adolfo de Castro, Varias obras ineditas de Cervantes, Madrid, 1874. Most of the plays here included are apocryphal or doubt- ful. Contains the Entremes de refranes. Armando Cotarelo y Valledor, El teatro de Cervantes, Madrid, 1915. A very extensive work which, while it contains little new and original material, brings under one cover most of what others have written about Cervantes' dramatic works. M. A. Buchanan, " Cervantes as a Dramatist. I. The Interludes," in Modern Language Notes, XXXIII, 183-186. The best study on the dating of these plays. XXXVI INTRODUCTION Edith Fahnestock and Florence Donnell White, The Talkers, The Colonnade, XII, and The Judge of the Divorce Court, Ibid., XIII. These translations, though expurgated and at times somewhat free, have caught the spirit of the original. Cervantes, GV Intermezzi, translated by A. Giannini, Lanciano, 1915. An excellent rendering of Cervantes' farces into Italian. Cervantes, Les deux bavards, translated by Henri de Curzon, Toulouse, 1900. An excellent French version. Spanisches Theater, II, Leipzig, n.d. The eight authentic en- tremeses of Cervantes and Los dos habladores, translated into German by Hermann Kurz. For other translations of Cervantes' Interludes, see Rius, Bibliografia de las obras de Cervantes, Madrid, 1895, I, 359362. IV. MISCELLANEOUS Obras de Lope de Vega publicadas par la Real Academia Es- panola, II, Madrid, 1892. Contains several early entremeses wrongly attributed to Lope de Vega. Quevedo, Obras, Biblioteca de autores espanoles, LXIX, Madrid, 1877. Contains Quevedo's dramatic output. Bonilla y San Martin, Entremeses del siglo XVII, alribuidos al Maestro Tirso de Molina, Madrid, 1909. Most of these are wrongly attributed to Tirso. Cotarelo y Mori, Migajas del ingenio, coleccion rarisima de entremeses, bailes y loas, Madrid, 1908. Entremeses by Lanini, Zabaleta, Benavente, and others. Quinones de Benavente, Enlremeses, loas y j&raras, edited by C. Rosell, Libras de Antano, I and II. B. J. Gallardo, Ensayo de una biblioteca espanola de libros raros y curiosos, 4 vols., Madrid, 1863-1889. Contains mis- cellaneous material. Vicente Garcia de la Huerta, Theatro Hespanol, Parte IV, Madrid, 1785. Contains 36 anonymous entremeses. For additional collections of entremeses, see La Barrera, Catdlogo bibliogrdfico y biogrdfico del teatro antiguo espanol, Madrid, 1860, pp. 713-720. INTRODUCTION XXXV11 V. RAMON DE LA CRUZ Y CANO Ram6n de la Cruz y Cano, Tealro, 10 vols., Madrid, 1786-1791. Ramon de la Cruz y Cano, Coleccidn de sainetes, edited by Agustin Duran, 2 vols., Madrid, 1843. Ramon de la Cruz y Cano, Sainetes ineditos en la Biblioteca Municipal de Madrid, edited by C. Cambronero, Madrid, 1900. Sainetes de Don Ramdn de la Cruz, edited by E. Cotarelo y Mori, Madrid, 1915. E. Cotarelo y Mori, Don Ramon de la Cruz y sus obras, Madrid, 1899. The best biography and critical study of this author. B. Perez Galdos, " Don Ram6n de la Cruz y su 6poca," in Revista de Espana, 1870, XVII, 200-227. Antoine de Latour, Sainetes de Ramon de la Cruz, Paris, 1865. A judicious choice of plays, translated into French, with an instructive introductory treatise on the author and his works. PASO SEPTIMO FOR LOPE DE RUEDA LOPE DE RUEDA AUTOR DEL PASO SEPTIMO De un antiguo grabado en madera EN EL CUAL SE INTRODUCEN LAS PERSONAS SIGUIENTES, COMPUESTO FOR LOPE DE RUEDA TORUVIO, simple, viejo. MENCIGUELA, su hija. AGUEDA DE TORUEGANO, su mujer. ALOJA, vecino. TORUVIO. ; Valame Dios y que tempestad ha hecho desdel requebrajo del monte aca, que no parescia sino quel cielo se queria hundir y las nubes venir abajo ! Pues deci agora: