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TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN When renewing by phone, write new due date below previous due date. 78733 L162 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM A THESIS IN ROMANIC LANGUAGES PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WILLIAM SHAFFER JACK PHILADELPHIA 1923 PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF 7 ROMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES NO. 8 To Sly Mother Who lade Jt Possible This Little Work Is Affectionately Dedicated oo oe Oe pew gee al FOREWORD Considering the importance of the place that the entremés holds in the history of the Spanish theatre, but little attention has been given it by way of critical studies either of its origin or its development. The most extensive hitherto is that of Sr. Cotarelo y Mori which serves as one chapter of the intro- duction to his Coleccién de entremeses . . . in volume seventeen of the Nueva Biblioteca de autores espajioles. There are, besides, short articles by Rouanet (Intro. to Intermédes espagnols), Mantuano (Intro. to Entremeses del siglo XVII atribuidos al maestro Tirso de Molina), and Northup (Intro. to Ten Spanish Farces); and Professor J. P. Wickersham Crawford, Bonilla y San Martin, and others have devoted some space to the entremés in works on the sixteenth century Spanish theatre. There still remain, however, many problems unsolved, both as to the origins and the growth of the entremés. The aim of the present work has been to trace a history of both word and form from their earliest known appearances in Spain, and, if it may be, to solve some of the problems related thereto. That there must still remain many points unsettled, is undoubted. This little study cannot seek to be in any wise definitive. The author will be more than satisfied if he shall have succeeded in tracing a clearer outline than has hitherto been available of the growth of the entremés, and in adding somewhat to the knowl- edge of what actually took place before it became a definite and established literary form in Spain. The writer’s heartiest thanks are due the eminent Hispanist, Professor Hugo A. Rennert, both for his counsel in the prepara- tion of this little book, and for having put at the author’s dis- posal his magnificent library of Hispanic works. The author owes an acknowledgment of no slight debt to Professor J. P. Wickersham Crawford for the unfailing interest he has mani- fested throughout the progress of this study, and for his assistance and counsel in its preparation. Thanks are likewise due to Mr. J. A. Meredith for suggestions on a number of points im- portant to a study of the entremés, and for having kindly con- sented to read the proofs. Wisner CONTENTS PAGE RINSE MANOS OL LAs Ch SF cris cel cs mpeg ake Ginko Win wh Gato, Meek RE Ae 5 I The Word Entremés Before Fifteen Hundred........................ 9 II LSEVELOMMeNnt: DelOre_LOpeG Ge RUCdA. oo) uo. ec ce os cd ae ee eens te 39 Iil aamoneuasnueda, Alonso dela: Veda tive. . 6 is Cake cae nas Pee eee e's 74 IV oetene LOGE 1 OCA GS Cet HE ACOTIUT Vaiss 2 o Ske tates cso wom h owed eRe oy 96 Vv que meventeenth Century to Cervantes. 250 v. seins ve wer eens cette’ 109 VI OES NO SIETTG CoS oS Pw, el A CRAs Mega ted MIU id BR i RDN Ti eT Oh at 131 Pay oO le ee ee ee. Pee eS! , ee ‘ ‘ THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 9 THE Worp ENTREMES BEFORE FIFTEEN HUNDRED The use of the word entremés antedates, according to exist- ing documentary evidence, by nearly two centuries, the crea- tion of the genre known to literature by that name. During that period, the word was employed sporadically in a number of meanings more or less closely related, and an exact definition is rendered still more difficult by the frequent use of other terms such as roca, and carro, which were often synonymous with entremés. The aim, therefore, of the first part of the present chapter must be to trace, so far as the scanty and often inconclusive documents of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Spain will permit, the source and history of the term entremés before it was used as the name of a new literary form. While references to similar festivities occur in Spanish docu- ments as early as 1373,' as far as is known, the first occurrence of the term entremés on Spanish soil is found in the description of the festivities that attended the coronation of Dojfia Sibila at Barcelona in the year 1381.2, The passage reads as follows: “Item fou aportat a la derraria del menyar un bell entremes, so es un bell pago3 qui feya la roda y estave en un bell bestimen en torn del cual havia molta bolateria cuyta cuberta de panys dor e dargent e aquest pago fou servit fort altament e presentat a la taula‘ de la dita senyora ab mols esturments axi de corda com d’altres, e venien apart devan lo mayordom e cavallers * Mérimée, L’Art dramatique 4 Valencia, Toulouse, 1913, pp. 11-12. ? The word farce, applied to dramatic performances, is less ancient than entremés. In France, it can be traced back only to 1398. Cf. Beneke, Das Repertoire und die Quellen der franzdsischen Farce, p. 8. 3 ‘‘Les deux mots entremés et sainéte ont l'un et l’autre, on le voit, une origine gastronomique,”’ Rouanet, Intermédes espagnols, p. 39, n. 2. 4 There is a record in Germany as early as Jan. 24, 1417-18 of a play given between courses: “In dem mahl, zvisschen dem Essen, so machten sie solch bild und geberd, als unser Frau ihr Kind unsern Herrn und auch Gott gebahr, mit fast késtlichen Tiichern und Gevvand. .”’ Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, II, 101, n. 2. He thinks it was probably a dumb-show. 10 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: e donsells, e lo dit entremes portave en sos pits una cobla escrita qui deya axi.5 sg The word, as used here, has a certain literary significance, as the copla shows, and has to do with a show-piece. Were it not for the concluding words where it is said that the entremés ‘bore on its breast a copla,’’ which can refer only to the peacock, there might be some reason to believe that by entremés the writer had in mind not only the dish but the presentation and the music as well. But while the word itself seems here to apply to the dish alone, the text of the passage shows clearly that there was an entertainment very much like entremets of a some- what later date in France where, however, extant records seem to show that they were much more elaborate than the one in question here.® The term entremés, therefore, from its very inception, be* longs to the east of Spain, to Valencia and Catalonia, and not to Castilian territory, and it was in that region that it was first to extend its meaning and develop. Mérimée thinks that the matter of geographic locality is of little importance in a con- sideration of the development of the theatre.? Be that as it may, geography cannot be left unconsidered in a search for the source of the word. Baist, while uncertain, inclines to think that it comes from Italy. There, however, the word tnter- mezzo seems to be no older than the earliest acclimatization in Spain of the form entremés, although it is distinguished as a literary form at least as early as 1497, and probably much earlier.» Moreover, while there was from an early date con- tact with Italy, it was not with her that Spain, especially Catalonian territory, maintained its closest relations until the middle of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth cen- s Cit. Mila y Fontanals, Obras completas, VI, 235. Fora discussion of the pauon at banquets. see Enrique de Villena, Arte cisoria, ed. Felipe-Benicio Navarro, cap. 7, p. 47, and the note, pp. 190-196. D’Ancona, Origini . . . II, p. 68, mentions ‘‘gentileze de cervi pavoni,”’ etc., at a feast given for the French ambassadors in July of the year 1473. The English soteltie was likewise an elaborate dish. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, I, 223, and II, 397. 6 Pruniéres, Le Ballet de cour en France, Chap. I, esp. pp. 6-12. 7 Mérimée, Spectacles et comédiens a Valencia, p. 187. 8 Groéber’s Grundriss, Vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 463. 9 Croce, I teatri di Napoli in Scritti di storia lett. e pol., Vol. 7, pp. 12-13. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 11 turies. Catalonia’s closest bonds, prior to the coming of Italian influence at about the date mentioned, had long been with Provence. As Menéndez y Pelayo says, ‘‘Catalufia y Provenza estaban por sus origenes {ntimamente enlazadas. Juntas formaron parte del primitivo reino visigodo. Juntas entraron en la unidad del imperio franco. Juntas lograron, bajo los débiles sucesores de Carlo Magno, independencia de hecho y positiva autonomfa. La corrupcién de la lengua latina se verificS en ambas cumpliendo las mismas leyes.’’*° It might be reasonable, therefore, to look to Provence as the most natural place from which the word entremés might come. And pre- cisely, it was current in Provence. It was used there for a dish,” and for a ‘‘Zwischenspiel bei festlichen Mahlzeiten zwischen die einzelnen Gange eingeschobene Lustbarkeit.”? The passage cited by Levy from a fifteenth century chronicle is interesting for its similarity to Catalonian texts: ‘‘Lo ters servici (foc) de grans plats de raoust. . . . Apres on portec un en- tremieys; sO era un gran castel assietat sus un roc bel et fort. En lo dit castel avia quatre grandas tors . . . et encascuna tor las banieras deu rey de Ongria. . . . En las quatre tors avia quatre enfans petits, que cantavan devan la seignoria. Lo quart servici foc de ausels. . . . Lo segon entremeys foc una gran bestia qu’es appelada tigre; avia dins lo cos un home que li fasia getar lo foc per la gorja. Lo ters entremeys foc una gran montanha que portavan vingt et quatre homes, y avia en la dita montanha doas fontanas.’’ In the north, the word can be traced back at least as far as the poems of Marie de France, ca. 1175, where it is found in the Lanval:"4 10 Menéndez y Pelayo, Antologia de poetas liricos castellanos, Tomo I, prélogo, pag. LX XIX. See also for the time of the breaking down of these bonds, Schack, tr. de Mier, Hist. de la literatura y arte dram. en Espana, II, 167. And for a still further extension to Castile, Wolf, Studien zur Geschichte der span. und port. National literatur, p. 582. 1 Levy, Provenzalisches Supplement-Worierbuch, III, 84. 1 Levy, op. cit. 13 Chroniques romanes des comtes de Foix composées au XVe siécle par Armand Esquerrier et Miégeville et p. p. Félix Pasquier et Henri Courteaulx, Foix, Paris, 1895. Levy, Proven- zalisches Supplement-Worterbuch, II, p. III, and Idem, III, p. 85 for the text cited. See also Jeanroy, Histoire sommaire de la littérature méridionale, pp. 230-31. 14 The lines cited are 180-188, p. 93, ed. Karl Warnke. 12 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: puis li aportent a mangier. Od s’amie prist le souper; ne feiseit mie a refuser. Mult fu serviz curteisement, e il a grant joie le prent. Un entremés 1 ot plenier, qui mult plaiseit al chevalier: kar s’amie baisout sovent e acolot estreitement. The editor’ gives as a translation for the word entremés in this citation the German Zwischenspeise. Since the last two lines, introduced by kar, give the justification of the assertion that the entremés pleniers pleased the knight, it is difficult to admit that the excellence of the meal and its pleasure should have caused the knight to make love to his sweetheart. It seems much more reasonable to interpret the word entremés as entertainment. The term is also found in the sense of altercation or quarrel in the Roman de Renard; in the Roman de la Rose, it is used apparently to designate fine or delicate dishes at a meal, ‘“‘de tables pleines d’entremez”’;?7 in the Roman de la Violette, it seems to be applied to some sort of dramatic presentation of the deeds of Gerars li biaus; and in the plays of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it seems to have meanings similar to those which it assumed in the early Spanish plays of the sixteenth century before the rise of the form of that name. Because, therefore, the bonds between Provence and Cata- lonia were so close, and inasmuch as the word entremés follows in the latter, from the very beginning of its use, the same lines of meaning to which it had been accustomed in Provence, it seems certain that the last-named region, and in a larger sense France, may be considered the home from which it passed into Spain through the intermediary stage of Catalan.'® 1s Warnke. 6 Cit. Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’anctenne langue francaise, Vols. II] and IX. The Renard is ca. 1200. "7 Cit. Godefroy. He gives as an explanation ‘‘ce qui se sert dans un repas entre deux ser- vices.'" The context, however, seems hardly to warrant the inclusion of ‘‘entre deux services.”’ Godefroy appears to have been influenced by the modern acceptation. t§ Cf. Cotarelo, Coleccién de entremeses . . . intro. on the entremés; and El Bachiller Mantuano, Entremeses del siglo XVII atribuidos al maestro Tirso de Molina, pp. 9-10. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 13 Although a well-known writer and critic in a recent introduc- tion derives the word from inter and medium,?9 it has been generally accepted that entremés comes from the compound inter and missum,?° and this agrees with the early meanings, for the Provencal and Catalan word, and its French cognate entremets, signify first of all a dish, a between-course as has already been shown in the documents cited. It is true that one of the Provencal texts mentioned contains the variant entremteys,?* which through association of ideas may represent confusion with mteg from medium. The word entremés, after its earliest occurrence in a document of 1381, is found in Valencian documents for the years 1399, 1402, 1412, 1413, 1414, 1415, 1432, 1435, 1437, 1446, 1453. In Barcelona, it appears for the years 1423 or 1424, 1437, 1440, ca. 1446, 1453, 1458, 1461, 1462, 1467, 1477, 1481, and at Sara- gossa in documents for 1414 and 1487, as well as elsewhere at various dates throughout the century.” From designating a course or a special dish at a banquet, entremés assumes a more or less dramatic significance first in Saragossa as early as 1399, and in Barcelona in 1424.33 In the early years of the fifteenth century, entremés as a dramatic term was applied to two kinds of representation: the platform on which was arranged a group of set-figures or statues forming an allegorical scene; and in the second place the so-called carros or rocas, pageants which bore the allegorical figures about the city in procession during the solemnities were likewise called entremeses. The spectacles fell only upon days of public re- joicing or thanksgiving: festivals having either a political or a religious significance. Whether the immovable representation, that is, the platform, already mentioned, preceded chrono- logically the carros, it is not possible to say with certainty. 19 Entremeses de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, ed. Bonilla y San Martin, intro., p. X. 20 Meyer-Liibke, Romanisches-etymologisches Worterbuch, article 5612. 1 See page 11. 22 For these data, cf. MilA y Fontanals, Obras completas, Vol. VI; Mérimée, L’ Art dramatique a Valencia; Cotarelo, Coleccién de entremeses . . . (Nueva B. de A. E., Vol. XVII); Moratin, Origenes . . . (B.deA.E., Vol. 2, pp. 152-53, note of D. José Sol y Padris). 23 Mila y Fontanals, Obras completas, Vol. VI, 236 and 256. Cit. also Mérimée, L’Art dra- malique a4 Valencia, p. 12, n. 1. 14 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: These platforms were set up within the churches, and it seems likely that they may have appeared there first, and later taken on the ambulant characteristics that make them familiar on the carro. These spectacles were an imitation or reflection of the church ceremonial from which they took at least their inspiration. Like the relics, they were presented in the church; *4 like the relics, they were borne about the city in procession, and when that procession was to celebrate a religious festival, in the same cortege with them. These shows were, as has been said, usually religious in char- acter. There may be cited, for example, ‘‘el entremés de Belen con los reyes magos a caballo; el entremés de Santa Eulalia con sus compafieras; el entremés de la misma santa con Daciano y doctores.”?5 In the year 1424, or the latter part of 1423, there is record of a festival for Don Alfonso V on his return from Naples, and the document reads in part, “Item foren aportat los entremeses de la dita ciutat representans paradis e infern ab la batalla de Sant Miquel e dels angels e de Llucifer e de sos sequaces e lo vibre e lo fenix e la aguila’’; and for 1461 and 1467 there are further mentions of the same, or very similar entremeses.> The castel likewise, probably always provided with allegorical figures, played a considerable part in these shows.?7. In Valencia, for the year 1435 there is a note referring to the construction and tearing down of ‘‘l’entremés del Paradis terrenal.’’ Exactly the same construction is mentioned in 1417 as a roca. It is evident that the two words were used synony- mously.?® a4 Mérimée, of. cit., p. 7. 2s Moratin, Origenes (B. de A. E., I1), p. 152; note by D. José Sol y Padris. The book of records of Barcelona from which this citation is taken covers the fifteenth century to the year 1462. The shows in question were, therefore, prior to that date. 26 Mila, op. cit., VI, pp. 245-256 and notes. 27 The descriptions of these processions and solemnities recalls strongly English pageantry (see, Withington, English Pageaniry, and Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, both passim). There can certainly be no question here of any direct influence; hardly even of the most remote. Such analogues serve to show how closely knit were the popular diversions of all Europe of the time, and not only of those times and countries, but of all times and in all places. In- fluence is a dangerous thing to argue when it is a question of the popular play-spirit. 28 Mérimée, op. cit., p. 11, thinks that at first a distinction was made between these terms. “Au début on semble avoir distingué l’entrames, qui était la charpente, et la roca, qui était la décoration dont l’entrames était le support.” THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 15 The Italian imtermezzi at least as early as the fifteenth century were likewise allegorical, but usually in a mythological and not a religious way. Italian influence, if it can be noted at all, which is doubtful, is very slight. It may just possibly be present in such an entremés as that of the Pastor, representing a cardinal, and of the seven liberal arts,?? which had at least something of an Italian flavor about it, if one may judge from the title which alone has been preserved, but if so, this is an isolated case, and not a rule. The entremés of the church and the carros does not serve as a forerunner to the entremés of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries except for the fact that it acclimatizes in Spain and makes current the name by which the form was later to be dis- tinguished. In these early entremeses is to be seen rather the first faint stirrings of another and quite different genre, the religious auto, including, of course, the auto sacramental. And herein lies a strange thing. The two literary forms that best typify the extremes of the genius, though perhaps not wholly the literary greatness, of the Spanish race as expressed in the theater, have both borne the same name: the latter at its origins before it became a form; the former at a subsequent period by adoption, as the auto took on a new appellation and lost the name entremés.3° The entremés as it first appeared as a spectacle was with- out dramatic significance, but a development soon began to take place. Very early the set figure was replaced by the living actor. This occurred as early as 1407 when Adam and Eve, as Mérimée remarks, were ‘‘honest Valencians.’’3! This was an immense step toward something dramatic. With human actors came both the need for expression and its possibility. There is a record of singing accompanying entremeses in the year 1413,3? 29 Cafiete, Teatro espanol del siglo XVI, p. 96, n. 1. For the Intermedj, see, among others, Pruniéres, Le Ballet de cour en France, passim. 3° The mere fact that the carros are mentioned through the sixteenth century is no proof that the religious auto, and the auto sacramental, did not develop from them and the repre- sentation they carried. In that century, the au/o itself was represented from the carros. 3t Mérimée, op. cit., pp. 14-15. 2 The Italian intermezzi were also musical. In them lies the source of the melodrama and the ballet. The same development, however, does not hold good for Spain in the sixteenth century. 16 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: at a celebration in honor of the visit of the king, Don Fernando, to Valencia. The document, dated March 7, 1415, reads: ‘‘Mosen Juan Sist, presbitero, per trobar é ordenar les cobles é cantilenes ques cantaren en los entramesos de la festividad de la entrada del Sor Rey, Reyna é Primogenit.’’33 The second step toward humanization had thus been taken, and by the sixteenth century, in Mérimée’s opinion,34 the mute carro or entremés was no longer known. The personages always spoke, or recited, or sang. All this, of course, is pageantry rather than drama in any literary sense. These pageant-like entremeses continued to be called by that name until at least 1501.35 The carro, however, did not cease to exist with the close of the fifteenth century. They are mentioned all through the following. In 1528, there was a roca representing the Sacrificio de Isaac *°; and during the latter years of this century the documents are full of references to the carros.37 Many of these, of course, were merely the wagons used for representing the auto, and consequently must not be confused with the pageant carros, but others belong distinctly to the latter class, as, for example, that mentioned for 1528; or that of 1586, when Rui Lépez contracts to paint the carros triunfales.3® Again in 1595 there were eight carros triun- fales, and in the same year Luis Barajona contracted to “‘hacer una fuente en el carro de Santa Susana.’’39 33 Lamarca. Cit. Rennert, Spanish Stage, intro., pp. XII and XIII; also Mila, op. cit., VI, pp. 245-46. Rennert gives 1412 as the year of the visit, Mil4 1413 (cf. op. cit., p. 243); Rennert gives March 7th as the date of the decree; Mil4, March 9th. Cf. also Cotarelo, Coleccién, a Tomo I, p. LV. 34 Mérimée, op. cit., p. 23. 3s Mérimée, op. cit., p. 21. 36 Rouanet, Coleccién de autos, etc., . . . IV, 136. 37 Pérez Pastor, Nuevos Datos, passim; also same author Nuevos Datos, 2nd series, in Bulletin Hispanique, Vol. IX. S&nchez-Arjona, El Teatro en Sevilla. Diaz de Escovar, Anales. The last-named copies assiduously from the others. 38 The carro, like the pageant in England, was often constructed by the corporations of the city, sometimes by religious orders. They were, as Mérimée says, ‘‘non des artistes, mais des manoeuvres.’ For a description of those of the mid-sixteenth century, see Cafiete, Teatro espanol del siglo XVI, 325-330. 39 It would be of interest to compare what is known of these pageants with those of England and of Italy. Withington and Chambers have most of the data for England. For Italy see Giannini, Origini del dramma musicale, in Propugnatore, XXVI, Pt. I, pp. 209-261; D’An- cona, Origini, passim; and Pellizzari, Portogallo e Italia nel secolo XVI, pp. 202-203. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 17 The important point in this for a study of the entremés, how- ever, lies not in the fact that the carro continued to be used as a pageant throughout the sixteenth century, but that after 1501 it is no longer called an entremés. The term carro or roca remains. Entremés begins to have a new and very different significance. The word as used in the fifteenth century was not confined to the carros. It was applied also to certain aristocratic diver- sions which, nevertheless, were in a certain sense ‘‘popular,’’ that is to say, more spontaneously in the spirit of play than even the pageants. The chief text that shows this use of the word is the Doctrinal de Caballeros of Alfonso de Santa Maria.‘° ‘‘Dos cosas son en que sin actos de guerra al tiempo de hoy los fijos dalgo usan lasarmas . . . ;launaesencontiendas del reino; la otra es en juegos de armas, asi como los torneos e justas, e estos autos, que agora nuevamente aprendimos, que llaman entremeses.’’4* The author speaks of them as autos. Were the Doctrinal of a little later date, the term might appear to have a real dramatic meaning. As it is, they were in all likelihood more or less impromptu allegorical performances similar, perhaps, to those described in the Crénica del Condestable de Castilla Lucas de Iranzo where there is mention of a pantomime and dance taken part in by the gentlemen of the household at the time of his marriage in 1461. These entremeses might, says the Doctrinal, be played by gentlemen, but the momos were considered beneath their dignity. In the same Crdénica del Condestable de Castilla, for the year 1461 a statement reads: ‘‘y por cuanto este dia . . . recrecid mucha pluvia del cielo, ni se corrieron toros, ni se hicieron otras novedades, salvo el danzar y bailar y cantar en cosante, y otros entremeses a tales fiestas anejos.’’42 This statement makes it clear that danc- ing and singing were called entremeses. Such a fact gives the word a very broad field, and from the documents extant, which, however, are so few and inconclusive as not to permit of much 4° The first edition known is of 1487. 4 Kohler, Sieben spanische dram. Eklogen, p. 106. Milego, El Teatro en Toledo, 41-42. # Cit. Bonilla edition of Cervantes, Entremeses, intro., pp. XI-XII. 18 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: generalization, but it is possibly not too much to say that knightly plays and games in general, whether of a social or a dramatic nature, cou'd pass under that name.# Yet once again, though using the name, these games were far removed from the literary form. Neither were they anything in themselves that could lead directly to the form as it later developed.‘4 In these knightly games, there seems to have been no comic element. But comedy, which was to be the most important characteristic of the entremés in the sixteenth and following centuries, was by no means unknown in connection with the name in the preceding. In the year 1442, a complaint was laid with regard to certain abuses that had crept into the public festivals. A part of the statement is as follows: . ‘‘Fou proposat per lo discret en Johan Gradoli notari, altre dels honorables concellers. . . . Molt honorables senyors, la saviesa de quascun de vosaltres no creu ignoran com la festivitat de la Caritat es stada principalment ordonada per co que nostre Senyor Deu trameta pluja sobre los blats de la qual lavors comunement per nostres pecats freturan, e que per sa pietat preserve aquells de tempestat, e que conserve sanitat e pau en lo poble, e en qual manera per solemnitat e honorificencia de la dita festa se acostumavan en temps passat fer en semblant dia diverses entremeses e representacions per las parroquias, devotas e honestas e tals que trahien lo poble a devocio; mes empero d’algun temps en sa quasi tots anys se fan per los caritaters de las parroquias, qui los demes son jovens, entremeses de enamoraments, alcavotarias e altres actes desonests e reprobats, majorment en tal dia en lo qual va lo clero ab processons e creu levada portants diversas reliquias de sancts, de que lo poble pren mal exempli e roman scandalitzat.’’45 This statement is noteworthy. It is the first time that any- thing approaching the comic is mentioned in connection with «3 There is, for instance, in further support, a statement in the Crénica de D. Alvaro de Luna where: ‘‘se dice de D. Juan II, que fué muy inventivo, e mucho dado a fallar invenciones e sacar entremeses en fiestas, o en justas, o en guerra, en las cuales invenciones muy agudamente significaba lo que queria.’’ Schack, tr. de Mier, I, 239, n. 2. 44 It may be noted in passing that in England the so-called interlude or enterlude has little or nothing in common with the entremés. Cf. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, Vol. II, The Interlude. 4s Mila y Fontanals, Obras completas, VI, 322-323. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 19 the entremés. The complainant calls attention to a develop- ment that had led to the introduction of humor and even of obscene details. Originally, he says, these shows or ceremonies had been propitiatory. Then they had fallen into the hands of the young and the corruption of the world had entered them. What may have been the character of the folk-entremeses the good gentleman denounces so bitterly, it is difficult to say. It is to be noted that while for the most part (majorment) these entremeses were played on religious holidays, by the implication of the text they were not altogether confined to those seasons of festivity. If such were the case, they must have then become the diversions of the young, and consequently have been entirely foreign to the shows of the carros. It would seem likely also that they, like the aristocratic diversions just discussed, were mainly, if not entirely, impromptu. Perhaps they may be looked upon as the rustic counterparts of those games of the rich, also called entremeses. To argue from modern documents between which there is a lapse of more than two centuries is hazardous. In the recrea- tions of the people, however, time plays a far less important part in the matter of changes wrought, than in literature. There is a passage in the Theatro de los theatros of Bances Candamo* that in its main points follows so closely the Catalan document above cited, and that, if it be permissible to argue across the lapse of time, throws so much light on Spanish popular diver- sions of the type mentioned, that it seems worth while to cite it in part. ‘“ para entretener parte de las noches repre- sentan los mozos mas hauiles vnos entremeses en prosa, hauiendo- los ellos primero conferido entre si y diciendo lo que ha de hacer a cada vno de ellos aquel que saue el juego . . .. yo dire vno que vi en Ossuna con los terminos mas decentes que pueda. . . . Introduciase, pues, en el juego que he dicho vn estudiante que caminaua mui hambriento, y hallando vna vina se entraba en ella alabando el hallarla sola y diciendo muchos elogios de aquel genero de fruta que a un tiempo es alimento y vebida, comia con gran prisa haciendo muchos ansiosos y Born 1662. 20 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: hambrientos visages. A este tiempo salia con vn arcabuz el guarda de la vina muy colerico y queriendole matar; el pobre estudiante se le humillaua con los maiores estremos de cobardia que podia fingir; pero el guarda, inexorable a las exclamaciones, le pedia el dinero de las vbas comidas. Escusabase con su pobreza el estudiante y con serle imposible la satisfaccion, y el otro le decia que ya que no las pagaua no las hauia de Ileuar ni aun comidas, y asi que tratase de dejarlas alli arrojandolas -por fluxion de vientre, que el con eso cumplia. Tambien se disculpaua el estudiante con no hallarse dispuesto para ello, pero amenazandole con el arcabuz le obligaua a fingir la fea accion de voluer el alimento, prouocando la risa del auditorio con los gestos del temor y de la fuerza . . .’47 He goes on to cite still another of these popular entremeses, this second one erotic in nature. These games, then, consisted of coarse horse-play, but with a more or less definite situation, and resemble to no small degree the cruder early entremeses, or a rough and undeveloped scenario of the commedia dell’arte. It is quite possible that both forms may have had a certain amount of influence upon these popular diversions by the time of Bances Candamo. The folk is very likely to carry into its own play reminiscences of the things seen in the theater. Nevertheless, allowing for such reminis- cences, which doubtless showed in a better developed intrigue, and a greater refinement of form, these games are excellently defined by the terms of the complaint, ‘‘entremeses de enamora- ments, alcavoterias e altres actes desonests e reprobats,”’ and it is hardly too much to say that in those described by Bances Candamo there is at least in essence a fairly accurate description of what was intended by the old counsellor. And it is to be noted that in both cases the same name applies. Here, then, is a popular, comic diversion, a by-play of some humorous or ludicrous sort, intercalated in the general festivities whether of a religious or a popular holiday, and to which they give the name entremés. 47 Bances Candamo, Theatro de los theatros in Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, Vol. VI, Ser. 3, 1902, p. 80. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 21 To recapitulate: entremés, losing its meaning as a set-piece | at dinner, became the name of the religious play or show-piece of the platform and the carro; then, somewhat before the middle of the fifteenth century, it was applied to popular, and a little later aristocratic, diversions of a comic or allegorical nature. It did not, however, as has been said, lose thereby its connection with the religious festivals until the early years of the sixteenth century, when a rapidly growing list of new meanings tore it loose from its old moorings, and brought it over finally to be the . almost exclusive property of the theater. A study of the adoption of the word as the name of a literary form belongs to the next chapter. It was late, however, before that use became exclusive, and during the first half of the sixteenth century, entremés was a word applied by the writers of plays in a number of senses wholly unrelated to any concept of a literary genre. Torres Naharro uses it in the Comedia Himenea:* Febea, aquesta doncella, tiene un hermano marques que entendia la conseja, el cual procura por ella desque sabe el entremes que Himeneo la festeja, where it is used in the sense of trick, with no apparent comic connotation. In the Tesorina*? of Jayme de Giiete: Pinedo. Que entremes! Este frayre loco es, where it may be translated ‘‘what a joke!”’ In the Vidriana:s° Cetina. Quando, pues? aqueste es otro entremes. Modesta. Si me descalco el chapin, yo te mostraré lo ques. 48 In the argumento, Propaladia, II, 14. 4s Comedia Tesorina, 1. 1820. In Cronan, Teatro espafiol del siglo XVI. s© Cronan, op. cit., p. 234. 22 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: Here it seems to be in the sense of ‘‘another matter,” or per- haps it may be rendered by ‘‘another bit of fooling.” This line, ‘‘aqueste es otro entremes,”’ is found a second time in the same play, and there also the word has much the same meaning. The third case in which entremés is found in the Vidrianas? -shows some variation in sense. It is of a trick that the servants play to frighten the lovers: Carmento. Dale, pues; mas si nos sale al rebes, pardios, yo te enlodaré. Secreto. Mirad que negro entremes! Grita tu, como yo haré. Under very different conditions, the word appears in the speech of Liria in the Farca a manera de tragedta 53 O que altas alamedas llenas de auezitas ledas que cantan sus entremeses.*4 This might be rendered by the English work interludes. The _word refers, of course, to the songs of the birds. The interest- ing thing is that it is found in a musical connection. As has already been seen in the present study, as far back as 1513 en- tremeses of a musical nature are known to have existed.5> The intermeszt were, of course, frequently musical; but music occurs only sporadically in connecticn with the word in Spain. In the fifteenth century, non-musical, allegorical, occasionally comic, connotations predominate. In the Farsa Salamantina,®® the word is found three times. The first’? is in a passage that copies except for a single word st Cronan, Teatro espafiol del siglo XVI, p. 213. 52 Cronan, op. cit., p. 228. 53 Pub. by Dr. Rennert in Pub. of Univ. of Penna., Romanic Lang. and Lit., Extra series No. 3. The word occurs in line 279. 54In the Italian plays, instrumental music is sometimes spoken of as a tramezzo. For ex: ample, in the Atto della Pinta, ovvero Rappresentazione della creazione del mondo of the year 1562, it is directed that ‘‘cadera la tela et si vedera Iddio con tutti li angioli che con tramezza di varii strumenti canteranno. .”’ Di Giovanni, Delle rappresentazioni sacre in Palermc ne’ secoli XVII e XVIII in Propugnatore, I, 27. Also idem, pp. 30, 31. ss LLamarca. See note 33 to the present chapter. s6 Bartolomé Palau, Farsa Salamantina, pub. in Bulletin Hispanique, Vol. II, 1906. 51 Lines 749-750. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 23 the one cited above from the Jesorina; in the second, it is used with the meaning ‘‘trick’’: ‘‘y hard algun entremes.’’5’ The last,59 ‘‘que entremes,’’ can also probably be rendered ‘‘what a clever trick.”’ Both Rueda and Timoneda use the word in senses other than its application to the literary form. Passo two of the Turiana has ‘‘escucha aqui qu’entremes,”’ that is to say, with the meaning “nonsense,” ‘‘foolishness.’”’ In the Armelina,® there is the sentence, ‘‘por no pagarme haces agora esos entremeses.” It is clear that the sense here is the one already most commonly noted: anglice, trick. In the Trapacera,® published by Timoneda: Alon. Pardiez, que yra a mi posada por mas que vos brauees. Ro. Escucha aqui, qu’entremes! sus, sali, that is, ‘‘Just hear what a brave threat,’’ or something to that effect. Again in the Rosalina:* Lucas. Mira qué locura o qué entrames®3 os tomé de al Portugues mojalle? This must mean, ‘‘Come, what madness, or caprice, seized you?”’ In none of the passages cited has the word entremés the slight- est literary significance. Yet in them is to be observed a step, already begun in the preceding century, toward a fixation of the general meaning in a sense approximating that in which the word will be applied to the new form. There are, it is true, a 58 Line 1236. 59 Line 2282. 6> Lope de Rueda, Obras (ed. de la Real Academia Espafola.),1,112. Unless otherwise noted, references will be to this edition which is the best available of the man who is in many respects the most important figure in the Spanish drama of the sixteenth century before the other greater Lope appears. & Timoneda, Obras compleias (Pub. por la Soctedad de Bibliéfilos Valencianos), Vol. I, 408. 62 Timoneda, op. cit., p. 467. 6s The spelling is exceptional for so late a date. It is the only case of the kind in Timoneda, and recalls the older Catalan and Valencian documents of which some have been cited in the present study. Timoneda was, of course, himself a Valencian book-seller. 24 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: number of minor variations, but, if exception of the Farca a manera de tragedia is made, the predominating idea in all the others is that of a trick, and in most cases this is taken in the comic sense. This step brings the word very close to the mean- ing as it was first understood when taken over by the literary form. How close, will be made clear in a study of the earliest entremeses in the following chapter. A strict definition of the literary form called the entremés is by no means easy to formulate. The writers of the early seventeenth century are content to speak of them as comedias antiguas. Lope de Vega in his Arte nuevo de hazer comedias* says: Acto fueron llamadas, porque imitan Las vulgares acciones y negocios. Lope de Rueda fué en Espafia exemplo Destos preceptos, y oy se veen impressas Sus comedias de prosa tan vulgares, Que introduze mecanicos oficios Y el amor de una hija de un herrero: De donde se ha quedado la costumbre De llamar entremeses las comedias Antiguas, donde esta en su fuerza el arte, Siendo una accion y entre pleveya gente Porque entremes de rey jamas se ha visto.® Lope here refers, of course, to the Armelina, a comedy and in nowise an entremés, which, however, he says these plays were called, though on what authority he bases his statement he does not say. It must be admitted that the Arte nuevo gives every indication of being a made-to-order composition on a sub- ject that the author was at best but poorly fitted to handle. He certainly does not make clear his idea of the entremés as a literary “ Pub. in Bulletin Hispanique, Vol. III. The citation includes lines 62-73, p. 375. ‘s A passage that has certain similarity to these lines occurs in the Pasagero of Cristébal Suarez de Figueroa, p. 75: ‘Plauto y Terencic fueran, si vivieran hoy, la burla de los teatros, el escarnio de la plebe, por haber introducido quien presume saber mAs cierto género de farsa menos culta que gananciosa. . . . Introducianse personas ciudadanas, esto es, comunes; no reyes nt principes, con quien se evitan las burlas, por el decoro que se les debe." The last words carry the explanation that is lacking inthe Arte nuevo. It will be seen later that the statement about a king never having been seen in the exlremés is not absolutely correct. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 25 form, though by listing the Armelina as a comedia antigua, and, therefore, by implication as an entremés, he seems to class all of the older comedies under that heading. This, he asserts, is the custom. Perhaps it was true that no one of Lope’s time had any very definite idea in regard to the distinctions of form. To Lope, and perhaps to his contemporaries as he says, an entremés may have been one of the old comedies, meaning those of the preceding generation, and especially those of the school of Rueda. If such is the sense of his definition, he is not alone. Salas Barbadillo in his Coronas del Parnaso y plato de las musas® introduces the part that contains the entremeses in the following manner: ‘‘Quatro comedias antiguas, que el vulgo de Espajia llama entremeses.”’ The distinction in the mind of these writers is a real one: \ there is a vast gap between the comedies of the first three- quarters of the sixteenth century, and those of the school of ° Lope de Vega. But as a definition of the entremés the state- ment is altogether wrong. At most, it would have been possible to say that the entremés was one form of the comedia antigua. To class all the earlier sixteenth century comedies as entremeses was altogether inaccurate. Another step toward a definition is found in the texts of a little later date. In the definitions of dramatic technical terms given in the Rhythmica of Caramuel,® the following is that for the entremés: ‘‘Entremés apud hispanos est comoedia brevis, in qua actores ingeniose nugantur.’’ Whether Father José Alcazar was acquainted with the Rhythmica, cannot be ascer- tained with certainty. If not, his definition adds another to the long list of literary parallels. He explains: “Entremés es una comedia breve en la cual los actores se burlan ingeniosa- mente.’’°§ He adds somewhat to his definition by saying that the ancient mimes were for the express purpose of making the auditors laugh, and ‘‘a este género de comedia corresponden 6 Madrid, 1635. Passage cited by Morel-Fatio in La Comédie espagnole du XVIIe stécle, 1; 60, 0. 19. 67 Second edition, Campanial, 1668. Cit. Schack, II, 224n. 68 Cit. Restori, Fragments de thédire espagnol in Revue des langues romanes, Ser. 5, Vol. I, 1898, p. 147. This Spanish author wrote ‘‘vers 1690." 26 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: nuestros entremeses.’’ These statements are undoubtedly true so far as they go. The difficulty is that quite as much may be said of other forms. The gracioso, in the comedy, “‘ingeniose nugatur,”’ and he is for the express and definite purpose of mak- ing the audience laugh, but his parts do not constitute entremeses. There is still lacking a qualitative differentiation. That is sup- plied in the Dedicatoria of D. Manuel Antonio de Vargas to the Entremeses of Benavente’® where the distinctive feature of the form is defined. He speaks of Luis de Benavente as having com- posed Joas and intermedios,7° and he says that the former were parte cuantativa of the comedy,” while the latter were an addi- tion, or substitution for some part of it. Here the writer has touched the heart of the distinction between the entremés and the farsa, the comedia, or the auto. The entremés is essentially dependent in character. It may be true, as Rouanet says,?? that the word ‘‘au sens propre’’ does not designate something intercalated.73 Nevertheless, it was from the time of the carros used for some sort of an intercalation.74 But in any case, of one thing there can be no doubt: as a literary form, the entremés was always a secondary and dependent genre. There is no authentic record of its having been looked upon in Spain in any other light. ~ The entremés or passo, for the words early became synonymous through their use by Timoneda, may, therefore, be defined as a short dramatic compos tion, usually burlesque or farcical in character,7> used as a passing-scene for purposes of comic *> Benavente, Entremeses (ed. Libros de Antafio), Vol. I, p. XXIV. The Dedicatoria in ques- tion was written Oct. 22, 1645. %¢ Intermedio in Spain is a rather unusual and later synonym for entremés. This is in direct contrast to Italy where intermedio and intermezzo were used more or less ad libitum. % This is interesting regarding the Joa. The argument which it contained evidently caused it to be looked upon as an essential, integral part of the play. 7 Intermédes espagnols, p. I. 73 It must not be overlooked, however, that missus is also past participle of mitto. 7 Mérimée, for instance, speaks of the tréteaux ambulants as follows: ‘‘Ces représentations intercalées sur le parcours de la procession.” 7s The matter of allegory, while it enters the entremés, is so unimportant as not to call for attention in the definition. This is exactly the opposite of the Italian case, where the intermedj were for the most part either musical or allegorical, or both. In Spain, there is the one case of Timoneda’s Passo de la Razén y la Fama. In two others, Fama appears, but for comic effect. Allegorical, or comico-allegorical passages sometimes occur. Mérimée’s definition seeks to Include these also. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 27 relief .76 The genre defined as complementary, grafted upon a more important one, the question of its position and use arises as a natural consequence. It is found between the prologue and the first act, or jornada; it occasionally comes at the close of the play; sometimes, especially in the early years of its develop- ment, it falls within the act itself; but mainly the entremés, when once. it had fully rounded out as a form, was used as an interlude between the acts. Details concerning these various uses must be left for study in connection with the particular times and plays in which they occur. Some of the more general aspects of the positional relation may, however, be touched upon here. In the Vidriana,77 the following order was observed: Introito. Jornada I. Jornada II. passo, lines 604-868. main action. Jornada III. main action. passo, lines 1276-1505. main action. Jornada IV. main action. passo, lines 1965-2003. main action. passo, lines 2063-2185. main action. 7¢ It may be worth while to cite some of the more modern definitions: Schack: ‘‘Entremeses, 0 pequefios dramas burlescos, que se representaban entre las jornadas de las comedias, o entre /a loa y el auto. Su argumento, con ligeras excepciones, est4 tomado de la vida y costumbres de las clases mds bajas del pueblo . . . Frecuentamente son s6lo situaciones en bosquejo, escenas sueltas sin enredo dramAtico.” Rouanet: ‘‘L’entremés était une courte piéce de théatre, buffonne et satirique, 4 peu prés dépourvu d’intrigue, que l’on représentait entre les actes du drame principal, afin d'’engaget l’esprit, de reposer l’attention et de captiver la bienveillance du public. Tel fut, du moins, ce genre de spectacle sous sa forme élémentaire et traditionelle.”’ 27 Cronan, Teatro espafiol del siglo XVI, pp. 171-265. 28 THE EARLY-ENTREMES IN SPAIN: Jornada V. main action. passo, lines 2465-2709. main action.78 Here there are five passing-scenes interspersed at irregular intervals in the play. Timoneda indicated five in the Colloquio de Timbria in the Tabla de los pasos that he appended to. the comedies of Rueda.79 It is noteworthy that the number given for the various comedies, as indicated in the Tabla, varies all the way from one to five. Other early works beside those of Rueda and the Vidriana will show the same variation, and the same maximum, with perhaps only one exception which shows more. The Examen sacrum® is arranged as follows: | Loa Auto (égloga) entremés (actio intercalaris) Auto (suite) entremés Auto (suite) That is to say that, while it is not exactly evenly divided, there are two entremeses spaced as though between acts. Toward the close of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the next, the usage seems to have been from one to as many as three, even, with an auto sacramental. For instance, for August 25, 1603, there is record of a ‘‘concierto de Nicolas de los Rios, autor de comedias . . . sobreir . . . y hacer por la mafiana un auto con dos entremeses’’;* and for March 18, 1624, there is exactly the same statement.*? The comedy, on the other hand, seems for a time at least to have had regularly three. Rojas writes :%3 hacian cuatro jornadas, tres entremeses en ellas. Y al fin con un bailecito iba la gente contenta. 7 This is, of course, before the entremés was distinguished as a definite form. - 79 Rueda, Obras, II, pp. 137-138. 8¢ Biblioteca de autores espafoles, LVIII, p. 133 et. seq. % Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos, pp. 80-81. 32 Idem, p. 166 and p. 205. 83 Viaje entretenido, I, 145. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 29 And Lope de Vega affirms him:*4 Y yo las (2. e., las comedias) escrivi, de once a doze ajfios, de a cuatro actos y de a cuatro pliegos, porque cada acto un pliego contenia: y era que entonces en las tres distancias se hacian tres pequefios entremeses.°5 For the year 1604, there is record of the same number being contracted for both with a comedy and with an auto: ‘ Obliga- cidn de Juan de Parras . . . de que su padre ira ; y hard por la mafiana el auto que hubiere hecho en Madrid con tres entremeses y por la tarde una comedia con otros tres entremeses.’’®° Attention must be given to the fact that both Rojas and Lope de Vega refer to the four-act comedy, and that, according to them, an entremés was played in every entr’acte. Possibly the last-cited document may have reference also to the four-act comedy, although it is not so stated. On the other hand, the use of three entremeses with an auto was unusual. It serves only to show how far the number used was from having hardened into a fixed and settled custom by the time of these documents. It seems probable likewise that the matter of expense entered into the consideration. Loa, entremés, auto: each was paid for, so to speak, by the piece.’? A well- to-do municipality, a wealthy individual or society could afford the full luxury of a comedy or auto with loa, entremeses at every interval, and when they came into being a little later, bazles. A more slender purse must be content with less. However, it may safely be said that while the four-act comedy was in vogue, the custom, so far as there was one, was to have the three entremeses. But the number of jornadas to the comedy changed during the time of Lope de Vega, and three acts became the accepted form of division. It seems that the number of interludes also % Arte nuevo in Bulletin Hisp., III, p. 379, lines 219-223. ts A document of March 13, 161° calls for three batles or three entremeses with each comedy. Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos, p. 176. 86 Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos (second series) in Bulletin Hisp., IX, 1907, p. 369. 87 ‘‘ Pagabase, al concluir el siglo, 100 reales por cada loa, 300 por un entremés y mojiganga, 1, 100 reales por la misica de los autos, y de 200 a 400 reales por un sainete.’’ Pedroso, intro. to Bib. de aut. esp., Vol. 58, pp. XXIV and XXV. This is somewhat later, but the custom s the same. 30 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: changed. In his Spanish Stage,** Dr. Rennert says, ‘‘Generally two entremeses accompanied a comedia, though sometimes even three were played, one following the Joa, and the play always concluded with a bayle or dance.”’ Lope de Vega speaks of a change in the number:*9 Y era que entonces en las tres distancias se hacian tres pequenos entremeses. Y agora apenas uno y luego un bayle. What, then, seems to be the final fixed and definite usage is found in a play of 1656:9° 1. Loa de D. Antonio de Solis. Acto primero de la comedia. Entremés de Los Volatines (de Solis). Jornada o acto 2. Entremés de Juan Rana, poeta. Jornada 3. Sarao. Sa et Pet alan pec It may be noted in passing that by this time entremeses and batles were at times used to replace each other between the acts. The two forms, however, were never really confused, nor were the terms ever synonymous.” There remains still a word to be said about the position of the entremés. That they might begin a play without regard to the use of the Joa or prologue is made clear by the statement of Timoneda as a second heading to the ZJuriana.* In that position the entremés may easily be confused with the prologue which at times is also a little playlet, often humorous in con- tent.3 The distinctive feature of the prologue is the argument 88 Pp. 290-291. 89 Arte nuevo, in op. cit., lines 222—224. °° Table cited from Cotarelo, Coleccién de entremeses in Nueva B. de A. E., Vol. XVII, intro., Dek Ve * Cf. Cotarelo, op. cit., intro., pp. IV and V. Also note 85 to the present chapter. 9 ‘Aqui comiencan muchos passos y entremeses muy graciosos para principios de saree y comedias,”’ Obras completas, I, 159. 9s The same short introductory playlet, much like an entremés, is found in the French theatre. For example, Les Veaulx which, as the Fréres Parfaict say, ‘‘étoit une espéce de Prologue, pour amuser les spectateurs les plus impatients, pendant que les acteurs s’habilloient.”” Text in Viollet-Leduc, L’Ancten thédtre francais, VIII, pp. 232-234. Cit. from Sydow, Die fran- zdsische Originalkomédie des XVI Jahrh., p. 14. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 31 of the play that it contains, and this will usually serve to differ- entiate it.94 Rarely the entremés, even at a late date, takes an unwonted position in the play. For instance, at the close of the first act of Calderén’s El castillo de Lindabridts, one is found of which Ticknor says, ‘‘Calder6én has ingeniously made his entremés serve as a graceful conclusion to one of the acts of his principal drama.’’% But these cases are sporadic. The form remains essentially a humorous interlude between the acts. It has been said that the entremés was created for purposes of comic relief. Two things served to make some such form absolutely essential. At the time of the beginnings of the genre, there was the greatest technical poverty and lack of skill on the part of the artists, rather artisans, who supplied the material for Spain’s early theater. How far they were from having any true concept of the rules of their art, one of the most exacting after all, will need no explanation for him who has read the plays of Spain’s dramatic sixteenth century. This does not imply cause for condemnation. An art was in its infancy and only struggling to expression. The results of that struggle were no worse than in the case of any other people. But poor, they certainly were. Some prop for weak comedies was alto- gether essential. In themselves, they lacked the qualities to satisfy either the groundlings or the literati. None of the — writers of his time recognized this weakness better than SAnchez de Badajoz: Lo que aqui se ha de decir seran cosas devotas y provechosas; y porque vos no durmais algunas cosas graciosas diremos con que riais.°7 » It has been noted that the Joa was probably looked upon as an integral part of the play. 9s Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, II, 445, * That the development is toward a full genre in Spain, and away from it in all the other nations of Europe, with the possible exception of Italy, is interesting, but cannot be discussed here. All European literatures of importance had something to correspond at least in a rudi- mentary form with the entremés. It either came to the point of extinction very early, or was reduced to comparative unimportance. 97 Cit. Cotarelo, Colecct6n . . . intro., p. LXI, from the Recopilacién. 32 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: And the editor of Benavente strikes the same chord:* ‘‘de modo que el autor que tenia una mala comedia, con ponerle dos entremeses deste ingenio, le daba muletas para que no cayese, y el que tenia una buena, le ponia alas para que se remontase.’’99 These and similar statements from the pen of early writers might be multiplied, but these will suffice to show the general sense of insufficiency that was one of the causes of the creation of the genre. There were, of course, also more definite technical grounds and uses. Most of these will find place for examination in the chapters that follow. One quotation that lies just beyond the period to be treated may be mentioned in passing. As late as 1624, the entremés is spoken of as dividing the jornadas of a play. ‘‘Una comedia suntuosa . . . entretenida por los bayles y entremeses, que sirvieron de dividir y ocupar los espacios entre una y otra jornada.’’!°° If the first great cause for the rise of the form to so consider- able an importance in Spain lies in the writers’ weakness, the second and still more insistent is their public. As far back as the Vita Christi there is a hint of this: Por que no puden estar en un rigor toda via los archos para tirar, suelenlos desenpulgar alguna pieca del dia; pues razon fue declarar estas chufas de pastores para poder recrear despertar y renouar la gana de los lectores.?™ 98 Benavente, Entremeses (ed. Libros de Antafio) Prologo al lector, Vol. I, p. XIX. See the whole passage, pp. XVIII and XIX. 99 For a discussion of the technical poverty that made necessary the intermezzi of the Sacre Rappresentaziont, see D'Ancona, Origini, I, 659. roo Hrom a Relaci6n among the Papeles varios de la Biblioteca Colombina, Vol. IX. Cit. Sanchez-Arjona, El teatro en Sevilla, p. 246, n. I. The play mentioned was given May 16, 1624. Sanchez-Arjona gives the same passage also in his Noticias . . . p. 229,n.I. ror Fr, Ifiigo de Mendoza, Vita Christi in Canctonero castellano del siglo XV, Vol. I. (In Nueva B. de A. E., Vol. XIX.) Cit. also Crawford, Spanish Pastoral Drama, p. 12. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 33 This, naturally, might quite as well lead in the drama simply to the introduction of certain integral comic elements. It usually does just that. The important thing for the present study is that in Spain it leads to the development of a new form. The technical inability of the writers precludes the possibility of the working out of integral elements. The dramatists follow the line of least resistance, and that leads directly to the entremés. The question of the turbulence of the public and its effect on the player or autor recurs again and again in the literature of the time. In the Farsa sacramental de las bodas de Espajia:'®? Aqui no basta destreza, si no nos da viento en popa; porque al que menos tropieza le cortan por gentileza los auditores la ropa. Cristébal Suarez de Figueroa in El Pasagero*® says, ‘“‘La plebe no es menos peligrosa desde sus bancos 0 grados,” and he goes on to tell the ways in which the groundlings disturbed or even destroyed a play. Rojas in his Vzaje entretenido complains unceasingly of the difficulty of pleasing the public. And Lope de Vega: Quede muy pocas vezes el teatro sin persona que hable, porque el vulgo en aquellas distancias se inquieta.' This goes to the heart of the matter. The writers of plays cast about for some means of quieting the public, of filling all gaps. The entremés,—to some extent also the baile,—is the result. Considering all things: the inability of the writers along technical lines, the coarse, yet exacting public, demanding certain kinds of entertainment, but wholly unable to decide from the point of view of the merit or demerit of the structure of the play; the necessity in which the author found himself of supplying r09 From the Joa of play cited. Pub. in B. de A. E., Vol. 58. See the whole passage. 103 Page 76. 24 Arte nuevo in Bulletin Hispanique, Vol. III, p. 379. 34 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: something not alone while the play was going on, but in those intervals, either within or between the acts, when so far as the intrigue was concerned the action ‘must be held back: considering all these things, the entremés is perhaps the best answer to the need that could have been devised. It is not, as it looks on the surface, altogether an expression of weakness. In the long run, it may even be a demonstration of skill, if not, certainly, of artistry. These, then, are the local reasons for the genre. - The question also arises whether there were not at the same time broader historic causes and sources. Here the field must be much less certain. The solution of the inception of the idea of a passing- scene for relief must be left to a general study of the form in European literature. This much is certain: the entremés be- longs to a general phenomenon once current in all Europe, that found its highest growth in the sixteenth century; its climax in the first half or two-thirds of the succeeding, and its decline before the beginning of the eighteenth. The solution of the problem is not to be found by tracing the course of comic material, for of that only a minor part belongs to the passing-scene, and even that part is by no means its exclusive property. The distinguishing mark of this movement is that it gave rise to a particular form, of any content whatever,'® incidental in an- other. The Spanish entremés, and the passing-play in general may, as Rudwin says,’ arise out of the minstrel tradition, and the popular spirit of play, but that is scarcely to make a dis- tinction. The whole modern drama comes from a combination of three sources: the church, the minstrel tradition, and the popular spirit of play.t°7 Traces of the form under consideration tos In Spain, nearly always, it is comic; in Germany, comic or didactic; in Italy, allegorical or musical, sometimes comic. If musical, it became the ancestor of the melodramma. In France, it is mainly comic. The English interlude, it has already been said, probably does not belong tothe movement. See Chambers, Vol. II. The word interlude may, however, apply to plays, or parts of plays, that have the character of entremeses. For instance, Burton speaks of Xenophon as‘‘ (shutting) up all with a pleasant interlude or dance of Dionysius and Ariadne.” Anatomy of Melancholy (ed., 1826) II, 274-275. The entremés as a separate miniature play to close a larger one has already been mentioned. The bibliography for France or Italy would be too long to cite. For Germany, see Hammes, Das Zwischenspiel . . . in Literarhis- torische Forschungen, XLV, for the period 1500-1660. 106 Origin of the German Carnival Comedy, p. 49. *o7 Humanism later adds the classics, which, however, were not entirely absent either in the church or the minstrel tradition. \ " \ < } j ‘ ; THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 35 are much older in Europe than the sixteenth or even the fifteenth centuries, but not in such plays as the Atellanae where they © have generally been sought. The passing-play of modern days does, however, in a few cases retain the function of the exodium. Schlegel has called attention to the fact that in Euripides the songs are frequently episodical and bear no rela- tion to the action. In his Italic Origins, Toscanelli speaks of one of the Greek comedies, Hercules in the Grotto of Pholus, ca. 500 B. C., where ‘‘la scena pare che finisse in lazzi e mimiche grotesche.’’'°® In the mysteries, farces and farce scenes were intercalated. For instance, ‘‘cy apres sont . . . miracles de madame sainte Genevieve. Et sachiez que ... a parmy farsses entees, afin que le jeu soit mains fade et plus plaisans.’’7°9 In plays like the Jeu de Saint Nicholas of Bodel, passing-scenes occur. The quarrel between Connart and Raoul over the ‘‘crying”’ of the tavern-keeper’s wine is a scene apart from the real action of the play, whose intrigue is as a whole definite and closely knit.""° But above all important in a study of the interlude as the term is to be understood outside of England, lying at the very foundations of the European drama, is a phenomenon that occurs in the church service: the tropes. These, from which the mediaeval liturgical drama takes its rise, are themselves intercalations. They are, of course, not wholly separate from the main thesis. Rather, they are enlargements and elucida- tions in a few cases developing into little playlets.7* But they bear in themselves the germs of a custom: that of making interpolations. This is the habit from which springs the entremés. The so-called textes farcis belong to the same tradi- tion.7? The tropes themselves are not by any means always strictly religious enlargements. The later ones at least are at times profane to the point of indecency.*8 Going still farther 98 Toscanelli, Le Origini italiche, I, La Letteratura, p. 299 and passim. 19 Jubinal, Mystéres inédits, I, 281. Cit. also D’Ancona, Origini, I, 70, 71 n. ue Lines 595-657. 21 See for France, the writers on the tropes, Gauthier, etc. For Italy, D’Ancona. 113 D’Ancona, Ortgini, I, 63. 13 ‘‘Many of the later tropes are trivial, indecent, or profane,’’ Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, ITD. Same 1. 36 THE EARLY. ENTREMES IN SPAIN: than the tropes, however, are the interpolations known as the conductus. They are independent units, essentially musical, and not a development at all of the thesis of the text. At this point, the same complete separation that is found in the interlude is reached. The mock ceremony known as the Boy Bishop, the obispillo, was also a grafting of extraneous elements, secular and comic, upon the service of the church on certain stated holy-days. In its possible connection with the entremés, this spectacle is especially important for Spain because it is known to have existed there certainly in the fifteenth century, and apparently according to existing documents much earlier.™5 A form of more or less dramatic intercalation is, therefore, the common property of the Middle Ages and the succeeding centuries, a heritage that, on occasion, as in the case of the entremés, was to develop to meet certain needs in the life of the drama. That direct necessity in Spain has been discussed in the preceding pages. Spain must have had much the same dramatic background as the rest of Europe despite the scarcity of direct evidence."° That being the case, she would have possessed long before its earliest traces as a form, the germ of the entremés. ‘To look for any closer source for the beginnings of the form is to look only for its application as a piece of dramatic technique. Hammes, in a certain sense, is in all likelihood correct when he says, ‘‘Das Zwischenspiel ist in Deutschland, wie in Frankreich, England, Spanien, durchaus selbstandig erwachsen und weist erst spat und nicht allgemein, fremde Einfliisse auf.’’1!7 There can be no question of influence of the German Zwi- _schensprel on the entremés between 1500 and 1600. Neverthe- less, the German form shows a greater similarity to the Spanish than does any other. There are undoubtedly in the two varia- 114 Chambers, op. cit., I, 282, n. I. ms Crawford, A Note on the Boy Bishop in Spain in Romanic Review, Vol. XIII, 146-154. See also Mila y Fontanals, Origenes del teatro catalan in Vol. VI of the Obras completas, and Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, Vol. I. 6 Cejador, Historia de la lengua y literatura castellana, I, 403. Bonilla and others have also expressed the belief that Spain knew the mystery. If so, then the rest of the general liturgical backgrounds must have been her property also. 7 Hammes, Das Zwischenspiel . . . inop. cit., p. 50. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 37 tions of purpose at times. The German Zwischenspiel has often didactic ends in view; the Spanish, practically never. But barring such points, the history of one, in its broader outlines, might well be used as the history of the other. On the other hand, the true Italian intermezzo, older than the entremés, and where one might expect to find the source at least of the idea, has very little in common with the Spanish entremés. As to the influence of the commedia dell’arte, there can be no question of source at the origins. The roots of the entremés are found long before the time of the earliest extant scenario.’ More- over, the scenari as they have come down show a fully-developed play with nothing to speak of in common with the entremés except the Jazzi.%9 The probable influence the latter had on the Spanish form belongs not to its inception, not to the source of the idea, but to the development of an already-created form, and hence to the succeeding chapters. The one possible source in Italy for the idea of the form in Spain is in the ‘“‘intermedj contadineschi”’ of the early Italian comedy and the Sacre Rappresentaziont. They had much the same purpose as the early entremés, and were developed and treated in much the same way.° Their content, likewise, shows many similarities, though, as has been insisted, comic content makes the hunt for sources very uncertain. Humor and comedy are too universal. In point of time, these intermedj were known in Italy long before she sent her troupes of players to Spain, antedating even the time of Encina. As Borghini says, ‘‘al tempo de’ nostri padri non si faceva commedia, che 18 The oldest scenario dates from the year 1568. Driesen, Ursprung des Harlekin, p. 193, n. 4. Some of the personages, however, like the Zanni date from between 1500 and 1550. Idem, p. 193, n. 7. See also D’Ancona, Origini, I, 602, n. 4. Others like Pulcinella belong to the early seventeenth century. Croce, Saggi sulla lett. ital. del Seicento, pp. 203 and 207. Driesen op. ctt., p. 230, n.9. Scherillo, however, feels sure that the Pulcinella ‘‘nacque nel cinquecento.”’ La commedia dell’arte in Italia, pp. 48-49. 119 Bartoli says (Scenari inediti, intro., p. X), ‘‘la commedia dell’arte 6 essenzialmente com- media di intreccio, e sempre d’intreccio amoroso.’” This statement alone suffices to destroy all relationship with the early entremés. 120 See Giannini, Origini del dramma musicale in Propugnatore, XXVI (N. S., Vol. VI), |g gl Bey oR 11 For instance, an intermezzo entitled Una questione di dua faltori that closes the Rappre- sentazione di un Pelligrino recalls strongly certain gaming-scenes in the earliest Spanish plays. These latter are also often passing-scenes. D’Ancona, Sacre Rappresentaztoni, III, 430-433. 38 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: buona parte del riso non dipendesse da un framesso de’ con- tadini.’”’"2 They are simply comic passing-scenes such as will be found strewn everywhere in the Spanish plays before Rueda. Men like Encina and Torres Naharro with their long Italian residence, and their contact with Italian literature must un- doubtedly have been acquainted with such framessi. They must have understood and appreciated the technique of those scenes. There is, however, no proof that they copied them directly. In fact, there is proof that at least Rueda among the early writers avoided the comic passages in the plays he translated for the Spanish stage, substituting for them his own. Yet Encina and his followers would not be altogether forgetful of what they had seen and known in Italy. That knowledge would naturally be the source of their idea, and they would adapt their own material to scenes of a similar nature. And here, it seems most probable, was where Spain received the first outside impulse for the creation of the form. What she bor- rowed was an idea, linking it with her own liturgical back- grounds so far as they may have existed, and to her internal needs and conditions.”3 With these foundation steps in mind, it is possible to pass to a consideration of the actual creation of the literary form in Spain in the closing years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth centuries. 12 Cit. D’Ancona, Origini, I, 602. 3 The mediaeval popular farce must not pass unmentioned. Brander Matthews says of these playlets, ‘‘The crude farces of these wandering minstrels may have been mere dramatized anecdotes, practical jokes in dialogue, pantomimic horse-play of an elementary type; they were wholly unliterary, and, being often even unwritten, they have rarely been preserved.” The Mediaeval Drama in Modern Philology, I, p. 80. This sounds close to the entremés which, as far as material goes, is often a ‘‘practical joke in dialogue”’ or a ‘‘dramatized anecdote.” But the mere fact that the two are alike as regards material does not offer any real proof of anything in particular. Farce material is too general a property. Moreover, there is nothing to show that these were in any sense of the word passing-plays, and its secondary character is in the last analysis the distinguishing feature of the form in Spain. The strong similarity may be due at least in part to the fact that the wandering minstrel of the old days and the Spanish dramatist were both doing the same thing: drawing comic material from the life of the people. sé THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 39 II DEVELOPMENT BEFORE LOPE DE RUEDA‘ Long before the name by which it was to be known was applied to it, the form existed, though often in only the most rudimentary way. Scenes that are in every wise entremeses are found frequently in Spanish plays of the first half of the sixteenth century. In considering such passages, especially in the early years of their development before they can be looked upon as forming a well-established literary genre, one of the most important considerations is their essentially? dependent character. What must first and above all determine whether a given passage is or is not entremés in character, is its inter- calation as essentially independent of the plot of the play. Other than this, the delimitations of these scenes are by no means fixed and definite. It must be understood, moreover, that in most cases the early writers did not in all probability look upon them as actual entremeses. Nevertheless, whether looked upon as such or not, these detached passages contain in germ the future entremés, and cannot be ignored in a con- sideration of its origin and development. A search for the earliest traces of what was to become a literary form of considerable importance leads back to Encina. The Carnival Eclogues, published in the Cancionero of 1496, and dating back to 1494 for their first presentation, show certain - characteristics, at least in subject-matter, that will be common to many entremeses of subsequent date, and Kohler has looked upon them as forerunners of the type.s There is, however, one vital objection to counting these eclogues as true proto- types of the passo. They can scarcely be considered comic- relief, or passing-scenes: they form individual plays in them- selves. » The subject of the present chapter was treated in part in an article by the author entitled Development of the Entremés before Lope de Rueda, pub. in Publ. of the Modern Language ASsoe c tation of America, Vol. XXXVII, No. 2, 1922, pp. 187-207. 2 The importance of this qualifying adverb will be made clear in the present chapter. 3 Kohler, Representaciones de Juan del Encina, p. 11 40 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: The second Egloga representada en requesta de unos amores begins with a passage that serves as an introduction, and the second scene continues the argument of the preceding eclogue. We are told that a year has passed. Here the author seems to have felt the need of dividing his composition. It is at such a point, as between two jornadas, that at a later date the in- sertion of an entremés might be expected. The passo as such did not exist at the time, but Encina inserted a song and dance after Gil had said: Déjate de sermonar en esto, que esta escusado. Démonos a gasajado: a cantar, danzar, bailar. It would appear, then, that Encina feared a wavering of interest on the part of his audience at this critical point, either from attention too long sustained, or lest his material lacked sufficient dramatic intensity. It is from just such technical considera- tions as the desire to introduce more variety, or sometimes to divide scenes, that the entremés takes its rise and develops. In the works of Lucas Fernandez, who wrote probably only a few years later than these earlier eclogues of Encina, exactly the same thing occurs. In one of his plays,‘ after a dialogue between Bras Gil and Beringuella, they break off the conversa- tion, dance and sing,’ and then with the appearance of a new personage, the course of the action continues.® Still another example is found in the Egloga real of Fernando de Prado, played before Charles I in December, 1517,7 where a villancico 4 Comedia hecha por Lucas Fernéndez, ca. 1500. 5 The use of intermedi di musica was the regular thing in the more pretentious Italian plays of the whole sixteenth century, and the insertion of music or singing interspersed in, but not connected with, the plot of the play is, according to every indication, much older. It is quite possible that Encina, and perhaps some of the other early dramatists of Spain, steeped in Italian culture, found there their ideas for the interludes here under discussion. That they lack the pomp and importance of those found in Italy is in line with the whole situation of the drama in the respective countries. 6 This use of music to relieve the tension of a situation in a drama or to gain the good-will of an audience is of ancient and far-reaching use. The Greek chorus, especially where the music does not relate to the main action (see Chapter I), seems to have had some such pur- pose. Music to win the good-will of an audience for a play is found even in Hindu literature. Witness the prologue to the Sakoontala. 7 Kohler, Sieben spanische dramatische Eklogen, in Vol. XXVII, Gesellschaft fiir romanische Literatur, p. 158, Dresden, 1911. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 41 in praise of the king is inserted. Some sort of a break for relief is all the more necessary here in view of the poverty of the action.’ While it cannot be called in any sense comic, it is none the less a relief scene, and shows the general need and tendency that lead to the inception of the entremés. In the Egloga de tres pastores,? whose source is the second eclogue of Antonio Tebaldeo,’® one scene shows certain relation- ships to the entremés. Fileno loves Cefira. With the impas- sioned eloquence of a lover, he recounts to Zambardo the woes of his unrequited love. But the latter is a dullard, and as Fileno rises in eloquence, his companion falls asleep. Fileno arouses him. Again he sleeps, to be reawakened, stupid with drowsi- ness and babbling nonsense. This so-called ‘‘sleeping-scene”’ forms Encina’s only real addition to his Italian original. Neither such a scene nor the character Zambardo appears in the eclogue of Tebaldeo. In the Spanish play, the whole passage bears no relation to the intrigue. In fact, its comic content serves to form a contrast to this first of Spanish tragedies. It seems to have been this variety, later secured by the insertion of an entremés, that Encina sought to attain,'' and in so doing he at least approaches the genre. The Auto del Repelén which, like the Egloga de tres pastores, is included first in the Cancionero of 1509, has often been con- sidered one of the earliest entremeses. It undoubtedly does show many characteristics of the form, and might easily have been used as an entremés. The great objection to looking upon it as belonging to the type is, as in the case of the Carnival Eclogues already mentioned, that it probably was written not as a passing-scene for purposes of comic relief, but to constitute a completely independent play with no subordinate function in a larger dramatic form. But while this play does not in itself belong to the type, its content is such that it must have had an influence on the development of the entremés. In fact, 3 Idem, p. 157. * Kohler thinks it was probably composed between 1507 and 1509. It appears first in the Cancionero of 1509. Cf. Representaciones de Juan del Encina, in Biblioteca Romanica, intro. p. 10. xe Crawford, Spanish Pastoral Drama, p. 34. ™ Crawford, idem, p. 35. 42 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: there are passing-scenes, subsequently written, that recall it strongly, though they cannot be said to have been copied directly. In this sense, therefore, Kohler,” Ford," Cotarelo,* and others have not been altogether unjustified in speaking of its relation to the entremés. When in 1513 Encina gave his Pldcida y Vitoriano at the home of Cardinal Arborea in Rome,’ he used in three of its scenes material that shows the type of the entremés. As com- pared to the developed form, they are naturally rather crude, and they present no dramatic unity, but the whole purpose of the author seems to have been to break the thread of the plot with relief-scenes, and that, as has been seen, is in the last analysis the chief distinguishing feature of the early form. The first of these scenes, between Flugencia and the bawd Eritea, shows clearly the influence of the Celestina. Both Placida and Vitoriano feel that the love they bear each for the other is unrequited. Suplicio counsels Vitoriano to make love to another as a means of forgetting Placida. He accepts the suggestion and courts Flugencia. All this forms a long series of monologue and dialogue of serious nature. It is abruptly at this point, as a relief-scene and wholly apart from the action of the play, that the passage in question occurs. Its coarse wit furnishes the strongest possible contrast to the main intrigue. The second scene of the kind forms a contrast between the courtly conception of love and the rough manners of the shep- herds as conceived by Encina, and by no means pictured after 12 Sieben spanische dramatische Eklogen, p. 121. Kohler thinks he can find Italian influence on this auto. So far as the actual material is concerned, the subject was certainly extremely familiar in the time in which it was written, so familiar that a purely literary source does not seem necessary. Encina needed only the faintest trace of the power to observe to find his material ready at hand. *3 Main Currents of Spanish Literature, p. 108. 4 Estudios de historia literaria, I, 181; also p. 167. *s Carolina Michaélis de Vasconcellos doubts the possibility of dating this play from the oft-cited letter of Stazio Gadio. Cf. Revista de filologia espafiola, V, 1918, pp. 337-366, where she says, ‘‘Atendendo as ultimas frases da carta, que todos alegam convictos, a favor da sua hipotesi, julgando que a frase sobre as forcas e acidentes de amor indica o assunto da comedia, eu acho todavia muito duvidoso, e de maneira nenhuma indubitavel, que a representada fosse a de Placida y Vitoriano."’ (P. 362.) For the opposite view, see Cotarelo, Estudios de historia literaria, I, 128-29 and n., and also Menéndez y Pelayo, Antologia, VI, p. IX. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 43 nature.’® Vitoriano and Suplicio are hunting for Placida who has disappeared. In their quest, they seek information of the shepherds Gil and Pascual. So far the author seems to have tried to relate the passing-scene to the eclogue. He but serves to accentuate the fact that he is groping; the type is not yet established. The lover and his friend leave, following the directions of the shepherds. Gil expresses sympathy for the unhappy lovers; Pascual retorts impatiently, and then suggests a game of cards. They play, and Gil loses, remarking philo- sophically over his want of luck: Mas hagate buen provecho que perdiendo he de aprender. They hear some sounds, and uncertain whence they come, decide to investigate, but Gil’s legs are benumbed, and he can- not walk fast. A villancico to Amor closes the scene. The third passage which closely approaches the entremés follows the Vigilia de la enamorada muerta. Gil and Pascual are gathering flowers for a garland, as Gil says ‘“‘A tus amores,’’ but with at least a connotating remembrance of the dead Placida. The touch seems rather artistic, but undeveloped. Suplicio enters, lamenting her death. The shepherds take him for a thief. After he has explained his mission, they refuse to go with him until they shall have taken a nap, and when Suplicio protests, Pascual cries out: Velad si quisierdes vos, mas tené la lengua queda. Suplicio consents to the arrangement. Thereupon the scene changes to where the body of Placida lies. The comic content of the passage is not great. It recalls the sleeping-scene of the Egloga de tres pastores. Here again shepherds, unable to understand the nature of the sufferings of a courtly lover, sufferings in this case related by a friend, are %* Such a misconception of the courtly idea of love is found also in a Zwischenspiel of the Spiel von Appius und Claudius. Of this scene, Hammes says,‘‘ Die zweite Szene (i. e., Zwisch- enszene) nimmt Bezug auf die Haupthandlung, indem Heinj mit komischer Entstellung der Vorginge sich wundert, dasz zwei Manner sich um ein Madchen streiten konnten; er wurde sein zankisches Weib sofort einem anderen abtreten.”” Das Zwischenspiel . . . in op. cit., p. 22. The analogy between the two is rather close. 44 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: overcome by sleep. Its chief importance in a study of the entremés is that it has no real connection with the eclogue, and the purpose seems to be only for comic relief after the recital of the long vigilia. The Egloga ynterlocutoria of Diego de Avila, a play of early date,'? has several scenes that show a relation to the entremés. The first of these is a sleeping-scene recalling to a considerable extent the one in the Egloga de tres pastores. Tenorio, a shepherd, is fast asleep. When Benito, a match-maker, tries to arouse him in order to discuss with him a marriage he proposes to bring about between Turpina and Tenorio, the latter babbles nonsense, and cannot be awakened. The scene is for comic effect, and bears no more relation to the play than did the one cited from Encina. Another wholly detached scene is that which begins with the stage-direction ‘‘aqui comienza a alabar al Gran Capitan,’ lines 528 to 580. Tenorio brings it to a close with the observa- tion: Queres saber, padre, qué tengo pensado? Que entramos a dos tomais por remedio d’estaros metiendo palabras en medio, porqu’este mi hecho se quede olvidado. This is not, however, a comic-relief scene, and does not, save for its detachment from the play, belong to the entremés. The scene between Toribuelo and Hontoya, lines 641 to 706, forms a true comic-relief dialogue. Toribuelo enters asking Hontoya, Tenorio’s father, for the keys on the pretext that his son needs them to get his Sunday clothes. The key secured, Toribuelo takes advantage of his chance to make away with Hontoya’s whole stock of wine, and Tenorio enters dressed in his best, showing that Toribuelo’s excuse was merely a trick. Yet in spite of the presence of such scenes in considerable numbers, it is certain that as late as 1513 they were not looked upon as entremeses, nor had that name yet been given to a dramatic form. In that year, Lebrija in his dictionary defines, “entremés de La Tarasca—Manducus.”” That is all the *7 Kohler dates it prior to 1511. Cf. Sieben spanische dramatische Eklogen, in pub. cit., pe 168. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 45 definition he had to give, and it is clear that he still associated the word with those mummings and carnival shows in connec- tion with which it was discussed in the previous chapter.*® The dramatic works of Lucas Fernandez offer no material for a study of the form except for the single instance that has already been mentioned. Comedy constitutes an inherent part of his plays, either to bring about an explanation of religious doctrines or to contrast courtly manners with the ignorance of the peasants as long-standing aristocratic traditions conceived them. It does not appear in the form of detached passing- scenes. It is to Torres Naharro, who in so many respects antici- pated the dramas of the following century, that one must turn in a study of experiments in the new form. The entremés, in so far as the detached scenes belong to the genre, exists in con- siderable numbers in his plays, though still not looked upon as a form complete in itself. In the Comedia Serafina, the trick scene in the fourth jornada has no organic connection with the plot of the play, and forms an episode that will compare favorably with some of the en- tremeses of fifty years later. Gomecio and Lenicio, two servants, meet. The former talks a macaronic Latin. Lenicio tells him that Dorosia has said to her mistress that Gomecio is infatuated with her. Gomecio is incredulous, and Lenicio promises to assure his lady’s favor by an incantation. He ties the dupe’s fingers, and utters the formula, composed, as he says, of “‘ciertas palabras caldeas,”’ in reality a jargon. Then he deserts Gomecio, leaving him tied. In response to the latter’s cries, Teodoro, the friar, appears and Gomecio receives at his hands the reward of his credulity while Lenicio gloats over the success of his practical joke. The servant-scene in the first jornada’? is unrelated to the plot, but belongs to a sub-plot which connects with the scene discussed from the fourth jornada. It has a certain technical purpose in that during the latter part of it Dorosia is supposed 18 Bonilla y San Martin, Las Bacantes, pp. 86-87, and 86, n. 5S. 19 Propaladia, I, pp. 144-148. The passing scene begins with the speech of Lenicio, ‘‘ Primero me besaras. . . .” All references to the Propaladia are to the edition in the Libros de Antafio. 46 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: to deliver a message from her mistress to Floristan. Such technical purposes are frequently filled by the device of passing- scenes in the early plays not alone in Spain, but in Europe in general. The situation, moreover, while crude and undeveloped, is of a nature to place the scene in question with the beginnings of the entremeés. The second and fourth jornadas of the Comedia Trofea are in reality entremeses. Both are quite separate from the intrigue of the play. The first introduces two gardeners and a page. An interesting feature of this is its division into two parts by a song and dance. Such scenes are slowly crystallizing in form and adopting the various dramatic devices. The scene of the fourth jornada, while it has no relation to the play itself, is slightly prepared by the closing lines of the second. In content, it is perhaps scarcely entremés, although it plays the part of one. To the two gardeners of the second jornada are added two others, Mingo Oveja and Gil Bragado. The four offer gifts to the prince, Don Juan. It includes a typical quarrel arising over the question of whose right it is to speak, and a misunderstanding on the part of the four personages as to what disposition court custom requires should be made of the presents. This is but a variation of the misunderstanding of courtly love as a theme in the contrasts of Plécida y Vitoriano. Some break of the sort offered by this jornada is more than obligatory in view of the poverty of the action. The first jornada is at best no very ani- mated dialogue. Much of it is composed of long-winded speeches. The third jornada is a single monologue of 280 lines. The passing- scenes serve to relieve and animate this background. The whole forms an entirely typical situation for the rise of the genre. It would be hard to find a better setting for its earliest traces, or a clearer example of its first uses and purpose. In the last jornada of the same play, the scene in which Mingo borrows the wings of Fame, and comes to grief when he attempts to fly is also really an entremés in both material and character as well as separability. If it may be so regarded, it is probably the earliest example of such a scene used at the close of a play. In both the Comedia Soldadesca and the Comedia Tinellaria, it is extremely difficult to determine what scenes may be looked THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 47 upon as entremeses. Many in character and content are what seem to be passing-scenes, but the very nature of the subjects of these. plays affords a chance for the introduction of loosely connected, or even wholly disconnected scenes that have never- theless their justification and belong to the plot, if plot there is, in that they lend to the picture that the author is presenting. To that extent they become integral parts of the whole, and the fact that they may be separated from the play is in this case scarcely sufficient in itself to justify classing them as en- tremeses. Some of them, however, contain excellent material for the form as that, for instance, in the Comedia Soldadesca in which some soldiers strive to force the landlord to supply their wants. In the fifth jornada of the Comedia Jacinta, there is a scene that recalls to a considerable extent the intermedi di contadini of the earliest Italian plays. It is very much like a written and extended Jazzo. The lady Divina is interviewing the travellers who have been brought to the castle at her command. One of these, named Precioso, bursts out in a tirade against the corruption of Roman manners and morals, and Pagano, a rustico, who has much in common with the landsknecht of the German Zwischenspiel and with the contadino of the early Italian plays, makes a witty reply. The traveller answers, and Pagano becomes impertinent until his mistress punishes him with a blow for a coarse remark that he has made. Thereupon the thread of the main action is taken up again. The whole scene”® is entirely foreign to the action. It forms an entremés and, as has been said, seems not unlike the /azzz so far as one may judge what they were.” The Comedia Calamita contains abundant material that closely resembles the entremeses of a little later date, but in the main so skilfully blended with the action as to make it in- separable from the p'ay. Torcazo, the simple; his wife, and the 2° Propaladia, II, pp. 115-120. * Scherillo has called attention to the impossibility of deciding how far the /azzit became sources, even in Italy, for the written comedy. They were, as he says, ‘‘sempre solamente accennati.’’ La Commedia dell’arte in Italia, p. 23. In the case of Torres Naharro now under consideration, there can be no question of a source other than the probable one of his idea. 48 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: young student are types that will figure in the passos of Lope de Rueda. The trick that Iusquino plays on Torcazo in passing himself off as a relative is such as frequently occurs in the en- tremés in its developed form. On the whole, it would seem not unlikely that both in the matter of types and material it, in common with several scenes in this comedy, had a certain influ- ence on the development of the form. As it stands here, how- ever, it belongs to the action. The same may be said of the trick that Fileo plays on Torcazo in the second jornada. It also belongs to the play—by grace!—and yet it is extra- ordinarily in the manner of the passos of Rueda. So much is this the case, that one must wonder whether inspiration for the latter may not have been in some measure derived from it. One scene, however, in this play seems to have all the elements of the entremés. It occurs in the fifth jornada while Euticio is waiting for his son to come out so that he can settle with him, the term being understood in the true parental sense. Iusquino persuades Torcazo to feign himself dead. This ar- ranged, the former sets up an outcry. In response to his calls, Libina, Torcazo’s wife, and the student enter, and in reply to Libina’s lament, the student replies: Callarte cumple a fe por mi amor; muérase, qu’es un traidor de tu placer enemigo: yo me casaré contigo y aun te serviré mejor. Whereupon Torcazo arises from his pretended swoon, filled with wrath and much to the discomfiture of the student and his wife. In passing, it may be noted that this scene is not original with Torres Naharro. Its source is found in La Calandria of Bibbiena.” But although only this one scene is actually separable from the play, and for that reason the rest may not be accounted true entremeses, the entire action between Libina, Torcazo, Iusquino, * Flamini, I/ Cinquecento, p. 317 and Crawford, Note on the ‘‘Comedia Calamita”’ of Torres Naharro in Mod. Lang. Notes, Vol. XXXVI, p. 17. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 49 and the student forms a subordinate plot in itself, only more or less loosely related to the main intrigue. In connection with a play of somewhat later date, to be examined shortly, atten- tion will be called again to this fact in its possible relation to the development of the entremés. In the Comedia Aquilana, the second jornada is entirely separable from the play and forms an entremés despite the fact that the author seems to have wanted to give it a certain con- nection by the closing lines in which Dileta delivers a message to Aquilano from her mistress, a message, by the way, of no importance, since it is simply to tell Aquilano that Felicina wants him to come “alone and early’”’ to the rendezvous his lady had given him on their parting.*3 Nor does the fact that the traces the gardener finds are those made by the lover in his clandestine visit to his sweetheart*4 make it any the less a passing- scene, inasmuch as the discovery leads to nothing of importance for the plot. It is, as has already been shown in several cases, not uncommon to find these comic-relief scenes given a semblance of relationship to the play in some such manner as this by the early writers. In this passage, the personages, two gardeners, a servant, and a maid-servant, are types that have already been found in similar scenes by the same author. The argument is as follows: two gardeners while at work find footprints in the garden. Galterio fears the loss of his wages because of the damage done by the intruder. The scene is one of the earliest to offer a definite discussion of social conditions. Dandario closes it with the words: Desos vienen los que mas pompa mantienen. Y aquellos contino veo mas tristes por lo que tienen que yo por lo que deseo. Dileta, the maid, enters asking for Faceto, and the latter part of the jornada is a dialogue between the two. While the scene is an entremés in its separable character and from the types it 23 Propaladia, II, 258. 24 See the argument, Propaladia, II, 239. 50 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: portrays, the comparative seriousness of its tone seems to remove it somewhat from the form. It is from this gardener scene, as well as from certain other passages in Torres Naharro, that Jayme de Giiete drew the inspiration, if not the actual material, for some of his passos. In the fourth jornada of the same play is a scene that may be reckoned as belonging to the nascent form in that its only real purpose is the technical one of allowing a lapse of time. It occurs between the point at which the king sends a page for the ladies, and their entrance.?> There is a semblance of rela- tionship to the plot attempted when the king says that the fun- making is needful, something should be done to mitigate Aquilano’s suffering: but this is only a pretext. The content is entirely unimportant. The more or less coarse humor of the gardener furnishes the subject matter. Its remoteness from the intrigue of the play is more than clear at the close when one of the doctors says: | Pues nos habeis alegrado, yos digo ques cosa sana ir a comer un bocado y a beber por la mafiana, and sends them off with a gratuity for their services. It is no longer Aquilano who is thought of. The doctor says ‘“‘nos,”’ and that nos can fairly be taken to mean audience as well as actors. This technical use of a passing-scene to allow a necessary \ lapse of time, possibly found here for the first time in the Spanish theater, will be observed time and again as the entremés develops. It may, perhaps, be due in some measure to the helplessness and technical weaknesses of the writers of the time. It is, however, a device that belongs to a study of the passing-scene, not alone in Spain, but wherever such scenes are found. Pas- sages of the sort, or musical interludes, whose main purpose is to allow either the time for the delivery of a message, or for a happening not actually presented on the stage, or to indicate a journey from one place to another, whether near or far, are 2s Propaladia, II, 310-314. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM S1 found in the plays of France, Italy, and Germany, and could be traced through the length and breadth of Europe. They are found in Italy at least as early as the Sacre rappresentaziont,”® and it is possible that from there they found their way out to other lands, or again it may be simply one of the freak tricks of analogy. For Spain, only this much may be said: Torres Naharro who first used the passing-scene there in this way was undoubtedly familiar with Italian plays.?7 From this outline of some of the principal passages that may be looked upon as bearing a relation to the entremés, it will be seen how extensive was Torres Naharro’s contribution to the development of the form.?* As regards character types, he has servants, a maid-servant, a friar, a page, gardeners, a simple and his wife, a student, and the allegorical personage Fame, the last-named used, however, for comic effect, and not for the sake of allegory. In the passos of Rueda, appear the type of lackey to correspond somewhat with the servant, the fregona who may be more or less equivalent to the maid- servant of Torres Naharro, the page, the szmple and his wife, a friar, beside other clerical characters, a gardener, and the allegorical personage, Fame. Just how far Torres Naharro may be considered a creator of types it is not possible to decide, but the fact remains that in his works are to be found at least a majority of the more important ones that appear in the entremés during the next half-century. Nor is his contribution confined to types as a glance at the material of his followers will show. One of the most important of these, so far as the entremés is concerned, is Jayme de Giiete. Yet, however he may follow 26 See the Sani’ Orsola, Vol. 2 of D’Ancona, Sacre Rappresentazioni. 27 For some such scenes: D’Ancona, Origini, I, 469-70; D’Ancona, Misteri e sacre rappres., in Giornale Stor., XIV, pp. 148-49; Solerti, Le Origini del Melodramma, pp. 7-8; Hammes. Das Zwischenspiel . . . in op. cit., pp. 50-51 and passim. Italian comedy was probably known in Germany as early as 1507. D’Ancona, I/ teatro mantovano . . . in Giornale Storsco;V1, p. 23; n. 3. 48 Rouanet is, therefore, far from stating the facts of the case when he says, ‘‘Chez les suc- cesseurs directs de Juan del Encina l’on perd toute trace des intermédes. . . . L’élément comique, dans les oeuvres de Gil Vicente et de Torres Naharro, se méle 4 des actions principales assez étendues et, par conséquent, ne reléve pas de la farce.’’ Intermédes espagnols du XVIIe siécle, p. 9. 52 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: Torres Naharro, he completely misunderstood his master’s art. Had he known how to weave his comedy into his plot as so often happens in the Propaladia, his development might have been entirely away from the separate scene from which the entremés develops. In the first jornada of the Comedia Tesorina, the comic scenes between Citeria and her mistress, Lucina, and between Citeria and the foul-mouthed Gilyracho present in their comedy and general aspects many of the elements of the early entremés. Moreover, they serve no real purpose in the play unless it be to introduce the characters, hardly a sufficient justification even in view of the undeveloped state of the drama of the time. In the third jornada, lines 1106 to 1404, there is an entremés, a scene wholly unrelated to the play. Gilyracho, who is the typical simple, enters riding a donkey. He tries to take a nap, but a thousand things torment him. He beats about him, exclaiming: Malhadades, que moscas tan endiabladas! oO que negras picazones! o hy de puta, y que piojadas que siento en estos ancones! While he is thus engaged, he loses his donkey. Perogrillo enters, and Gilyracho in answer to his question says, ‘‘mi negro burro he perdido.” ‘‘Then you have two?” asks Perogrillo. ‘‘No,”’ is the reply. Pero. Pues esse burro en que vienes cuyo es? Noes de nenguno? Like the conventional simple, he has been looking for that which was not lost. The scenes that follow this rather long passo are crude to an extreme, and the humor lies in the foul language, macaronic Latin, after the manner of Torres Naharro, and a contest in abuse, a common form of comedy in the early Spanish theatre.?9 In the Comedia Vidriana, the structure of which is so loose 29 Crawford, Echarse Pullas: A Popular form of Tenzone, in Romanic Review, VI, 150-164. Also Rouanet, Coleccién de autos, farsas, etc., IV, 171. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 53 that it can scarcely be termed a play, no less than five of the scenes show a lack of relationship to the intrigue. This number of comic-relief scenes in a play is probably equalled or surpassed in only two others, the Colloquio de Tymbria of Rueda where five are pointed out, and in the Farsa Salamantina of Bartolomé Palau. They areas follows: jornada II, lines 604 to 770; jornada III, lines 1276 to 1505 (This entremés might be entitled La Caza de ptojos!); jornada IV, lines 1965 to 2003, a very short scene of the kind; lines 2063 to 2185; and jornada V, lines 2465 to 2705. The first of these introduces a shepherd riding a donkey. Cetina, a servant, enters, and the inevitable quarrel between the two ensues. It is the rough, coarse comedy of the relief-scene. The second is sufficiently described by the title suggested above. The third, a very short scene, is a quarrel between mistress and servant. In the fourth, a chattering and selfish gardener argues with his master, and when after a hot dispute they quarrel, he threatens to leave. In the last, Gil Lanudo in a long monologue imagines himself a soldier, and acts the part much after the manner of the modern small boy playing soldier.3° It forms a sort of mockery on the Miles Glortosus theme, a parody of the bravado of the soldier, so favorite a figure on the Italian, and indeed the European comedy stage of the sixteenth century. This is the earliest faint trace of the type in the entremés for, as has been said, Torres Naharro’s Comedia Soldadesca does not offer actual passing-scenes. The source of this type has been the subject of much discussion. It is one of the early ones of the Italian theater and the commedia dell’arte.32 The scene in question continues with the entry of 30 A very similar motif is found in a German Zwischenspiel, but of later date, where Hans “riihmt sich, mit Schild und Schwert geriistet seines Mutes. . . .’ Hammes, Das Zwt- schenspiei . . . in Literarhistorische Forschungen, XLV, p. 64. 3« For the Italian miles, see among others, Caravelli, Chiacchiere Critiche, article on Tradiziont dramm. popolare, pp. 80-82; D’Ancona, Origint, I, 590-91, and note 4, and II, 135; D’Ancona, Il teatro mantovano . . . in Giornale Storico, V1; Scherillo, La Commedia dell’ arte in Italia, passim; Fest, Der Miles Gloriosus, passim. For French Fanfarron: Toldo, Etudes sur let héGtre comique francats du moyen Gge in Studi di filologia romanza, IX, pp. 277, et. seq. For Spain, Crawford, The Braggart Soldier in the Spanish Drama in Rom. Rev., II, 1911. See also Rudwin, Origin of the German Carnival Comedy, p. 46. 33 Scherillo, La Commedia dell’arte in Italia, p. 96. Fest (Der Miles Gloriosus) says, ‘‘ Die ersten italienischen Kapitine stammen aus dem 15. Jahrh. Literarisch finden wir sie erst etwas spater, ndmlich zuerst in dem Spanier Giglio der Ingannali (1531).” 54 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: Perucho. A fight ensues, and Gil, worsted, goes off calling for Cetina. The Tragedia llamada Josefina may belong to the first quarter of the sixteenth century.33 It contains a number of scenes that, while not strictly belonging to the entremés as it is found in Spain, are of the general class of separate scenes. At the end of each act, or parte, is a chorus of maidens which either sums up the argument of the act, or moralizes on its lesson. It will be noted a little later that this is common in the Jesuit drama. Perhaps the beginnings of a musical form are to be seen in the choruses. The second and third parts are preceded by short prose prologues delivered by the Faraute which contain the only, though feeble, attempt at humor in the play. This use of intermezzt from act to act to give the argument is found also in Italy.34 The evident purpose of the speeches of the Faraute is to quiet and hold the audience, and to some extent they, therefore, belong to the form under consideration. The first of these prologues contains an interesting use of the word passo. The Faraute says, ‘‘La segunda parte se sigue. Es en si paso muy dulce y sabroso y gracioso.’’ Since that part to which he refers is the play proper, and in nowise anything that can be construed as a separate scene, it is clear that the author does not use the word in the specialized sense of passing-scene, but rather in that of passage, part, the ordinary and generalized acceptation to which Timoneda later gave its special significance. The Comedia Radiana of Agustin Ortiz35 offers two examples. They extend from lines 800 to 879, the closing scene of jornada III, and lines 1071 to 1118, the final scene of the succeeding jornada. ‘The first is a dialogue between the shepherds Girado and Pinto. They are of the type traditional from the earliest eclogues of Encina, always sleepy, always gluttonous, and given to gaming and fighting. The scene closes with a bit of horse- play in which Girado indulges at the expense of Pinto, and pre- 33 Cafiete, intro. to Tragedia llamada Josefina, pp. XIII and XIV. Crawford, Spanish Drama before Lope de Vega, p. 61. 34 D’Ancona, Il teatro mantovano . . . in Giornale Storico, VI, p. 4. 3s Published by R. E. House in Modern Philology, Vol. VII. Professor House concludes that the play must have been written between 1533 and 1535. Idem, p. 509. ee ee THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 55 pares the next at the close of jornada IV where Pinto, with the aid of Juanillo, evens up matters with Girado in the coarsest manner. A similar attempt to relate scenes that are wholly apart from the main intrigue has already been seen in Torres Naharro. Neither of the scenes of the Comedia Radiana offers any advance in content over the earliest traces of the form; rather they serve to show how thoroughly the Propaladia was misunderstood by its followers and imitators. In the Farsa (or Tragedia) de Lucrecia,*®. there are certain scenes between bobo and mistress not essentially connected with the plot. Such are lines 155 to 174 and 312 to 360. They are interlarded only for humorous effect. The first is exceed- ingly coarse; the second has to do with the old theme of the gluttony of the bobo. Neither offers much of real interest. The Auto de Clarindo was published originally by Antonio Diez3? from ‘‘the works of the Captive.’’ Its date has been placed about 1535.38 There are three passing-scenes. The first of these comes just before the last scene of the first jornada. It opens with a tirade of Antonica against her mistress, and closes with a passage between the two servants. The social satire, and discussion of the servant problem—no special privilege of the twentieth century—are poorly done, and show no advance upon Jayme de Giiete or Torres Naharro. The second passing- scene comes a little after the middle of the second jornada. It is very short, only a few lines, consisting of a very coarse play between the servants. It recalls the Italian Jazzz. The third of these scenes closes the second jornada. The author has thought to relate it to the plot in that the fathers of the two girls who have been shut up in a convent order Pandulfo, the bobo, to visit and take them some food. This the simpleton is crafty enough to appropriate for his own nourishment, solilo- quizing as he eats, and closing with a song in which he says that since those for whom the food was intended have delayed so long, “‘ perdido lo tienen.”’ 36 Tragedia de la Castidad de Lucrecia agora nueuamente compuesta en metro por Juan Pastor. Pub. by Bonilla y San Martin inthe Rev. Hisp,. XXVII, pp. 437-454. The date of the Lucrecia must be fairly early to judge from the fact that the same author wrote an auto, published in Sevilla in 1528. Cf. idem, p. 394. 37 Pub. by Bonilla y San Martin, Obras dramaticas del siglo XVI, primera serie. 38 Barrera, Catdlogo, p. 128. 56 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: The second jornada of the Comedia Tidea of Francisco de las Natas contains a comic-relief scene unmistakably influenced by Encina. It extends from lines 806 to 1045, and bears no real relation to the play.%9 Menalcas enters dancing and leaping. His first appeal is to the audience: Hora andar, quierome enuenturar (h)a hablar estos sefiores, mas no sé por do empegar, que parescen rugidores. Such an appeal is common in the prologue of the time, and also, recalls somewhat the opening, or Joa, scene of the Egloga en requesta de unos amores of Encina where Mingo is so perturbed in this case at having to face his patrons, that he says to his companion: Yo te juro a San Crimente que no sé qué me hacer. But in the Comedia Tidea does the statement mean that the audience had become restless and inattentive, or that the writer was in fear of a wavering of interest with its natural accom- paniment of noise and disturbance? If so, an entremés at this point would seem all the more justifiable and to be expected. Damon, who follows Menalcas, tells him of his adventures in the city, and of meeting ‘“‘a thousand students” who, Ellos juntos comiengan habrar de puntos, cercaronme en derredor; yo miralles sin barruntos y dezilles: sf, sefior. Sin me cato, dame uno del capato, otro puncar la trasera; pelaronme un gran rato todos juntos la mollera. 3* Romera-Navarro, Observaciones sobre la Comedia Tidea in Modern Philol., XIX, pp. 187- 198. He does not think this scene a passo because of a possible, though slight, relationship to the play. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 57 This is, of course, the situation of the Auto del Repelén, the clash of town and gown, and in the manner of its presentation very close to Encina. Badajoz, like Lucas Fernandez, often mingles the humorous and the grotesque with the religious element, using them to explain and develop his doctrinal points. Nevertheless, they are not always interwoven as is the case with his predecessor, and some of his scenes belong to the entremés. Only in occasional cases, however, do they show the completeness of form found in some of those in the Farsa Salamantina. If Badajoz in reality considerably antedates Palau, this is not surprising. It is all the less so when his traditional literary affiliations are con- sidered. In much he is very far away from the school of Rueda in whom centers and culminates the early entremés. The best-developed scene of the kind that he has is in the Farsa Teologal. A negress bearing a tankard enters singing a villancico on the birth of Christ. It is the common trick of the time, and almost an idiosyncrasy with Badajoz, to attempt to relate these really detached scenes to the plot. After some dialogue, a shepherd seizes the tankard and makes with it a jack-o’-lantern with which he frightens a boasting soldier into a swoon. When the latter recovers consciousness, he calls for a priest, and then says as an aside that he will mend his ways and meanwhile feign toothache ‘‘por quitar inconvenientes.”’ This statement about the toothache serves as preparation for the second entremés, pages 112 to 115, in which the priest enters with a dentist. The scene between the dentist and his patient, the once boastful soldier, who is frightened half to death, is excellent from the standpoint of humor. The dentist, after ordering a glass of wine for his own, not his patient’s stimula- tion, pulls one wrong tooth—be it remembered that there is really no ‘‘right’’ one for the soldier is only feigning—then another, and is prevented from further depredations only by the intervention of the priest.‘ 4° The dentist is common in comedy. In the scenari of the commedia dell’arte, published by Flaminio Scala in 1611, there is one called Il Cavadenti. Its humor is more boisterous and rather less persuasive than Badajoz’s. On the whole, the similarity remains only in the _ subject, and that is too common to permit any question of influence. Cf. Scherillo, La Commedia dell’arte in Italia, intro., p. X. 58 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: The former of these two scenes is the best of Badajoz’s con- tribution to the form, and one of the best before Rueda. It is one of the comparatively few early passing-scenes that offers a definitely, dramatically humorous situation. The great majority depend more upon horse-play and coarseness, some- times of the lowest sort, than upon a situation that offers a chance for real humor. , In the Farsa del Colmenero, there is a scene whose whole purpose is to allow a certain lapse of time before the return of Tamar to the stage. It begins with a soliloquy by a shepherd. Opilio overhears his last words, and thinks that he is talking ill of women. A quarrel ensues, almost childish in its inaneness. A knife-sticking contest follows, and when Tamar at last re- appears she thinks they are fighting, and tries to quiet them. This technical use of the entremés to allow a lapse of time required in the play has already been discussed. It is one of the most common causes for the introduction of these passages. The theft of the thirty ducats in the Farsa Militar can be considered an entremés in spite of certain connection it may have through the part the money plays in the development of the main intrigue, and through certain of the characters. The friar tells a lame man, a one-armed man, and a blind man to take up the ducats from beneath the stone where they are supposed to be hidden—Mundo has really stolen them again— and divide them. The friar then departs. Of course, they do not find them. The blind man thinks that the others have stolen his share, and attacks them bitterly. The diablo ma- liciously hits him on the head. The blind man blames his lame comrade, and they come to blows. The friar re-enters and intervenes. When the lame man again protests vehemently that the ducats were not there, all turn their wrath upon the friar whom they accuse of having deceived them. It will be seen that the whole action turns upon a series of misunder- standings, a situation common enough in the early entremés. The devil as a personage in the early passo is probably unique here. He never really gained a foothold in the entremés, though common enough in other Spanish dramatic literature. Many of Badajoz’s humorous scenes have just. enough rela- THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 59 tion to the plays to make it incorrect to class them as entremeses, and yet are so loosely fastened as to rattle on their hinges! On the other hand, there are true interlude scenes in which minor characters comment and moralize on the action like a chorus. But these, although passing-scenes, have nothing to do with the entremés as a form. In the Farsa de Isaac, the scene in which the shepherd fights with Rebecca over the goat she wants to take from his flock to prepare for Jacob has no organic connection with the plot. Moreover, the same shepherd’s soliloquy after Rebecca and her son have departed, in which he says some extremely in- jurious things concerning her conduct and about mothers in general, serves only to permit the lapse of time necessary until the food shall have been made ready for presentation to Isaac. It is very common for Badajoz, after using his play for serious and doctrinal purposes, to introduce at or near the close a humorous scene that has no connection with the action. In that case, he commonly gives a sort of coda to his play proper by a reversion to the moral tone at the end of the comic scene, usually in the last speech. Such a condition occurs in the Farsa del Molinero where he has a blind beggar, his boy, and a friar, the last the butt of some strong sarcasm on mendicant friars, indulged in by the beggar. The Farsa del rey David has a rather long separate comic scene between a shepherd and a Portuguese, one of the earliest examples of the latter type. The shepherd enters laden with spoils of the combat between the armies of Israel and the Philistines. He tries to make sport of the Portuguese, offering to share part of the captured arms with him, and fight him. The foreigner at first shows cowardice, but the arms once secured, he attacks the shepherd vigorously much to the latter’s terror. The last lines of the shepherd’s closing speech go back to the argument of the play. This entremés is fairly well developed and is interesting. It forms a possibly unique example of the ridiculed Portuguese turning the tables on his Spanish tormentor. In the Farsa del Herrero, a shepherd and a smith make sport of a pilgrim; but Badajoz is a most unmitigated moralizer, and soon returns to his religious theme. 60 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: The Farsa de la Hechicera has much comic material, often loosely connected, but, as in the case of the plays of Torres. Naharro already mentioned, the subject is such that it is not possible to distinguish true passing-scenes from those that really belong to the play.” The so-called Comedia de Sepulveda*® contains material of importance in a study of the entremés in its early years. Dr. Crawford has already called attention to the fact that the prologue contains one of the earliest, if not the earliest use*s of the word entremés as the name of a genre. But it contains much more. The prologue is in the form of a dialogue between two men who are discussing the play. To quote: Escobar. . . . Pero, por vuestra fe, que me digais, si se os acuerda, el sujeto desta comedia; y, por ventura, ahorrare cinco o seis horas de trabajo por verla. Becerra. No os puede dar gusto el sujeto ansi desnudo de aquella gracia con que el proceso dél suelen ornar los recitantes y otros muchos entremeses que intervienen por ornamento de la comedia, que no tienen cuerpo en el sujeto della; pero prosupuesto esto, si todavia quereis saberlo, os dire lo que se me acuerda della. . . . Y hay aqui, como digo, mil entremeses graciosos, que van trovados con la obra: que son que el viejo Natera, el que crio a Violante, con un instinto agudo, entendio que la Florencia de Figueroa, page de Alarcon, era mujer e enamorose della; y Parrado, su criado, lo llevo a un charlatan que se hacia magico y hizo mill burlas de su amo; 4 When Cotarelo (Nueva B. de A. E., XVII, Tomo I, Vol. I, intro., p. LXI) says, “La Farsa del matrimonio (II, I) es un entremés dilatado: todos los personajes son ridiculos; y del mismo cardcter participan las farsas del Molinero, de la Hechicera y de la Ventera,"’ he is mislead by his definition or rather lack of definition of the word entremés. He is still farther astray when of Gil Vicente he says, ‘‘La farsa de O Juiz da Beira (1525) contiene algunas sen- tencias graciosas, como las que después aparecen con frequencia en nuestros entremeses.”’ If that is sufficient to make a play an entremés, practically the whole collection published by Rouanet must be so classed. Moreover, as regards subject matter, the Farsa del Molinero is a Corpus Christi play. # Pub. by Cotarelo in Rev. esp. de lit., hist. y arte. It begins with afio I, nam. III, and is printed in short installments ending afio I, nim. XI. +} The play is probably of the year 1547. Cotarelo in his collection (N. B. de A. E., intro., p. XIII) dates it 1580. Internal evidence, including the way in which the word entremés is used, seems to refute the later date. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 61 y tambien al magico que tenia una mujer hermosa. En fin, hay mill cosas que no os las sabre decir ni aun son sino para verse en su lugar representadas y, por esto, holgaria que la viesedes.”’ If now one turns to the play proper, it will be seen that this comedy contains what has already been noted in the Comedia Calamita of Torres Naharro, that is to say, a more or less com- plete subordinate, humorous intrigue included in, but almost wholly separate from the main action.44 This subordinate series of scenes the author calls entremeses, and rightly so for they have all the characteristics of the rising genre. The important thing is that by 1547 these detached scenes were actually and definitely called by the name of the naissant form. It has hitherto been a well-known fact that Timoneda, in publishing the works of Rueda, so named the detached comedy scenes of the plays. He even gave a table of them. But here, twenty years before the publication of Rueda’s work, is an author doing much the same thing. It is another proof of the fact that the form was really existent and to some extent understood before the middle of the century.‘ The exact length of these scenes as compared to that of the whole play cannot easily be determined because of the broken way in which it was published, but they may roughly be esti- mated as a third of the whole. They belong entirely to the first three acts. The fourth deals with the main intrigue only. These ‘‘entremeses’’ are in prose. That is to say, the play as a whole is prose. They are, of course, Italian in tenor since the play is from an Italian source, I] Viluppo, and the author 4« This play within a play is found elsewhere than in Spain. Cf. Hammes, Das Zwischenspiel in op. cit., p. 76, and pp. 181-82. In Italy in 1515, an Italian play interlarded between the acts of Plautus’ Miles Gloriosus has the necromancer (and an anvil chorus!). D’Ancona, Origini, II, p.119. Inthe German Zwischenspiel and the Italian intermezzo, it is not uncommon for the subordinate action to parody the main intrigue. 4s If additional justification to looking upon these detached scenes as the foundations of the entremés were needed in addition to that given in the present chapter, it would be found in Rojas, Viaje entretenido, loa de la comedia: y entre los pasos de veras, mezclados otros de risa, que porque iban entre medias de la farsa, los lamaron entremeses de comedias. 62 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: has not replaced the comic material with his own as Rueda so often did. The eroticism is less rough and crude than that which is innately Spanish, but more pronounced and subtle. The servant, and indeed most of the characters, have a finesse in the delineation that bespeaks their Italian origin. The humor is not so spontaneously boisterous as in plays from true Spanish sources. Like the Italian, it is somewhat more serious. In the main traits, the writer has followed his Italian original, but he has not been a servile copyist, and there is sufficient of the Spanish feeling to make these scenes important from the stand- point of influence on the entremés. They would permit an interesting and instructive comparison with similar passing- scenes from the work of Bartolomé Palau. But that belongs rather to a comparison of national characteristics as expressed in literature. In this comedy of Septilveda, some of the scenes he calls entremeses have a certain connection with the main plot, at times even a necessary connection. To class them as he does, he seems to feel it sufficient that the whole background of the scene be separate from the main intrigue. A single point of contact is not enough to forbid such a classification. For instance, the fact that Natera tells Parrado, his servant, that Violante is not his daughter is important. Yet the scene as a whole is listed as an entremés. It goes to show that the form was not yet completely fixed nor fully understood despite the steps that had been taken in that direction. When Sepilveda said that an entremés was a scene that did not belong to the body of the play proper, he took a long stride in advance, but not a final step. When the author indicated that in this play the entremeses ‘“‘yvan trovados con la obra,’ he seems to point out, at least by implication, that such passages were not always written with the work; that they were already at times composed sepa- rately, or perhaps transferred from one play into another. This appears a fair interpretation of his words, and if it is, it proves that already as early as 1547 what has hitherto been clear in literature only from the time of the publication of Rueda was even then taking place: before the middle of the century at THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 63 least it was to some extent the custom to use these scenes inter- changeably. The Farsa Salamantina of Bartolomé Palau‘ is another very important example among the earlier plays for a study of the development of the entremés. Professor House has called atten- tion to a number of the comic-relief scenes of which this play contains more than almost any of its predecessors. He inclines to think that they have considerable relationship to the passos of Rueda.‘? The first introduces a Biscayan, Juancho. In a scarcely intelligible jargon, he tells a student and Soriano that, having come from his country to Castile, and finding himself without money, he has exchanged his arbalest for a guitar. He wants to communicate with his family, but cannot do so. The student offers to write his letter for him, and by so doing manages to get a little money from him. It is probably a true picture of one of the resources of indigent students of the time. The immediately succeeding passage also forms an entremés. Anton, who is a typical bobo, comes in. He is on an errand for his mother, and to remember his commission he repeats in monotonous refrain: Sangre para las morzillas y tripas para el quajar. The student and Soriano ask him whether the pudding his mother makes is good, and whether she will sell them some. To both questions he replies in the affirmative, but meanwhile he has forgotten his refrain. They tell him what it is that he was saying, and while he goes on his way, they proceed to the home of Mencia, Anton’s mother. While she is getting ready what they have desired to buy of her, they steal a piece of bacon, but Mencia detects them in the act and raises an outcry. Anton returns to force the student to leave bonnet and cape in payment for the theft. 46 The earliest known edition is dated 1552. Whether this is the editio princeps is not cer- tain. Cf. Morel-Fatio, Bulletin Hispanique, II, 239. 47 R. E. House, Sources of Bartolomé Palau’s Farsa Salamantina, in Romanic Review, IV, 311-322. 64 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: As will be seen, this makes, on the whole, an excellent en- tremés, comparable with, if not actually excelling, some of those of the Deleitoso and the Registro de Representantes of Lope de Rueda. The opening scenes of jornadas two and three are entirely independent of the main action of the play, and form comic interludes. They belong together. The second is simply a continuation of the action of its predecessor. Both are based upon Beltran’s passion for Teresa. These scenes form to some extent a burlesque on the courtly idea of love. This is especially true of Beltran’s soliloquy, lines 1302 to 1368. Both passages are coarse and vulgar to an extreme. They form an appeal to the baser instincts of the Salamancan students before whom the play was intended to be given.‘® In jornada three, the closing scenes‘? offer another example. The bachiller Tripero comes to procure the services of Anton. He arouses Mencia who at first denounces him as a disturber for coming at such an unseemly hour, and then, learning who it is that calls, receives him graciously as an old acquaintance. Mencia recalls the Celestina, and to some extent, Eritea in Encina’s Pldcida y Vitoriano. She promises Tripero that he shall have the assistance of her son, but wants to know what he desires of him, to which Tripero replies: No falta ado hay fatiga harta que han venido por mi en posta. Voy, comadre, a sancta Maria a conjurar la langosta. Anton enters: Boto a san, que parezco sacristan, y aun casi (casi) clerizon. Supposed to assist Tripero with the conjuration, he puts the conjuror’s book into the caldron, and the rest of the scene is 48 R. E. House, Romanic Rev., IV, 314, has called attention to the striking resemblance between these scenes and certain passages in the Tesorina. 49 Lines 1584-1789. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 65 filled with his stupidity and nonsense. Nevertheless, the whole does not make a bad entremés. In the fourth jornada,’° there is a short scene of the type. Anton is selling sausages. An alguacil, under pretext of doing his duty in examining the wares, frightens him by threatening arrest and imprisonment, and takes possession for himself of the whole contents of the basket. Allied to this scene, much as the scenes in jornadas two and three were connected, is the closing passage of the play which forms another entremés, and another case in which one occurs at the end of a play. Mencia wants to send Anton on an errand with a basket of sausages, but he is eating and refuses to be disturbed. Finally, however, after a good deal of coaxing and wrangling, he consents, takes the basket, and learns the message he is to repeat on delivering it. But the moment his mother’s back is turned, he commences to sample the contents, saying that, if called to account, he will say that a dog ate it. This trick of the bebo in appropriating to himself food destined to other purposes has already been noted. The alguacil enters, pretends that Mencia’s sausages are dirty, and over the united protests of Mencia and Anton, makes off with his booty. Mother and son, fearing still further pursuit from the law, hide. The last two entremeses show a certain attempt at satire over the injustices of public officials. Social satire is to play a considerable part in the entremés as it develops. It is a form that in every way lends itself to such subjects. Of these passing-scenes in the Farsa Salamantina, several are exceedingly good examples of the newly developing form, and might well have been written separately as entremeses. The change from the crude scenes of an author groping for something without a clear idea of the end to be attained, a condition so painful in the plays of Encina and Jayme de Géiiete, is striking. It will be but another step to the fixed genre. In the Obra de El pecador** of Bartolomé Aparicio, whose date Cotarelo conjectured to be about 1530, but which, both se Lines 1840-1894. s Pub. in Gallardo, Ensayo, I, col. 221-244. s Cotarelo, Estudios de historia literaria, I, 187, n. S. 66 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: from structural evidence, and what is known of the date of another play by the same author, probably belongs to the middle of the century, if not even later, there is a scene that belongs to the entremés. The passage in question follows that of the birth of the Christ Child.s+ Its only possible relation to the play is to have the shepherds on the stage for the Annuncia- tion, and for the purpose a scene of this extent is out of all proportion to the length of the play. Mateo enters with his flock, prepares his meal, but lies down to sleep before touching it. Pedruelo comes in, spies the food, and eats it while Mateo sleeps. The latter awakens, accuses Pedruelo, who denies the theft, and they come to blows. Cle- mente comes upon the scene to act as peacemaker. Such is the action. The horse-play is less rough than is usual in such scenes, possibly due to clerical affiliations on the part of the author. There are two interesting lines when Pedruelo says: Antes no es, con perdon, hurtar cosas de comer, in answer to Mateo’s statement that he did wrong in appro- priating the food. This sentence seems to sum up the peasant feeling and morality in such cases, at least according to the interpretation given them by the writers of the first half of the sixteenth century. Cases of such theft have been cited in the Egloga ynterlocutoria and the Farsa Salamantina and elsewhere. The first jornada of the Comedia Florisea of Francisco de Avendafio® has a break for a song at line 1033 after Salauer has said: pues estamos tan amigos cuemo hermanos, comencemos de holgar; yo vos diré vn buen cantar; asgamos las manos. % This play is called the Misterio de la bienaventurada Santa Cecelia, and dates from 1572. Cf. Mila, Obras completas, V1, 228 and 360. Creizenach, Geschichte, III, 147-48, n. repeats what Mila has said. Barrera, Catélogo, 513, mentions an edition of El Pecador of 1611. This cannot, however, have been the first. The characteristics and structure of the play, as said above, seem to place it in the period 1550-1570. & The entremés is published in Gallardo, I, col. 233-236. s There are editions of 1551 and 1553. Published by Bonilla in Rev. Hisp., Vol. 27. — | 4 THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 67 The song that follows is humorous in character, and seems to be only for relief. Attention has been called to a similar break for the same purpose in the works of Lucas Fernandez and Encina, and occurs later in many of the compositions published by Rouanet in the collection generally known by hisname. Thus two tendencies, the true entremés, and the musical break— that leads in Italy to the musical imtermezzo and the melodramma —run for a time side by side in Spain. In the second jornada of the same play,5® there is a short scene foreign to the action, though the speeches that precede and follow relate the characters to the plot. This passage, like so many in the early plays, is coarse to the point of lewd- ness. It consists mainly of the dishonest propositions of the shepherd to the maiden Blancaflor. It recalls somewhat cer- tain of the passing-scenes from the Farsa Salamantina. Doubt- less the humor was intended to lie particularly in the fact of such a situation between two persons of so widely divergent social positions. It closes with a dance accompanied by a humorous song. The first scene of jornada three’ offers the best example of entremés material in the play. It serves no more purpose than to introduce the allegorical character Fortuna who, however, plays an important role in this act. Briefly, the action is as follows: Fortuna enters dressed in a manner befitting the alle- gorical character of the personage. Servants and gentlemen alike are terrified at the apparition. At the instance of Floriseo, the shepherds Salauer and Pedruelo conjure him in what is evidently intended to be humorous terms, whereupon he reveals his identity. The element of producing fright for comic effect in a passing-scene has already been found in the Farsa Teologal of Sanchez de Badajoz. In the works of Sebastidn de Horozco, there is perhaps the earliest extant example of an entremés entirely separate and apart from a play. This is the entremés written ‘‘a ruego de una monja parienta suya.’’5’ For a long time it was thought that this was the first time that the word occurred as the name # Lines 1234-1269. 8 Lines 1434-1594, 68 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: of the literary form, and a number of critics have repeated that statement. As has been seen, this now appears to be inaccurate. But up to this date, all passing-scenes have been strictly incidental to and included in larger dramatic compositions. This entremés of Horozco stands as completely separated from a larger dramatic form as do those of Rueda in the two collec- tions published by Timoneda. The one possible exception, if it is to be considered at all a real example of the form, is the Auto del Repelén. The entremés in question is, as regards form and content, of no very special interest. Its attitude is distinctly one of levity, if not of actual mockery of religious things, an attitude on the part of the author that reappears in the bobo scene of the Historia de Ruth. The structure of the scene is loose, and there is no distinct dramatic purpose. By turns, the love-passion of the peasant, the beggar at his trade, a new departure in the entremés, and one that was to be a fruitful source of material, a dishonest friar, and a bun-seller are depicted with more or less skill. In the Representacién de la historia evangélica del capitulo nono de Sanct Juan, Horozco has another entremés distinctly so named: ‘Mientras vuelve el ciego, pasa un entremes entre un procurador y un litigante.’’ A lawyer laments his lack of clients. He describes how he plucks those who fall into his hands, and then abandons them. All is grist that comes to his mill. A client appears, and the lawyer proceeds to apply his system. His greeting is cordial, and he makes use of the Bible . to serve his ends: Ora sus, nombre de Dios, quidquid venerit ad nos non eiiciemus foras. The client gives and gives until at last he exclaims: Veis ay otro ducado, aunque del comer lo quito. Whereupon the lawyer, having bled his client to the last ducat, abandons him. s* This, of course, does not mean to say that it is any the less a subordinate form. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 69 This entremés is interesting for its material. The lawyer’s cold-blooded greed, his carelessness of the ultimate interests of his clients, his effusiveness that borders almost on servility while he is wringing money from his victim, his desire to create litigation for his own profit: all these are well depicted for the time at which the passage was written. In form, it is rather highly developed. This is not strange in view of the advance that had been going on for half a century by the time that Horozco wrote. In addition to the scenes mentioned, Horozco has a very short one in his Historia de Ruth between a majordomo and a laborer, Reventado, that has some of the characteristics of the entremés. When Horozco called the play written ‘‘a ruego de una monja parienta suya’’ an entremés, what did he understand by the term? Cotarelo seems to think that he did not really intend to differentiate it from his other plays.5? In his famous Memoria® of the festivities held in Toledo in 1555, he says, ‘‘Este dia, entre los otros entremeses estropajosos, salio vn sacamuelas con todo su herramental, y vna mujer a quien sacaba la muela, y sentavala en vna silla y descarnavasela con un cuerno, y despues sacava unas tenazas de herrador,®™ y ella dando gritos sacavale un miembro de hombre. . . . A este tenor salieron vn tripero y vna tripera. . . . Ella llevava dos ollas delante en vn seron, y con su garavato sacava de la una tripas y de la otra muchas naturas de hombre.’’? And again, “‘Delante yva un tamborilero disfrazado en su asno, tafiendo muy bien, y luego venian muchos hombres y mugeres muy aldeanos y de camino, con sus sudarios al pescueco y con muchachos delante de si, y algunas de las mugeres con criaturas como que yvan paridas, como acontece quando van a las bodas de unas aldeas s9‘*A una le da el nombre, entonces poco comin, de entremés; a las otras las nombra repre- sentaciones.’’ Cotarelo, El Licenciado Sebastian de Horozco, p. 34. 6© Memoria de las fiestas y alegrias que en Toledo se hizieron por esta razon (i. e., the conversion of England) . . . in Rev. Hisp., Vol. 31, 1914. & This recalls strongly except for the phallic part J/ Cavadenti, the scenario published by Flaminio Scala. See note 40 to the present chapter. Pub. cit., p. 402. These recall the phallic shows and pageants apparently common to all peoples at some time in their history. 70 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: a otras, y muchos de ellos traian la redoma para la novia en vnas mancanas puestas en vnos palos, y las manganas llenas de reales hincados en ellas hechos de lata, y otro llevava vn plato para en que ofrecer, con dinero de la ofrenda, y jugavan de palo quando alguno le metia la mano. Detras venian los padrinos y los novios, besandose de rato en rato, y el cura del lugar con vn gesto y vn bonete harto de notar y de reir, y el alguacil y el alcalde del lugar, todos tan al propio y al natural en todo, que regozij6 mucho este entremes, avnque en asnos, porque ymitavan mucho a lo verdadero.’ These, then, are to Horozco entremeses. Juan de Angulo, in his Flor de las solennes alegrias®’ describes the latter of those cited from Horozco, but he terms it a mdscara, and not an entremés, which latter word he does not use at all. Horozco also speaks of mdscaras in his Memoria, but to him they mean types, while comic interludes in the pageants are entremeses, as has been seen. It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that, understand- ing the word in this sense, when he used it for his playlet he thought of a somewhat similar show interlarded in the general festivities of the convent, and actually had in mind a differentia- tion from that of representaci6n. That he went still further and knew of the entremés as a play within another has already been seen. When Juan de Angulo calls mdscaras what Horozco names entremeses, it simply means that this use of the word was not altogether generalized. It is, however, found in the sense that Horozco used it in other writers of nearly the same date. Villa- lobos defines as follows’: ‘‘entremeses en nuestra lengua quiere decir nuevos visajes y nuevas invenciones.”’ This might in- clude both the type and the show. If so, Horozco went a step farther in restricting its meaning. The idea of ‘“‘invention’’ in connection with the word has already been noted as far back as the Crénica de D. Alvaro de Luna. 6s Pub. cit., pp. 400-1. 6 Juan de Angulo, Flor de las solennes alegrias y fiestas que se hizieron en la imperial ciudad de Toledo por la conuersion del reyno de Ingalaterra. . . . Acabose en el aio de MDLV. Pub. in Rev. Hisp., Vol. 31, 1914. Cf., p. 468. 6s Libro intttulado Los Problemas de Villalobos, Tractado I, metro II, in B. de A. E., Vol. 36, p. 406. *¢ See chapter I, note 43. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 71 It will not do to pass from Horozco’s contribution to the form without quoting a few lines valuable for the light they throw on the popular types of the time, a field intimately allied to the entremés. In the same Memoria,” he says: ‘‘En este tiempo salieron maxcaras de moros, judios, doctores, medicos, deceplinantes, salvajes, locos, triperos, melcocheros, bufioleros, cornudos, romeros, diablos, correos, porteros de cofradias, cacadores, hermitafios, negros, negras, portugueses, amazonas, ninfas, cardenales, monjas, biudas, Celestina con su cuchillada y su canastico de olores, lenceras bizcaynas, reyes, pastores y aun frayles salieron al principio.’”’ That is to say, he men- tions most of the types adapted to the entremés whether by Rueda or his predecessors. While there is certainly reciprocal action both from and to the drama, these types seem, as the relation shows, to have been to no small extent popular in their inception. In comedy, as opposed to tragedy, influence usually flows largely along the underground river of human contact and the fundamental similarities of human nature. About the time of Horozco, that is to say toward the middle of the century, the use of the word entremés for a little secondary playlet became common. It is found in that sense in the Historia de la gloriosa Santa Orosia® and in the Crotalon.®® By a decree of the synod of Guadix and Baena for the year 1554, entremeses in churches were forbidden without previous notice given in order to allow the authorities the opportunity to pass on their fitness.7° They were in all probability rudimentary examples of the form, unless perchance they belong to the class of those written by Gregorio Silvestre to be mentioned in the next para- graph. It seems likely, however, that they may have been true comic plays, for in 1609 P. Mariana in his De Spectaculis mentions entremeses given in convents which he censures in the following terms: ‘‘los entremeses indecentes y bailes deshonestos 67 Pub. cit., pp. 394-95 for the whole passage. 68 Cf. Bonilla y San Martin, Las Bacantes, p. 134, n. 1. 6s Baist in Gréber’s Grundriss, Vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 464 and note. Also Bonilla, op. cit., p. 87. It is difficult to determine exactly whether it has here its new meaning or belongs still to the old tradition discussed in the first chapter of this study. 7° SAnchez-Arjona, El teatro en Sevilla, p. 10. 72 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: que se mezclaban con las representaciones devotas en las iglesias y conventos.’’7! There is in the introduction to the works of Gregorio Silvestre a mention of entremeses. The passage is as follows: “. . . escribi6 muchas obras espirituales, asi por ser él aficionado a religion, como por darle ocasion la iglesia mayor, donde era organista; obligandose por solo su gusto cada afio a hacer nueve entremeses y muchas estancias y chanzonetas: en el cual oficio sucedié6 al famoso Maestro Pedro Mota complutense, y al Licenciado Jiménez, que hizo el Hospital de Amor que imprimié por suyo Luis Hurtado de Toledo;que en esto tambien tuvieron cargo de escribir estos entremeses para las fiestas mas celebres de la iglesia mayor.’’? Silvestre lived from 1520 to 1570.75 His entremeses, then, would have been written somewhere near the middle of the century. Since they are spoken of as ‘‘obras espirituales,’’ they cannot have been comic interludes. Set figures like the church entremeses of the fifteenth century do not seem likely. More probably, especially since Silvestre was a musician, they may have been musical or festal representations. It is not impossible that they had some similarity to the Italian ricercart. In any case, they belong to another tradition than the one here under consideration. The word applied to them serves only to show how long and persistently it held to its varied meanings.74 The anonymous Farsa llamada Rosiela contains two passing- scenes. The first*® opens with Caniuano endeavoring to arouse his worthless son. The latter is the conventional bobo. The master enters. A discussion between him and the bodo’s father, Caniuano, who is a gardener, over crop and weather conditions can scarcely be called humorous. The comic element is supplied 7 Sanchez-Arjona, op. cit., p. 12. 7 Gallardo, Ensayo, IV, col. 619-22. Article 3944. 73 There are editions of his works of 1592 and 1599 (Gallardo 3945 and 3944). The vita appeared in both. In Valencia in 1531 there was an entremés de peu, religious in nature. In 1551, the same representation was called a misteris de peu. After 1515, these shows were divorced from the church, but the religious and allegorical character continued. They do not to any degree belong to the tradition from which the Spanish form developed. See Mérimée, L’Art dramatique 6 Valencia, pp. 20 and 30. 75 Lines 215 to 475. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM 73 by the forgetfulness and gluttony of Benito, the bobo, who re- calls somewhat the shepherds of Encina, but still more Anton, the bobo of the Farsa Salamantina. The second of these scenes’ has little point, and as in so many of the early attempts, rough- ness takes the place of humor. Both scenes, however, continue the already establishing tradition in the new form. Going back a little in time, it may be noted that improvisa- tion appears in the theater in the Farsa of Luis Milan where the actors are given only the indication ‘‘dicen que . . .,” and fill in according to their fancy. Since 1538, the bbssibfe year of the Farsa,7’ is also the one in which an Italian company, so far as is known, first visited Spain,7’ one is tempted to ask whether Italian improvisation may not have had an influence on Luis Milan. It appears later in the entremés, but never really acclimated itself on Spanish soil. Already, then, many attempts at the new form, a few con- scious as in the case of Horozco, many blindly groping, had been made. An abler hand than any of these was shortly to fix and establish the new genre, and that was to be the work of Rueda, the first real entremesista. 7% Lines 623 to 738. 77 Mérimée, L’Ari dramatique a Valencsa, p. 89. # Rennert, Spanish Stage, p. 21. Stiefel, Zeitschrift fiir romanische Philologie, XV, 320. 74 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: III TIMONEDA, RUEDA, ALONSO DE LA VEGA While it is only as late as 1554 that Rueda is mentioned in extant documents’ he is then spoken of as already a man of the theatre, representing ‘‘un auto de la Sagrada Escritura, muy sentido, con muy regocijados y graciosos entremeses.’’ It is not possible to do more than conjecture how early his career began, but it is more than likely that chronologically his earliest influence, and his writings as a whole, antedate those which are usually attributed to his posthumous editor, Juan de Timoneda. Since, however, the hand of the latter passed upon, and in some sense interpreted, Rueda’s work, it is in) Timoneda’s contribution that must be sought certain back- | grounds for an understanding of the contemporary concept of the entremés during the period which immediately follows the middle of the century. _ It was with the publications of Timoneda that in a real sense began that period of prose in the theatre, and especially in the \entremés, that was to flicker out only with the contribution of Cervantes and a few of his anonymous contemporaries against whom rose the supreme influence of Benavente in the entremés, ‘and Lope de Vega in the comedy in favor of verse. Certainly there had been dramatized prose works numerous enough in the first half of the century, but with an occasional sporadic exception like the Comedia de Sepiilveda, they had been imita- tions of the Celestina, and, like it, not intended for representa- tion. Timoneda recognized both the value of that great work for “‘el estilo comico para leer puesto en prosa,’”’ and the fact that its imitations had not been intended for the stage, but, he continues, ‘‘considerando yo esto quise hazer comedias en prosa, de tal manera que fuessen breues y representables.’’? * Cotarelo, Estudios de historia literaria, I, 207; and Rennert, Spanish Stage, p. 587. * Juan de Timoneda, Obras completas, I, p. 9 THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM nas Here then, in a contemporary is a clear realization of the part the Celestina played in producing that prose period of which mention has been made. Among the causes for the change from verse, Menéndez y Pelayo has seen also the triumph of Italian comedy in Spain.’ There is, perhaps, especially for the entremés, also another reason more indigenous than either of these which will be discussed in its more appropriate place under the work of Rueda. Timoneda’s contribution to the entremés is that of editor, not that of an author. Of the non-religious works published under his name, he claims the original composition of the Comedia Cornelia alone. Timoneda, both as collector and editor, uses the word entremés but three times: once, as synonymous with passo, in the head- ing to the collection known as the 7wuriana; a second time as title to the first composition in that collection; the third, in his sonnet introductory to El Delettoso where passo and entremés are again synonymous. His favorite word is passo. During the earlier decades of the century, this word appears in two main senses. It is applied to a short religious play, possibly some- what like an eclogue or an auto sacramental. For instance, to a collection printed in 1520 there is the title Tres pasos de la Pasién y una Egloga de la Resurreccién,4 and the colophon reads Aqut se acaban tres muy deuotos pasos de la passién y vna Egloga dela Resureci6n.4 In the second place, it means simply passage, as when Carvajal speaks of a ‘‘passo de la sagrada hystoria’’s; or Bartolomé Palau ‘‘ay en ella muy graciosos y notables passos.’’® But in no case before Timoneda does it appear as strictly synonymous with entremés. Where to his time a name had been given to the new form, it was always entremés and not passo.?’' As has been said, Timoneda used the two words to apply equally to the new genre. In the Turiana, there is no material difference between the first playlet which 3 Estudio preliminar to the Propaladia in Libros de Antafio, X, p. CL. On the influence of the Celestina, see also Wolf, Studien, pp. 285-86. 4 Cotarelo, El primer auto sacramental in Rev. de Arch., Vol. 17, p. 253. 5 Josefina. And see Creizenach, Geschichte, III, 145 and note. 6 Farsa llamada custodia del hombre. Cf. Gallardo, Ensayo, IV, col. 1401-02. No. 4483, 7 See preceding chapter. 76 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: he terms an entremés, and the following three which he calls passos, except for the third, perhaps, which is “‘para la noche de nauidad,’’* and may hark back to the application of passo to religious plays. In addition, Timoneda uses the word in the old and common sense of passage when he says of his Amphitrion, ‘“‘contiene muy altas sentencias y graciosos passos.”’ It is to be noted, therefore, that in the use of the words to name the form, Timoneda’s contribution is exactly the opposite of that usually attributed to him. He is far from being the first to use the name entremés.9 His use of that word is, on the whole, without particular significance. So far as the form is concerned, what he does do is to apply the term passo to what was already beginning to be known as the entremés. Whether this is his own individual contribution, or due to the influence of Rueda, who may have used it for his examples of the form, it is not possible to say, since the latter’s work has come down only through the hands of Timoneda, who quite conceivably wrote the title-pages and headings. It is certain, however, that except for Timoneda (and Rueda?) the word passo was but Jittle used to designate the form until comparatively late times,'® when those writing of the sixteenth century drama, influenced by Timoneda’s synonyms, use the two indiscriminately. From the strictly historical standpoint, passo for entremés is little more than a temporary phenomenon due to the influence of a single writer.” ’ Timoneda, Obras completas, I, p. 177. * Fitzmaurice-Kelly (Littérature espagnole, p. 181) lists Andres del Prado as one of those who used the term entremés prior to Timoneda. ¢ It does, however, occasionally occur in the period that follows, as, for example, in a letter of Antonio Pérez cited by Cotarelo (Obras de Lope de Rueda, I, intro., p. XXVI n. See also B. de A. E., I, 548) where passo may be synonymous with entremés, and not simply in the sense of passage. The uncertainty in interpretation lies in that it is not known whether Ganassa wrote entremeses, or whether the writer means only to indicate humorous passages from the works of both men, passages that might or might not be entremeses. Even when Rojas in his Viaje says: y entre los pasos de veras, mezclados otros de risa, he uses it in the sense of passage, and not in its technical meaning, for he goes on to explain that these other (passages) ‘‘de risa’’ were called entremeses. 1 When Crawford (Rom. Rev., XI, p. 80) says the Comedia de Septlveda has ‘‘one of the earliest recorded uses of the term entremés as synonymous with passo,”’ if he means that they were then synonymous, he anticipates the use of the word passo. As has been shown, the use o entremés precedes. THE RISE OF A DRAMATIC FORM ~! ~ But the word passo, a passage, and then for a brief time the name of the nascent form, does serve to show unmistakably whence the genre comes. Entremés, too, has been seen in the same application in the Comedia de Sepzilveda. The form was at first a passage, disconnected or separable from the play, and in this sense it was at first understood. The five entremeses of the Turiana, all anonymous, were intended ‘‘para principio de farcas y comedias.’’ This was certainly not the most ordinary place, as has been seen. It serves to add emphasis to the still fluid conditions that sur- rounded the new genre. It might be natural to think that Timoneda thought of them as introitos but for the fact that his first collection offers three examples of the latter, all essentially different from the passos, though both contain in germ a slight dramatic action. The introito, however, contains also the argu- ment to a play; the entremés can be attached to any larger dramatic form: it is wholly complete and independent in itself, though intended as a subordinate form. It is more than prob- able that Timoneda thought of these short, and in four cases out of five comic, playlets as curtain-raisers to the main comedy, offering a means of winning the good will of the audience in advance. This, of course, is one of the main purposes of the form as a whole. Its position with regard to the main play was extremely elastic even as late as the time of Calderén. The passos themselves offer certain points of interest. They are all in verse. Either the influence of Rueda was not far- reaching enough, or what seems more likely, they form an in- dependent, and sporadic attempt. Two, numbers three and five, are intended as Christmas plays, and the latter of these is allegorical. While this is not the only case in which allegory entered the entremés, this Passo de la razén y la fama is in nearly everything an exception to the traditions of the form. It is serious in tone, and the whole spirit is religious. It might, in fact, much more suitably be classed as a true Christmas play. It can certainly have had no effect on the entremés, and if Timoneda’s classification is to be at all accepted, it must be only upon the ground that this play was intended, like the others of the collection, as a curtain-raiser for a larger form. 78 THE EARLY ENTREMES IN SPAIN: The Passo de dos ciegos y vn mogo does not differ essentially from the other three comic passos except for the fact that its use as a Christmas play is clear. Martin, the blind man, says: Mandadme rezar, pues qu’es noche santa, la oracion segun se canta del nacimiento de Christo.” The action is briefly this: one blind beggar tells another that for safety he keeps his money in his cap. The mozo of the former steals the cap, and the blind men come to blows when the one accuses the other of the theft. Certain features of this plot find analogues in the French farces Le Garcon et l’aveugle (1277); Un Aveugle, son valet et une tripiére, ca. 1450; and most of all in L’Aveugle et son valet Tort, of 1512, by Francois Briand,™ but these can scarcely be regarded as even remote sources for a story that, on the whole, belongs rather to folk-lore.4 In entremés literature, a very similar motif has been pointed out in the theft of the thirty ducats in the Farsa Militar. The first passo in the Turiana is likewise a quarrel between two beggars, one of whom is blind.5