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Members of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Maori communities are advised that this catalogue contains names and images of deceased people. Microform , Book , Online - Google Books. Includes index of the "entremeses" in preliminary pages. Microfilm of original in the University of Pennsylvnia Library. Unlike in Rueda's pasos, the correction here has less to do with a difference of category, and everything to do with a difference in education.
Although Chirinos is of a lower social standing than Benito, she still shows herself to be cleverer than the magistrate of this provincial town. Indeed, she is a con man, a thief, and a trickster. With this passage, Cervantes pokes fun at the notion of el honor, understood by the common folk as residing in noble titles and in being a cristiano viejo, a pure-blooded Christian, as opposed to the descendant of a convert.
The magistrate Benito, although he is in fact of a higher social standing than Chirinos, falls prey to Chirinos and Chanfalla's simple ruse, along with the rest of the townsfolk, because of the village's excessive preoccupation with being of pureblooded Christian descent. Later on, in the same play, there is a similar correction that once again reflects the magistrate's ignorance in failing to understand a Latin phrase that would have been extremely common at the time: Although the humor in the correction is much the same as in the preceding example, here, Benito implies that he is illiterate.
While this would not have been uncommon for a minor official in a small town in the day, it shows us once again Cervantes poking fun at the pomp and circumstance of the titles and authority granted to the underprepared and little educated. One can imagine this same magistrate signing other contracts and agreements without a very sophisticated understanding, if any at all, of the terms of the agreement. As can be seen from all these examples in both Rueda and Cervantes, the use of the emendation of one character by another is one humorous technique in which these two playwrights invite their audiences to laugh at the foolishness of a character.
However, Cervantes often subverts the original use of the technique, making the audience question which of the two interlocutors is, in fact, in a greater position of authority. I have devoted an extensive amount of time to this technique principally because I am relatively certain that Cervantes acquired it from Rueda and the early tradition of Spanish theater as Amado Alonso surmised many decades ago , but as we can see, Cervantes appropriates the technique and innovates within its use, broadening both its comedic and situational possibilities.
Los refranes Cervantes' Sancho is quite well known for his tendency to use an excessive amount of popular refrains or adages, often corrupted or confused, to great comic effect. This distortion of refrains is usually achieved either by the accidental and unexpected combination of two or more refrains, or simply by switching around a word or two, creating a new meaning or an absurd one, as opposed to the traditional meaning of the saying.
His choice of refrain, however, is usually extremely apt for the situation. This technique was not unique to Cervantes, nor does he use it exclusively with his Sancho character. In fact, several of the Cervantine entremeses use this same technique in their depiction of the more foolish characters. But popular refrains inserted into the dialogue of a play were a tendency that was brought to fruition in Rueda's pasos, used both straightforwardly, and for comic effect, and was certainly one of the many elements that influence Cervantes in his own writing.
Being a natural fool he goes along with all of these absurd demands for the sake of his wife. The saying is supposed to condemn ill-gotten gains,34 but here Samadel distorts its meaning to emphasize the fact that he has already spent the money on booze and gambling, and in this sense, he too has "lost" his illgotten gains. Rueda's use of refrains is fairly sporadic and infrequent with most of his characters in El Deleytoso. However, he employed many adages, and particularly deformed or distorted versions of these popular sayings, in the voices of marginalized characters that spoke in a particular accent, for example, his negras.
These stereotyped black women were a subject of ridicule in his plays, and for a contemporary audience their racist depiction is indeed in conflict with our modern sensibilities, to say the very least. Nevertheless, they are an interesting point of study both in terms of racial relations and conceptions held during the time period, as well as for their elaborate, albeit stereotyped and ridiculed, language.
Eulalla the negra is a wealth of refrains and adages in "El 34 Autoridades. Rueda makes use of various techniques for this distortion. Sometimes, he likes to have Eulalla invert the meaning of some of the words in the saying, as in the first and third example here, which come from the adages "Do fuerza viene derecho se pierde" and "Quien tiene oficio tiene beneficio.
Lope de Rueda's use of the refrain is for the most part substantially less complex than that of Cervantes. For instance, whereas Rueda generally confines the use of refrains to the "popular" domain, Cervantes often puts these colloquial sayings in the mouths of officials, as opposed to simply the lowest stratum of society.
For example in El Juez de los divorcios, when Mariana 35 This is an embedded paso, which constitutes the seventh scene of Rueda's comedy Eufemia. See Refranes and Refranes III for the more conventional forms of these popular sayings and their respective meanings. The first refrain, uttered by Mariana, indicates the fleeting goodness of something new.
The use of these two refrains here reinforces the judge's unwillingness to do anything about the dysfunctional relationship between Mariana and her much older husband. En La guarda cuidadosa, the soldier employs a refrain in trying to win Cristina's affection: Spadaccini explains the humor in making use of this refrain in this situation in his footnote to this passage The refrain is a comedic gloss on the popular saying "por el hilo se saca el ovillo," meaning that from the small beginnings of something, you can gain knowledge of the rest of it.
In this case, the refrain is used in a particularly ironic fashion, considering the soldier is dressed in old torn-up clothes reduced practically to rags. Hence, the refrain further calls attention to the distance between his pretensions and the reality of his humbled situation. Parker's "The Humor of Spanish Proverbs. The third of these refrains is a reversal of "a otro perro con ese hueso," used almost identically as it was in the Rueda citation we saw earlier, to similar comedic effect.
Para que entienda vuestra merced que la codicia rompe el saco. The proverbial phrase "greed breaks the sack," is fairly straightforward in its meaning if you try to take more than you can carry, the sack will break, and you wind up losing it all. As for the other two proverbial phrases, "curarse en salud" and "salir al lobo al camino, como la gansa de Cantimpalos," they both have the meaning of trying to prevent something unnecessarily or prematurely. There are a few other uses of refrains in Cervantes' entremeses, most of which are a little more conventional in their situational use and more like Rueda's employment of this device.
The refrain is funny in context not just because he confuses the elements, but also because he does so in response to being asked to speak straightforwardly and simply about the situation at hand, to which he replies that he will have no trouble doing so, since this is his custom. Yet he clearly isn't being very articulate. Even this simple use of the refrain is much more contingent upon the situation in than it was in Rueda, although the form and deliberate distortion of refrains is indeed quite similar. There is no doubt that Cervantes learned this technique from dramatists like Rueda, and expanded upon its dramatic possibilities in his own works.
Latinisms, especially the frequent use of the superlative: Both Rueda and Cervantes frequently employ words or phrases of Latinate origin. Often, these words or phrases are used to poke fun at the clergy, or at phases of the church that are being misused or misinterpreted by characters of the lower stratum of society.
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Other times, the Latin superlative is used, particularly in situations where one of the characters is agitated, and is employing the superlative in an ironic, mocking, or derisive fashion. Occasionally a less educated character will slip in a commonly used Latin phrase in Rueda's plays, often of a religious nature, as all were at least familiar with the Latin of the sermons, whether or not they understood it. The other very common use of Latin phrases in both Rueda and Cervantes is to ridicule the pretense of relatively more educated characters. For example, the doctor in the third paso of El Deleytoso, Lucio, constantly employs Latin phrases, without particularly good cause for doing so.
How much pain must he suffer because of this misery! Salus adque vita in qua Nestoreos superetis dias. The second, a simple statement wishing his patient good health and long life. Even today, the famous De Brevitate Vitae, which begins "Gaudeamus igitur. In this way, Rueda ridicules the pretentious erudition of physicians of the day. Cervantes, on the other hand, seems to be more critical still in his critique not just of false erudition, but in general of the out of touch officials of his time period.
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When Cervantes utilizes Latin in the mouth of a lower official, it often has a certain ironic double meaning, when one knows the context. For example, in El Juez de los Divorcios, the judge asserts, "Pues yo no puedo hacer este divorcio, quia nullam invenio causam" As many editors have noted already,44 the words are from John, While Cervantes' actual stance on divorce is a subject of some debate, what is clear is that he doesn't fully approve of the sentence of his detached Judge either.
The play on the whole, as we shall see in the next chapter, is a parody of the bureaucracy and impotence of lesser legal institutions of the day. These are procedural uses of Latin and are somewhat more unremarkable than Cervantes' other uses of such phrases. Of course, I would be remiss in this discussion if I failed to point out the most notorious use of a Latin phrase in Cervantes' Entremeses, which comes in El retablo de las maravillas, when Capacho accuses the Furrier of being one of them, that is to say, a Jew or a bastard, when he says "de ex il[l]is es," and the Governor immediately repeats the same accusation.
We will discuss the social ramifications of this play in the next chapter, but this phrase, a vulgarization of the Latin meaning "he's one of them," is actually the same phrase that Caiaphas' servant uses in his accusation of St. Peter, when Peter denies knowing Jesus. As is quite evident here, Cervantes liked to exploit the subtext of many Latin phrases, that much of his audience would recognize from the Bible or from sermons, in order to make a subtle political point. This sets him apart from Rueda, who was never quite as thought- 45 The original phrase, ex illis es, appears in Matthew His plays were clearly intended to be much more straightforwardly comical.
In summary, it is not the fact that Rueda and Cervantes make use of Latin in their short, one-act comedic works that is remarkable, but the way in which they make use of Latin phrases to ridicule figures in position of relative authority, or to denigrate a phrase that would otherwise have much loftier connotations, or, in the case of Cervantes, to hint at a subtle situational irony. Cervantes was no doubt influenced by Rueda in this, and there have already been numerous studies on the language employed by each author.
I have already made note of the classic studies by Alonso and Veres D'Ocon earlier. The most important aspect of this study, in my view, is the excellent observation that some of the phonetic changes correspond with those actually used by Moors and black individuals of the day in the Iberian peninsula, whereas others are invented by Rueda for greater comedic effect, such as the often exaggerated use of the article "al.
Perhaps it is in part for this reason that no such character appears in any of his entremeses. Also of great interest is Rueda's depiction of the negra, a traditional type or figure more than an actual character in the modern sense of dramatic works of the XVI century. To generalize about their language use, Rueda's negras employ a dialect that is even more corrupted than that of his Moors.
It is hard to tease out how much of their speech corresponds to an actual linguistic reality of the time period and how much is pure invention on Rueda's part. As Veres D'Ocon notes in his aforementioned study, Rueda's negras tend to employ a manner of speaking that is an amalgam of various speech characteristics of the lower stratum of rural society and has a very rustic sound to it Marquina, , and de Chasca, Many of these dialectical markers are placed in the mouths of the simples, negras and lacayos, in other words, the very characters whose speech Timoneda would have had to modify somewhat due to the censorship of the time period.
There are some exceptions, however, such as the first usage of the "casa fosca" for prison, which seems appropriate given the dramatic situation of the correction by the other character. Hence, it seems probable that some of the use of the Valencian Spanish dialect was already present in Rueda, and in other cases, it had more to do with Timoneda's intervention.
Another aspect of dialectical speech present in both authors is their fascination with the criminal underworld. They both ably depict the world of thieves, prostitutes, gamblers and swindlers, and both show a great degree of awareness of the underworld slang of their time period. Indeed, Rueda's profession as a traveling actor and Cervantes' known affinity for games of chance would have presented both with ample opportunities for encountering this element of society in bars and taverns during their travels. The fifth Paso of El Deleytoso, known as la tierra de Juaja, deals with two thieves poking fun at a particularly credulous and hungry simple named Mendrugo.
The play is about them convincing him that there exists a land where everything is food. Sicas o cicas, is also criminal slang for a money purse or small bag. A few lines later, Panarizo, his accomplice, states, "Mira, hermano Honzigera, provee que comamos, que yo vengo candido de hambre. Also, there are a lot of double-entendres and puns involving scissors or "bleeding" slang for robbing. Scissors were the common emblematic tool 41 for barbers and tailors, but the term was also slang for the main fingers of the thief. Y a essotro mirad lo que lleva debaxo la capa.
Registro de Representantes, Paso Cuarto, "Los lacayos ladrones," In the sixth Paso of El Deleytoso, known as "Pagar y no pagar," the thief Samadel doesn't use many terms that are exclusive to the underworld register. Yuta drame a roquido dotos los durbeles. No he fet yo tan gran llegea. Los dineros que me quisistes hurtar. Toma una higa para vos, don villano. Deleytoso, Paso Sexto, "Pagar y no pagar," Samadel speaks in Catalan here, and the words are clearly apt to the scene, and obviously written by Rueda, but they have added meaning for those who understand the language.
Next, Samadel says "I have not done such a great filthy thing" no he hecho yo tan gran fealdad. He then responds by flipping them off. As we can clearly see from this example, a lot of the humor in this scene is greatly augmented if the audience knows Catalan, and understands what Samadel is actually saying.
The titular fake Biscayan, unsurprisingly, "imitates"52 the unusual syntax of the variant of Spanish spoken by someone of Basque descent during the time period: He "cordially" flirts back with her, knowing that she will soon be the butt of their trick, as we will discuss in our third chapter. The interesting thing to notice about this scene in Cervantes is that, unlike Rueda, Cervantes cues the audience in to the meaning of the coded language employed by the characters. The false Biscayan dialect is used not to conceal any meaning, but rather to assume a new identity.
One need only think of the numerous times that Don Quixote clarifies a phrase in 52 The quotation marks here are to indicate that this language, from what I understand, has little to do with what the actual syntax of a Basque Spaniard would have resembled at the time period.
It is in fact a brilliant parody of themes of courtly love, wherein the system of values is completely flipped upside down, and the value of the woman as a subject of beauty is interwoven with her commercial value as an object for consumption. As Trampagos mourns the loss of his best prostitute, her exploits as a prostitute are fondly remembered, in a fashion that is both comic and grotesque the details of her final moments, suffering from venereal diseases are recounted in poetic detail.
Cervantes also draws upon the double meaning of the word ninfa, which signifies both a nymph in the sense of a minor female deity of nature, as well as a slang term for prostitute in the era. The deceased whore Pericona has her praises sung as though she were a deceased nymph of the other kind, or a figure of great importance. Part of what works extremely well in this play is the fusion of highly loquacious, "elegant" language with much more vulgar and plebeian language of the underworld.
Trampagos responds to this request, stating in an extremely rustic and vulgar way, and employing some slang, such as garlado for hablado that Chiquiznaque has spoken like a true theologian, but that until he can arrange his affairs again, he would prefer to start fencing again, as is their custom.
Another passage of this play, of much more grotesque intrigue, is where Chiquiznaque and Trampagos discuss how Pericona died: El yerro estuvo En no hacerla sudar. He inquires of Trampagos how it came to pass, and Trampagos replies that she died of an infection of the hypogastic region, and that they tried to get her to drink tamarisk, or bayberry water a common remedy of the day for this affliction , but she didn't drink in time. Chiquiznaque declares that the 46 fault was in not having made her sweat it out earlier.
Eugenio Asensio explains in a footnote54 that the eleven times she was made to sweat were provoked by cures of the time period used to treat syphilis and other venereal diseases. The passage gets progressively more grotesque in its detail: Trampagos states that Pericona did benefit from all the sweating, being left in a happy and gorgeous state, looking very healthy. In the following lines, Chiquiznaque speaks of her "fuentes" and compares her to Aranjuez, a place known for its sumptuous gardens and fountains.
However, as Spadaccini informs us,55 the "fuentes" here refers to her puss-filled sores that form as a result of her venereal diseases, so this comparison is of the most vulgar and grotesque kind, deforming an image of beauty. They then speak of her former beauty and clean 54 55 80, n. This image is immediately contrasted with the image of her teeth being blackened and rotted by another affliction, completely turning the Petrarchian image of teeth as white pearls on its head, which Cervantes makes very explicit here, culminating with Trampagos' comment that "one morning, she woke up without them [her teeth].
Both authors are able to integrate masterfully the kind of vocabulary used by the lower stratum of society to paint a picture that is believable for the kind of grotesque, degraded world in which their low characters operate. While Rueda's characters often use different linguistic codes that provoke misunderstanding that even the audience wouldn't fully understand, Cervantes blends his criminal slang with a much more "elevated" register, and it is the contrast between the worlds of high poetry and criminal lowlifes that provokes laughter.
To conclude this section, I should perhaps also note that I do not mean to imply that the four language techniques illustrated above are exclusive to Rueda and Cervantes, or that Cervantes necessarily learned them from Rueda and not another source. My primary aim was to show that Cervantes is indeed deeply linked to the Spanish tradition of theater that preceeded him and the rhetorical devices used during the time period. This fact, however, in no way diminishes his originality and ability to innovate within the confines of this older mode of theater.
Cervantes' entremeses were generally speaking far subtler and more complex in terms of language, the creation of characters, and the exploration of social relations of the time period than the vast majority of the farces of his predecessors. Cervantes' interludes are, nevertheless, extremely well regarded by most modern critics, as well as modern theatrical companies. One of the recurring responses to this question modern critics have mentioned is the style in which the theater was written.
In particular, Cervantes' interludes seem to have much more detailed and explanatory stage directions, considerably more characters, and to have less dramatic action than those of his contemporaries as we shall see later in our analysis of the individual plays. These factors and others have led some modern critics, such as Jenaro Talens and Nicholas Spadaccini57, to propose that Cervantes may have intended the plays to be read rather than performed.
I cannot agree with this suggestion, both because of Cervantes' own affirmations about his dramatic works and because of the circumstances under which he published his plays. As Cervantes himself informs us in his introduction: And, as I previously noted, Cervantes' plays appear to have been considerably ahead of their time, and have enjoyed a relative degree of both commercial success and excellent critical reception in the modern era.
What is it, then, about their composition that makes them much more appealing to us as moderns than they probably were to Cervantes' contemporaries? In his provocative study, The Novelist as Playwright: Reed explores the ways in which Cervantes' interludes present themselves as a kind of "novelized drama" 4 in that they use a more polyvalent language, as well as irony and satirical criticism not typical of the genre prior to Cervantes' arrival on the scene. Reed prudently accepts that Cervantes intended his theater to be performed upon the stage, but points to some of the reasons why it might not have been as successful in its day.
Specifically, Reed points out that there is a synthesis of literary discourse and dramatic performance in Cervantes' interludes 37 , which blend elements of "official" as well as "popular" culture As he puts it, "The novelized 58 This discussion is a bit lengthy to summarize here. The gist of his argument is that Cervantes' interludes are more "heady" and require much more contemplation than those of his predecessors, because they don't give us a clean, comfortable, clear-cut resolution, and because they incorporate elements from both the more everyday world of the street as well as from the classical literature.
In reality, I think that some of what Reed characterizes here as uniquely Cervantine could in fact be demonstrated for many playwrights of the time, included Lope de Vega though perhaps not as much in the case of Rueda , but it is nevertheless a compelling argument, that demonstrates many of the virtues and innovations of Cervantes' dramatic technique.
As Reed states, all but two of the Cervantine interludes conclude in a way that is far from traditional. Rather than ending with the typical slapstick found in most of Rueda's plays, Cervantes often chooses to have the main dramatic action of the play interrupted by musicians who come on the stage and prevent the final decision of the arbiters of the play from taking place.
This leaves the audience with a sense of indeterminacy with regard to the ultimate conclusion of the play, and requires "the collaboration of the theatrical audience or reading public in order to resolve the open-ended presentation of such ideas. I find Reed's discussion particularly salient with regard to this last point. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the interlude was typically thought of as a lighter, less involved comic work, used to prolong the length of a comedy, as well as to provide some levity and respite for the audience between its acts. As such, the interlude as a "contingent" or "dependent" genre was deliberately written in such as way so as not to demand too much deep contemplation or "serious" attention on the part of the audience.
Cervantes, in outright rejecting this kind of "escapist" interlude, crafts a kind of interlude that demands a greater degree of reflection and intellectual participation from his audience. Cervantes' interludes become more substantial in their content 52 than those of his predecessors, but, in the process, they not only become more autonomous from the larger work into which they would have been inserted, but, in fact, resist such a subordination altogether.
As Reed points out, after witnessing a work such as El retablo de las maravillas, it could prove difficult for the audience to keep in mind all the previous actions of another, longer work. The audience would likely still be contemplating the ideas and themes presented by the interlude and this, in turn, would interfere with the dramatic action and impact of the larger work.
It is perhaps for this reason that Cervantes' interludes enjoyed less success in their own time, where one-act plays were common only as short comedic episodes or in religious festivals. In the modern era, we as audience members are far more accustomed to "weighty" plays comic or otherwise that take place in a single-act. In contrast with later writers such as Quevedo, who outright rejected the common man, and embraced Horaces' doctrine of "odi profanum vulgus et arceo,"59 Cervantes seems to have taken a different Horatian principle to heart, namely, placere et docere,60 to delight and to teach simultaneously.
However, unlike Quevedo, Cervantes doesn't outright reject the uninitiated into the worlds of "higher" culture. Rather, he seems to embrace a more humanistic idea that all walks of life should in principle, if they are willing to listen, be able to benefit from the questions posed by his works.
Cervantes' Entremeses, in keeping with the tradition of the genre, poke fun at human folly in various forms. But unlike the drama of his predecessors, Cervantes writes his short comic interludes almost as fables, with no explicit moral message stated, but with an ending that seems to invite the reflection of the audience, and a concluding edifying sentiment to be drawn from the work. This form represents the popularization of the phrase from the original text, "Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae" Ars Poetica, vv.
This attempt to "edify" is seemingly made more explicit in some of the plays by the appearance of musicians, who, with popular forms of verse and song and dance, give a conclusion to the dramatic action. Yet, this conclusion is often deceptive, and, as we shall see, doesn't always concord completely with what we have observed in the play. To illustrate how this functions within the individual works more clearly, it will be useful to classify Cervantes' short plays by the major prevailing themes he addresses.
Although there is some overlap between the recurring themes and motifs of these works, for our purposes it will be sufficient to classify these Entremeses into three thematic categories: Each of these plays addresses some aspect of the society in which Cervantes lived, and, even if not explicitly stated, suggests an alternative for a more humanistic society, less governed by human capriciousness and the dangerous, irrational extremes of social conformity.
It is interesting to note as well that in several of his entremeses,61 Cervantes tends to present us with female characters that are considerably more individuated and well defined than their male counterparts. In this sense, they are still closer to the "figuras" we saw in Lope de Rueda's Pasos than to fully defined characters. Nevertheless, in the dialogue of this play, they are given a greater degree of characterization than many of Lope de Rueda's character types. The play begins with Mariana and El Vejete, her husband, demanding a divorce before the Judge in a at the time completely fictitious divorce court setting.
Mariana, a woman much younger than her husband, laments how the age disparity in their relationship makes their marriage completely impossible. The above cited passage lists her complaints both with his poor, sickly physical condition bad breath, trouble breathing, inflammations, etc. She makes herself out to be the self-sacrificing wife that does nothing but toil over and take care of her "husband," who may as well be her patient. But the Vejete husband refuses to take her complaints without rejoinders of his own: He concludes by stating that he is the one dying in her power and she is the one living in his, sharing in his estate.
I believe that it is at this moment that the play truly begins to show its most humorous, but also somewhat saddening characteristics. What is funny is the "dialogue" if indeed they are truly addressing one another between the bickering members of the various married couples in this play. While the play is lacking for much "action" on the stage, it nevertheless draws us in with its vivid dialogue, that perfectly captures the essence of each of the four marital disputes presented.
The dialogue is structured in such a way that the couples begin by making their complaints about one another addressing the Judge, but increasingly interrupt one another, and wind up for all intents and purposes bickering with each other more than actually addressing the judge.
It is the perfect portrayal of an absolutely disharmonious marital arrangement. In the scene we are examining, the wife continues by furiously accusing her husband of not really having an "estate" to speak of at all, and instead benefiting from her dowry: Callad, callad, nora en tal, mujer de bien, y andad con Dios, que yo no hallo causa para descasaros. The Vejete then implores the Judge to divorce them for his sake, and Mariana and her husband continue to beseech the Judge to let them separate.
Even the court scribe and the attorney agree with the couple, and see their reasoning, but the Judge simply repeats his sentence, "Pues yo no puedo hacer este divorcio, quia nullam invenio causam. As other scholars have already observed62, the phrase used by the judge here is very close to the language of Pontius Pilate in the gospel of John when Pilate announces to the Jews that he refuses to condemn Jesus, because he doesn't find cause to do so. The use of this language, which is legal in tone, but which clearly evokes the echoes of the Biblical passage as well, would have been very daring and out-of-place language for the Judge to use in this context.
But the Judge doesn't seem to be deliberately making any kind of transgression. The question becomes then, what is Cervantes saying about the Judge here, and indeed, about legal officials of lesser courts in general? It seems to me that in addition to the issue of divorce itself, Cervantes also subtly pokes fun at the legal system throughout this play, and at lesser local-level legal officials of this sort, who, rather than getting anything done, put up obstacles at every opportunity, constantly delaying a final verdict, a verdict which, when it comes, is seldom satisfactory.
We will see this trend continue throughout the rest of the play as we continue our analysis. In the context of the play, it is almost certainly a pun, meaning both, as Mariana remarks in an aside, "Esta y yo nos quejamos sin duda de un mismo agravio," implying that both of their husbands are impotent, in both senses of the word. Before we actually meet the soldier husband, it might be somewhat tempting to think that Cervantes will present us with a miles gloriosus, the character type common for the era, and based on the eponymous protagonist of Plautus, who is the swaggering, braggart soldier, who frequented taverns, gambled away his earnings, and regaled whoever would listen with exaggerated tales of their bravery and heroics in battle.
In reality, the soldier Cervantes presents us with here, while not a fully realized character, is still more than a mere "figure," and is even slightly tragic as he is presented. That is, the problem of the unemployed soldier. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, the dominant economic model in place prior to the emerging proto-capitalist burger economy relied upon a remnant of the feudal concept of vassalage.
In order to make a living for themselves, lower-ranked members of society needed to find a lord into whose service they would enter. In exchange for their services, the lord would then give them a small salary that would take care of their basic necessities. However, during the Spanish Golden Age, this traditional model was largely falling apart, as a combination of inflation due to the influx of gold from Latin America ironically driving down the value of currency and overspending had led to the impoverishment of the nation on the whole.
Many formerly wealthy and powerful families no longer had the money to back up their titles. Thus, they were unable to take on vassals, and their vassals were unable to take on lower-ranked vassals and so on and so forth, such that people in the lower ranks of society were finding themselves increasingly unemployed. To make matters worse, soldiers returning from war were therefore often unable to make a living upon their return home. The soldier here is having difficulty finding work because no lord can spare the money to take on a married ex-soldier as his criado.
The soldier, therefore, asks for a divorce both in hopes that it will help him to find work, as well as because he is disconent with his wife. This is another tragic social reality that Cervantes puts on display in this play. Nevertheless, the soldier counters that her only virtue resides in her refusal to do this, and that she is otherwise a completely insufferable woman: In fact, the nameless Soldado attempts to use his faults, and acknowledge his wife's grievances against him, in hopes that it will be sufficient cause for the divorce of the two: Nevertheless, the Judge once again does not divorce the couple, this time because he is interrupted by the court scribe, who informs him and the audience of the arrival of new plaintiffs.
It should be mentioned here for the sake of the non-specialist that the term "surgeon" in the Spanish "Golden Age" was not used in the same way it is today. A surgeon was not a trained medical professional, but was rather equivalent to someone in the modern era who had received a basic first-aid course today, and little more. The surgeon was equipped to suture lacerations, open tumors, cauterize wounds and perform amputations. By modern medical standards, the surgeon of Cervantes' time was little more than a non-medical professional who knew how to sow and suture wounds.
In fact, this function was often performed by barbers as documented by numerous older dictionaries. The Surgeon's complaints really don't give us any legitimate reason for a divorce so far, and merely sound like the irritated comments of someone who is in a marital spat. Although the Surgeon's wife speaks second, she seems to have a much stronger case, stating actual reasons for her grievances with him rather than simply spouting out her contempt for him: Apparently she entered into a marriage with him under the false pretense that he was a man of letters and a doctor, when in reality he was a lowly surgeon.
This would have meant a huge difference both in income and social status, and given the reality of marriage as a financial contract in the time period, this would actually have been a significant reason for Aldonza to be upset with her husband, and possibly would have been a legitimate reason for a divorce, if divorce had actually been legal and not a literary fiction presented here by Cervantes.
Vuestro negocio se reciba a prueba; y andad con Dios, que hay otros negocios que despachar" Once again, the obstructionist judge doesn't feel like hearing out their grievances in his defense, the number of grievances Minjaca listed was clearly absurd and hyperbolic , and instead says that the couple's case must be subjected to further tests and scrutiny later on, "vuestro negocio se recibe a prueba" It is clear from this situation that the judge has no intention of really hearing out the couple's complaints or divorcing them.
Nevertheless, rather than give them a definitive verdict in the negative, he once again uses legal language in order to delay final judgment, and keeps the couple waiting in suspense, feeling trapped by their hopeless marriage. This position is somewhat equivalent to a modern-day handyman or oddjob man. She, however, is of such an ill-temper and bad character that no one in the market place can tolerate her, and she is always attempting to rip off her customers, such that he is always forced to defend her, and they aren't making ends meet.
As a consequence, he seeks a divorce. Once again, the Judge delays any kind of a verdict. While he at least acknowledges that some of the grievances are legitimate, he nevertheless insists that he will require written testimonies from each of the parties involved, and witnesses to corroborate their claims. This closing refrain has been the principal subject of debate among scholars of this play.
Nevertheless, the 24th session of the Council of Trent held the 11th of November, saw to it that this would not come to pass, and that divorce according to ecclesiastical law would not annul the covenant of marriage, considered unbreakable by the church. A tribunal could grant only two types of divorce: The a mensa et thoro or "divorce from bed-and-board" is a legal separation in which a couple is still considered legally married and may not remarry , but are not legally obligated to live together, The a vinculo matrimonii is a form of divorce wherein the marriage bond was completely annulled due to extreme circumstances, such as the accusation of sodomy, heresy, bestiality, incest, or any other extreme taboo where one of the spouses was deemed not to be Catholic in the first place, and hence the marriage was invalidated , or the impotence of the spouse before the marriage was even consummated.
In the reality of the time period, even the first kind of divorce was only permitted in severe circumstances and wasn't always conceded legally , and there certainly didn't exist "divorce court judges" of this type specifically assigned to preside over these cases. This kind of marriage annulment was never granted to a marriage deemed legitimate that had been 67 68 Restrepo-Gautier, See the annotation in ed.
Only in extreme circumstances could tribunals convene to determine that the marriage was never valid in the first place, and hence the marriage could be deemed null and void. In other words, by Catholic law, divorce was never legal or socially permissible in this era. The only thing remotely resembling a divorce that did exist was a legal separation, wherein neither spouse could legally remarry. There are, however, legal aspects both of the time period and of the play that are well worth considering.
As Atienzo has noted, the play, while not realistic in the strictest sense of the world, points towards something real. In examining each of the individual character types, the old man mismatched with a wife who is way too young for him, the unemployed soldier, frequenting gambling houses and struggling to get by, the surgeon who pretends to be a doctor for social prestige and economic benefit, and finally, the alcoholic odd-job man, Cervantes paints a very vivid and compelling portrait of a society in financial decline.
All of the couples in the play entered into their respective marriages under false pretenses of one sort or another, and they all feel suffocated by the stranglehold of the marriage bond. In fact, save for the first couple, the others that come before the judge all speak of financial woes that are complicated in one sense or another by their marriage situation, as we have seen.
Although there isn't much dramatic "action" in El juez de los divorcios in the traditional sense that is, actions occurring on or off stage that further the plot , the dynamism of the play comes from the lively and hilarious dialogue in the disputes between the various married couples seeking divorce. At its most basic level, this play is about four married couples that are discontent with their marriages for various reasons, coming to court in order to seek a divorce.
The final verdict of the play is, ironically, never displayed on the stage, and the judge postpones his final 69 Atienza, Beginning with the ending seems to be how most scholarship has addressed this play up until now. They have looked at its climax and asked themselves, what are we, as the audience, to make of this ambiguous ending for the play?
A lot of ink has been spilled debating Cervantes' true message with this dramatic work. Most early scholarship of the play, such as the work of Cotarelo y Valledor,70 later followed by Agostini,71 seemed to take the closing refrain at face value, arguing that Cervantes was trying to defined Christian matrimony with this play. It seems clear that in the cases presented, whether or not a divorce should be granted, there is no happiness in these marriages. In light of all the varying perspectives on this cryptic ending, what, then, are we to make of the final refrain?
Could Cervantes really have meant the refrain that concludes the play, laughing at the folly of people seeking divorce? Or is he rather cleverly pointing out the dangers of entering into a marriage lightly, either for convenience or monetary gain, and admonishing both 70 Cotarelo y Valledor Typically, when analyzing this play, scholars have tended to focus on the divorce aspect of the play more than anything else. Was Cervantes for or against the idea that perhaps, in cases of horribly mismatched marriages, divorce could be an option? Asking these questions seems inevitable given the primary theme and title of the play, as well as Cervantes' own well-known marital woes with Catalina de Salazar, detailed extensively in Canavaggio's biography.
Cervantes` "Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, nunca
What is most notable about this play is the incredible ineptitude of the judge, the supposed "titular protagonist" of the work, and the legal system, to accomplish anything. Indeed, much of the humor of this play is derived from this very situation. No matter how much it might seem like the couples warrant divorces from one another, the judge keeps postponing his decisions, until, in the end, he allows a group of musicians to disrupt the entire proceedings, waiting perhaps indefinitely to come to a final verdict.
The message of the play, it seems to me, in addition to being about marital woes, is about the woefully inadequate functioning of the legal system at the local level, and of a society that allows people to enter into a social contract as serious as marriage so lightly. In a way, the story could be seen as a kind of cautionary tale about entering into marriage for the wrong reasons, but it could also be seen as an admonishment of the legal proceedings themselves.
Cervantes suggests here that, even in the hypothetical scenario where 76 Canavaggio , As we have seen, Cervantes carefully creates highly individuated character types that, while they aren't full "characters" yet, still have a great deal more complexity than their counterparts in Lope de Rueda, and aim not so much at having the audience merely laugh at them and their circumstances, but also at provoking reflection in the audience through a kind of empathetic response to the characters.
Cervantes doesn't tell us directly what to conclude at the end of this play, but with a seemingly bitterly ironic resolve, he invites us to consider a wide range of clearly problematic marriages, and cautions us against entering into marriage too lightly, or for the wrong reasons.
Account Options
Four candidates, all of them laborers, present themselves and their "qualifications" for the office. The entirety of the play concerns itself with the election of the best candidate for the office, and is deceptively simple from a structural point of view. As Patricia Kenworthy has observed, however, the structure of the play is characterized by "a tension between haste and delay, between progress and interruption" These interruptions are centered on three main actions in the play: In addition, the electors seem to oscillate back and forth between candidates, and their opinion is quite easily swayed, right up until they ultimately seem unanimous in their support of Rana after his interaction with the sacristan.
This play is fundamentally about the trivial debates the electors have with one another over who would make the best candidate for the position of magistrate, and about the irrelevance both of their arguments and of the qualifications they consider in electing said official. We open with Panduro reproaching Algarroba for his linguistic style, and for whether or not his invocation of heaven is appropriate to the conversation. This declaration is rather comical and ironic coming from Algarroba, whose name is clearly of Arabic or Hebrew origins.
Y yo me burlo. Here, Cervantes takes up one of his many recurring themes, in ridiculing his society's excessive preoccupation with a person's blood ancestry, and demonstrating its pernicious effects. In the case of this play, it is simply one more completely irrelevant criterion that all the candidates put forth as to why they are most qualified to be town magistrate, or to preside over the election itself. Zimic , We learn that Miguel Jarrete is quite a marksman with a bow and arrow, that Francisco de Humillos is a great mender of shoes, and that Pedro de la Rana has a phenomenal memory.
Of these qualifications, Rana's memory seems the only one that is actually somewhat relevant as far as having the capacity to be town magistrate, except that the proof they give of his memory is that he is able to recite the entirety of Perro de Alba, "sin que letra falte," as Algarroba informs us v. This composition is a very famous series of antiSemitic rhymed couplets of the era, and was known, even in its day, for being very vulgar and generally lacking in literary quality.
In spite of 81 The couplets tell the tale of a dog from Alba de Tormes that could distinguish between Jews and Christians, and would only bite people of Jewish descent. The dog is condemned to death in a lawsuit by the Jews, but escapes, and continues to torment them. In order to satisfy the Bachiller's sensible request, Algarroba proclaims: The scribe, the two town councilmen and the Bachellor are nevertheless all in agreement that the examination of the candidates should 82 Ed. Before the proceedings can commence, Humillos not-so-subtly suggests that the candidates should offer them bribes.
We begin to see the trend in this play that the most sensible person out of the four officials is the only one with a formal education. In fact, when it comes to the candidates themselves, the shoemaker, Francisco de Humillos, foolishly prides himself here on his inability to read: Con esto, y con ser yo cristiano viejo, me atrevo a ser un senador romano.
He suggests instead that what he knows is "much more advantageous," as he is able to recite the same four prayers four or five times every week. When Rana inquires if this is sufficient to be town magistrate, Humillos replies that with this, and the fact that he is a "cristiano viejo," he is qualified even to be a Roman senator. Of course, the expression is a frequent colloquial hyperbole, but in this context, its discordant irony seems lost on Humillos, given that Roman senators were of course not at all Christian, and in fact would have 74 persecuted the Christians of their era.
This passage illustrates Humillos' provincial distrust of reading and formal education, the excessive emphasis on "purity" of the bloodlines, and the folly of both these value systems. It seems clear already that Humillos is hardly qualified to be the magistrate, but the councilmen have not yet made up their minds. They proceed with their examination of the candidates, and we learn all of their "qualifications. Soy sano de mis miembros, y no tengo sordez ni cataratas, tos ni reumas, y soy cristiano viejo como todos, y tiro con un arco como un Tulio.
He is able to sound out words, and has been studying his syllable charts for three months. In other words, he is basically illiterate, though slightly less so than his fellow candidates.