Cervantes and the ·

.Cotnic Mind of his Age

Pour Fra11foise, avec mes excuses.

ANTHONY CLOSE

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OXFORD ..„
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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OXFORD All translations from Spanish are mine.

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 Contents
Abbreviations

1. INTRODUCTION 1
A.Col.IAC Actas del Coloquio lntemacional de la Asodacion de Cervantistas
A.Cerv. Anales Cervatltinos
BAE Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles
PART I: CERVANTES'S POETICS OF COMIC FICTION
BRAE Bolet(n de la Real Academia Espaiiola
CEC Centro de Estudios Cervantinos
Cerv. Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Sodety ofAmerica 2. BASIC VALUES OF COMEDY AND SATIRE 17
CSIC Consejo Superior de lnvestigaciones Cientificas (i) Propiedad and discreci6n 17
CJVE Collected 1%rks of Erasmus (ii) EI coloquio de los perros . 30
DQ Don Quijote; unless otherwise indicated, references relate to EI
ingenioso l1idalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Luis Andres Murillo, (iii) The nocturnal encounter in Don Quijote II. 48 59
3 vols. (Madrid: Castalia, 1978)
EdOro Edad de Oro 3. THE PROLOGUE TO DON QUljOTE PART I AND
MLR Modern Language Review ITS IMPLICATIONS 73
NBAE Nueva ßiblioteca de Autores Espanoles (i) The theory of comedy 73
NCRLL North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures
(ii) The ironic ethos of Cervantes's comic theatre 81
NRFH Nueva Revista de Filologfa Hispanica
RABM Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos (iii) The satire of pedantry and its motives 96
RAE Real Academia Espanola
SBE Sociedad de Bibli6filos Espanoles 4. THE TRUTH OF THE HISTORY 1: RELEVANCE AND
RHETORICAL PITCH 117
(i) Decorum and style II7
(ii) Episodes 128
(iii) Camacho 's wedding 142

5. THETRUTH OFTHE HISTORY II:MAKING PRESENT 151

Vois. 1 to 71 of the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles were published in Madrid, from
1846 to 1880, by Rivadcneyra; the continuation of the series, from 19541 was pub-
lished in Madrid by Atlas. The 25 vols. of Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles PART II: CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND OF THE
were published in Madrid by Bailly-Bailliere, from 1905 to 1918. SPANISH GOLDEN AGE

6. EVOLUTION OF SPANISH ATTITUDES TO COMEDY,

1500-1600 181
(i) The concept of a collective comic mind 181
viii CONTENTS

(ii) The mote tradition 189

(iii) EI licer1dado Vidriera
7. SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY,AND CULTURE
(i) Courtly manners and humour
(ii) Social and religious discipline
(iii) Academies and academicism
8. THE NEW COMIC ETHOS: SOCIAL AND AESTHETIC
PREMISSES
(i) L6pez Pinciano 's theory of comedy
(ii) Hidalgo's Dialogos de apacible entretenimiento
(iii) Tirso de Molina's Cigarrales de Toledo
9. CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN DEALFARACHE
AND ITS HERITAGE
(i) The crisis of comedy around 1600
(ii) Guzman de Alfarache
(iii) La p{cara Justina
(iv) Salas Barbadillo
(v) Conclusion: Cervantes
Bibliography
Index
212
CHAPTERONE
216
216
Introduction
231
241
In this book 1 aim at a historical understanding of Cervantes's poetics and
practice of comic fiction, putting primary emphasis on the poetics, and con-
sidering the practice as a means of confirmation and illustration. For this
purpose, it seems to me important to resist the tendency, endemic to mod-
ern cervantismo, to treat Cervantes as though he were an honorary modernist
or postmodernist. Until fairly recently, not much was written about him as
a practitioner of comedy: surely an odd state of affairs, given his universal
fame in that capacity. The reasons for the silence, which were investigated
in my book The RomanticApproach to 'Don Quixote' (1978), had to do with
277 the assumption that the patently risible aspects of his prose fiction, especially
277 his masterpiece, are merely its robust, archaic, and juvenile surface, beneath
283 which lie complexities that enable it to speak directly to our condition and
are virtually convertible into the themes of our time. If myth is a fable about
310
the origins of culture, then the modern age may justly be said to have con-
321 verted Don Quijote into myth, and Cervantes into the Prometheus who
326 bequeathed to it the modern novel. The kind of novelist ·thus depicted
bears closer resemblance to the models theorized by aestheticians such as
341 Ortega y Gasset, Lukics, and Bakhtin, or exemplified practically by sundry
361 writers from Flaubert to Carlos Fuentes, than to any writer of Cervantes's
era; and the projects attributed to him are likewise our projects. None of
them corresponds very closely to what he said, hence presumably to what
he thought, he was about in Don Quijote and his comic novelas.
To be sure, since mine is a book addressed to readers contemporary with
me, it needs to be intelligible in modern terms: to use our concepts arid
terminology and tackle problems that seem important now. Moreover, 1
acknowledge that my conception of the sense and hlstoric specificity of
Cervantes's works is conditioned by the temporal viewpoint from which 1
write. That, as Gadamer points out, 1 is just the necessary condition of any
historical enterprise, which does not entail that its judgements are thus
deprived of claims to validity. So, in assuming that Cervantes has a distinct-
ive theory of his novelistic practice, and shapes his stories according to it, 1
start from a modern premiss: it is broadly typical of a tradition of Cervantine
1 Tmth arid Method (first Gcrman cdn., 196o; 1988: 267 ff.). This and all subsequent rcferences

are keyed to the Bibliography.

 CHAPTERSIX

Evolution of Spanish Attitudes to Comedy,

1500-1600

(i) The concept of a collective comic mind

In Part 1 of this book 1 examined Cervantes's poetics of comic fiction from
a viewpoint internal to his thought and art. In this second part 1 wish to
consider it in subordinate relationship to the pressures which conditioned
his and his contemporaries' thinking about the risible. Partly those pressures
are 'socio-genetic' in nature-a term taken from Norbert Elias's 111e
Civilising Process-and partly they are ideological and institutional. They
crystallized during the course of the sixteenth century and provoked a crisis
for the genres of comedy around 1600. Cervantes's reaction to that crisis is
both individual and typical; and without considering it in both aspects we
cannot fully understand it.
The first part of Elias's book is concerned with the evolution ofEuropean
manners since the Middle Ages, and traces over the course of generations
the continuous raising of the threshold of shame and embarrassment in
respect of table manners, bodily exposure, and speech. This schooling of
behaviour begins by conscious imitation or explicit admonition and ends
with assimilation of the lessons into the subliminal consciousness of indi-
viduals, resulting in a standardized personality structure. The motive for this
process, which Elias calls socio-genesis, is social rather than rational in na-
ture, 1 and obeys the desire of the elite, in the absolutist age, the court, to dis- {
tinguish its behaviour from that of inferior groups, which, as they try to
climb the social pyramid, imitating the behaviour of those at the top, oblige
the elite to refine its behaviour still further. As society, in the modern age,
evolved increasingly more complex networks of dependency and differen-
tiations of function, and elite status ceased to be identified with a particular
dass, so the sense of delicacy became more widely diffused, and the task of
instilling it passed from the court to the family.
Eli:as's model of socio-genetic transformation is apposite to the evolution
undergone by Spaniards' sense of the comic, and Spanish genres of comedy,

1 A similar poinr is made about domestic taboos, such as putting 'upstain things downstairs,

underclothing ... wherc overclothing should be', by Mary Douglas (1966: 36).
----------------------------------"'---"'
182 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
between 1500 and 1630. 1 take 1630 as the end term because by about this
date the process of their evolution, insofar as it has a bearing on Cervantes,
was complete. 1 choose a date that lies beyond Cervantes's death (1616), be-
cause some cultural tendencies which impinge on him come to maturity in
the 162os. The focus in this chapter and Part II generally falls on historical
movements of taste, manners, and thought, which, obviously, do not stop
with the lives of individuals. The pertinence of Elias's model to this evolu-
tion should come as no surprise, since that period sees the entrenchment of
absolutism in Spain and the spread of the influence of the court as role-
model, and, moreover, since the sense of the comic is intimately bound up
with social shame. lt is no coincidence that the two most influential books
of gentlemanly manners in the Renaissance, Castiglione's II cortegiano (trans-
lated into Spanish in the mid-153os by Juan Dosdn), and Della Casa's
Galateo (adapted by Lucas Gracian Dantisco in his Galateo espaiio~, give con-
siderable space to the discussion of humour and jokes, both as social orna-
ment and as potential pitfall. For Freud, in ]okes and their Relation to tlze
Utuomciotls (1905), comedy is precisely the means by which people circum-
vent the taboos associated with social shame and give release to the obscene
or aggressive drives thus censored. In sixteenth-century Spain, the bound-
aries of the playing field of comedy were redrawn, and socio-genesis was a
primary agent of this change.
My contention that the Spanish comic genres were all affected by this
process is based on the assumption that they are expressions of a col1ective
comic mentality or mind-set. Dy this 1 mean shared, inter-subjective
thought: concepts, values, intuitive assumptions. 1 take for granted, with
Maravall, that the facts (institutions, economic arrangements, etc.) discussed
by the historian bear the imprint of the thoughts which engender them,
and, in continuous dialectic, constrain and condition men's thinking and are
modified by it. 2 This also applies to cultural practices, of which this book is
in part a history. 1 presuppose, too, with modern anthropology, that such
practices are historically relative constructs, in some degree peculiar to each
society bound together by a common language, and imply a distinctive way
of ordering the world.3 Like many pre-industrial societies, the numerous
.•
groupings of Golden Age Spain were tightly knit and had a well-developed
3 See the prologue to the 2nd edn. (1986) ofJ.A. Maravall's monumental Estatlo motlemo y men-
talitlatl sorial (ISt edn., 1972). Maravall's concept of'mentality' differs in two respects from mine: he
is concerned with the conceptual premisses that underpin the structure of the absolutist state, and
he considcrs them as having a pan-European dimension. 1 am concerned with the mentality of
humour and sce it as having an ethnic character.
l This assumption, basic to the structuralist amhropology emanating from France, Dritain, and
Amcrica from about 1950 to the mid-197os (Claude Levi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, Marshall
Sahlins), still persists in anthropology written in a postmodernist climate: e. g. Pierre Bourdieu's
0111line of a Theory of Praclice ( 1977; French original, 1972).
._;:;:-~IEll-----------------"'!"""--~========--iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiliiii-----~
.. ·
EVOLUTION Of ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 183
communal life with its calendar of rites and festivals. These include activities
inspired by a spirit of laughter and fim, elaborately codified in courtly
circles, and also defined by traditions and customs, albcit of a less formal
kind, lower down the social ladder: revellers at Carnival; students and pages;
mule boys and drovers on the open road; ordinary townsfolk on their
evening stroll; peasants working in the field. Texts like Luis Milin's EI
cortesano (The Courtier), Tome Pinheiro da Veiga's Fastiginia (Calendar of
Festivities), Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo's Dialogos de apadble entretenimiento
(Dialogues of Pleasant Entertainment), and Rodrigo Caro's Dfas geniales o
IUdicros (Days of Festivity and Play) copiously attest the richness of this
repertoire of activity,4 and Joly (1982) has documented its lexicon and
semantics. The terminology of btlrlas (jesting, prank playing) embodies
assumptions about the nature, limits, and occasions of the risible, which are
made explicit in four formally constituted discourses, conceming, respect-
ively, courtly manners and pastimes, rhetoric, the genre of comedy, medical . -
theory. They are also articulated or implied in literature, theatre, proverbs, 1.
and other folklore. Considered in its expressive aspect, as joking, the dis-
course of comedy can to some extent be treated as a sociolect in the
Barthesian sense. Considered as a set of instinctive expectations, that is, as a 1'
1'
sense of the ridiculous, it might seem far too diffuse to be treated as an ! t
l,
identifiable phenomenon, yet even this shows comrnon and distinctive .! ;
traits, noted by contemporary observers and modern scholars. Though the
evidence for Spain's comic mentality is inevitably drawn from texts written
by the literate, middle-to-upper dasses, thus giving emphasis to their values
and doubtless exaggerating their typicality, there is testimony of both the
continuities and the dissimilarities between them and the lower classes.
Obviously, the examination of that mentality in literary texts is subject to a :t'
major handicap somewhat like that diagnosed by Bourdieu in respect of
scientific ethnography: the observer's permanent exclusion from the process
of negotiation between the shared norms that he or she identifies and the
live, practical circumstances in which individuals apply them. Yet that does
not deprive the enterprise of all daims to informative value. .;'
In some respects, this mentality and its discourse correspond to the dis-
cursive practices described by Michel Foucault in his 111e Arcl1aeology ef
Knowledge (French original, 1969) and later works such as Disdpli11e and
Ptlnis/1:111e Birtli oftlie Prison (original, 1975). What Foucault,in Archaeology,
meant by formations discursives (discursive formations). were systems of expert
talk in the human sciences (e.g. clinical practice, psychiatry, criminology),
4 Pinheiro da Veiga, Milan, and Hidalgo an: discu~ed, respectively, in this chapter (s. ii), and
Chs. 7, s. i, and 8, s. ii. Caro's book ( 1626) is a dialogue about the various types of popular gamcs
practised in Antiquity and contemporary Spain: riddles, children's games, dances, practic.il jokes,
and so on.
!·
1
t
1
~
1
•
184 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 185
and he aimcd to uncover the unconscious rules which, interacting with en-
The transgeneric nature ofSpain's comic mind needs particular emphasis,
abling conditions such as institutions and technology, determine the gener-
since the conception of the period's major genre of comic prose fiction, the
ation and diffusion of propositions in them beyond the conscious control of
picarcsque, as formally self-contained and, with LA Celestina and Don
individuals. The sense of the risible was not on Foucault's agenda, nor, 1 dare
Quijote, as containing the modern novel in embryo is still prevalent in
say, was it ever likely to be; so in that respect my analogy is inadmissible.
Golden Age studies. lt has led us to neglect their fundamental complicity in
However, from 1970 onwards, he was insistently preoccupied by the rela-
the myriad comic species assimilated into them, and to consider them pri-
tionship between discourse and non-discursive practices, and conceived of
marily as instruments by which such infl.uence is transformed into some-
the latter in ways which resemble Elias's notion of social conditioning:
. thing radically new. The Golden Age's view of the matter was different. lt
witness the systems of classified notation and the organization of classrooms
tcnded to see those works as essentially designed to provoke laughter, hence
and prisons in easily observable grids which Foucault treats as instrumental
as commodious warehouses in which diverse funny material could con-
!i in the development of supposedly enlightened notions of penal correction
in the eighteenth century. Foucault's theories are relevant to Spain's comic
vcniently be assembled. As Maxime Chevalier has shown {1976: 167 ff.).
readers of that age regarded Lazarillo de Tormes as a buffoon, and his carcer
mentality for two reasons: first, it was affected by forces of cultural discipline
as a thread on which is hung a loosely connected series of amusing repartee
1 not unlike those just mentioned, and second, it exhibits something of the
l and hoaxes. He also suggests that Quevedo's EI Buscon should be read as a
l; historical transience, the tendency to diffusion, and the systematic character miscellany of witty fragrnents rather than as a novel (1992: 193). The su·g-
of Foucault's discursive formations. Like them, it produces an effect of
i strangeness when measured by standards ofhumour oflater period'>; it cuts
gestion could be taken even further. Bartolome Jimenez Pat6n, writing
• about the humble style in an appendix to his Elocuenda espaiiola en arte {1604;
' across one of the unifying concepts--genre-by which a tradition of rev. edn„ 1621; p. 196) (Art of Spanish Eloquence), revealingly juxtaposes
humanist historical thinking has mapped the thought of past epochs; it LAzarillo de Tormes and LA Celestina with Hidalgo's Dialogos de apadble
marks boundaries within which, for a finite period, a number ofinterrelated entretenimiento (1605), a series of dialogues among gentlefolk of Burgos
1
positions are possible and outside which none exist.
incorporating miscellaneous funny material:
My assumptions about the historical specificity of this mentality need
briefl.y to be defended against the widely held notion, encouraged by theor- Es el de las conuersaciones, y hablas familiares de corrillos,juntas, lenguage casero
ies of the comic such as Freud's and Bakhtin's,5 that humour is a psychic y comun (como lo difine Ciceron en los Officios) y a este se reducen los librillos
impulse of an elemental, universal kind, giving rise to comic forms and tech- de entretenimiento y donayre, como el de Carnestolenda:s, l.Azarillo de Tormes,
niques (e.g. the joke techniques analysed by Freud) which are likewise uni- Cclestina &.
versal. However, little reflection is needed to see that this notion cannot be lt is the style of familiar talk and conversation typical of gatherings where people
valid on any strict interpretation of 'universal'. lf, as modern anthropology gossip, homely and everyday language (as defined by Cicero in De efficiis) and to this
insists, our sexuality, manners, cooking, and all other aspects of our culture may be reduced such light books of entertainment and jest as the Shrovetide mis-
are products ofhistory, rather than of unchanging human nature, this must cellany, l.Azarillo de Tormes, La Celestina, etc.
also apply to our sense of the risible. This entails that, whatever universal The matter-of-course way in whichjimenez Pat6n links Hidalgo's book to
substrate there may be in laughter and its manifestations, each historical lA Celestina and LAzarillo, which from our viewpoint differ sharply from it
community imprints specific characteristics upon it, related to other features by virtue of their novelistic character, unity of conception, and latent ser-
of its culture and social organization. In making this claim, 1 endorse Elias's iousness, implies a view of these works as a family, united by their nature as
unexccptionable observation that the drives, atfects, and thinking of indi- light, risible pastime. lt was a typical assumption amongst Spanish comic
viduals are inevitably shaped by the networks of social dependence: family, novelists of the early seventeenth century: Alemin, Cervantes, L6pez de
trade, dass, community, in which their lives are implicated (1994: 481). Ubeda, Quevedo, Avellaneda, Espinel. When they characterize their own or
S Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesquc origins of comedy is expounded in Rabelais an~ his other writers' novels they habitually use terms like entremes (farce},gracias,
Hlorld (original, 1965). I mention Freud and Bakhtin becaus~ oftheir pervasive ~nfluence ~n hter-
ary criticism. However, theorizing about jokes and comedy m the modern age 1s not restncted to
c/1istes, donaires (jests), bi1rlas (risible matter), entretenimiento (entertainment),
ehe areas demarcated by them: it has been developed in new directions by anthropology, seman- cuentos (tales), which imply a conception of them as continuous with these
tics, sociology, and folklore. See, e.g., the volume of essays editcd by Dow and Lixfcld (1986), and species. Continuous in spirit and purpose, which is what decisively defined
the bibliographies inApte (1985) and Raskin (1985).
them for that age, and continuous in form too, to the extent that those
 .„, „ ......
~-.:....-------------------......
186 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
ingredients enter freely into their composition. The prologue of Quevedo's
picaresque novel EI Buscon (Zaragoza, 1626) describes it firmly as a libro de
b11rlas. Avellaneda implies the gencric family to which his version of Don
Quijote belongs as follows:'He tomado por medio el entremessar la siguiente
comedia con las simplicidades de Sancho Panza' (ed. Riquer, i. 9). (I have
chosen to insert as merry interludes in this comcdy the foolish sayings of
Sancho Panza.) Cuentos entremesiles (farcical tales) is the disparaging label
which Vicente Espinel, in the prologue to Marcos de Obregon (1618), attaches
to unspecified works of entertainment published not lang before 1618; he
means, almost certainly, LA pfcara]ustina, and probably Hidalgo's Dialogos.6
Guzman, in Aleman's Guzman de Alfarache, repeatedly uses terms like these
to characterize bis own narrative.As for Cervantes, though hazy about what
kind of work Don Quijote should be called, vacillating in the prologue to
part 1 between libro (book), leyenda Qcgend), escritura (piece of writing), and
historia, and privileging this last ambivalent term, he is perfectly clcar about
the work's polemical aim and about its impact on the reader: laughter. Poets
and editors of poetry, throughout the Spanish Golden Age, identify jocular
verse with terminology like the above, from the Candonero de obras de burlas
provocantes a risa of 1519 (Verse Collection of Jocose Works Conducive to
Laughter), to the Sixth 'Muse' of Quevcdo's poetry, Parnaso espaiiol (1648}
(Spanish Parnassus). The Muse is described by the epigraph: 'canta poesias
jocoserias, que llam6 burlescas el autor, es decir, descripciones graciosas,
sucesos de donaire y censuras satiricas de culpables costumbres'. 7 (lt sings
jocular-serious verse, called burlesque by the author, that is amusing de-
scriptions, funny happenings, and censorious satires of blameworthy cus-
toms.) And needless to say, the entremes and the comedia burlesca (burlesque
comedy), a species of palace play which flourished in the mid-seventeenth
century, are single-mindedly dedicated to provoking mirth.
6 Claiming that his picaresque novel strikcs a happy balance between instruction and delight,
Espincl dcscribes those books which go too far in thc second direction as 'tan enfrascados cn pare-
cerles que deleitan con burlas y cuentos encremcsilcs, que ... no dejan cosa de sustancia ni prove-
cho para el lector' (cd. Gili Gaya, i. 33) (so engrossed in thinking that they delight the reader with
pranks and farcical ules, that they leave him with noching ofprofit and substance). I infcr a refer-
ence to L6pez de Ubeda, author of LA p(cara]ustina (1605}, since he makes a point of emphasizing
his novel's striving for pure risibility without didacricism, and anticipaces Espinel"s phrase 'cuentos
entremcsilcs' by his characterization of ocher frivolous material which is perrnitted to circulate in
print: 'ruincs representaciones de entrcmeses y aun comcdias, alcahucterias y romanccs, coplas y
cartas, cantarcs, cuentos y dichos' (ed. Rey Hazas, i. 78) (base performanccs of farccs and plays,
doings ofbawds, ballads, verses, lctters, songs, talcs, and jcscs).
1 Obra poitila, ed. ßlecua (1969), i. 131. The humaniscjose Gonzilcz de Salas, a good friend of
Quevcdo, who was responsible for the edition. assigns his poetry to compartrnents which are given
thc names of Muses. Poetry designated burlesco is distinguished fiom heroic, amacory, moral, or
funercal vcrse. Burlesco is a tcrm broadcr in scope than English 'burlesque'. and means, roughly,
'jocose, merry, light, facetious'.
========::::s:i.....,i:z::_____
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 187
The sheer pervasiveness of the idea 'conducive to laughter' is significant
(cf. Perez Lasheras 1994: 139); and we could express the significance thus.
Suppose that we could move a modern bookshop to seventeenth-century
Madrid, filling it with old Spanish books, and distributing them as appro-
priately as possible to the already designated bays. We would find it neces-
sary to relocate to the bay marked 'Humour' much of the contents of
'Crime', 'Recent Fiction', 'Poetry', 'Sociology', 'Drama', and 'Auto-
biography', and to accommodate the resulting overflow by cannibalizing the
space released by 'Gardening', 'Cooking', and 'Sci-Fi', now largely
superfluous. This suggests not only the massive demand for 'Humour', but
also that the equivalent terms in old Spanish had more specific and fär-
reaching force as a classificatory marker than that label of bookseller's con-
venience. From that one could reasonably infer that laughter had then a
more urgent, compensatory function than it does now, and that the as-
sumptions and values attaching to it were not the same as ours. As we saw
in Part I, Cervantes's poetics of comic fiction is not a ready-made kit but an
improvised cocktail of ingredients derived partly from canonical comic
theory, partly from epic and historiography, and partly from the precepts of
courtesy books governing oral narrative. Applying this combination to
comic fiction was not an obvious step, and contemporary writers were at
first very reluctant to take it. We need to understand their preconceptions
about the comic in order to understand this reluctance, and to understand
also the highly original cherry in the Cervantine cocktail, the concept of
the 'truth of the history', devised precisely to meet them. And we need to
sec how they evolved in the course of the sixteenth century in order to
understand why he puts such a premium on propiedad.
What are the traits of this comic mentality? Though 1 will offer a pre-
liminary general characterization, their specific identity can only be grasped
by examination of the particular forms that they took, one of which will be
discussed in the next section of this chapter. That said, the basic trait is the
conception of the comic as existing in a simultaneous relation of parasitic
intimacy with, and symmetrical opposition to, the non-comic. lt is proverb-
ially enshrined in the dichotomy of burlas and veras: though opposite, the
two things are senscd as inseparable, and this paradoxical kinship penetrates
the most diverse corners of Golden Age culture. Here is how Asensio, in his
classic study of the Spanish entmnes (1965: 15), defines its relation to the
comedia: 'A cutting ripped from comedy by Lope de Rueda's band, it has
thrived as a parasitic plant entwined in hostile intimacy round the trunk
from which it sprouted.'The entremes, as Asensio goes on to characterize it,
is a jungle of base instincts and a madhouse, designed to elicit uproarious
laughter; the comedia, an exalted and poetic world oflove and honour, made
sympathetic, rather than destroyed, by its humorous ingredients. Yet for
 „.,,
188 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
Spanish theatregoers of that age, one was inseparable from the other; it was
scarcely possible to imagine the performance of a comedia without its farcical
prelude or intermission. And despite the indignation of divines, the public
demanded the same comic relief from the solemnity of sacramental drama,
the auto sacramental. One could make similar observations about the rela-
tionship between heroic traditional ballads and ballads of thievcs' cant
(romances de german(a), the courtly love lyrics of the Candonero general ( I 5I 1)
(General Verse Anthology) and the Cancionero de obras de burlas, the genre of
romance in general and Don QHijote, witty gallantry and comic wit. 8
Furthermore, the opposition is not merely reducible to forms familiar to
all periods and cultures, such as those defined by llakhtin: on the one hand,
the heroic body and the values promulgated by the ruling dass; on the other,
the coarse rebelliousness and sensuous gratifications of the grotesque body,
with its language, festivals, and sites, as outlet for the world-upside-down,
subversive revelry of the common people. lt consists in a systematic, pointed
mirroring and inversion of superior by inferior: the burlesque duplication,
1. in countless comedias, of the galan's wooing of his lady by the lackey's fürta-
\ tion with the maid; the p{caro's short-circuiting of the gentlemanly ideal,
\ highlighted by his attempt to ape it and by his recourse to the normally self-
' justifying form of autobiography; Celestina's desacralizing occupation of
/ the places of mother and mentor, emphasized by the fact that her proteges
fondly see her in precisely this light. Cervantes offers the quintessential
example in the pairing ofDon Quijote and Sancho, seen as diametrical op-
posites, yet described as 'forjados en la misma turquesa' (Don Quijote 11. 2; ii.
54) (forged in the same mould).
I can only explain the consistency of this phenomenon by positing an
underlying mentality which a~sumes specific manifestations in different
genres. Other, similarly pervasive aspects of it are: the cult of bravado and
blasphemy, which the French nobleman Brantome found so distinctively
Spanish;9 the pushing of absurd fantasies to irrational extremes, diagnosed
by Blanca Perinan (1979) as a peculiarly Spanish inflection of an inter-
nationally diffused species of jest; the cult of wit by plebs and nobility
8
A peculiarity of the cult of wit in the Spanish Golden Age is the tendency of wordplay in a
comic mode to copy symmetrically, while inverting, that in a courtly, gallant mode: the trait is
freely manifested, for example, by puns on proper names, rife in both stylcs. See the informative
study by Bershas ( 1961).
9 Brantome's cnthusiasm for Spanish wit is attested by his Rodomontades, Srrments et j11reme11ts es-
pagnols, and Les Domes galantes, ed. Lalanne, vols. vii and ix. He says: 'Or il faut noter que aucuns
de ces Espaignols aymcnt tant adire de bons mots, qu'ilz n'espargnent ny rcligion, ni religieux. ny
personne, ny chose quelconque qui soit' (vii. 187). (Now it must be noted that some Spaniards are
so fond of uttering witticisms that they spare ncither religion, nor religious persons, nor anybody
or anything.) Pissevin (1600), French translator ofSanta Cruz's Floresta espaiiola, makc:s a similar
comment on Floresta vu. iii. 11.
! •.,.,.___
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 189
alike; t o the exploitation of the comic potentiality of names and lineages, ap-
propriate to a society obsessed with honour (Egid~ 1996a); the pop~larity
of demeaning gibes, motes and apodos, noted by G10vanm Pontano m De
sermone (1509) (On Conversation) as a trait distinctive of the Spanish plebs,
worthy descendants of Martial in this respect (ed. Lupi and Risicato, I 12);
the delight in burlas, pranks, in which the community bands against the
scapegoat, heaping physical and psychological humiliation on him. lt ~s a
juvenile, robust,Aristophanic style ofhumour which delights in desecratmg
inversions, wounding derision, exuberant revelling in allusions to the body's
base functions. lt is, in short, brazenly aggressive. To describe it thus might
seem to Japse into the subjective impressionism against which Joly judi-
ciously warns (1982: 3). However, the diagnosis is not in substance m~ne,~nd
involves no aspiration, in principle unrealizable, to judge the rhetoncal 1m-
pact of a community's humour from an external vantage point. My dia~?­
sis is based on the reactions of various Spanish writers around 1600: Grac1an
Oantisco, Rufo, L6pez Pinciano, Aleman, Cervantes, Salas ßarbadillo,
Espinel, Lope de Vega, to their native traditions of c~med~; in common, they
judged those traditions as excessively coarse ~d lH~enttous a~d so~ght t~
bring them under civilized control. The uruformtty of the1r at~tude is
striking proof of the existence of a collective hu~orous ~ental1ty. And
yet, despite this reaction, the ~~itional.ism i~er~nt m Spamsh culture en-
sured that the Aristophanic spmt surv1ved withm the new fra~ework of
restraint. lt is on the conflicting pulls of control and resurgence, with the fii:st
serving as paradoxical catalyst of the second, that I want to concen~ate m
the rest of this book. 1 choose a specific exam_ple to show ?ow t~ts h_ap-
pened: the tradition of motes, freely tapped m Cervantes s EI l1cenaado
Vidriera.
(ii) The mote tradition
Motes, usually bracketed with apodos, 11 were by f~r the mo.st popular type of
jest in the Spanish Golden Age, particularly m the sixteenth c.ent~ry,
amongst the nobility as much as the common people. The maJor Jest
anthology of the period, Mekhor de Santa Cruz's Floresta e~panola (1574)
(Spanish Forest ofWitty Sayings), which was ceaselessly reprmted, quoted,
· · see C heva1·1er ( 1992.· chs· 1• 2 • and• 3) · L6pez Pinciano eloquently
10 Regarding the nob1hty,
· f · • · d Ja gente menor quan aguda es en sus conceptos y
attests the plcbeian practice o wit: Y ~ . d d llos' (Philosophia antigua
dichos q ue assi como hienden e1 pelo, h1enden la oreJa con 13 agu eza e th li ,
poerica, ii . .208). (And see how witty an: the plcbs m t e1r conce1ts an sayi·ngs·• ey •sp t ones ears
' ' · · h · · d
with their acuteness, likc: splitting hairs.) , 1 · d
11 See the definition of mottjar in the Di«io 11 ario de autoridadts: Notar, censurar.: ac_Cihones ~
alguno con apodos y motes.' (To disparage or censure the actions of somebody w1 ep1t ets an
witticisms.)
190 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
and quarried, includes well over 300 motes and apodos amongst its apoph-
thegms, which number about 1,050 in the most complete editions. 12 The
anthology is retrospective in its selection of material: it draws on the witty
sayings that circulated in the reigns of the Catholic Monarchs and Charles
V, and gave them popular currency in the late sixteenth century and much
of the seventeenth. The same retrospective character marks the selections of
wit included in the Miscelanea, compiled by the Extremaduran caballero Don
Luis Zapata in his old age at the end of the sixteenth century; the three
chapters in question are based on Zapata's memories of the celebrated
witticisms ofthe court of Charles V, which he frequented in his youth. 13 At
least half of the examples that he offers are motes; and one of the chapters is
devoted to a famous ballad 'En las cortes esta el rey', a sustained litany of
apodos directed at various knights and nobles who attended one of Charles's
parliaments. Juan de Timoneda's Sobremesa y alivio de caminantes (1569)
(After-Dinner Talk and Entertainment of Wayfarers), the immediate pre-
cursor to Santa Cruz's Floresta, and, in the sixteenth century, not far behind
it in popularity, contains fewer motes, no more than 23 out of the 166 jokes
contained in the 1569 edition. This scarcity is explained, 1 think, by the
partial extraneousness ofTimoneda's collection to two aspects of the mote
tradition: its ethnic, Castilian character and popularity in courtly circles.
Timoneda, a Valencian bookseller, was adept at the vulgarization of Latin
and ltalian literature. This is reflected in his Sobremesa and in his other jest
collection EI buen aviso y portacuentos (1564) (Good Counsel and Story
Carrier), both of them folksy and popularizing in character. In them, he
draws freely on Spanish and Valencian folklore, and also on the European
repertoire of jokes chiefly constituted by Boccaccio, Poggio, Alfonso King
ofNaples, Pontano, Castiglione, the apophthegms ofErasmus, Guicciardini,
Domenichi. At the same time, he depends relatively little on the witticisms
attributed to historic, courtly Spanish personalities which abound in the
joke collections produced in sixteenth-century Castile. 14 When he does
12 Two excellent editions ofthe Flore.sta, with scholarly apparatus, have recently been published:
by Cabaiias (1996) and by Pilar Cuartero :md Chevalier (1997). My computation ofthe number
of motes in the FloTl!sta is neces.sarily approximate, since motts, as personal gibes, are not always easy
to discriminate from ncighbouring species of jest. Yct the computarion is not just arbitrary. The
sense in which 1 use mott corresponds to the content of chapters iii to viii inclusive of the seventh
part of the Floresta, all explicitly designated by the term motejar. My definition o( apodo matches
the content of vu. ii, whose heading reads 'De apodos'. The chapter headings of part VIII imply
that it contains the same kind of jests as part VII. The chapters specified comprise 169 witticisrns.
There are over 150 jests o( similar technique, relating to the same topics (Jewishness, drunkenness,
stinginess, etc.), in the rest of the collection.
13 The three chapters are 'De motes interpretados','De dichos', and 'De un cortesano romance
de apodadura', in Memorial historico espaiiol, xi. 123 ff., 369 ff., and 449 ff.
1 4 Apart from the Florcsta, these consist mainly ofthe Libro de chistes ofLuis de Pinedo (BAE
176, pp. 99-118), and the Sermon de Alj11ba"°ta (BAE 176, pp. 45-81), both mid-16th ccntury.
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 191
quote them, he is only interested in them as popular, effective anecdotes,
suppressing details about the original circumstances of utterance.
The term mote was commonly understood in the sense of a witty gibe:
'dicho agudo y malicioso', according to the definition in Covarrubias's dic-
tionary. Commonly, motes made insinuating allusion to some demeaning
personal attribute. In Hidalgo's Dialogos, the staple form of entertainment is
the telling of jests, primarily motes, on themes identified thus by the chapter
headings: 'motcjar de necio, de cobarde, de borracho, de apocado, de cris-
tiano nuevo, de vieja, de loco, de ladr6n, de pobre y de mala mujer' (to taunt
as a fool, a coward, a drunkard, stingy, a converted Jew, an old hag, mad,
a thief, poor, a loose woman). This roughly conforms to the motes most
prominently featured in Santa Cruz's Floresta, and indicates which ones en-
joyed most popularity. Apodos were witty comparisons which, typically, de-
humanized the butt by co!llparing him or her to an animal, an artefact, a
vegetable. 1 S The Diccionario de autoridades offers a good example: 'Elvira
Portocarrero sali6 de blanco que Ja apod6 Paxar6n como escarabajo en
leche.' (Elvira Portocarrero came dressed in white, which led Paxar6n to dub
her a beetle floating in milk.) Both species were a speciality of court jesters
throughout the Golden Age: witness the strings of apodos and frequent motes
which enter into the character sketches in the burlesque chronicle of the
court jester of Charles V, Francesillo de Zuii.iga (d. 1532). 16 However, the
courtiers of that reign cultivated them as assiduously as their buffoons, as is
shown by the exact overlap between several of the epithets coined in the
ballad 'En las cortes esci e1 rey', composed, according to Zapata, by 'a very
noble knight of very good taste', and those that figure in Zuii.iga 's chroni-
a
cle. The ballad is preceded by warm defence of such exercise of courtly
wit, and a categoric discrimination between its tasteful humour and libel-
lous gibes, described as 'pecado mortal que mata el alma de quien 1o hace,
como et mata la honra y fama del pr6ximo, y para siempre' (mortal sin
which kills the soul of its author, just as he kills eternally the honour and
reputation of his neighbour). r7 Courdy enthusiasm for such wit is abun-
dantly attested too by the coplas de motes (versified motes) which figure in the
cancioneros of the fifteenth century and early sixteenth. These coplas, whose
1 S Neither mote nor apodo exclusively denotes disparagingjests. In the 16th century, though less
in ehe 17ch, mote can mean, neutrally,a witty saying of any kind, as in Zapata's chapter heading'De
motes interpretados'. Likewise, apodo properly means a characterizing epithet, whether eulogistic
or disparaging. That is the sense which it has in Flore.sta IX. vi, containing epithets about Spanish
towns. .
1 6 There is a good modern edition by Diane Pamp de Avalle-Arce (1981).
17 Memorial hist.Srico espa11o~ xi. 449-SO. Pascual de Gayangos, in his translation (1851~: i.
s12-14) oITicknor's History of Spa11isli Literature, identifies the personalities ridiculed in the poem.
On the overlap berween jester's and courrier's wit, see Chevalier (1992: chs. 1, 2, and 3, especially
p. 42).
 ···t-~
~ ...
192 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
ingenuity is enhanced by the fact that they were usually improvised and
form part of sustained verbal jousts, occupy much of Luis Milin's manual
of courtly behaviour EI cortesano, and are cited as examples of usage in Juan
de Valdes's Dialogode la lengua.
The popularit}r of motes amongst the common people is shown by their
recurrence in Gonzalo Correas's proverb collection Vocabulario de refranes
(1627), where proverbs are frcquently identified as motes in the brief,
accompanying gloss, e.g.:
1. 'Reloj de medio dia nunca da menos de doce.' Moteja decir
necedades. ('He/she is a midday clock; never strikes less than twelve:
Ta taunt as a blatherer.)
2. 'Ande la recua, que ya esta cargada.' Moteja a los corcovados. ('Let's be
off; the team is loaded.' Ta taunt as hunchbacked.)
3. 'Retoza con el verde; retoza con e1 vicio' ... Se traslada a las personas,
motejando de bestia cuando se burlan y toman deporte neciamente
con otros. ('He/it frolics with the green grass, with pleasure.' Applied
to people, to taunt them as beasts when they foolishly make fun of
others.)
4. 'Tapa, Ramiro.' Dicen eso al carnero topador, y trasladase para notar a
uno de cornudo, y aun de borracho. ('Go on, butt, Ramiro: They say
this of the butting ram, and metaphorically it serves to censure some-
body as a cuckold, or even as a drunkard.)
5. 'Cuero lleno, piezgo enhiesto.' Contra los destemplados en vino.
('Wineskin füll; trotters in the air.' Against drunkards.)
6. 'Sicala, Real Majestad; este es Conde, y este esconde a los criados el
pan.' Dicho fue de truh:ln que junt6 dos palabras en uno. ('Withdraw
it, Your Majesty; he's a Count, and he hides bread from his servants.'
Saying of a jester who joined two words together.) [The pun es
condelesconde is untranslatable.]
7. 'Bachiller de estomago.' Dicese del que no se sabe declarar. ('Bachelor
of Arts of the stomach.' Said of those who cannot express their
thoughts.)
For Spaniards of the Golden Age, there was an intimate link between
proverbs an the one band, and the stories and jests perpetuated by oral trad-
ition an the other. Fifty of the jests in Timoneda's Sobremesa have the form
of explanations why proverbial sayings originated, and similar anecdotes
feature in the glosses that the humanist Juan de Mal Lara provides for his
collection of 1,000 proverbs, Filosofla vulgar (1568) (Common People's
Philosophy). Not surprisingly, then, Correas's collection amply illustrates the
various uses of motes, either by enshrining famous ones and giving scope to
the raconteur, or by offering brief disparaging characterizations which can
' . ~„ • ..4„„„
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 193
be used, with or without modification, as motes. Example 6 is a witticism
attributed in the Floresta espaiiola .to the jester Francesillo de Zuiiiga (n, v. 5;
cf. Chevalier 1975: 0 24). In the Floresta (vn, i. 22), number 7 is applied as a
gibe to those who say: 'I feel it here inside, but can't express it.' Example 1
figures in Act VI of Rojas's La Celestina in one of the servants' asides about
the love-besotted nobleman Calisto: 'Ya escurre eslauones el perdido. Ya se
desconciertan sus badajadas. Nunca da menos de doce; siempre esci hecho
relox de mediodia' (ed. Cejador y Frauca, i. 210). (The poor fool is a1ready
slipping his chain links. His chimes are already haywire. He never strikes less
than twelve; he's always a midday clock.) Badajo, implied by badajadas, was
the clapper of a bell, and metaphorically, a fool. Examples 2, 4, and 5 con-
tain stereotyped insinuating metaphors like badajo: being 'loaded', a 'ram ',
and a 'wineskin'. The potential of proverbs for generating new motes is illus-
trated by example 3, whose analogy between humans and animals grazing
on green grass doubtless suggests the mote in Floresta espatiola vm. v. 1 to be
analysed below. Motes, then, with their associated tropes and habits of
thought, permeate the everyday speech of the Spanish Golden Age.
In works like La Celestina (1499, 1502) and Delicado's La lozana andaluza
(1528) (The Lusty Andalusian Girl), which aim to portray dissolute plebeian
. types with some realism, motes and apodos are integral to the dialogue, and
typically appear as crudely transparent or very thinly veiled gibes: 'asno',
'bestia', 'cuero', 'ciervo', 'puto cariacuchillado', 'desorejado', 'cuba', 'volar sin
plumas', 'traer jub6n sin camisa', 'cuando le bautizaban ya sabia andar' (ass,
beast of burden, wineskin, horned <leer, scar-faced queer, earless [thief],
barrel [fat], to fly without plumes [witch], wear a jerkin without a shirt
[suffer a public whipping], when he was baptized he could already walk [to
be a converted Jew]). Also, they are linked to oaths, obscenities, curses, and
so on, and, with them, make up a distinctive sociolect, partly overlapping
with ·near neighbours such as thieves' cant and the code relating to copula-
tion.18 Inevitably, they supply material for the various ritualized, playful
duels or broadsides of insulting wit that form part of the popular culture of
the age: echar pu/las (cast lewd gibes), dar matraca (fire a volley of gibes), dar
vaya (the same, as parting shots), each with their typical settings and con-
ventions.
lt is not at all my purpose to claim that motes are unique to Spanish cul-
ture; obviously many of the above-cited epithets, and motes and apodos as
types of joke, have equivalents in all languages at all times. However, the
specific form of their organization as a sociolect, with its conventions,
tropes, themcs, and metadiscourse, is indeed distinctive, peculiar to a par-
ticular historical period. The prc:>of of it is that this system does not survive
r 8 for an anthology and specialized vocabulary of these two jargons, see Poesfas gennane.scas, ed.
Hili, and Flomta de poeslas erJticas, ed. Alzieu.Jammes, and lissorgues.
 ·-
194 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
the Spanish Golden Age; the themes and devices popular in the lifetime of
Mekhor de Santa Cruz appear strange to: eighteenth-century Spanish edi-
tors of his anthology, who show occasional misundcrstanding of thcm. 19
Francisco Asensio, in his continuation of the Floresta, which was added to it
as a 'Segunda Parte' from 1728 onwards, drastically reduces the types and
quantity of motcs and virtually eliminates apodos. Those who translated the
Floresta into other European languages in the half-century following its
original publication experience even greater headaches in trying to render
Spanish wit into their native idioms. This book, nowadays read only by
specialists, enjoyed almost as much diffusion in Europe as masterpieces like
Guzman de A!faraclie and Don Quijote: testimony to its merits and its com-
prehensiveness as an anthology of Spanish jokes, and to the contemporary
popularity of that genre throughout Europe. lt was translated into English
(Anthony Copley, I 595), French (Jean Pissevin, 1600), Italian (Francesco da
Venetia, 1616), and German (anonymous, before 1630). Of these versions,
the best is by Pissevin, scholarly editor of the hieroglyphs of Valeriano
Dolzani (Lyon, 1602).Though his very name might suggest a fictitious apodo,
he really existed, and was a poet as well as a humanist. However, despite his
competence, even he mistranslates several apophthegms and fails to get the
precise point of many more.
I offer two examples of motes, both taken from Santa Cruz's Floresta
espaiiola (respectively, VIII. v. 1 and m. iii. 5), to show why this species deserves
to be considered a distinctive sociolect. 1 invite the reader to try to work
out the point of these jokes for him- or herself, before looking at my ex-
planation:
Una dama flaca envi6 a decir al caballero que la servia que la color que sacase en un
juego de caiias fuese verde. Conociendo el Gran Capicin Gonzalo Fernandez Ja
dama a quien este caballero servia, viendo Ia librea, Je dijo: 'Si con este verde no
hace, dela vuestra merced de mano.'
A thin lady sent word to the knight who served her that he should wear green livery
in a tourney of cane spears. On seeing the livery, and knowing who the lady was,
the Great Captain, Gonzalo Fernandez, remarked to her admirer: 'If she doesn't
make with this green, have no more to do with her.'
Andando a caza en Amusco don Hemando de Sandoval, perdio un azor. Supo que
le habia hallado uno de la villa de N„ sobre lo cual escribi6 al alcalde que alli estaba.
Y porque no le. hacfa justicia, vinieron en palabras. Dijo el alcalde: 'Seiior, no
19 In the edn. published in Madrid, 1728, which derives from that ofHuesca, 1618, and includes
Francisco Asensio's continuation, misunderstanding can be seen, for example, in the clumsy emen-
dations of the following motes: Floresta 111. iii. 2; VII, i. 15; VII. i. 18; VIil. V. 1. Except perhaps for the
last change, already in the 1618 edn., the changes are evidently due to a misguided attempt to im-
prove the sense of passages perceived as obscure, since they fit into a pattern of bringing the text
into line with the tastes and usage of 18th-century readers.
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 195
respondo a vuestras amenazas, porque sois viejo, y yo mozo.' Respondio don
Fernando: 'Ya se que sois mozo, y lo fuistes de N., y agradecedme las espuelas, pues
os hago gracia de ellas.'
When he was out hunting in Amusco, Don Hernando de Sandoval lost a hawk. He
knew that it had been found by somebody in such-and-such a town, and wrote to
the magistrate about it. And because the magistrate took no steps to return what
was rightfully his, they had words with each other. The magistrate said: 'Sir, 1 do not
reply to your threats, since you're an old man and I'm young and robust.' Don
Fernando replied: 'I know weil that you're a lackey, and once you were X's, and say
thanks for the spurs, you can keep them.'
Get the point ofthe firstjoke? If you didn't,nevermind;nor did l,for a long
time. Nor did the French translator Pissevin, who, making a reasonable
guess, translates the punchline thus: 'si moyennant cette liuree verte, vous
n'estes fauorise d'elle donnez luy son conge' (1600: 379). (if she doesn't
favour you as a result of this green livery, have no more to do with her.)
Here, he misunderstands the double meaning involved in hace (makes, does).
One of its numerous senses in old Spanish was 'gets fat', as applied
specifically to mules, horses, asses. So, the witticism insinuates that the lady
is an emaciated mule. However, hacer, as much in old as in modern Spanish,
is fraught with different possibilities of meaning. Those who heard the bon
mot for the first time laughed immediately, so we are assured by Luigi
Domenichi, and judged this to be a 'bellissimo' sample of wit. 20 Why were
they able to see the point at once, instead ofhesitating amidst all the virtu-
alities of hacer, as we do now? I come to that question in a moment. The sec-
ond joke is not easy to understand, even after the double meaning of mozo
(strapping youth, also lackey) is explained, as it is in the above translation.
What gibe is involved in Don Hernando's gift of spurs to the mayor?
Pissevin hazards the guess that the ex-lackey once stole the spurs; and the
nobleman is now shaming him wich a reminder of the theft. Yet it is not
what the magistrate did or did not do that is in question; but rather what he
is. The joke is steeped in hierarchical prejudices: ehe assumption that the
magistrate, because of his ignominious antecedents, is behaving like an in-
solent upstart in bandying words with an aristocrat. lt also depends on the
metonymic associations of spurs: emblems of a lackey's trade. In making a
gift of his spurs to this social climber, Don Hernando implies: 'This is what
you really are'; and the piquancy of the jest consists in its brutally flattening
effect. Santa Cruz classifies this joke in the category 'De gracia doblada'
(redoubled humour). By this he refers both to the type ofrepartee involved,
which turns the adversary's weapon against him, and to the intensified
20 Domenichi, who doubtless derivcs the joke from chronicles or anecdotes that circulaced in
Italy abouc the life of the famous Spanish commander, includes it in his F«ttit, motti tt bune, first
published in 1548 (1593 edn.; p. 276).
 -~,„
196 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
humour resulting from it. Tastes in humour change; in our more egalitarian
age, we are unlikely to find thatjoke funny at all.And while we moderns are
not lacking in sexist humour, this tends to exploit cnlightened sensitivity
to sexism instead of revealing blithe innocence about it, like the Great
Captain's quip.
The difficulties posed by the two jokes do not merely lie in the factors
adduced by Pissevin in the epistle 'Au lecteur debonnaire' at the end of his
translation: the laconic brevity of the author's style, and his habit of taking
for granted the reader's knowledge of'les coustumes, uz, loix, ordonnances,
& police d'Espagne, dont l'intelligence de beaucoup de comptes dicts &
faicts compris en ce liure depend entierement' (the customs, uses, laws,
ordinances.' and ~overnment of Spain, on which the understanding of many
of the stones, domgs, and sayings comprised in this book entirely depends).
Though it would indeed help if we happened to know the above-
mentioned sense of hacer, in old Spanish, and the habit of Spanish mule
drovers of fattening up their beasts in spring with the new season's grass, this
w~uld not put us on an equal footing with the joke's first audicnce. Quite
as importa~t as that is the additional knowledge that 'motejar de flaco' (to
taunt as thm) was a common social pastime, as was 'motejar de bestia' (to
taunt as a beast). lt is no accident that each of these two species is allocated
a s~parate ch~pter. heading in Santa Cruz 's anthology: the headings reflect
the1r co.nvent1onahzed nature. Thus, we have to do with familiar conceptual
categones, and they are associated with recurrent tropes and techniques. For
example, the joke featuring Don Hernando and the magistrate exemplifies
both the .heavy dependence of motes on double meanings, and also the
me~onym1c. tendency of Spanish humour of that age, typical of a society
wh1ch class1fied every aspect of its life--food, dress, animals, forms of ad-
dress, religious beliefs, weapons, work-as semiotic markers of dass or caste
d~fference. Many .of th~se d~uble meanings recur so frequently that they are
virtually conventtonal1zed: mozo' (youth/lackey), 'cardenal' (cardinal/stripe
or scar), 'ciervo' (deer/cuckold), 'majadero' (pestle/fool), 'servidor' (servant/
ch~mber, P?t); sundry prop~r names of persons or places, such as 'Hurtado'
or Ladron , capable of bemg understood in another sense (in these two
cases, 'stolen' and 'thief); words susceptible of phonemic dissociation like
'b~rbacana' (barbican)/'barba cana' (white beard), 'damas' (ladies)/'da 'mas'
(gtve more). 21 ~ for ~he metonymic tendency, it is insistent in jokes about
converso Jews, wh1ch spm endless innuendo from circumstances linked to that
conditio~: scriptur~l passa~es about their ancestry; addiction to 'waiting' (for
the Mess1ah); avers1on to p1g-meat, crucifixes, baptismal fonts, gctting singed
or scorched; awkwardness with marks of hidalgo status, like wearing silk.
21
See Chevalier (I9'J2: eh. 3). On proper names, sce Bershas (1961).
-------~~----------
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 197
As Viktor Raskin (1985) shows, the language of jokes is fundamentally
ambiguous, and relies on the operation of a sudden switch, achieved by the
punchline, from a conventionally expected, innocuous meaning to a risibly
subversive one, present as a virtuality from the beginning. That inherent
ambiguity is what makes the language ofjokes notoriously difficult for the
translator. Each community devises its own conventions for signposting the
deceptive paths of humour; and they constitute a way of discoursing hu-
morously, which is also, ipso facto, a way of thinking humorously, not exactly
commensurable with the conventions of another community. They are
roughly commensurable, to be sure; otherwise the translators of the Floresta
would never have given themselves the trouble. Yet their frequent failure to
surmount its difficulties tells its own story.
As practised by the nobleman and courtier, motes tend to appear in a soph-
isticated form. lt more or less accords with the prescription offered in
Crist6bal de Villal6n's EI scholastico (c.1540) (ed. Kerr, 222), a humanistic
work which, on the model of Castiglione's II cortegiano, depicts the ideal
scholar:
Ay otro segundo genero de pasatiempo para los hombres sabios: e1 qual consiste en
donaires y dichos gra0osos con que viua mente se motejan y se tocan en su conuer-
sa~ion: lo qual requiere mucha industria y viueza de juizio: porque es arte delicada
y que con mas modestia se deue regir. En este genero de dezir son agudos los
espafioles: y es a ellos como cosa propria y pare\en como amaestrados para ello de
su natural: y fuera destos pasatiempos es gente modesta y graue. En este genero de
inuen\iones ay <los maneras de dezir: una manifiesta y clara: y otra umbrosa y
cubierta de algun estilo gracioso de hablar como debajo de sombra la qua! encubre
la agudeza con que al motejado toco. Deue pues el nuestro scolastico tener auiso
de no usar del primer genero de motes descubierto y sin cobertura: porque es per-
judi~ial y da ocasion a hauer enojo los amigos en quien se endere\a el tal donaire.
Porque no ay hombre tan del pala~io ni tan pa\iente en la conversacion que no se
afrente si a la clara le motejas aunque Je toqueis de faltas que su persona tenga de su
natural. Quien podra sufrir que por tener la nariz corua le llamen romo o por tener
los ojos pequeiios le llamen \iego o porque sea moreno le llamen negro o porque
sea vermejo le Hamen falso quanto quiera que sean defectos de naturaleza si acaso
se moteja a Ja clara y sin algun velo de buen dezir.
There is a second pastime available to wise men, and it consists in witticisms and
jests with which they pungently taunt and mock each other in conversation, which
requires much care and lively judgement, since it is a delicate art and needs to be
ruled with the utmost tact. Spaniards show great ingenuity in this type of witticism;
it comes naturally to them and they seem to have an inherent flair for it; and, when
not engaged in such repartee, they are a grave and decorous race.This genre ofjest
may be divided in two kinds: one manifest and clear, and the other shadowy and
veiled by a pleasant jocularity which conceals the witty wounding of the victim.
...„„„....
 ··~
198 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
Our scholar, then, must beware not to lapse into the first, transparent kind of taunt,
because it is hurtful and gives cause for anger in the friends at which it is aimed. For
there is no man, however versed in the ways ofthe court nor so long-suffering, who
fails to be affionted if you taunt him openly, even though with defects that are con-
genital. What man, if taunted openly and without any kind of witty disguise, could
endure being called snub-nosed because he has a hooked nose, or blind because he
has small eyes, or black because he is swarthy, or false because he is red-haired, even
though these be faults of nature?
1 cite the passage in full because it is typical of a debate about the legitimacy
of motes as a form of gentlemanly repartee which recurs insistently in
sixteenth-century Spanish courtesy book.s, from Bosdn's translation of
Castiglione onwards. In all these contexts, one sees a predilection for motes
and a desire to justify their place in urbane discourse, combined with a
virtually impossible attempt to tarne and refine them. For, if what is said by
the 'shadowy' manner of speaking is often, in basic idea if not form, the same
as what is said by the 'manifest and clear' manner, how can witty camouflage
provide a secure guarantee against giving offence? The very examples
cited at the end of the passage show the difficulty of striking the desired
balance.
In these treatises of gentlemanly behaviour, prescription should not be
confused with description; the very emphasis on what must at all costs be
avoided by the scholar or courtier suggests that what happened in real life
made such admonition necessary. 22 Here are some examples of how little
heed was paid to these nice scruples by some eminent personalities of the
period from 1500 to 1530. In saying this, 1 am not concerned with the im-
pact that these jokes make upon us now, but with how they were taken at
different periods in the Spain offour or five centuries ago.Around I 530 they
would have been perceived by their audiences, though not necessarily the
butt, as the kind of wittily demeaning sally to be expected among persons
of high social standing. A hundred years later, that perception had changed.
Several of the jokes discussed below are cut in the edition of the Floresta
espaiiola published in Huesca, 1618. I mention this edition specifically ·
because, on account of its puritanical rigour as regards risque jokes in the
religious and sexual spheres, it became a model for subsequent editions pub-
lished in Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its prudishness
is a revealing criterion of the religious pressures which affected the evolu-
tion oftaste in humour during the Spanish GoldenAge.Though that is only
one, and not the most significant, constraint imposed upon Spain's comic
mind, 1 highlight it here because, by the criterion of what is visible on the
n This is shown by the passage in Martin de Azpilcueta's intluential Manual de confesores y
ptnitentes (1556), which, condemning humiliating jests, singles courtiers out as taking particular
delight in them, all the more ifthe victim shows offence. Cited in Layna Ranz (1991: 153).
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 199
printed page, it is the most evident one. Also, as we shall see, norms of
religious censorship, though obviously not identical to those of social ac-
ceptability, partly overlapped with them.
1 begin with two jokes which were not cut by the Huesca edition or its
successors. They illustrate, nonetheless, the outspokenness of the Spanish
gentry in the early sixteenth century. 1 can scarcely imagine a compiler of
an anthology in the following century, such as Don Juan de Arguijo, con-
sidering either of them, particularly the second, appropriate quips to ascribe
or address to an eminent ecclesiastic. That is, they survive in seventeenth-
century editions of the Floresta and subsequently because they are perceived
as jokes dating from an earlier, coarser age. The protagonist of the first,
which plays on two senses of vara (a rod of office, a small lance used in
bullfighting), was a learned churchman, Diego L6pez de Ayala, sometime
servant of the powerful Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros, and 1ater, after retir-
ing from politics, translator of Boccaccio and Sannazaro into Spanish. This
is his comment to the adulterer on the appointment of the cuckolded hus-
band to a sought-after public post in Toledo (Floresta, x. 27): ·
Pidio Diego Lopez de Ayala, canonigo y obrero de la Santa Iglesia de Toledo, al
conde de Fuensalida una vara de alguacil para uno que habia sido sli criado. Y por
haberla mandado el Conde primero a un caballero de Ja misma ciudad para el
marido de una gentil mujer, con quien este caballero tenia alguna conversacion, no
se Ja dio. Paseandose el caballero por la lglesia Mayor, dijole el canonigo: 'No ha
parado vuestra merced hasta poner Ja vara en los cuernos de! toro.'
Diego Lopez de Ayala, canon and master of works of the Cathedral ofToledo, asked
the Count ofFuensalida for a constable's rod on behalf of somebody who had been
in his service.And since the Count had already promised it to a knight ofthe same
town, so that it could be bestowed on the husband of a pretty woman with whom
that knight had a liaison, he refused. One day, when the knight was strolling in the
cathedral, the canon remarked to him: 'You didn't give up until you stuck the dart
between the bull's horns.'
The second jest, more a tart rebuke, since it involves taunting the butt as a
thief, is ascribed to Donjuan Tellez Gir6n, Count ofUreiia, a celebrated wit
of the reigns of the Catholic Monarchs and Charles V, and protagonist of
apophthegms one to thirteen inclusive of part II, chapter ii of the Floresta
espatiola. lt is one of many jests which turn on the resentments arising out
of non-fulfilment of obligations of courtesy. The victim, significantly, is
not identified (Floresta II. ii. 2):
Topando por la calle a un arzobispo, hizole el acatamiento que a tan gran prelado ·
convenia. EI arzobispo quit6 muy poquito el capelo. Volvio el conde la cabeza a un
criado que venfa cerca del arzobispo, y dijole: 'Su seiioria debe de ser tiiioso o
desorejado, pues no se atreve a quitar el bonete.'
-
200 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
Meeting an archbishop in the street, he paid him the courtesy due to so eminent
a prelate. The archbishop only raised his hat very slightly. The Count turned his
head to a servant close to the archbishop,and said to him:'His Grace must have the
mange or had an ear chopped off, since he does not dare remove his bonnet.'
The following ingenious apodo, which plays on two senscs of cardenal
(cardinal, also a scar), is attributed to Don Diego de Mendoza, Count of
Melito; 1 presume, from the coincidence of this jest with a passage in the
burlesque chronicle of Francesillo de Zuii.iga (ed. Pamp, 89 n. 179; also 132),
that the target was the papal legate, Cardinal Salviati, on the occasion of his
embassy to Charles's court in 1525 to negotiate the peace trea[y between
Charles and Francis 1 after the battle of Pavia (1. ii. 15):
De un cardenal legado, que era gordillo, estando en la corte del Emperador Carlos
Quinto, dijo don Diego de Mendoza, conde de Melito, que mas parecia chich6n
que cardenal.
Of a squat cardinal, the Pope's legate at the court of the Emperor Charles V, Don
Diego de Mendoza, Count of Melito, said that he looked more like a lump on the
head than a cardinal.
This is cut in the Huesca edition. Similar disapproval of anticlerical humour
is shown towards the joke about a doctor who pays a professional visit to a
bishop (Floresta 1. iv. 2); when asked about the bishop's health the doctor
replies: 'Cual estuviese mi mula, gorda y liviana.' (As 1 would want my mule
tobe, fat and frisky.) Uviana here connotes 'dissolute'. The last three words
disappear in the Huesca edition, and later ones follow suit. In another joke
featuring the Count of Ureiia (n. ii. 6), he absent-mindedly scratches his
genitals while testing a page's capacity to deliver a letter to a lady: the page,
asked hypothetically to describe to the lady what the Count is doing these
days, complies with the request quite litcrally. This apophthegm is spared by
the Huesca edition. However, it was censored by the 1632 Index, and sub-
sequent Spanish editions complied with the prohibition. This shows that
inquisitors in their capacity as censors were quite capable of going beyond
their brief of monitoring heresy, blasphemy, and irreverence towards the
Church; when the mood took them, they would censor obscenity and
other outspokenness as well, even of a seemingly mild kind. Here is another
example (vm. iv. 7):
Un hombre muy gordo, que tenia Ja mujer hcrmosa, y no paria, decia a uno que Ie
motejaba de gordo: 'Yo, con ser tan pesado como soy, os apostare a correr, y os dare
una echada.' Respondi6: 'Dadmela vos echada, que yo os la dare prenada.'
A very fat man, with a beautiful wife who bore him no children, said to somebody
who was joking about his girth: 'Heavy as I am, 1'11 race you, and bet you I win even
ifl start lying down.'The other replied:'You let me have her lying down, and 1'11 let
you have her back pregnant.'
1
'r-..._
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 201
Though the Huesca edition cut this one, it let pass a joke with a similar play
on echar in the same chaptcr. Latcr editions, taking their cue from the 1632
Index, supprcssed the other joke as well.
1 suspect that several risque jokes in the Floresta, which do not name the
protagonists nor indicate their social status precisely, are based, like most of
the examples cited above, on reputedly real incidents involving well-known
personalities. That is, Santa Cruz himself starts the process of toning down
the indecorum ofhis material.A famous pair ofjokes in the risque category,
uncensored in the Huesca edition, involve repartee between a Jew and a
homosexual. Here is the second (vn. iii. 16):
Top:indose es tos mismos en la calle, que iban a caballo, pregunt6 el que puso al otro
el tocino sobre las ancas del cap6n: 'iPor que cabalga vuestra merced tan trasero?'
Respondi6: 'Por no matarle en la cruz.'
One day, when these two characters met each other in the street, both mounted on
horseback, the one who pushed before his table-companion the capon with the
bacon on it, asked him:'Why are you riding so far back on the horse's rump?'The
other replied: 'So as not to kill him on the cross.'
The obscene innuendo in cabalgar, to ride, and trasero, far back, is even more
obvious in Spanish than in English;'matar en la cruz' is an ingenious double
meaning, whose alternative, innocuous sense is 'so as not to blister the
horse's back'. We would naturally regard this as a standard, inventedjoke in
which the protagonists are mere archetypal roles. Yet, significantly, Graciin
Dantisco, in his Galateo espaiiol (ed. Morreale, 148), takes for granted that it
rcfers to a real encounter between two gentlemen, and cites it as a warning
not to make quips injurious to personal honour. Even if he was rnistaken in
this particular case, he had good grounds for making the assumption. In the
Floresta, Santa Cruz persistendy reduces to anonymity eminent butts of de-
meaning gibes who, in earlier sixteenth-century versions of the same joke,
are identified by name and other particulars. This happens, for example, in
all the jokes about courtly personages with equivalents in the burlesque
chronicle of Francesillo de Zuiüga. 2 3 Likewise, the jest attributed to
Cardinal Loaisa about the hypocrisy of an unnamed bishop (Floresta 1. ii. 16)
previously appcars in Luis Pinedo's Libro de chistes (Book ofJests) with the
individual named (BAE 176, p. rn8). Santa Cruz observes the same discre-
tion in the case of unflattering jokes about eminent prelates (see especially
Floresta I. iv), including the doctor's sarcastic quip about his patient and the
Count of Urena's tart rcbuke to the archbishop, both quoted above. In a
duster of apophthegms on the theme of liberality or stinginess among
noblemen (Floresta II. ii. 42, 44-8 inclusive), the two which contain taunts
of stinginess conceal the identity of the butts; the rest, which show the
2l See a !ist of these in Cabaiias's edn„ p. 6o8.
202 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
protagonists in a favourable light, identify them. We may fairly conclude that
Santa Cruz's anthology, while drawing heavily on the repartee of courtly
circles of the early sixteenth century, deliberately veils its abrasiveness so as
to present it, as does Luis Milan's EI cortesano, in a reasonably decorous light.
The Floresta is an eloquent witness to that abrasiveness despite itself.
Jests like those quoted above are consonant with the coarseness of upper-
class manners in the early part of the sixteenth century and with the free-
and-easy lack of inhibition that noblemen showed on the most contentious
or delicate subjects. This is memorably exemplified by Dr Francisco de
Villalobos's graphic and hilarious account of the administration of a sup-
pository to the irascible Conde de Denavente by one of his duetias, and of
the volcanic sequel to that operation, and also by Villalobos's private letters
to the aristocrats whom he attended, cheerfully candid about his own and
their Jewish extraction and impudently jocular about the Inquisition. 2 4 The
same lack of inhibition is shown by the improvised, versified motes which
Spanish caballeros would bandy with each other as a witty pastime.A nostal-
gically purified version of the practice is offered in Milan 's EI cortesano. A
more realistic version is to be found in the Candonero of Sebastian de
Horozco (d. 1580), native ofToledo, lawyer, poet, and proverb collector: in
his duels of wit with his friends, taunts of pox, impotence, hairiness, con-
sorting withjews, and so on are exchanged with merry nonchalance. 2 5
In writing about the ethos of that age, Spain's great literary historian,
Menendez Pelayo, is often provoked into displays of prudish pomposity
(1943: iv.21-2). He lumps together such disparate things as the trenchant an-
ticlerical satire of the Spanish Erasmian movement, the heresies of the alum-
brados, and the burlesque poems of the Candonero general, treating them as
symptoms of a spirit of dissolute licence and moral anarchy which, stem-
ming from the fifteenth century, would only be tamed when Charles V
reached maturity and his reign fulfilled its historic destiny. While Menendez
Pelayo's indignation gets the better ofhis judgement, it serves nonetheless to
highlight the abrasiveness of humour in that epoch, pervading the comic
genres and extending into the non-comic ones: witness the saucy salacious-
ness of Joan Martorell's chivalresque romance Tirant lo Blanc (1490, trans-
lated into Castilian in 15n); the grotesque parody of the liturgy inJuan del
Encina 's pastoral tragedy Egloga de Placida y Victoriano (1s13) (Eclogue of
2 4 The dialogue describing the incident with the Count ofßenavente is the second oftwo in-
cluded in the Problemas ofVillalobos (1543),reprinted in BAE 36.The dialogue figures indepcnd-
ently in DAE 176,pp. 197 ff. OfVillalobos's lctters.see nos. ix,xx,xxi,xxvii,and xxxviii in the edn.
ofhis works published by SBE {18116).
2 S ed.Weiner, nos. 71"""'99. 164-6, 183. Horozco's taste for these exchanges shows a certain con-
scrvatism, sincc in thc sccond lulf of thc 16th century they were beginning to go out of fashion.
Joly (1982: 234-6) notes the decline, and dates from this pcriod the predominantly pejorative con-
notations attributed to mote and, especially, motejar.
EVOLUTION OF ATTJTUDES TO COMEDY 203
Placida and Victoriano); the burlesque section of the Cancionero general
(1511), 2 6 with its brazen irreverence towards clergy and Pope, its unbridled
lewdness mixed with liturgical parody, its misogynistic ribaldry, its vituper-
ative tirades against the converso court poets Juan Poeta and Anton Montoro;
the disenchanted view offered by LA Celestina of a world turned topsy-turvy
by lust, avarice, and the lack of exemplary guides, aligned with a tradition of
scathing satire going back to the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo and the Coplas del
Provincial (Verses of the Head of the Provincial Order).
The dialogue ofVillalobos describing the Count of Benavente's misad-
venture is preceded by a letter from the Archbishop of Santiago, Don Alonso
de Fonseca, in which he solicits a written copy in these terms (BAE 36,
p. 443):
Pocos dias ha que el seiior don Comez me mostr6 un dialogo vuestro, en que muy
claramente vi que nuestra lengua castellana excede a todas las otras en Ja gracia y
dulzura de Ja buena conversacion de los hombres, porque en pocas palabras com-
prehendistes tantas diferencias de donaires, tan sabrosos motes, tantas delicias, tantas
flores, tan agradables demandas y respuestas, tan sabias locuras, tantas locas veras, que
son para dar alegria al mas triste hombre del mundo.
A few days ago Don G6mez showed me a dialogue by you, in which 1 saw very
clearly how far our Castilian tongue exceeds all others in tbe wit and pleasantness
of good conversation amongst men, since in a brief space you managed to bring
together so many different kinds of wit, such savoury jests, so many delights and
ornaments, such agreeable repartee, such sage nonsense and madcap truths, that all
this is fit to make merry the most melancholy man in the world.
These remarks about so merrily scatological a text reveal a paradoxical con-
junction of criteria of refined and urbane humour like those prescribed in
Villal6n's EI scholastico, with a readiness to revel in uproariously vulgar farce.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the form er tendency was beginning to
bring the latter under a tight rein.
Because of the scarcity of relevant evidence, it is easier to demonstrate the
end result of the process, and to explain why it happened, than to show pre-
cisely by what stages it happened. The copious quantity of versified motes in
the Ca11cionero of Sebastian de Horozco, added to the testimony of Santa
Cruz's Floresta, shows that the cult of motes still flourished among the gen-
try ofToledo after the mid-sixteenth century. Gracian Dantisco's ambivalent
attitude towards motes in chapter II of his Galateo espafiol (c.I s86) (Spanish
Galateo), in which grudging acquiescence combines with severe warnings
against their injuriousness, testifies to the tradition's persistence in the court
city of Madrid in the same period. One of the most interesting sources of
26 lt was published independently in 1s19 as Cancionero de obras de b11rlas prol!l)Cantes a risa.
204 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
evide.nc~, al~eit som~what mis~eading, is that of the Portuguese magistrate
Tome Pmhe1ro da Ve1ga, who, m 1605, found himself in Valladolid for some
months on official business and kept a chronicle of the festivities held to
mark the birth of the future Philip IV, together with the official visit of the
English Ambassador, Lord Notringharn, accompanied by a !arge retinue. lt is
one of the most intimate, picturesque, and mordant pictures that we have of
social life in the Spanish Golden Age, sharply attentive to the scandalous or
bizarre occurrences of the court, as well as duly deferential to its ceremonial
splendour. For example, having described in respectful detail a kind of mili-
tary tattoo in a large clearing by one of the gates of the city, the Puerta del
Campo, around w~ich improvised terracing had been built for the specta-
tors, he then descnbe~ how some women, needing to leave early, descended
by ladder from the h1gher tiers, exhibiting their legs and petticoats to the
male spectators ~eneath. The dcscription is a masterpiece of polished,
burle~que obsceruty: the de_scent compared to that of the angels down
Jaco~ s ladder; ~ewd spe~ulat1ons as to why Castilian ladies wear petticoats
heavily embr01dered with gold trimmings; witty innuendo between the
men and the wo~en •.who give as good as they get (Fastiginia, 75-81). In
another pa~sage Pmhe1ro reports the murder of the Persian .Ambassador by
a c.o~patnot .converted to Christianity, and presumably incensed by the
~cavmes of th1s Middle Eastern DonJuan, who was reputed to have Iogged
m a noteb?ok the conquest of 130 Spanish noblewomen, some so eminent
that the King ordered the damning evidence to be burnt. The Ambassador's
body was ta~en ou~ of the town in a meat cart, with Iegs trailing behind, to
be ~u~ped l~ a ravme and partly devoured by dogs. Pinheiro comments that
the i.nc1dent 1.s shameful to Spain, whose ambassadors are well treated by the
Pe~s1ans, addmg pleasantly that it was rumoured that the 'dog' (S ·h
ept~et fort;i~~lim infidels) probably got what he deserved for his Ji~~:~­
dermg (Fast1gm1a, 34).
. Pin~~iro is ~n intelligent and ironic observer, of a rakish and hedonistic
dtspos1~on, w1th a marked taste for the company of Spanish womeD' he
never .tlr~s .of comp~ring favourably their spirited, free-and-easy open~ess,
~7reJ~dic 1 ~. to their honour, with the frumpish sullenness of Portuguese
a ies, m w ich the~ are ~ncouraged by the boorishness and jcalousy of
~~r tuguese men. He ts par~1cularly intercsted in their badinage: during pub-
5
. P~~tacles, ~ncounters m the street, excursions to the fields outside the
c~ty, ~Slts to private houses.The book is a mine ofthe impromptu witticisms
t at .e recorded on such occasions, and shows that amon t the S anish
~~u~~ers ofthe ~arly years of~hilip IIl's reign (from I 598) th~varioutforms
morous g1~e current m the reign of that monarch's grandfather,
Charles V, we~e still fre~ly practised, at least in certain circumstances. Guest
appearances m these Jousts of wit are made by the Count of Salinas
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 205
(presumably the poet, later Viceroy of Portugal), the wild and rakish Marquis
of Darcarrota, and the family of the licentiate Gilim6n de la Mota, an im-
portant accountant at court. The principal dramatis personae are, it is true,
oflower status, though most qualify for the epithet 'gente honrada'. ·
However, the apparent vigour of the mote tradition in Valladolid, 1605, is
due to special factors: the dissolute character of Pinheiro da Veiga's woman
friends, whose morals are frequently reminiscent of the protagonists of
Castillo Sol6rzano's Las harp{as en Madrid (1631) (The Harpies of Madrid),
and whose penchant for repartee befits that status; 2 7 and the fact that
the Portuguese were traditional butts of Spanish raillery. lt also reflects the
carnivalesque gaiety of the early years of the new reign in reaction to the
austerity of the previous one; the atmosphere reached fever pitch at certain
moments in particular places.The endless round of regattas, masques, mock-
battles, fireworks, theatricals, cavalcades, and processions which took place
in and around Valencia in 1599 to ce1ebrate the marriage of Philip III to
the infanta Margarita of .Austria is one example of this opening of the
floodgates, 28 launching the conspicuous extravagance of the new regime
and its promotion of the social and spectacular aspects of court life. The
simil~rly protracted cycle of festivities witnessed by Pinheiro da Veiga in
Valladolid in 1605 is another example. Apart from the Fastiginia, all other
evidence known to me suggests that the mote tradition, considered solely as
a form of courtly repartee, and not in its other aspects, suffered a sharp de-
cline towards the end of the sixteenth century.
Thus, in the copious collection of witticisms compiled by the rich and
learned Sevillian poet Don Juan de .Arguijo and bis cirde, in the approxim-
ate period 1610-24, the proportion of motes shows a sharp drop by com-
parison with Santa Cruz's Floresta, some 70 out of a total of nearly 700, with
a mere handful attributed to noblemen. The debate about the legitimacy of
motes, which so exercised the authors of sixteenth-century courtesy books,
disappears from similar contexts in the seventeenth. 2 9 A striking example of
this is Salas Barbadillo's portrait of an ideal knight, EI caballero perfecto (1620)
(The Perfect Knight), which, though partly modelled on Castiglione's
27 l6pez de Ubeda, in lA p(cara]ustina {16o5), characterizes the voUeys of gibes (matracas) and
mocking mimicry (/isf!.as) exd1anged between the heroine and Perlicaro as typical of courtesans,
pages, students, and the like (ed. Rey Hazas, i. r 50). As Bataillon has shown (1969: eh. J), he was
intimatdy familiar with court life in Valladolid.
28 These fcstiviries are exhaustively described by the contemporary chronicler Felipe de
Gauna, ed. Carreres Zacares (1926-7).
2 9 Cf.Joly (1982: 235).The only exception known to me is a passage in the chapter on satire
in Carballo's Cisne de Apolo (ed. Porqueras Mayo, ii. 6.,-8), where the interlocutors discuss the le-
gitimacy of jocular gibes (matracas, apodos) amongst friends. The terms of the discussion and the
examples quoted dearly echo corresponding passages in Villalon's EI schofastico and Graciin
Dantisco's Gafateo espatiol, previously cited in this chapter, and seem a mechanical repetition of
them rather than a considered conttibution to the debate.
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200 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 207

treatise, gives no attention at all to wit and repartee, a subject that occupies into virulent political propaganda.33 The numerous poems in which he
most of book II of II cortegia110. Salas's hero is an epitome of Castilian grav- ridicules Don Pedro Vergel, court constable and celebrated horseman, play
ity, with the associated aristocratic virtues ofhonour, loyalty, piety,justice.3° witty variations on the traditional puns and metaphors associated with
The traditional debate is now replaced by an ethical discourse which, in- 'cuernos' in order to insinuate his cuckold's horns. Here is a sample, whose
spired partly by the precepts of courtesy literature and partly by traditional wordplay makes it all but untranslatable (Cotarelo y Mori 1886: 240):
Christian meditation on the vices of the tongue, differentiates urbane wit
Sus galas son peregrinas,
from malicious gibes and associates these with buffoons or with the plebs.
pues Je hacen contrapeso
A passage in Cervantes's Coloquio de los perros (see Ch. 4, s. i above), which a martinetes de hueso
brands apodos as unworthy of a gentleman, is the best-known example of this cintillo de cornerinas.
trend, and makes a pertinent contrast with Luis Zapata's enthusiastic appre- Mir6 al toro con desden
ciation of the ballad of apodos composed, according to him, by Don Luis de Vergel, y el toro se para,
Avila about the delegates to the Padiament of Monz6n.3 1 The trend is pues ve con cuernos y vara
echoed by Cervantes's contemporaries: Damasio de Frias, Rufo, Salas un retrato de Moisen.
Barbadillo, Tirso de Molina, Espinel. The last named in his Marcos de Obreg6n Dud6 el toro la batalla,
(1618) is the most insistent, taking conversational virtue as a model for his y no sabe en tal aprieto
own literary achievement. Again and again, through his narrator and ficti- si ha de guardar el respeto
al rey de la Cornualla.
tious persona Marcos, he returns to the charge: denouncing tireless chatter-
El toro tuvo razon
boxes who hog the conversation and take pleasure in evil speaking (1. de no osar acometer,
xviii-xix), those who habitually digress or intervene at a tangent to the sub- pues mal puede et oponer
ject in hand (u. i), those who discourse pleasantly and wittily without being dos cuernos contra un mill6n.
able to fill this husk with nutritious substance (111. xv-xvi).3 2 His finery is novel, for strings of red agate aci: as counterweight to plumed crests of
These developments suggest that scruples about the social acceptability of hone. Vergel contemptuously eyes the bull and the bull stops in its tracks for it sees
motes had become effective in practice. A telling sign that times have before it a portrait of Moses with horns and rod. lt feared the battle for it didn't
changed is the indignation felt by Guzman de Alfarache, at that moment the know whether in such a strait it should not respect the King of Cornwall. lt was
Ambassador of France's jester, when he hears two Spanish caballeros, or im- right to refrain from attack, for how could it oppose two horns to a million?
postors masquerading as such, taunt another behind his back as an upstart
Whatever the reasons for Villamediana's assassination in the Calle Mayor of
Jew (Guzman de Alfaraclie 1. iii. 10; ed. Gili Gaya, iii. 16-17). That even a buf-
Madrid in 1622, popular opinion endorsed the verdict of the court poet
foon, albeit fictitious, should feel this inappropriate is new indeed. Another
Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza:'que,porque dijo mal bien,dej6 la vida bien
symptom of the raising of the threshold of sensitivity is the exploitation of
mal' (Cotarelo y Mori 1886: 145). (For saying ill weil, he left life right ill.)
the most injurious motes by writers of defamatory libels, like the Conde de
Ovcr the course of a century, the matter of jest bad become a motive for
Villamediana. His satires against the Duke of Osuna, protector of Quevedo,
bloodshed.
and active executor of Spanish foreign policy in ltaly, echo the tirades against
This does not mean that indulgence in the traditional gibes by Spanish
converso poets in the burlesque poems ofthe Cancionero general and turn them
caballeros was frowned upon in all circurnstances, but rather, that it bad to
conform to conventional restraints tobe acceptable in respectable company.
JO A negative attitude towards motes is implied by Salas's imaginary pkture ofideal gent!emanly
A gentleman could bandy motes with buffoons, lackeys, innkeepers, prosti-
amusements in LA casa Je/ plater honesto (1620), which insists on their refinement, urbanity, and
inoffensiveness. Cf.Alonso Nufiez de Castro's SOio Madrid es corre (1658; 3rd edn., 1675; p. 398). In tutes; he could shower insults on fellow academicians within the tightly
Gracün's AguJeza y arte Je ingenio, traditional motes and apoJos tend to be treated as popular and regulated and, in principle, decorous framework of the vejamen academico
coarse (see discourse xxxii and the condusion ofxxxiü). This accords with Gracian's thematic re- (academic taunting); in the carnivalesque licence of the ritual caricature
pudiation of evil speaking (Chevalier 1992: 169, and Egido 1996b).
3 1 Zapata, writing in the 159os, says that the ballad was composed 'forty eight years
ago' (Memorial histOrico espaiio/, xi. 449-SO). Presumably he refers to Cortes held at Monz6n in 33 See Cotarelo y Mori (1886: 244-5); cf. 'Coplas del Conde de Paredes a Juan Poeta cuando
1542. Je cautivaron moros en Fez', in Candonero Je obras dt burlas, ed. Beiion Cazab;in and Jauralde Pou,
32 Ed. Gili Gaya, i. 227-42; ii. 16-18 and 233-.u. 87 ff.
 '··-·
208 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
(vej<m1en or gallo) of recipients of university doctorates, the spcakers were
given equally free rein. Poets like Jacinto Polo de Medina or Jacinto Alonso
Maluenda in the 162os and 163os churn out burlesque poems about persons
marked by some ridiculous peculiarity. The titles mark the frivolity of the
species, which was typical of academy poetry and, as is shown by a remark
in a play by Cubillo deArag6n (cited injose Sanchez 1961: 23), was typic-
ally made up about fictitious subjects: 'A unas piernas delgadas con unas
grandes ligas' (To a pair of thin legs with huge garters); 'A una dama muy
enemiga de gatos' (To a lady with a phobia for cats); 'Epitafio a un narig6n
quese llamaba Neptali' (Epitaph for a man with a huge nose callcd Neptali);
'A uno que llevaba un ojo postizo de plata' (To one who had a false eye
made of silver).
lt would, of course, be quite misleading to suggest that verbal humour
amongst the Spanish gentry in the scventeenth century generally main-
tained a level of frivolous innocuousness. We are concerned with a shift in
what was regarded as socially permissible; to qualify as such, the kinds of
motes tolerated fifty or a hundred years before bad now to dress themselves
up as some form oflicensed burlesque. Alternatively, as happened in floods
of anonymous lampoons, they trampled down restraint and revealed them-
selves as naked insults in which wordplay, double meaning, and allusion
served to sharpen the witty malice, not camouflage it. Seventeenth-century
Spain, an age of decadcnce, was fertile ground for the writing of political
satire, mostly anonymous, in verse, and virulently personal; in it, the nation
found a safety valve for its resentful sense ofimpotence (Etreros 1983: 30-1).
Naturally, writers exploited the ambiguous dividing line between the two
optionsjust mentioned. In Tirso de Molina's Cigarrales de Toledo (ed.Vazquez
Fernandez, 443-4) (The Country Hauses ofToledo), Don Melchor, por-
trayed as having a mischievous turn of humour, recites some d&imas about
a gallant with a cataract in one eye, who obsessively ogles beautiful women.
The poem, typical of academic burlesque but aimed at a real person, begins:
Mon6culo enamorado,
trasunto espaüol de Isopo,
puesto que en los ojos, topo,
Argos lince, en el cuidado:
A las damas que has aojado,
la mas bella darme quiso
de tus desvelos aviso,
y entre las setias que me dio
de ti, que eras, me avis6
antipoda de Narciso.
Amorous monocle, Spanish copy of Aesop, though a mole with respect to sight, a
Jynx-eyed Argus in amorous care. To the ladies that you have rumpled ['ahojado'
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 209
contains a pun on 'ojo', eye], the most beautiful chose tosend this warning of your
attentions through me, and amongst the identifying signs that she gave, she told me
that you were the antipode of Narcissus.
So, an ingeniously insulting string of apodos, which later turns obscene; it is
affiliated to similar coplas about physical peculiarities composed a century
before, for example, about the diminutive stature of Don Fadrique
Enriquez, Admiral of Castile (Chevalier 1992: 38-40), and shows how this
burlesque species now refl.ects the learnedness and conceitedness typical of
Baroque style. The frequency with which such compositions are presented
in comedias and comic novels--e.g. Lope de Vega's EI galan de Ja Membrilla
(The Gallant from La Membrilla) and Castillo Sol6rzano's Teresa de
Manzanares-as referring to victims of flesh and blood leaves no room for
doubt that they often did.Yet there are important differences between them
and the old coplas de motes. The latter were addressed to their victims; the
former were recited at literary gatherings about the absent subject, or were
1
sung from the street at night beneath the balcony, or were circulated anony-
mously. In short, to compose them was, for a caballero, an act of truancy,
which potentially Ieft him liable to retaliation. A measure of the change in
climate is the inconceivability, in a seventeenth-century context, of the
jocular flaunting of Jewish origins practised by the court poet Anton
Montoro and the merry doctor Francisco de Villalobos in the fifteenth cen-
tury and early sixteenth; this self-abasement went together with protest
against anti-Semitism and the ridicule of bogus pretensions of caste purity.
Such postures were now rendered taboo by coIIective Spanish paranoia
about purity of blood, institutionalized in the course of the sixteenth cen-
tury (cf. Egido 1996a: 22-3, 43).Yet this prickly sensitivity did not just affect
anti-Semitic motes; Spaniards' obsession with honour, caste, and dass, to-
gether with the factors to be discussed in Chapter 7, made it impinge on
injurious motes in general.
What happens to the mote tradition in literature is conditioned by, and, in
part, directly mirrors, its evolution in real life. So, in Lope de Vega's great
comedy-in-prose LA Dorotea (1632), whose faithful representation of furni-
ture, clothes, family relationships, domestic routine, and other minutiae has
been noted byTrueblood (1974: 202 ff.), motes feature quite frequently in the
discourse of servants, but are confined mainly to them. The same applies,
broadly speaking, to the comedia and the entremes: in Lope de Vega's comedias f
these jests are restricted to low badinage amongst lackeys and similar scum,
to ritual taunts at passers-by in the streets on festival days, and other such
contexts (Chevalier 1992: 227-42); while in the entremeses of Quinones de
Benavente, motes achieve a sort of apotheosis in the series Los alcaldes encon-
trados (from about 1624) (The Warring Village Mayors), featuring, in the first
four parts, Mojarrilla and Domingo, mayors respectively of the l1idafgo and
 -.~,
210 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
the peasant dass. The hidalgo mocks his colleague for his asininity; the villano,
who always outscores his rival, ridicules his pretensions eo purity of blood
(cf. Asensio 1965: 149-62). The setting is village life, rustic and inherently
comical.Asensio (146) pointedly contrasts the inoffensiveness of this kind of
verbal sparring with the virulence of its direct equivalent in Diego de Avila's
Egloga interlocutoria (lnterlocutory Eclogue), composed over one hundred
years before.
However, robust comedy is capable of more aggressive implications, since
there is now a tendency for polemical satire to camouflage itself in that
mode, and for risque humour to seek the added cover of ambiguous double
meaning. The argument between Jammes and Arellano Ayuso over the sub-
versiveness of G6ngora's burlesque poetry is instructive on this point.
Robertjammes,in his classic study ofG6ngora's poetry (1967: 41 ff.),argues
that a distinction may be made between the satiric poetry of the age and
the poetry designated as 'burlesco' in terms of the author's pro- or anti-
establishment attitude: in satire, the writer attacks vices and follies from
within the establishment system of values; in the 'burlesco' mode, he does
the opposite, celebrating attitudes which are conventionally reproved. While
I agree with Arellano's questioning of this thesis (Poes(a satfrico-burlesca de
Quevedo, ed. Arellano Ayuso, 27 ff.) on the grounds that the real distinction
between the two modes lies in the seriousness of censorious inrent in one
and the predominant jocularity of the other, Jamm es has a point in saying
that Göngora, like his contemporaries, chooses a patently risible style and
persona as his preferred medium for expressing outrageous sentiments. In a
repressive climate, farce offers a convenient alibi. · the motejador's traditional butts. lt is assimilated too, with similar repercus-
One can offer numerous examples of this, beginning with Cervantes,
who adopts a soldier's bombastic language and viewpoint in order to mock
Philip Il's funeral monument in the sonnet 'Voto a Dios que me espanta esta
grandeza' (see Ch. 2, s. i), and, like Quevedo in his burlesque-satiric poetry,
implies the arbitrariness and corruption of the law by concentrating ridicule
on its lesser minions in the Coloquio de los perros. Likewise, the notorious
ambiguity of Guzman de A!farache foc modern readers largely derives from
the articulation of passionate reformism, both social and religious, by a pro-
tagonist whose buffoonery, degradation, and cynical flippancy are deliber-
ately accentuated. Quevedo's satire presented a similar ambivalence to
Spaniards of a former age. For the authors of the 'Tribunal de la Justa
Venganza' (1635) (Tribunal ofJust Vengeance), he was 'Maestro de Errores,
Doctor en Desvergüenza, Licenciado en Bufonerfas, Bachiller en
Suciedades, Catedratico de Vicios y Proto-Diablo entre los hombres' (Obras
completas: verso, ed.Astrana Marin, 1248) (Master ofErrors, Doctor in Shame,
Licentiate in Buffoonery, Bachelor of Filth, Professor ofVice, and Arch-
Devil amongst men). For Fray Francisco Palanco, author of the 'Aprobaci6n'
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 21 I
of the princeps edition of Quevedo's LA constancia y paciencia del santo Job
(1713) (The Constancy and Patience of Holy Job), the satire held no such
sinister implications: 'porque aunque el autor siempre se mostr6 desen-
gafiado, aun en los asuntos jocosos; pero alli el desengafio es como juego de
cafias, en que las lanzas mas divierten que penetran; aqui las tira de veras, y
tan aceradas, que penetran hasta lo intimo del coraz6n que las atiende sin
lisonjear al gusto' (Obras completas, i: Obras en prosa, ed. Buendia, 1328). (For
though the author always showed scepticism about the illusions of this
world, even in jocose matters, yet in the latter this awareness is like a game
with cane spears, which rather amuse than pierce; here, however, he throws
them so truly and sharply that they penetrate to the depths of the heart
which hearkens to them, without attempting to give pleasure.) Of his satiric
Sueiios, the one where Quevedo most accentuates the knockabout note is
precisely the most politically outspoken, the Sueiio de la muerte (Dream of
Death). Here a succession of ridiculous personifications of popular sayings
-Juan del Encina, Pero Grullo, Diego Moreno-round on Quevedo to
protest against men's unjust opinions of them; and the Sueiio ends,just like
an entremes, in a slanging match and brawl between Quevedo and Diego
Moreno, the archetypal patient cuckold
In general, the mote tradition benefits from the reinvigoration of the old
comic genres around 1600 and is exploited in new and imaginative ways. lt
is assimilated into the sophisticated repertoire of humorous techniques op-
erated in the burlesque poetry of G6ngora and Quevedo, models for all sub-
sequent verse in that vein in the seventeenth century, and aimed largely at
sions, into the character portraits and jousts of wit in Löpez de Ubeda's LA
p{cara Justina and Quevedo's EI Buscon. But even in cases like these, where
fantasy has free rein, literature obeys the new rules of decorum that obtain
in real life; that is, the mote tradition flourishes in literary contexts where the {
author, or his narrator or adopted persona, adopts a buffoonish mask. Thus,
Quevedo, in the sonnet entitled 'A un hombre llamado Diego, que casaron
con una mala mujer llamada Juana' (Poes(a satfrico-burlesca de Q1,evedo, ed.
Arellano Ayuso, no. 615) (To a man called Diego, who was married off to a
loose woman called Juana), elaborates the repertoire of traditional tropes
about cuckolds' horns; but the effect, unlike that ofVillamediana's satires on
Pedro Vergel, where the same tropes are used and restraints overthrown with
deliberate brutality, is purely risible. This is not to say that Quevedo, a mor-
dant satirist, was disindined to follow the path of personal libel; when it suits
him, as in his various attacks on Gongora, he strips off the ludic envelope of
traditional motes as brutally as Villamediana. .
Satire, when governed by a moralistic purpose, and aimed generally at
types of vice or folly rather than at individuals, in keeping with the hero's
- ··--~--
212 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
prescription at the end of Don Quijote 11. 16, offcred another lcgitimate out-
let for motes. The tradition is rechannelled thus in Juan Rufo's Las seisdentas
apotegmas (1596) (Six Hundred Apophthegms), the verse epigrams of Salas
ßarbadillo in the first part of EI caballero puntual (1614) (The Punctilious
Knight), and Cervantes's EI licendado Vidriera. This brings us to Cervantes's
reaction to the tradition.
(iii) EI licenciado Vidriera
Virtually, he expels it from his writings, except for that novela. The jokes in
Don Quij'ote and in his other novelas which are classifiable as motes and apodos
are rare, and are invariably attributed to low characters.34 This surcly should
strike us as extraordinary. Cervantes, acknowledged in his own lifetime as a
master of comic fiction, and famous now for his sponge-like assimilation of
traditional cultural motifS, would seem to be the least likely person, espe-
cially in Don Quijote, to turn his back on such a popular species ofjest. 1 shall
attend to that paradox in a moment. First, let us consider why and how he
draws on the tradition in EI licetuiado Vidriera.
We are concerned with the novela's central section, where the hero, now
mad, displays the bitterness and heightened wit of the typical Renaissance
melancholic, and wanders the streets of Salamanca, then of Valladolid, re-
sponding impromptu to the invitations ofbystanders to say something about
the social type that they represent. In effect, this section, intended to give
proof ofVidriera's rapier-like repartee, is an anthology of apophthegms, in-
debted to the sixteenth-century tradition of them (Timoneda, Pinedo, Santa
Cruz, Zapata) and particularly to Juan Rufo's lAs seiscientas apotegmas. The
latter is a collection of just over 700 (not 600) witty jests and aphorisms
uttered on different occasions by Rufo himself. Many of Vidriera's jests
are identifiably based on pre-existing motes and apodos, playing individual
variations on them. Thus, the one about the Jewish origin of the woman
clothier of Salamanca conforms to a proverbial joke in the second part of
Timoneda's Sobremesa (BAE 3, p. 179), based on the association of that trade
with conversos, and, formally, to anti-converso gibes which quote Scripture,
particularly in connection with Christ's Passion, in order to insinuate the
butt's enmity towards Christianity. 1 cite Vidriera's quip first, then the one in
Timoneda's anthology:
Pasando, pues, una vez por la roperfa de Salamanca, le dijo una ropera: 'En mi anima,
seiior licenciado, que me pesa de su desgracia; pero .:que bare, que no puedo llorar?'
34 In this category fall the apodos fired at Don Quijote by Altisidora (Don Q11ijote 11. 70; ii. 567),
and the gibes by masked bystanders at Carriazo of La ilustre.fregona when he plays the guitar 10 ac-
company the dance at the inn (Novelas, ed. Rodriguez Marin, i. 273).
EVOLUTION OF ATTITUDES TO COMEDY 213
EI se volvio a ella, y muy mesurado le dijo: 'Filiae Hierusalem, plorate super vos et super
.filios vestros.'35
On one occasion, when he was passing through the clothiers' quarter of Salamanca,
a woman clothier said to him: 'Upon my soul, master, I am sorry for your misfor-
tune, but what shall 1 do, for 1 cannot weep?' He turned to her, and said with great
composure:'Daughters ofjerusalem, [do not weep forme], weep for yourselves and
for your children.'
Andaba un pobre pidiendo por amor de Dias, por los ropavejeros de cierto pueblo,
y a grandes voces decia: 'acordaos, seiiores, de la pasion de Dios.' Dijole un estu-
diante: 'hermano, pasad vuestro camino, que aqui testigos son de vista.'
A beggar was begging for the love of God amongst the second-hand clothes dealers
of a certain town, and saying loudly: 'Be rnindful, sirs, of God's Passion.' A student
said to him: 'Brother, 1 would move along somewhere eise, for the people of this
quarter are all first-hand witnesses of the event.'
The close similarity of the two jokes with regard to setting, protagonists, and
the implication of Jewish cold-heartedness establishes the link between
them.An example ofjokes on the converso theme which cite Scripture is that
in Zapata's Misce!Jnea about a muffied caballero who finds himself being
followed at night by two conversos trying to identify him. He turns on them
saying: 'Quem queritis ego s11m.'36
Vidriera's joke about the 'profound' learning of the licentiate has prece-
dents in the Floresta andin Rufo's collection, where the same double mean-
ing is employed (Novelas, ii. 59--60):37
A lo cual dijo el amigo: 'Tratemonos bien, senor Vidriera, pues ya sabfo vos que soy
hombre de altas y de profundas letras.' Respondi61e Vidriera: 'Ya yo se que sois un
Tantalo eo ellas, quese os van, por altas, y no las alcanziis, de profundas.'
To which the friend said: 'Let's be civil to each other, Vidriera, for you know weil
that I'm a man of deep and lofty learning.'Vidriera replied: 'I know that you are a
veryTantalus oflearning, since, because so lofty, it escapes you, and because so deep,
you can't reach it.'
Vidriera addresses the following brutal gibe to a woman shopkeeper about
her promiscuous and bejewelled daughter: 'Muy bien habeis hecho en
empedralla, porque se pueda pasear' (ii. 63}. (You have clone very weil to
pave her; so that she will serve as a public footpath.) This simply recycles in
a different form Rufo's witticism about a previously virtuous woman, now
the expensively attired mistress of a wealthy doctor: 'Hinla empedrado
JS Nowlas, ed. Rodriguez Marin, ii. 40; cf. Luke 23: 28. The same biblical text is cited, in Latin,
in a burlesque epitaph coined in Francesillo de Zuiüga's chronide (ed. Pamp, II s). and, in the ver-
nacular, in a witticism included in the mid-16th-century collection ofLuis de Pinedo (BAE 176,
p. 99). In neither of these cases is it used as an anti-ro11vmo jibe.
36 Memorial hist.Srico espailol xi. 370; cf.John 18: S·
37 See Floresta, VII. v. 8. and LAs seisrientas apotegmas, ed. Dlecua, no. 168.
214 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
despues que se hizo calle pasajera' (ed. Blecua, number 412). (They have
cobbled her since she became a public walkway.)
Vidriera 's sayings are not unremittingly caustic nor are they all rooted in
the apophthegm tradition. A few of the sallies are light jests. Some employ
aphoristic style as a vehicle for diverse modes of satire reminiscent of
Guzman de Alfarache: miniature homilies of biblical inspiration; elegant
metaphorical definitions; moralizing invective against types of parasite or
miscreant. The acidly parodic vignettes of the mannerisms and sayings of
poets and duenas resemble Quevedo 's sketches of the .figuras of the court,
notably his Vida de la corte, which circulated in Valladolid, where the
Cervantine novela was probably written, about 1605. The diversity of these
intertextual links is exemplified by the passage about old men who dye their
beards (ii. 66-8), which, in the space of a few lines, mingles the tradition of
portuguesadas Uokes about the Portuguese) with echoes of Rufo and
Guzman de A!farache:
y riiiendo una vez delante deI dos hombres, que el uno era portugues, este dijo al
castellano, asiendose de las barbas, que tenia muy terudas: 'Por istas barbas que teiio
no rostro .. .' A lo cual acudi6 Vidriera: 'Olhay, home, naon dig.iis teiio, sino tiiio.'
Otro traia las barbas jaspeadas y de muchas colores, culpa de la mala tinta; a quien
dijo Vidriera que tenia las barbas de muladar overo. A otro, que traia las barbas por
mitad blancas y negras por haberse descuidado, y los caiiones crecidos, le dijo que
procurase de no porfiar ni rei'iir con nadie, porque estaba aparejado a que le dijesen
que mentia por la mitad de la barba.38
And once when two men were quarrelling before him, of whom one was
Portuguese, this individual said to the Castilian. tugging his own beard, which was
heavily dyed: 'By this beard on my face which 1 hold .. .' Upon which Vidriera cut
in with:'Hey, man, don't say tetio [mispronunciation of tengo, 1 hold], but titio [I dye).'
Another man's beard was motley-coloured, due to the dye having run, to whom he
said he had a beard like a dappled dungheap. To another, whose beard was half-
white, half-black through neglect, with the roots very thick, he said that he should
avoid quarrels, because he exposed himself to being told that he lied through
[Iiterally, through the middle of] his beard.
This very eclecticism suggests that Vidriera's debts involve playing variations
on commonplaces rather than citing specific models. The same kind of
consideration applies to bis addiction, so characteristic of the Spanish
38 Vidriera's dungheap analogy echoes an apodo by Rufo, Las stisdentas apotegmas, no. 33. The
epithet 'overo', dappled, is an example of topical exaggerations of multicoloured grotesqueness on
this theme in contemporary satiric/burlesque poetry: the swan turned crow, white wine mixed
with red, Harlequin moustaches. Cf. Quevedo, Obras completas: poes{a original, ed. Blecua (1963),
nos. 566, 645, 654, 660, 662. Vidriera's quip about the half-white and half-black beard resembles a
sally by Guzman in his role as court jester (G11zmiin Je A!faroche 11. i. 3; iii. 132). For examples of
port11g11esodas see Santa Cruz, Floresta espaiio/a, vn. i,passim, and Pinheiro da Vciga, Fastiginia, 146-8,
156.
EVOLUTION Of ATTJTUDES TO COMEDY 215
apophthegm tradition, to double meanings evocative of vile or corrupt
occupations. Mozo (lad/Jackey), banco (bench/bank), cuento (story/tally/
million), dereclto (straight/law or right), vecina (woman neighbour/neigh-
bouring), bagaje (baggage mulelwhore),Domingo (a proper name/Sunday),
and cortesana (courtesan, permitting a pun on cortes, courteous, and sana,
healthy), are cmployed in this way in the novela. Cervantes's chief debts to
Rufo are of a general, formal kind: the basic idea of a collection of the spon-
taneous sayings of a witty personage, treated as brief, independent anec-
dot_es; the moralizing causticity of the cornments, which though addressed
to individuals, are capable of being referred to types; their courtly context;
the cult of elegant pithiness and point; the way in which satire extends into
aphorism, moralistic eulogy, and light jest.
However, while Cervantes resembles Rufo in harnessing the mote trad-
ition to an edifying purpose, he differs from bis model in one important
respect. Rufo, by profession a jurado of C6rdoba (a magistrate with admin-
istrative duties), presents himself as a courtly, affable, morally high-minded
man, proud, obviously, of his talent as an impromptu wit. Vidriera, a law
graduate of Salamanca, suffers from a fantastic delusion as a result of eating
a poisoned quince; his acid wit, though not his underlying learning and in-
telligence, is a by-product of this condition; when he recovers his sanity, he
repudiates his former causticity, that is, its publicly displayed, unbridled
manner: 'You can now ask me at home the sort of things that you asked me
in the public squares, and you will see that the man who could reply weil
impromptu, or so they say, will reply even better upon reflection' (ii. 82). In
making his hero reject part ofhis past, andin portraying his gift for motes as
an aspect of madness, Cervantes, in effect, repudiates the mote tradition.
Why should he have felt the need to do this? Two, interlinked motives are
already familiar to us: his scruples about satire and his consistent reproof of
the coarseness of the comic genres of his age. However, the immediate
reason for it is revealed in that comrnent by Derganza in the Coloquio de los
perros on the fable of the lapdog and the ass, in which he brands apodos as
unworthy of a gentleman (see Ch. 4, s. i). This condemnation applies by
extension to motes, given the intimate association that was then perceived
between the two species. Yet to consider the problem solely fiom the per-
spective of Cervantes 's ideology is insufficient. As we have seen, his negative ·
reaction to these jests is not unique, but conforms to the characteristic
mind-set ofhis age. We must now consider the socio-genetic factors which
conditioned that mentality.
 ''Y-•-~---
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sodo-genesis, Ideology, and Culture
(i) Courtly manners and humour
The modification of Spanish attitudes to comedy in the course of the six-
teenth century is due, in general, to these factors: the emergence of a large
urban middle-to-upper class, looking to the court as role-model and acting
as a primary cultural consumer; the prescriptive and authoritarian spirit of
the age, which sought to observe and control social practices ovcr a wide
area; its pervasive academic ethos. 1 do not claim originality for signalling
these trends. They have been noted and documented by historians of the
period: Maravall, Dominguez Ortiz, Elliott, Nalle, Dedieu, and others. My
own contribution consists in pointing out how they impinge on manners,
norms of conversation, and humour. Their impact is manifest in the three
texts to be examined in the next chapter, published in the period 1596-
1624. They represent the framework of assumptions about comedy common
to Spaniards of the early seventeenth century.
To avoid misunderstanding, 1 should make plain straight off that I do not
posit a simple cause-and-effect relationship between these trends and litera-
ture of entertainment: 1 do not want to suggest, for example, that in the
measure that society acquired an increasingly middle-class, authoritarian,
and acadernic tone, literature evolved new forms primarily designed to
reflect or express it. To some extent, because it is originally mimetic, it did
have that purpose; yet its themes, conventions, and stylistic resources, like
those of creative literature in any age, were generated by the need for es-
capist fantasy, linguistic play, and other kinds of aesthetic pleasure, which
have their own distinctive nature and cannot be treated as mere effects or
replicas of other social activity. The point that 1 am trying to make is that in
pro~ortion as_ new forms of social coexistence came into being, new groups
attamed dommance, new conditions ofleisure and recreation became avail-
able, new and wider media of cultural diffusion were created, so the diverse
kin~ oflitera~re ~f entertainment adapted to the changed circumstances.
Th1s affects thmgs like ethos and tone, presupposed criteria of value, tokens
of quotidian life incidentally interwoven in the fictional world new kinds
of. heroism for readers to identify with and of scapegoat to la~gh at. The
bndge between such things and the evolution of society may not be direct
and obvious, but it is real.
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 217
Before we consider the causes of this evolution of manners and taste, we
need to remind ourselves briefl.y of some of the major political events which
form the background to it. The marriage of Ferdinand and Jsabel united the
crowns of Aragon and Castile, and their period of government, from 1479,
Jaid the basic framework of the absolutist monarchy by which Spain was to
be ruled until the end of the eighteenth century.Various policies pursued by
them combined to make Spain a more unified, firmly governed, and peace-
ful country than it had been previously: the overhaul of the legal system and
of central and town government; the policy of turning the aristocracy into
subscrvient collaborators with the crown;the requirement that Spanishjews
and, subsequently, Muslims should convert to Christianity, and the setting up
of the Inquisition in 1478 to police heretical backsliding amongst the con-
verted Jews and their descendants (conversos). Once In place, and equipped
with its formidable powers, the Inquisition was ready to deal with any form
of heresy, including Erasmianism, Protestantism, and apostasy among the
converted Moors (moriscos). After the accession of the Habsburg Charles V
(1516), the royalist forces loyal to him crushed the revolt ofthe towns against
the crown (1520-1), sparked by resentment of his imperial comrnitments ~j'
and the need to finance them; the victory over the comimeros at Villalar de- I·
cisively consolidated the monarchy's authority in Spain for the rest of the l
.Golden Age.
Charles initiated the foreign policy of aggressive defence of Spain's
sprawling imperial possessions, with the related assumption of the role of
defender of the Catholic faith on several fronts simultaneously: against Islam
in the Mediterranean and against Protestantism in north Europe. That
policy, sustained by his successor Philip II (1556-98), was accompanied
within Spain's borders by fierce repression of heresy and the vigorous im-
plementation of the resolutions of the Council ofTrent (1545-63), which
formulated the Catholic Church's doctrines in response to the Protestant
schism. The series of man-made and natural disasters which overshadowed
the last years ofPhilip II's reign-theArmada expedition (1588),farnine and
plague, crippling debts to foreign financiers and inflati?n-induce~ _tem-
porary recourse to a policy of detente, which was contmued by Phil1p III
(1598-1621), and was marked by the peace treaty with England in 1604 and
the truce with the Dutch Protestants in 1609. The government's awareness
of the nation's social and political infirmities inspired the programm~ of
reform envisaged in 1617-18, towards the end of Philip III's re~gn, am1dst
the aura of sleaze and incompetence surrounding his administratlon, largely
run by powerful court favourites. That programme was optimistically imple-
mented in the early years of Philip IV's reign against the ~a~kgroun~ of
renewed military engagement abroad and continuing financ1al 1mpovensh-
ment. That, broadly, is the political background to our story.
218 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
Towards the end of his reign, in 1548, Charles V introduced Durgundian
ceremonial into the Spanish court, and its elaborate ritual was adopted by
his successors. 1 Jose Deleito y Piiiuela, in one of his studies of social life in
the Spanish Golden Age (1955: 106 ff.), largely based on the reports of for-
eigli travellers to Spain, offers a graphic account of the Lilliputian finicki-
ness of palace behaviour. Everything was prescribed and regulated: from the
forms of salutation at royal audiences, to the dishes served on solemn occa-
sions, to the hour of the queen's bedtime: ten in summer, nine in winter.
Precedence was paramount, and disputes over it were a frequent source of
heated confrontations. Different kinds of gold key, worn at the belt, marked
the different grades and privileges of gentlemen of the bedchamber.
According to Mme d'Aulnoy's doubtless apocryphal yet symbolic account,
Philip III's fatal fever was the result of a brazier having been placed too near
the monarch; since the grandee responsible for moving it, the Duke of
Uceda, happened to be out of town, and nobody else dared usurp his func-
tions, the monarch was left to suffocate. More positively, the preoccupation
with forrns of behaviour had a decisive inßuence on what Elias calls 'the
civilising process'; good manners were treated like a sort of gold key, distin-
guishing the courtier from the commoner. The relevance of this process to
how people laugh is illustrated by Brunel's anecdote about Mariana of
Habsburg's hilarity at the antics of a buffoon after she had recently arrived
at the Spanish court. She was firmly told that immodcrate laughter was un-
becoming to a queen ofSpain.
The object of palace fiummery was to emphasize the majesty and re-
moteness of the monarch, manifest in Philip II's taste for black dress, his
aversion to the picturesque hubbub of court life, the severe and stony sym-
bolism of his monastery palace at El Escorial, which was completed in 1584.
This aura was not forsaken after Philip II's death, despite the more active
commitment of subsequent kings to court festivity. Citing the example of
the Queen of Sheba's awe at the impressiveness of Solomon's palace, from
which she inferred that of its owner, the Augustinian friar Marco Antonio
de Camos, in Microcosmia y gouierno universal del hombre cltristiano para todos los
estados (1595) (Microcosm and Universal Guide of the Christian of Any
Estate),justifies on those grounds Philip II's choice of so magnificent a set-
ting (EI Escorial) and his practice of surrounding hirnself with a large hier-
archy of illustrious courtiers, each with an honorific function (117). Partly
with these motives, and partly to strengthen the nobility's dependence on
Se~ Rodriguez.Villa (1913), whose book is based on a document that describes palace eti-
1
quettc m 1651, bas1cally unchanged since ehe mid-16th ccntury. The reforms introduccd by
Charles V tran~formed the ~impler and more sobcr style that had prcvailed hitherto, dcscribed by
G~nzalo Fernandez de Ov1edo ( 1 S4 7-8) in Libro Je la camara real de/ Prlncipe Don juan. See also
Elhott (1989).
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 219
the crown, the Habsburgs, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, swelled the quantity of noble titles and the scope of royal patron-
age, with the result that the aristocracy's prestige, wealth, privileges, and
internal distinctions were increased, those on all rungs of the social ladder
except the highest had a strong incentive to ascend, and the sense of dass
difference in general was sharpened.A potent contribution to this effect was
made by the obsessive preoccupation with purity of blood which affects
Spanish society from the mid-sixteenth century onwards: that is, the urge to
make honourable offices and titles inaccessible to those tainted by Jewish or
Moorish origin. This became policy amongst the institutions and elite clubs
which gave access to such distinctions and was incorporated in their Statutes.
The elaboration of court etiquette is ·accompanied by a proliferation of
texts designed to teach people how to perform the various courtly roles.
All impinge directly or indirectly on manners. Some, like Gabriel Perez
del Barrio Angulo's Direai6n de secretarios de setiore.s (1613) (Manual for
Secretaries of Noblemen) and Miguel Yelgo de Bazquez's Estilo de servir a
principes (1614) (Style ofServing Noblemen), are prescriptive manuals relat-
ing to the discharge of specialized offices. Others exhibit a variety of pur-
poses, but collectively bear witness to the common trend. So, in his EI
cortesano (1561), broadly based on Castiglione's famous treatise, Luis Milan,
the composer for the lute, paints an idealized, retrospective portrait of the
amusements of the Valencian court of Don Fernando de Arag6n, Duke of
Calabria, and his wife Germaine de Foix, as he knew it back in the 152os
and 153os. Dedicating the book to Philip II, 2 he designs it as a model of ele-
gant badinage. The Dialogode los pajes (about 1573) (Dialogue Concerning
Pages), by Diego de Hermosilla, former chaplain of Charles V, scathingly sat-
irizes the mistreatment of pages in the aristocratic households of the age, and
ends with suggestions as to how the nobleman should run his household
properly and how he should be brought up. Damasio de Frias, weil known
in his day as a poet and man of letters, and a native and ardent eulogist of
Valladolid, offers in his 'Dialogo de la discreci6n' (1579) a discussion of the
concept and practice of discretion, the courtier's salient virtue, which he sees
as epitomized by two prominent personalities of the mid-cent~ry: Do~
Diego de Acevedo and Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. The dialogue ts
affiliated to the age's courtesy literature, Castiglione and Della Casa in par-
ticular, and anticipates in various respects Graciin Dantisco's C?alat~o esp~iiol,
which is the outstanding Spanish treatise on courtly manners m t~1s pe.nod.
1 shall come back to it shortly. Damasio de Frias shares Hermos11la s Jaun-
diced opinion of contemporary noblemen, whom he contrasts unfavourably
~ Milan's book of music for the Jute, EI mamro, was published i~ 1SJ6 (Trend 1925~. His EI
cortesano has been republished in modern times (1874), as have the next two works tobe discussed,
by Hermosilla (republishcd 1901) and Damasio de Frfas (1929).
 .
t..J.J:-·----
220 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
with the deceased Admiral of Castile,3 his former master, praised as the soul
of aristocratic magnanimity and humanity. The Filosofla cortesana (15 87)
(Courtly Philosophy) by Alonso de Barros amusingly exemplifies the image
of the court as a maze governed by chance, favouritism, intrigue, and
Byzantine bureaucracy. In this work, Barros, master of the king's lodgings, a
friend of Alemin and Cervantes, and also author of a popular collection of
gloomily disenchanted verse aphorisms, offers an emblematic satire on its
perils in the form of a sort of game of snakes and ladders, incorporating
moral precepts about how to circumvent them. 4 Yelgo de Dazquez's treatise,
in which he distils years of experience in service in noble households, is
testimony to the influence of courtly styles of behaviour on lower levels of
society. Relating the case of a servant of a Spanish grandee who was sub-
sequently employed by a merchant of Granada ( 1 So), he describes the in-
genuous joy of the merchant's wife when she was able to impress some
honourable visitors with the stylish bows and genuflections and courteously
attentive phrases of the new domestic. The point of the story is to impress
on the reader that honour, society's driving force, makes people on any
social level gratified to be served in princely style. The same motive induced
people to adapt their behaviour to that model.
Philip II's decision early in his reign, in 1561, to make Madrid seat of the
court and capital of Spain caused a rapid expansion of the city, which be-
came a centre for a large apparatus of courtiers, govcrnment officials, and all
the petitioners and litigants dependent on it, and a magnct of attraction for
aristocrats with their huge households, the religious orders, and sundry
adventurers and riffraff from the provinces. As is implied by the evocative
title ofNufiez de Castro's book, SOio Madrid es corte (No Court but Madrid),
an influential manual of behaviour aimed at the courtier in general, the
whole city radiated round the court and its apanage of noblemen and func-
tionaries, all deemed to be the king's servants. Its physical development-
wide arterial streets, rnonuments, public spaces-was largely conditioned by
the needs of royal ceremonial. The business pursued in it was political and
administrative; it was not economically productive, as were neighbouring
or not far distant towns like Avila, Cuenca, Segovia, and Toledo. In the
sarcastic phrase of the nineteenth-century writer Mesonero Romanos,
famous for his sketches of manners in old Madrid, the city's sole industry
was the fabrication of reputations of people from all parts of the kingdom,
with tailoring and smart social gatherings as important ancillaries Oulia,
3 Presumably the sixth Admiral of Castile, Duke of Medina del Rioseco, who, according to
Löpez de Haro's Nobi/iariogenea/O~ico (1622; i. 401), dicd in 1572.There is a briefnote on Damasio
de Frias's fame as a poet in Alonso Cortes (1955: 225-30).
4 Tue work is described by E. M. Wilson (1968). For biographical and bibliographical details
concerning Barros see Perez Pastor (1891-1907: i. 131, 291; ii. 3-4).
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 221
Ringrose, and Segura 1994: 127). After a brief check in the years 1601
to 1606, when the court temporarily moved back to Valladolid, Madrid
would reach a zenith of theatrical show and cultural glitter in the reign
of Philip rv.
The development of the capital caused the emergence of a large 'middle-
class' community, which if not the only, was certainly the most influential,
consumer ofliterary culture in Spain during the first half of the seventeenth
century.s lt is the protagonist of two major genres of the period: the novela
cortesana (courtly novel) and the comedia de capa y espada (cloak-and-sword
comedy). In these works, the city of Madrid, with its parks, monuments, and
streets, its calcndar of festivals, and the associated customs and occupations,
provides the preferred setting and, often, the subject matter. The theatre,
much more socially specific than that of the early to mid-sixteenth century.
sets the action against the background of middle-class pursuits: thc taking of
iron mineral water as eure for the fashionable wornan's disease of oppilation;
litcrary academies; browsing in the luxury goods' stores along the Calle
Mayor, where sponging courtesans preyed on the imprudent vanity of gal-
lants; the annual May Day pilgrimage-cum-festival excursion to the
meadow known as 'el Sotillo' by the river Manzanares, site of an old her-
mitage.The literary cult ofMadrid reflects the emergence ofa metropolitan
mcntality, a sense of living amidst a bewilderingly large and varied agglom-
eration of people, amenities, artefacts, buildings, which, for both good and
bad, had become much more complex and refined than the social life of fifty
or a hundred years before. That impression seems strange to us now, given
that Madrid, even at its most populous (roughly 125,000 people in 1617),
was no greater than a small-to-middling modern town. The experience of
increased sophistication, in both life and art, is a leitmotif of the Spanish
Baroque. 6
The culture of the age is urban in another sense: unlike that of the early
sixteenth century, typically generated in a courtly milieu, or dependent on
its or ecclesiastical patronage, it is commercially aimed at a mass market, and
rcflects and feeds off the leisure pursuits of the 'middle dass'. This term,
though convenient, is potentially anachronistic, since it does not refer to an
cntrepreneurial bourgeoisie. 7 Yet it is apt insofar as it evokes the conver-
gence, and partial overlap, of the minor aristocracy and the professional
classes. One may quite legitimately deem it to designate the numerous
S See Maravall (1975: eh. 4); and cf. Diez Borque's inttoduction to his edition of Juan de
Zabaleta, EI dfti dt fieslti por la lardt ( 1977) (Feast Day Afiernoons).
11 See, for example, Graci:in's EI Criticon (1651-?). pt. III, crisi x, which articulates nostalgia for
a bygone, simpler age, and also the ironic sense that this has become a trite topos.
7 Since Maravall uses the terms b111g11ts and b11rg11es(a throughout his Esttido modemo y mentali· _
dad soda/ ( 1986), in more or less the senses in which 1 use the term 'middle class' here, 1 see no rea-
son to be apologetic about this usage.
 ':U,.8•....,... . . .~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
\l
222 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
group of'gente de capa negra', professional people in black capes: magis-
trates, town hall dignitaries of various kinds, secretaries of royal councils, and
other civil servants. People like these feature prominently in Cervantes's ro-
mantic novelas. The term 'middle dass' also embraces the well-off, leisured
minor nobility featured in innumerable novelas and cloak-and-sword com-
edies, whose purpose in coming to Madrid, before becoming embroiled in
some affair oflove and honour, is, for example, to solicit the habit of a mili-
tary order, like Don Felix in Lope de Vega's Sembrar en buena tierra (Sowing
in Fertile Ground), or, like Don Diego, the young caballero from Granada
featured in Lifian y Verdugo's Gufa y avisos de forasteros {1620) (Guide and
Warning to Strangers to Madrid), to plead his cause in a lawsuit over a dis-
puted inheritance. The lower fringes of the 'middle dass', occupied by many
of the writers of the age, comprised hidalgos of modest income or re-
spectable commoners, who gained their living as majordomos in noble
houses, private secretaries, minor government functionaries, tutors, chap-
lains, and so on.
These socio-historical developments contributed to the enhancement of
the court and aristocratic behaviour as role-model. In seventeenth-century
Madrid, the copying of upper-class manners became a sort of snobbish dis-
ease permeating all levels of society, so that even the urban scum cultivated
the title 'don', drove around in coaches, and addressed spouses as 'primo' or
'prima' (cousin) in imitation of royalty. However, 1 do not believe that the
efficacy of this model, in practice, conforms exactly to the pattern diagnosed
by Norbert Elias with particular reference to France: that is, the exemplary
transmission of lessons from the court and the aristocracy to those below.
The Spanish aristocracy, weil into the seventeenth century, included many
boorish representatives, as is attested by Diego de Hermosilla's caustic satire
on them. 8 Seventeenth-century gazettes of events at court, such as the
anonymous Noticias de Madrid, abound in reports of their scandalous doings:
liaisons with actresses, sword fights in the street, disorders resulting from
nocturnal. serenades of ladies, violence against ministers of the law or gov-
ernment officials. lt was out of a sense of the nobility's degeneracy that
Philip IV and his minister, the Count Duke of Olivares, resolved in 1623 to
found a royal college in Madrid to instil into it learning, statecraft, military
theory, and moral fibre (Elliott 1986: 187-8). The preoccupation with eti-
quette, marks of honour, respectability, and cultural attainment that becomes
characteristic of the urban gentry in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries was generated from within that dass, as much as it was derived
from above, though it was always backed by a sense of approximation to an
ideal of courtliness and nobility.
8 Diatribes against the vicious and corrupt aristocr:icy were commonplaces of late 16th-
century moralistic discourse. See Cavillac (1983: 231-49) .
•
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 223
This is suggested by its prevalence in towns distant from the court, due,
surely, to the fact that the evolution of Madrid was replicated in some ways,
albeit on a lesser scale, in other parts of Spain during the sixteenth century.
There was a general tendency for towns to develop at the expense of the
countryside around:9 individual lords or institutions such as cathedral chap-
ters had financial power and legal jurisdiction over rural areas; the minor no-
bility forsook their country estates for most of the year in order to exercise
lucrative posts in municipal government, over which, throughout Spain, it
had the effective monopoly; villagers joined this migration in search of
work. The towns were busy centres of economic activity, both as producers
and as markets, consumers, and exploiters of the country's produce. They
were also the seats of legal tribunals, universities, schools, bishoprics, and
archbishoprics. As administrative and legal employment expanded, educa-
tion, which gave access to it and to social ascent in general, was taken more
seriously, not just by the minor nobility but by lower groups. lt was the age
of ividdle-class careerism and the rise of the letrado, the professional man
with a degree in law (Kagan 1974). The extensive bureaucratization of na-
tional and local government during the reign of Philip II created golden
opportunities for the promotion of this breed. There are numerous signs of
this in Cervantes's works: the solicitude of the merchant of Seville, one of
Berganza's masters in EI coloquio de los perros, for the education and advance- ·
ment of his two sons, who study grammar at the famous Jesuit college of
San Hermenegildo; the career of Ruy Perez de Viedma's brother, who, on
receiving his inheritance, chooses to pursue his studies at Salamanca
University, and, when he passes throughjuan Palomeque's inn (Don Quijote
I. 42), has recently been appointed judge in the supreme court of Mexico.
His success is proof of the power of Letters contrasted with Arms (Don
Quijote 1. 39, 42; cf. r. 37-8), likewise reflected in the aspirations of Don
Diego de Miranda for his son (Don Quijote II. 16), and, albeit abortively, in
the career of the hero of EI licenciado Vidriera.
Thus, within the principal towns there evolved dominant communities
equivalent to Madrid's 'middle dass', intent,just like that dass, on marking
its status by its manners, and similarly disposed to act as consumer and gen-
erator of culture. lt is one of the principal reasons for the spread of acad-
emies: in Toledo, Valladolid, Madrid, Zaragoza, Valencia, Seville, Barcelona,
Granada, a process which began in the mid-sixteenth century and in-
tensified in the seventeenth. In the inaugural discourses that the poet and
dramatist Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola delivered on the occasion of the
9 There have been numerous, excellent studics of towns in early modern Spain, inc!uding
Benassar's classic f.11/ladolid au Siede d'Or (1967) (Valladolid in thci Golden Agc). Others worthy of
mention are: Pike (1972); Ringrose (r983); Bilinko!T (1989); Reher (r990); ROdenas Vilar (1990).
There is a gener:il survey of the subject in Historia general de Espafla y Ambica (1986: vi. 269 ff.).
224 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
founding of an academy in Zaragoza (about 1605), he champions the ideal
ofbringing together men of different professions: soldiers, scholars, lawyers,
poets, so that they can learn from each other and assimilate the style of
speech of the polished courtier, free of inarticulateness, affectation, and
pedantry. This ideal conception of academies as schools of urbanity, though
often belied in practice by the manners of academicians, was widely held. 10
The membership of the Valencian Academia de los Nocturnos (Academy of
the Nocturnals}, founded in 1591 when this mercantilc city was in füll eco-
nomic boom, faithfully reflects this ideal, as well as mirroring the city's so-
cial oligarchy. While the majority, including the farnous dramatist Guillen de
Castro, consisted of noblemen of middle or rninor rank, possessors of large
estates, political offices, and military posts, there was also a numerous mi-
nority of academics, doctors, lawyers, ecclesiastics, like the dramatists Andres
Rey de Artieda and Canon Francisco Agustin Tarrega. 11 Valladolid, in the
same period, was a very different kind of city from Valencia, but showed as
much cultural vigour, which has been documented by Narciso Alonso
Cortes (1906} and Dartolome Benassar (1967).As principal seat of the High
Court,and temporarily (from 1544 to 1559 and again from 1601to1606} of
the court, with a university and a theological college as well, it had an un-
usually !arge community of lettered professionals: academics, lawyers,
theologians.A literary circle active in the late sixteenth century probably in-
cluded the classicist Dr Alonso L6pez Pinciano. Toledo 's cultural distinction
in this period was due to a combination of the factors that have been men-
tioned.12 Prior to the rnid-sixteenth century, it was occasionally seat of the
court, like Valladolid. Moreover, it was the prime Spanish see, with a uni-
versity, famous colleges, and printing presses. When the painter EI Greco
decided to settle there, about 1575, it was at the peak of its prosperity for
various reasons: the opulence of the cathedral chapter; the thriving local
crafts, notably the manufacture of bonnets, textiles, and swords; the naviga-
bility of the Tagus, which gave access to Lisbon; the functioning ofJuanelo's
famous machine for raising watet from the river to the city. In his painting
of the burial ofCount Orgaz (1586}, EI Greco immortalized Toledo's patri-
cian community, some of whose members were eminent patrons of litera-
ture. Cardinal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas, patron of Cervantes in his last
years, was one of them; when the weather was fine, he held literary reunions
in the gardens of his palace on a bend in the Tagus, replete w~th birdcages
10 Leonardo de Argensola's discourses are printed in Obras sueltas, ed. Conde de Ja Viiiaza, i.
309 ff. In a well-known passage ofhis EI dia defiesta por la tarde (ed. Cuevas Garda, 392),Juan de
Zabaleta praises acadcmies in sirnilar tcrrns. • .
11 See the useful introduction to the Actas of this academy, ed. Canet, Rodngucz, and Suera
(1988). . . . no doubt because it answered a specific need.
12 See Maran6n (1\}6o). Nougue (1962) is informative on the cultural life ofToledo high soc1-
ety frequented by the .dramatist Tirso de Moli11.1.
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 225
and Ancient Classical statues brought from ltaly. The great dramatist Tirso
de Molina was, from 16II, a frequent attender.As we shall see in the next
· chapter, the academic circles ofValladolid and Toledo are evoked, respect-
ively, in L6pez Pinciano's Pliilosophia antigua poetica and Tirso de Molina's
Cigarrales de Toledo.
The handbook of the age so far as manners is concerned was Lucas
Gracian Dantisco's Galateo espaiiol (about 1586), frequently reprinted.
Gracian Dantisco (1543-87) was son of the humanist Diego Gracian de
Alderete, weil known as a translator of Classical texts, and, in the years when
it was safe to be so, a supporter of Erasmus. Raised in a farnily that was
trained to put erudition at the service of the monarchy, Lucas gained his
living in Madrid as a notary, acted frequently as a censor of books for the
Council of Castile, and, on the death of his brother Antonio, replaced him
as librarian of Philip II's palace of EI Escorial. His book on manners, though
based on Della Casa's Galateo, does not merely translate it, but expands and
adapts it for a Spanish readership. lt is addressed generally to the gentilhombre,
gentleman, who lives in courts and cities; in this it differs from its illustrious
precursor, Castiglione's II cortegiano, aimed specifically at the courtier. The
change of intended recipient is reflected in the semantic rnodification of
cortesano, treated by Gracian Dantisco as equivalent to gentilhombre, '3 and as-
sociated generally with urbanity, affability, tact, social poise. Also, compared
with its precursor, Gracian Dantisco's treatise is much narrower in scope
and, for our tastes, more prosaic (cf. Chevalier 1990: 841).Where Castiglione
exhorts the courtier to turn his life into a work of art, nourished by the pre-
cepts of Ancient rhetoric, Neoplatonism, the principles of chivalric honour,
and graced by all kinds of cultivated adornment, Gracifo Dantisco, follo~­
ing his immediate model Giovanni Della Casa, is concerned to warn h1s
readers against such indelicacies as belching, boasting, fal1ing asleep while
others are in conversation, gesticulating extravagantly in church, using af-
fected forms of address, repeating oneself or digressing during the telling of
a story. While Castiglione's courtier's aim is to play elegantly to the gallery-
generally, the court, and specifically, his prince--without appearing to do so,
the gentillzombre galateo has a more middJe-class objective, that is, making
himself agreeable to his fellow men, and taking care not to give offence.
Gracian Dantisco defines his purpose thus: 'so that when you communicate
with people, you may show good manners and be of an equable and pleas-
ant disposition, for this is nothing less than virtue or something like it' (105).
Yet despite the book's artistic and intellectual inferiority to Castiglione's,
from our perspective, it was much the more popular in Cervantes's Spain,
13 See Morreale's lcarned edition of Galatro tspa11ol, 32-3.
 ,,_,„.
226 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
Evidence of this is supplied by the many passages of Spanish Golden Age
literature, written from about 1 590 onwards, which appear designed to
illustrate the precepts of the Galateo espat"iol, whether or not they were so
intended. The passage in the Coloqi.io de los perros (see Ch. 2, s. i above) where
Cipion emphatically recommends circumlocutions or euphemisms as the
appropriate means of expressing indelicate matters echoes the precept 'The
discreet gentleman should try to ensure that his words are chaste, decent, and
seemly' (Galateo espafiol, 167). backed up by examples of the uncouth lan-
guage that ought to be avoided. The second instalment of Don Quijote's
precepts of government (pt. II, eh. 43), moves into Gracian Dantisco's terri-
tory, warning against making invidious comparisons of lineages, holding
oneself on a horse as though it were an ass, quoting proverbs indiscrimin-
ately, eating garlic, belching o~till worse--saying 'burp'. Since Cervantes,
with his age, Starts from the premiss that a ruler's primary qualification is
moral integrity, especially the virtue ofjustice, the precepts offered by Don
Quijote would have been seen as applicable to anyone-anyone, that is, of
sufficiently honourable status to be considered fit to hold a governorship.
Another example of Gracian Dantisco's influence on Cervantes is Sancho's
shaggy <log story ofLope Ruiz and la Torralba (Don Quijote 1. 20). which is
an amusingly comic infraction ofthe admonition given by Gracian Dantisco
(153) not to clutter up the narration of stories with otiose digressions like
'Aquel tal, que fue hijo de fulano, que iva muchas vezes a casa de tal mer-
cader, que fue casado con una flaca que llamavan la tal, lno le conocistes?'
(So and so, who was son of what's his name, who often used to visit the
house of that merchant such-and-such, who was married to a thin girl called
what d'you ma' call it, don't you remember him?). Sancho again infringes
that precept in the malicious story that he teils at the Duke's dinner table
(1. 31; ii. 279-81), but in so doing, aptly illustrates another one: about the
folly of those who irritatingly insist on refusing the place of honour that is
offered to them (Galateo espatiol, 130).
Juan Rufo 's lAs seisdentas apotegmas is a striking example of this preoccu-
pation with good manners, and of the way in which it impinges on conver-
sational styl~ a subject which takes up most of Graciin Dantisco 's treatise
md includes. n.aror4Ily, bumour, '"i~ and the telling ofstories. In tbis respect,
.anJ othen. Rufo \ bool: is ~]'ical of Sp.mish Baroque c:ulrure: V.'C find the
same pre~m., ~i::h similiu- CDn.'if'~ences. in tbe v.nrinss ofD~o
.& &~ ~'""""'.4t l..ac4IS Hi}:i1.:r._"l, Cen:---....nu:s.,:Scks B...~\~:k.-.en!:: ~incl.
IL..~ .5: \~,p..JO.i. ~ iC i::b.e $C'!;~.:2n ...~ Q-~ h ~ ir.:::5...'"I..~ !o
~ '-vamtoopfui...~ ~~01 lilf" win „itf:n CIJ1'tl!Y~ roc:rtfu:iö'>„ whid:n
Graciict Danti:;co 's. book. did more tEu.n anytb.ing else to promote-. 1 4' One- of
1
• ll: is acmplifieJ by Lais VClc:z de Gucvara·s reputacion among5t bis c:ontemporarie5. quite
unimpaired by tbe fat:t that. acc:ording to bis biographer Cotarclo. the famous dramatist bad a
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 227
the major differences between Rufo's book and its Spanish precursors in the
apophthegrn tradition is its focus on precisely that area where etiquette
shades into morality, defined in the above-quoted passage from Galateo
espafiol (105). The subtleties ofRufo's play with the manifold devices of wit,
so admired by Daltasar Graciin, who often quotes him in his Agudeza y arte
de ingenio (1648), accord with his perception of social life as a chess game,re-
quiring all-round awarencss and nice judgement in order to avoid wrong
rnoves (lAs seiscientas apotegmas, no. 52):
Suelen, sin pensar, hallarse atajados diversos hombres, con vergüenza suya y de los
que los oyen, por haber dicho algo inadvertidamente que toque a alguno de los cir-
cunstantes, si bien se habla de diferente materia y persona. Pues como por un yerro
de cuenta destos viese despechado a un galan, le dijo: 'que de alli adelante hiciese
cuenta, en conversaci6n, que jugaba al ajedrez, y que al mover de cada pieza hiciese
en la fantasia una representaci6n de c6mo estaba entablado el juego, para no
perderle:
Many men find themselves unwittingly brought up short, to their own embarrass-
ment and to that of their listeners, because they have said something heedlessly
which wounds one of the bystanders, even though a different subject and person is
being discussed. On one occasion, then, seeing a gentleman mortified because of
this kind of error, he [Rufo] said: 'that from then on he should imagine, when in
conversation, that he was playing chess, and that on moving each piece he should
have a mental picture of the layout of all the others, so as not to lose the garne.'
lt is just this kind of gaffe that Graciin Dantisco warns against. 1 .S
Many more parallels like this can be adduced. Gracian Dantisco's stric-
tures on preciosity, grossness, impicty, theatrical gcsticulation (120-2) may be
related to apophthegms 36, 46, 67, 82, 88, 99, 124, 138 ofRufo's collection;
the warnings about not slighting or insulting people (112-13, 146-7), to
apophthegrns 40, 79, 103, 140, 264; the admonitions about avoiding arro-
gance, boasting, or the contrary vice, false modesty (12']-30), to apoph-
thegms 102, 168, 216, 219, 230.Apophthegm 36 epitomizes the density and
frequency of these echoes of the Galateo espanol. lt begins: 'Un afectado de
malidous tongue. So, in the Coro11as Jel Parnaso y platos de las M1isas by Sabs Barbadillo (1635)
(Crowns of Pamassus and Dishes of the Muses), which depicts a select mythological ac:ademy in
the form of a banquct presided over by Apollo, there is a salt cellar on the table füll of the witti-
cisms ofLuis Velez 'for in Pamassus they know no other salt mines than those ofhis most fclid-
tous wit, courteous and courtly. always remarkable and entertaining without olTence to anybody'
(33). Cf. Cervantes's comments on Luis Velez in chs. 2 and 8 of Viaje del Pamaso, pp. 29 and I 17;
also Jose Pellicer's in the passage of his Avisos historiros where he desc:ribes the massive turnout of
Madrid's aristocrac:y for Luis Velez's funeral in 1644 (Cotardo y Mori 1916-17: 158, 168).
1 S Cf. the injunction:'y devese muc:ho guardar e1 que esti hablando,que sea de suerte su pl.itica
y conversaci6n, que se pueda correr con ella alguno de los circunstantes, ni pararse colorado, o re-
c:ebir pesar y afrenta della' (Galateo espanol, 121). (And when in conversation, you should be very
careful that your discourse avoids giving offence to one ofthe listeners.or makes him blush or feel
injured and aggrieved.)
 -~··
228 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
los quese escuchan (vicio incomportable en buena conversacion), era ver-
bosisimo y usaba de circunloquios.' (One of those affectcd people who like
to listen to themselves talk (an insufferable vice in good conversation) was
exceedingly verbose and resorted to circurnlocutions.) Here, echoes of
Gracian Dantisco can be perceived in the condemnation ofhearing oneself
talk (Galateo espafiol, 169), hogging the conversation, ncedlcss prolixity, and
the very notion of'buena conversaci6n' as an ideal of civilizcd sociability.
The fundamental preoccupation shared by Rufo and Gracian Dantisco is
the sense of the need to measure behaviour with discretion to the circum-
stances, avoiding inappropriateness, disproportion, extravagance. In a word:
decorum. This visibly influences Rufo 's exercise of wit, and is responsible for
the process of refinement to which he, like Cervantes, subjects the tradition
of motes and apodos (Chevalier 1992: eh. I 1).A nice example of this is apoph-
thegm 293, arising out of a conversation about opportune and inopportune
sayings. The sight of a friar ineptly riding a horse--appropriate mount for a
knight or Iord, not a man of God-prompts Rufo to say: 'un fraile a caballo
parece dicho fuera de prop6sito.' (A friar on horseback is like something said
out of turn.) Here, the familiar circumstances and techniques of apodos are
exploited for coining a kind of meta-apodo, a witty reflection on measuring
words to the occasion, applied as an epithet to the friar, which practises what
it preaches by avoiding the degrading comparisons inherent in this species
of humour. When Rufo coins motes and apodos of recognizably traditional
type, the elegance of the expression and the strong sense of moral propriety
inject into them a new note of urbane earnestness. So, of an old man who
dyes his hair, he rernarks: 'con ser e1 color negro el rnas honesto, cstaba alli
tan por los cabellos, que era violento y cosa indecente' (no. 35). (Though the
colour black is normally the rnost akin to modesty, there it was so out of
place Oiterally, 'so dragged by the hair'] that it seemed scandalous and in-
decent.) And to a caballero yielding to the custornary habit of gamblers of
recapitulating endlessly their triurnphs at cards, he addresses this rebuke, ele-
gantly taunting him as an ox: 'Y como un caballero estuviese haciendo esta
resefia, la cabeza baja y hablando entre si, le dijo: "No piensan los jugadores
que comen lo que han ganado, hasta que lo rumian" ' (no. 113). (And as a
caballero was making this review, head lowered and mumbling to himself, he
said to him: 'Gamblers don't believe that they've really eaten what they've
won, until they ruminate it.')
Though the ethos that Rufo projects is typical of a Spanish caballero of the
age,and in that sense'courtly',and though he hobnobs with members ofthe
aristocracy, idealizing several of them as epitomes of chivalry, he implicitly
occupies a social position inferior to theirs. This is indirectly suggestcd by
the diversity and nature of the expcriences on which the apophthegms
are drawn: fatherhood and marriage; falling into debt; iinprisonment;
'{Ji•' . . - - -
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 229
attendance at mass,fiestas, comedias, gaming houses, literary acadernies; the
habits of women of easy virtue; the rnilitary scene; recitals of poetry and
music. Much of this obviously reflects the life and personality ofRufo him-
self: son of an honourable dyer of Cordoba, soldier, public magistrate, and
author, who ascended in society partly thanks to his father's rnoney and
partly due to his own literary talcnt. As we have noted, rnany writers of the
early seventeenth century-Alemin, Cervantes, Salas Barbadillo, Lope de
Vega, Castillo Sol6rzano, Velez de Guevara-fall into this kind of category.
For all their kowtowing to the apex of the social pyrarnid, the ethos articu-
lated by them reflects the social level that they occupy. This is manifest in
those works whose fictional strategy involves considerable fusion between
the author and the protagonist, such as Alemin's Guzman de Alfarache, Lope
de Vega's LA Dorotea, Espinel's Vida de Marcos de Obreg6n, Cervantes's Don
Quijote and Coloquio de los perros. lt is implicitly suggested too by the ten-
dency of these writers to idealize, hence wishfully identify with, the dass of
caballeros a rung or two above thern on the social ladder.
The comedia, particularly from 16o5 onwards, reflects the link between the
preoccupation with manners and the consolidation of the urban 'middle
dass'; as that dass becomes increasingly aware of its group identity, the
symptoms of that awareness are accentuated.An example of this is the crys-
tallization of the topics associated with receiving visits on the estrado, the
living-room dais of private houses: ladies' habit of chewing pottery as a
medicinal eure, sitting on the floor on cushions, taking chocolate, being
served by maids kneeling down. i 6 That consciousness of belonging is com-
ically manifested in Lope de Vega's LA dama boba (1613) (fhe Foolish Lady),
where the heroine's stupidity, which threatens to make her unmarriageable,
is shown above all in social gracelessness, scandalous to her father Otavio.
She is inept at her private granunar and dancing lessons, and, on her first
meeting with her official fiance (1. xviii}, Liseo, cornmits all kinds of gaffe.
She misunderstands a polite compliment to her sister as flirtation, and prat-
tles about the dish of offal that she prepared last Saturday with the maid.
When Liseo gallantly remarks how his yearning to arrive made the journey
seem interminable, she flippantly suggests that he should have tried riding
the plodding mule which drivcs the water whecl. When he takes a glass of
water, she compares his manner of drinking to a mule's, and, after he has
finished, unceremoniously rubs his face with a towel, half flaying him in the
process. To cap it all, she proposes that he share her bed in order to save the
servants preparing a bedroom for him. Her fa11x pas, and the reactions to
them, indicate a strong sense of what people 'like us' should or should not
do, grounded on notions of status, wealth, lifestyle, and place of residence. In
16 The satirist Juan de Zabale1:1 devotes a memorable chaptcr of his EI Jfa Je fasta por /a rarde
ed. Cucvas Garcfa, J48 ff., to these customs. '
230 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MlND
these years (between 1605 and 1625) Lope also wrote a succession of bril-
liant comedies, including Los melindres de Belisa (Belisa's Caprices), La villana
de Getafe (The Country Girl from Getafe), Los milagros de{ desprecio (The
Miracles of Scorn), whose farcical predicaments place the protagonists in
nightmarish embarrassmcnts: nightmarish, that is, to 'people like us', keenly
conscious of the importance of keeping face. A similarly refined sense of
normative respectability can be inferred from the occasional portrayal of ex-
travagantly idiosyncratic characters in the comedies of this period: the hys-
terically capricious Belisa of Lope's Los melindres de Belisa (Belisa's Caprices),
or the compulsive liar ofRuiz de Alarc6n's La verdad sospecliosa (Truth under
Suspicion).
However, the comedia, with its conformist and aristocratic ethos, its busy
concern with action and intrigue, and its focus on passion rather than 'char-
acter', is not the typical preserve of eccentric .figurones like these. Asensio
(1965: 77-86) has noted how the term.figura, as a derivative of its traditional
sense of theatrical personage, comes tobe applied from about 1600 to any
kind of eccentric who stands out against the compact and convergent soci-
ety of the court, often compared to a theatre for its motley showiness and
the visibility of everybody to everybody else. Quevedo, in his Vida de la corte,
which purports to warn strangers to the court about the fakes and twisters
to be encountered there, offers brief, humorous sketches of the foppish so-
cial climber, the braggart ruffian, the specious gaming house proprietor, the
varieties of complaisant husband. That is, he picks on the kind of extrava-
gant, degraded butts who people the infraworld of his picaresque novcl EI
Busc6n, his entremeses, his satiric poetry, and Sueiios. In the early years of the
seventeenth century, it is in this kind of risible context and correspondingly
low personage where humourous idiosyncrasy is typically depicted. The
fools and crackpots caricatured in Cervantes's Coloquio de los perros, EI licen-
dado Vidriera, and Don Quijote are examples of this. However, by the decade
1610-20, largely thanks to the prolific satirist Salas Barbadillo, the catchment
area of idiosyncrasy expands to include the manners of middle-class Madrid
(see Ch. 9, s. iv). Showing a sharp eye for sayings, customs, affectations, and
ploys of one-upmanship, he anticipates the satirically moralistic documen-
tation of social behaviour in Madrid by the costumbristas, Remiro de
Navarra,Juan de Zabaleta, Francisco Santos, who write around the middle
of the seventeenth century. Asensio's point {82) about how the homogene-
ity of Madrid social life sharpens the perception of idiosyncrasy can be ap-
plied by extension to Salas, since in all his works, deviant and extravagant
behaviour is portrayed and measured from a normative perspective, based on
communally perceived notions of acceptability. Without the consolidation
of a bourgeois ethos, such a viewpoint would be inconceivable. In the pro-
liferating genre of the seventeenth-century Spanish novela, represented by
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURI! 231
Salas Barbadillo, Castillo Sol6rzano, Maria de Zayas, and others, the same
ethos is patently advertised in the glittering tertulias (social gatherings) that
provide the occasion for the narration ofthe stories which make up the col-
lection. lt is also reflected, less pretentiously, in the mid-sevente~nth-century
11ovelas of Mariana de Carabajal y Saavedra, whose depiction of the lifestyle
of three widows and their families plausibly captures the fine nuances of
bourgeois respectability, exemplificd, first, by the curious way in. which a
customarily strict prudishness is relaxed, for women as much as men, on oc-
casions such as the recital of amusing verse in company; second, by the
scrupulous attention to ritual courtesies, such as gifts and greetings to
friends at Christmas, visits of condolence to the bereaved, expressions of
thanks for visits or for hospitality. 17 We shall encounter these features again
in Lucas Hidalgo's Dialogos de apacible e11tretenimiento, where their effect on
norms of humour is manifest.
(ii) Social and religious discipline
That the society of the Spanish Golden Age was prescriptive and authori-
tarian is obvious. While the monolithic nature often ascribed to this trait
seems to me implausible, and scarcely compatible with the independence of
spirit shown by such writers as Cervantes, Quevedo, Tirso de Molina, and
Lope de Vega, nonetheless, the society in which these men lived had a much
stronger sense of being controlled from above, of ideological cohesiveness,
and of civic obligation than had existed previously in Spanish history. lt was
an age ofbusy, idealistic reform and of the outward-going exercise of moral
conscience. These do-gooder attitudes are no less influential for being ac-
companied by widespread dissolution of morals in the reigns of Philips III
and IV, and by the recurrent failure of government initiatives to put well-
meaning projects into practice. The age's political and religious ideology, to-
gether with its practical implementation, significantly influences the change
in attitudes to humour during the second half of the sixteenth century and
afterwards.
1 do not mean by this, obviously, that Church and State had any direct
interest in controlling those attitudes, save in respect of blasphemy and
irreverence. What they demonstrably did achieve was to raise consciousness
about norms of decency, morality, and belief in the religious sphere; and this
had a tangible influence upon the perception of such norms in relation to
17 See the interesring essay by Bourland (1925) on middle--class manners ofMadrid as reflected
by this minor woman novelist. Dourl:md chooses Carabajal precisely bccause of her artlessness,
which makes her fiction the more revcaling as a social document. The evidencc drawn from that
sourcc accords with thc testimony of ttavellers to Spain, also with that of contemporary satirists of
manncrs, like Juan de Zabaleta.
 ___ ,, .,;.;. -------

232 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND

SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 233
manners. I stress the distinction between consciousness or discourse and be-
widespread and accessible. From being originally a means of transmission of
haviour; one can affect the other, without necessarily transforming it. 1 am
diplomatic mail and government directives, it came to include the diffusion
not suggesting that, as a rcsult of official initiatives, Spaniards in the_ m~ss
of ncws and private correspondence, and thus contributed to the formation
were turned into virtuous, devout citizens. 18 In the texts to be studied m
of public opinion: a significant factor in Spanish political life in the seven-
the next section, we shall see that scruples of shame and delicacy, which act
teenth century. To the mid-sixteenth century corresponds the first system-
as a check upon coarse laughter, go together with middle-class honour, and
atic description of Spanish roads: Juan de Villuga's Reportorio de todos los
this in turn is linked to moral conscience, the sense of obligation to the
caminos de Espatla (1546), 21 and its publication is symptomatic of the gov-
community, and religious piety. This suggests that the officially inspired
ernment's concern to maintain the condition of roads and inns, and to
ideological framework impinges on even the most private corners of social
exploit waterways, so as to expedite the circulation of travellers, post, and
life.
merchandise (Maravall 1986: i. 133-49).As the infamous statutes of'purity
In the wake of the Council of Trent the Spanish Catholic Church in-
of blood' (i.e. freedom from taint of Moorish or Jewish ancestry) were
tensified its campaign, already under way before the mid-sixteenth century,
adopted, and, from the mid-sixteenth century, were applied with ever in-
to raise standards of religious education, education in general, and morality
creasing rigour as criteria for admission into university colleges, cathedral
amongst the clergy and the laity. 1 9 The campaign _was systematic, ?~t~on; chapters, the royal household, the military orders, the Inquisition, and
wide, and reasonably effective. lt led to the extens1on of the Inqumtton s
monastic orders, the officials appointed by such institutions criss-crossed the
control of religious deviancy to seemingly humdrum areas of private life,
Spanish peninsula in order to carry out their investigations of th~ ~i?eag~s
such as casual blasphemy, and to the Church's monitoring of rcligious cults
of applicants for entry (Dominguez Ortiz 1961: 73 ff.)._The Inq~ts~t1on, 1_n
and festivals. The transfer of the production of the allegorical dramas its role as censor, criss-crosses the whole of European hterature m 1ts pen-
of Corpus Christi week, autos sacramentales, from amateur to professional
odic, voluminous Indexes of prohibited and expurgated literature; these
groups, and the careful supervision of their doctrinal effective_ness, dat~ from meticulous monuments to the denial of intellectual and religious freedom
this period. So does the proliferation ofJesuit schools, access1ble not JUSt to
succeed each other at intervals of about a generation: 1559, 1583-4, 1612,
the priesthood but to laymen.
1632, 1640, and so on.
Sara Nalle (1992: 92) reports that around 1580, in order to monitor the Criss-crossing, in its metaphorical forms, often obeys a less repressive mo-
educational attainments of the clergy, the inspectors appointed by Bishop tive than some of the examples just mentioned: the urge to systematize the
Rodrigo de Castro 'criss-crossed' the diocese of Cuenca ~o compile a s~s­ body of receivcd learning, moral wisdom, and theology, make it more
tematic record of the age, education, character, and dut1es of the pansh widely available and practically useful. Fray Marco Antonio de Camos, in
priests. That verb applies both literally and figuratively t~ the in~es~ga~ion his previously mentioned treatise (above, s. i), gives typical expression to it.
and control of people's lives by State, Church, and other mfluent1al msutu-
After approving the progress made since the bad old days when the only
tions in this period. Philip II, in requesting from the villages and towns of
vernacular literature available to the unlearned consisted of frivolous books
New Castile, in 1575, a comprehensive account of their populations and
of chivalry and the like, he nonetheless laments that the devotional treatises
economic activities, the so-called Reladones topogr4ficas, was responsible for
that have been published in the vernacular, such as Fray Luis de Granada's
the compilation of a massive and detailed grid of information about the
Libro de la orad6n y meditaci6n ( r 554) (Book of Prayer and Meditation), are
daily lives of Spaniards in the last quarter of the sixteenth century: for e~ch
aimed at contemplative friars and nuns, and are therefore useless for persons
town and village, a general picture of income levels, trades, dass strat1fi-
involvcd in worldly affairs. His book is intended to make good that
cation, food supplies, commerce with neighbouring towns, and of the pro-
deficiency, and to explain specifically how Christian ethics can be practised
portion of the population affected by each of these things. 20 Du ring
in diverse secular walks of life. A similar motive is adduced by Fray Juan
successive reigns in that century, the postal service became increasingly more
Marquez, professor of theology at Salamanca and author of EI gober~a~or
18 Nalle (1992: 68) makes this point weil in connection with the lnquisition's determined ef- cl1ristiat10 ded11cido de las vidas de Moysen y ]osue (1612) (The Chmt1an
forts to modify deviant speech, sexual behaviour, and religious b~liefS. .
19 This campaign has been studied by Nalle (1992). and prev1ously by Ded1cu (1979); see also
Governor Deduced from the Lives of Moses and Joshua), as the reason for
Dedieu (1989). . writing this book. lt, or something like it, is discernible in several religious
20 The Relaciones topogr4ficas are the basis ofSalomon's indispensable study (1964) of rural life
in La Mancha in Philip ll's reign. :u Villuga, a Valt>ncian, bases his book on his own journeys round Spain, and lists the icineraries
linking principal towns and the distance of each stage of the journey. ·
 '!!•
234 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
treatises of encyclopedic scope written about this time, such as Fray
Jer6nimo de Lemos's La to"e de David (1567) (fhe Tower of David), Fray
Luis de Le6n's De los nombres de Cristo (1583) (Of the Names of Christ),
Fray Juan de Pineda's Dialogosfamiliares de agricultura cristiana (1589) (Familiar
Dialogues ofChristianAgriculture). Luis de Le6n's famous book is a medi-
tation on the symbolic names given to Christ in the Bible: Shepherd, Prince
of Peace, Lamb, and so forth. A kind of vernacular Summa theologica, written
in superb prose which deliberately imitates the sonority, symmetry, and
amplitude of Cicero's, it aims to diffuse knowledge of the Dible and of
Christ's nature, hence about the central dogmas and mysteries of the Chris-
tian religion, by assembling and glossing the diverse biblical texts in which
Christ is named. lts intended readership is broad and non-specialist: all those
without knowledge of Latin who have been deprived of access to the Dible
by the prohibitions against translation of it into the vernacular by the
Roman and Spanish Inquisitions. lt is a magnificent embodiment of the
spirit of Spanish Counter-Reformation culture: the mingling of Chris-
tianity and Classical learning, the aspiration to make abstruse theology
popularly accessible, the insistence on the accessibility of the divine to
human experience.
However, the drive to give learning a practical orientation is far from re-
stricted to texts of religious inspiration.A glance at Menendez Pelayo's bib-
liographical lists in his panegyric to the achievements of Spanish science, La
dencia espafiola, testifies to the sheer volume, if not the quality, of the treatises
published in Spain from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth:
on applied mathematics (navigation, astronomy, artillery), metals and
minerals, medicine and natural history, much of this work being enriched
by the discoveries of the New World. Yet let us brießy mention examples
more akin to imaginative literature. Castillo de Dobadilla's massive and
inßuential treatise Polltica de corregidores (1597) (Political Art for Town
Governors), one of the possible sources of Don Quijote's precepts of gov-
erriment to Sancho, draws both on the author's experience as a lawyer in the
Royal Councils and on all kinds of legal, philosophical, and theological
authority from Antiquity to recent times in order to examine exhaustively
the qualifications and tasks of the corregidor. lt tackles specific questions such
as how to deal with monopolistic price-rigging, whether meat can be sold
outside the meat market, how to ensure the provision of bread. The same
kind of spirit inspires the much satirized theory of fencing which originates
withJeronimo de Carranza's I.ibro que trata de la.filosofla de las armas (1582)
(Book of the Philosophy ofArms), and purports to reduce it to geometrical
principles. lt is devcloped and publicized in the early seventeenth century,
with impressive erudition and technicality, by Quevedo's enemy Luis
Pacheco de Narvaez, and is grotesquely ridiculed in a chapter of Quevedo's
SOCIO-GENESlS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 235
EI B11sc6n. Ai;t altogether different kind of work, which nonetheless shares
with Pacheco de Narvaez's the aim to turn science into a practically useful
method, is Dr Juan Huarte de San Juan's Examen de ingenios para las ciencias.
First published in 1575, quickly translated into French, Italian, and English,
and endlessly reprinted since its original publication, this book builds a
typology of the varieties of intellectual aptitude based on the Ancient theory
of the bodily humours. lt aims to facilitate the selection of the right men for
the right job or discipline, a burningly topical reformist project, since in the
Spain of that age, and subsequently, selection of personnel for public offices
was determined as a matter of course on the basis of rewards for services
rendered, personal favouritism, and string-pulling.
One could cite numerous other more or less famous examples of this
broad trend, covering such diverse subjects as the direction of conscience
in the confessional, commercial 1oans and credit, the rationale of noble lin-
eages, statecraft in various aspects, the Spanish economy, and the reform of
social parasitism. The phalanx of analysts of Spain's social and political ills,
the arbitristas (Pedro de Valencia, Crist6bal Perez de Herrera, Martin
Gonzilez de Cellorigo, Sancho de Moncada, Pedro Fernindez Navarrete),
who are often justifiably treated as a symptom of awareness of national de-
cline, do not simply emerge in response to it, but represent a characteristic
orientation of Spanish thought and scholarship in that age. Their zealous
. concern with public welfare is reflected by the recurrent invocation of 'el
bien de la republica' (the good of the state), or similar notions, as a justi-
fication for particular enterprises. Maravall (1986: i. 486-9) has noted the
emergence of this consciousness in texts dating from 1524 onwards, dealing
with agriculture, medicine, anatomy, architecture. By the end of the century,
it is widespread. We remember that Don Quijote, often a helpful weather-
es
vane of the dich of contemporary discourse, decides to undertake a career
of knight errantry 'asi para el aumento de su honra como para el servicio de
su republica' (Don Q11ijote 1. 1; i. 74-5) (both for the increase ofhis honour
and for the service of the republic). The association between his chivalric
obsession and the outpourings of contemporary arbitristas-crank.s, as
Cervantes saw them-is made quite apparent in the first chapter of Don
Quijote part II. The self-justifying appeal to the good of the state becomes a
commonplace of the preliminaries of contemporary works of fiction and
apologies for the comedia.
The same civic spirit, in more disciplinarian forms, and intertwined with
religious motives, impinges heavily on literature of entertainment. The
Inquisition, as a body of literary censors, is the obvious spearhead. Though,
by its own rules of procedure, printed in the preliminaries of every Index, it
was essentially concerned with heresy, blasphemy, and irreverence towards
the Church and its cults, its direct involvement from the mid-sixteenth
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236 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND

SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 237
century onwards in the Catholic Church's campaign to raise Standards of
r~strictions imposed b~ the Inquisition could hardly be considered as having
religious education and morality often led it, in practice, and at the whim of
httle consequence for 1t.The texts tobe studied in the next section are direct
ind~~idual ~ensors, to concern itself with obscenity, personal Iampoons, and
evidence of their bearing on social attitudes.
pohtical sattre as well. 22 lt has been argued that the Spanish Inquisition was
The most ~~ri~ing example of the circumspection induced by censorship
relatively tolerant in its attitude to literature of entertainment, so long as this
are the hum1hatmg manccuvres and retractions to which the boldly out-
remained outside the sacrilegious sphere (Wilson 1973; cf. Russell 1978:
spoken Quevedo, foremost satirist of the reigns of Philips III and IV, felt
455-6). In support of that view, one can justly ridicule the claim that the
himself obliged to resort: the charade of requesting the Inquisition to ban
Inquisition stifled comic creativity in the Spanish Golden Age. Most of the
several satiric works commonly known to be by him, including the Buscon,
abundant samples of it published in Spain between 1500 and 1700 survived
on the grounds that he disclaimed responsibility for them; 2 l his request to
censorship unscathed, or only suffered minor alterations at its han<ls. The
the Inquisition that previous editions of the Sueiios be withdrawn, and his
most remarkable survivor was G6ngora, whose burlesque and satiric poetry,
republication of them in 1629 under the innocuous title Juguetes de la niiiez
from 1580 onwards, revives much of the scandalous spirit of the Cancionero
y travesuras del ingenio (Toys ofYouth and Mischief ofWit). This edition, by
d~ obras de burlas. Its humour is cynically anticlerical, wittily obscene, and
comparison with the manuscript versions which most plausibly correspond
ahgned with the p{caro's typical disdain for exalted flights oflove and hon-
to Quevedo's original intentions, severely tones down the religious irrever-
our, merry subversiveness compounded by the author's status as ordained
ence of the S11eiios, substitutes mythological gods and underworlds for the
priest. On all these grounds, the first edition of G6ngora's works, posthu-
Christian equivalents, and begins with a meek prologue in which the au-
mously published in the year of his death (1627), met with vehement and
thor apologizes for these fruits of the delinquent mischief of his giddy
detailed censure from Father Juan de Pineda, SJ, the inquisitorial assessor
youth. 2 4
appo~ted to revise that edition. Yet, for reasons which remain mysterious,
Fernando Uzaro Carreter, in the preface to his authoritative edition of
the ~eissued, expurgated edition, read thereafter by seventeenth-century
Quevedo's picaresque masterpiece EI B11sc6n (1965: pp. xlix, lxvii), notes the
Spamards and supposedly compiled in accordance with Pineda's objections,
atte~uation of burlesque and irreverent passages in manuscript or printed
acts on relatively few of them Qammes 1967: 639-45; cf. Wilson 1973).
vers10ns subsequent to the original one, which was composed in the
However, one swallow does not make a summer. Most of the writers
author's early twenties, and suggests that they reveal a wish to forestall the
untouched, or virtually unaffected, by censorship, like Cervantes, would
censo~ious attacks inflicted on him, especially on his satiric writings, by his
probably have regarded the Inquisition's vigilance as natural and necessary,
enem1es. He also asks why Quevedo never sought an official licence for EI
and complied with its rules spontaneously, instead of temperamentally
B11sc6n, as he did for the revised version of the Suefios. He plausibly specu-
straining against them, like G6ngora. Those of a more subversive disposition
lates that Quevedo preferred to let his picaresque novel circulate in versions
are better typified by what happened to Quevedo, as great a poet as
unauthorizcd by him preciseiy in order to avoid being obliged to undertake
G6ngora, and, like him, heir to the spirit of the Cancionero de burlas. His case
that kind of revision. Quevedo's poetry presents a similar picture; and the
is discussed below. There can be no doubt that the Indexes made Spaniards
comments of two of his editors, one ancient, the other modern, are en-
~xt~emely wa~ o~ writing, let alone acknowledging authorship of and pub-
lightening in this respect. Jose Gonzalez de Salas edited the volume of
lishmg, material likely to rouse the suspicions of the religious censorship.
Quevedo's poetry which appeared in 1648, three years after the author's
This applies to verbal jests as weil as to those in print or manuscript; the
dcath, with the title El Parnaso espatiol. In the section devoted to the bur-
Catholic faithful were perfectly weil aware of the requirement in the
lesque poetry, Salas notes that Quevedo's language is sometimes unaccept-
Inquisition's periodic Edicts of Faith that they should denounce any ward
ably crude and licentious to Spanish ears, and that he, the editor, has been
or act whatever of a heretical or blasphemous nature. Since irrcverence and
blasphemy were congenital traits of the Spanish comic mentality, endemic, ~3. Thus, the Index of Sotomayor (1640: 425), after permitting various moral, devout, and
for example, to La Celestina and the early sixteenth-century theatre, the pohuc~ tracts by Qu.evedo, p~l.1ibits all other manuscripts and publications in his name, 'lo qual
ha pcd1do por su pa~ucular pettc1~n, no reconociendolos por proprios' (at his express request., since
~e ~ocs not recogmze ~hem as h1S own). The formulation in the 16p Index (399) is somewhat
• 22 Pine~'s censure of Gongor~ discussed bclow, is an example of this. Although in this case
Pmeda's stnctures were not complied with, this must be treatcd as the exception rather than the s1mtlar, b~t. allows the mference ~hat the prohibited writings are corrupt or pirated versions of
rule. He was a powerful and infiucntial figure amongst the Inquisition's censors; and it is estimated works ongmally by Quevedo, wh1ch he wishes to be withdrawn until he can revise them.
~4 On these modifications, sec Crosby's onc-volume edition of Quevedo's S11t1ios y discursos
that he had a hand in censoring some 2,000 books. Cf. Pinto Crespo (1983: 261).
(1993), 114-15.

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238 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
obliged to tone down these passages. However, he exempts from censure
Quevedo 's frequent resort to double meanings to convey obscenity, since, in
such cases, ugliness is in the ear of the hearer, rather than in the words used.
The argument sounds to us like ingenious sophistry; yet it should be noted,
first, that Salas was a severe moralist, second, that as a learned humanist he
would have accepted licentiousness from poets like Martial and Propertius
propter eleganiiam sermonis, and third, that he was Quevedo's friend. lt is
reasonable to suppose that his rationale is a serious statement of poetic prin-
ciple, shared by Quevedo himself who,just like G6ngora, cultivated ambi-
guity deliberately in order to bypass the censorious reader's objections ( Obra
poetica, ed. Dlecua, i. 135-6). Now 1 pass to a comment by the principal
modern editor of Quevedo's poetry, Jose Manuel Dlecua, who notes the
significant fact that, despite the poet's unrivalled ability as a satirist, no verse
lampoon of a political nature can reliably be attributed to him before 1639,
the beginning of his imprisonment for four years in the Hospital de San
Marcos in Leon. From then until 1645, the year of his death, thcre appear a
number of such poems purporting to be by him, though in no case is the
attribution plausible (i. 81-2). From this one can infer two things: first, that
if,as is very likely, Quevedo wrote political verse satires before 1639, he must
have taken good care to throw the stone and conceal the hand, as the
Spanish proverb has it; and second, that those responsible for the dubious at-
tributions after 1639 doubtless regarded Quevedo's imprisonment, coupled
with the fall of the powerful Count Duke of Olivares, as providing plausible
and convenient pretexts for them. All these manceuvres are an eloquent ex-
ample of the kind of self-censorship and tactical disclaimers to which scores
of writers of comic and satiric literature of the period were forced to resort.
A very large amount of humorous writing, obviously unquantifiable, was
deliberately left anonymous, and never passed from script to print (Marquez
1980: 160 ff.).
The Inquisition was not solely responsible for monitoring literature of
entertainment; its control ran parallel to that of the civil censors, and over-
lapped with the vigilance of ecclesiastical watchdogs, who were often in-
quisitorial censors under another hat. These included the Jesuit Order,
prominent in the attacks upon the theatre from the late sixteenth century
onwards (Russell 1978: 469-70). The resulting restraints upon literature, des-
tined to turn increasingly severe in the seventeenth century, 2 S become vis-
ible from the publication, in 1s59, of the first Spanish Index. Its prohibitions,
2 S This is shown by the Indexes of 1632 and 1640, which censure several works or individual
passages that had previously escaped, including: a phrase in Don Quijote; a handful of apophthegms
in Santa Cruz's Floresta espaiiola; Calisto's blasphemous amatory hyperbolcs in La Celestina; the
whole ofLucas Hidalgo's Dialogos de apacible entretenimiento, Le6n Hebreo's Dialogos de amor, Diego
de San Pedro's Carcel de amor. Fora complete list, sec Marquez (1980: app. 1).
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 239
though mainly concerned with devotional texts, translations of the Bible,
and Protestant polemical tracts, include amongst the literature of entertain-
ment three works which were, or would become, seminally influential clas-
sics: Boccaccio's Decameron (first published Spanish version, 1496); Torres
Naharro's theatre, entitled Propalladia; Lazarillo de Tormes. Though all three
would be permitted in subsequent expurgated versions, their withdrawal
and later expurgation could not fail to serve as an intirnidating warning to
anyone who might be tempted to follow in their authors' footsteps. For
Spaniards ofthat age, tobe mentioned on the Index was a disgrace, while to
incur prosecution for heresy was social death.
While a measure of tolerance is shown by the Inquisition's practice, insti-
tutionalized by the Quiroga Index of 1583-4, of allowing books guilty of
minor offences to circulate in expurgated form, the curbs on literature of
entertainment are tightened by the aprobaciones, certificates of moral in-
offensiveness, which, from the 15 8os onwards, had to be included in the pre-
liminaries of books and were required by the civil authorities as a
precondition for permission to print. lt was the duty of the writers of these
certificates, usually priests or laymen with literary leanings, to confirrn that
the book offered profit as weil as pleasure, or, at least, contained nothing
scandalous to morals and the faith. They ofi:en ·did so in language which
echoed, more or less vaguely, the terms of neoclassical poetic theory (Russell
1978: 463). Thus, for that age, there was a close link between poetics and
exemplariness.
This is apparent in the attacks upon the theatre, already discussed, which
first climaxed in 1597-8. The campaign was vigorously renewed in the years
1617-25, receiving government support when the reform junta Uunta de
Rejortnacion) set up by Philip IV in 1621 included the theatre amongst its
targets in a wide-ranging programme of social improvement. 2 6 One of the
results was a prohibition on the printing of plays and novelas in the kingdom
of Castile, lasting ten years, from 1625 to 1634. Another was the effective
termination of the career ofTirso de Molina, Lope de Vega's rnost illustri-
ous disciple and a bold critic of the regime of Philip IV's minister, the Count
Duke of Olivares; in 1625, the junta branded his plays as scandalous, and,
to stop him writing, resolved to banish him to a distant convent. 2 7 Though
the censure of the theatre was primarily moral, it intertwined with neo-
Aristotelian objections to the irregularity ofLope's formula. The sheer per-
sistence and weight of the attacks, despite the vigour of the counter-attacks
and the comedia's immense popularity, had a profound impact upon it, which
zll This subject is studied in Ruth Lee Kennedy (1974: eh. 1); documents relevant to the work
of the junta, and its resolutions, are edited by Gonzalez Palenda (1932); sec also Moll (1974).
27 Though the decision appears not to have been litcrally carried out. See Vazquez Fcrnindez's
resumc ofTirso's biography in his edn. of Ciga"ales dt 7i>ltdo, 2cr-30.
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240 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND

SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 241
was far from being merely negative. The effect is seen in the increasing care
comments made on the chivalric romance and the theatre in Don Quijote
for artistic polish revealed by the plays of Lope de Vega's maturity. This is
part 1, chapters 32, 47, and 48. The nub lies in the phrase 'hanse de casar las
accentuated by his follower Calder6n de la Barca, whose career began in the
fabulas mentirosas con el entendimiento de los que las leyeren' (Don Quijote
162os. His most famous plays, such as La vida es sueiio (Life is a Dream), EI
1. 47; i. 565) (fictitious stories ne~d tobe wedded to the intelligence of their
prfndpe comtante (The Constant Prince), EI magico prodigioso (The Prodigious
readers); aimed at the reader's intelligent understanding, literature should
Magician), reveal a characteristic sombre reflectiveness, enhanced by
aspire to stimulate it or awaken it. Above all, in Cervantes's works, provecho
metaphoric and symbolic density and intricate thematic and formal pat-
signifies the 'good philosophy' that the two dogs of EI coloquio de los_per~os
terning. , . . . aspire to impart; his major fictions, though often drall and unassummg m
If the theatre was the primary target of the age s prescnpt1ve mentahty,
tone, are, in effect, guides to man's pilgrimage through life.
the norms by which it was judged were considered directly applicable to
lt is not my intention to force Cervantes into a straitjacket of intellectual
other kinds of literary entertainment. We have already seen what con-
conformism and solemn piety, a garment that would sit very uncomfortably
sequences Cervantes drew from the anti-theatre polemic (Ch. 3, s. iii). R.uth
upon him, but rather to point out that he was no more immune to the pre-
Lee Kennedy has noted an important side effect of this campaign (1974:
scriptive climate of his age than anybody else. In important ways, he shapes
36-7): the spate of works of prose narrative, mainly novela collections, which
it. Moreover, I have said before, and now re-emphasize, that Cervantes's
were published in the years 1620-5 with the words 'ejemplares' or 'morales'
moral thinking is subsumed in the artistic intricacies of his fiction; it is not
in the title. In several, this exemplary commitment coexists with pro-
a portentous 'message' intended to carry wei?ht on ~ts ~wn acco~nt: The
nounced academicism: that is, imitation of the form of literary academies,
stance that he adopts, between those like Aleman who ms1st on corruc litera-
which includes the explicit subjection of entertainment to poetic theory
ture's improving purpose and those like L6pez de Ubeda who do the op-
and norms of taste. 2 8 Needless to say, the originator of this trend was
posite, is interesting precisely because of the subtle strategies that_ he e~ploys
Cervantes, with his collection of Novelas ejemplares {1613), paradigm of the
to avoid overt didacticism, which, for him, was an offence agamst hts car-
seventeenth-century Spanish novela. While he takes it for granted that the
dinal precept of decorum. Despite that, he would have deemed literature
primary purpose of literature of entertainment is to entertain, his concep-
bereft of serious content mere frivolity; he is much closer to Aleman than to
tion of aesthetic pleasure is thoroughly permeated by considerations of
L6pez de Ubeda.
social usefulness. More intelligent than those critics of the theatre who
The age's prescriptive mentality, including its attitude to literature, is in-
called for its outright prohibition, he saw that such recreation serves a social
timately connected with the socio-genetic transformation of its attitudes to
need, which he expresses by means of the metaphor of purging the bad
comedy. lt is easy for us now, living in a libertarian and sceptical climate, to
humours engendered by idleness (Don Quijote 1. 48; i. 571), employing simi-
assume that there was a large gap between what people could acceptably say
lar therapeutic imagery for prose fiction (see Ch. 3, s. i above). lt would be
in print and what the most intellectually adventurous of them thou~ht in
misguided to dismiss these comments, cliches though they are, as no more
private. However, the pressures visibly applied in one sphere were s1mul-
than that; in Cervantes's writings they form part of a cohcrent tapestry of
taneously applied in the other. In particular, the pervasive diffusion of as-
thought. For instance, his insistence on respect for the rules of art is due to
sumptions about the need to act for the good of the state, disse~n.ate
bis assumption that they enshrine essential principles of rationality, propo_r-
practically useful knowledge, avoid disrespect for the Church and devtanon
tion, and harmony; thus, observation of them allows literature to perform 1ts from its teachings, creates the necessary climate in which scruples of taste
primary function, entertainment, more efficiently. Provecho, profit, i~ an im- are effectively acted upon instead of being expressed as pious aspirations.
portant aesthetic principle for him in a~other sen~e: He se~s goo~ ht~rature If the means of diffusion are public, the consequences reach deep into the
as serving an edifying purpose: correctmg superst1tton, enhghtemng tgnor-
private sphere.
ance, teaching good style, complementing the role ofhistory, the ßible, and
other sources of doctrine and knowledge. This is the burden of many of the
(ii) Academies and academidsm
28 One example will sufficc: Francisco de Lugo y Davila, Teatro popular: novelas mo~ales para
mostrar los generos de vidas del pueblo, y efeaos, costumbres y passiones dcl animo, con aprouecl1am1e1110 para The fundamental importance of literary academies in the cultural life of
todas personas (1622) (Popular Theatrc: Moral Novclas Depicti~g ~opular _Manners ~nd the seventeenth-century Spain has been demonstrated by Jose Sanchez (1961),
Affections, Habits, and Passions of the Soul, with Profit for All). lt IS d1scussed m Ch. 9, s. 1v.
Willard F. King (1963),Aurora Egido (1984a, 1990),Kenneth Brown (1980),

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242 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
and others. 2 9
Initially modelled on thc academies of Renaissance Italy, the
Spanish ones, in the seventeenth century, diverged from the Italian model,
and from practice in France, in that they were primarily devoted to the ex-
ercise of poetic wit rather than philological learning. However, animated by
the Horatian principle of combining pleasure with profit, they did not ne-
glect erudition. Academies met periodically in the house of some wealthy
patron, often a nobleman of literary bent; membership was by election,
though the meetings were usually open to the public. The proceedings were
characterized by their elaborate, finicky, and puerile ritual: initiation cere-
monies; the use of allegorical nicknames; bureaucracy; the award of laurels.
The typical programme of activity had a corresponding character. Here, for
example, are the compositions assigned to the members of the Academia de
los Nocturnos for the meeting of 9 October 1591 (ed. Canet, Rodriguez,
and Sirera, i. 83):
Silericio: Dos estanzas a su nombre.
Miedo: Una lecci6n sobre el emblema 36 de Alciato.
Sombra: A un pensamiento.
Fiel: Un villete a una dama que se fingi6 enferma por no hazelle merced.
Sosiego: 6 estanzas alabando la locura.
Temeridad: Que relate la destruici6n de Babilonia por <;iro y Dario.
Descuydo. Un romance de treynta y dos versos a la ingratitud de una dama.
Honor: Dos redondillas a unos cabellos negros.
Tinieblas: J redondillas de a 10 a unos ojos de una dama.
Silente:Two stanzas to its name.
Fear:A lecture on Alciato's emblem 36.
Shade: To an amorous thought.
Faitliful: A note to a lady who feigned sickness in order not to grant favour to him.
REpose: Six stanzas in praise of madness.
Rashness:To relate the destruction ofßabylon by Cyrus and Darius.
Carelessness: A ballad of thirty-two lines to the ingratitude of a lady.
Ho"or:Two redondillas [four-line strophes] to a lady's black hair.
Darkness:Three redondillas, each often strophes, to a lady's eyes.
~urlesque ~oetry was much cultivated, and its tenor may be sampled by this
hst of subjects for the meeting of the academy of Don Francisco de
Me_n~oza, sec~etary of the Count of Monterey, in Madrid, for a poetic com-
pet1t1~n he·l·d in May 1626: (i) a sonnet describing Clori in ;i. swoon after a
blee?mg; (u) gloss upon a poem about a jasmine; (iii) a humorous ballad
relatmg the complaints of a young gallant unable to catch a lame lady; (iv) a
29 Egi'dos''P~cSla
· dCJ~stas
· Y academias', included in Fronteras de /a poe1la en e/ &rroco (1990), is
~e m_ost useful m1roducuon to the subject, sincc it sets these institutions in a wide cultural and
histom:~ ~ontcxt. Sinchez's pioneering study is more factual, and cites numcrous Golden Age
tcxts; King~· equally fundamental, concentrates on the fictitious academies. On Italian academies,
sce Benzom (1978).
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 243
satire in optional poetic form about a man who lost his wig while doffing
his hat to a lady, who laughed so much that her dentures fell out (King 1963:
59). The piece de resistance of most sessions was the vejamen (ritual taunt), re-
cited by the fiscal (prosecutor), and aimed at each of the members in turn.
Anastasio Pantaleon de Ribera, the pillar of Medrano's academy, made a spe-
ciality of these satiric lampoons upon the physical and other peculiarities of
the circle, and wrote little eise.
Despite the triviality of the exercises, the esoteric ritual, and the backbit-
ing and gossip, the writers of the age, including the very best, flocked to join
these clubs. The membership of the Madrid academy which was the im-
mediate forerunner to Mendoza's, that ofSebastiin Francisco de Medrano,
is a roll call of illustrious literary names: Mira de Amescua, Guillen de Castro,
Vetez de Guevara, Ruiz de Alarc6n, Tirso de Molina, Lope de Vega, the
Prince ofEsquilache,Jose de Valdivielso, Salas Barbadillo,Antonio Hurtado
de Mendoza, Francisco de Quevedo, Calder6n de la Barca, Jose Pellicer,
Gabriel Bocangel, Castillo Sol6rzano, Juan Perez de Montalban. lt is not
surprising, therefore, that the influence of academic proceedings penetrates
Spanish Golden Age literature so deeply. Genres as seemingly remote from
this kind of influence as the picaresque novel and the farce or entremes
acquire, indirectly but perceptibly, an academic flavour around 1620. The
entremes's switch from prose to verse about that time, its witty play with
verse's epigrammatic potential, and its urbane flagellation of manners, are
largely due to the influence ofAntonio Hurtado de Mendoza, a palace poet
and assiduous academician (Asensio 1965: eh. 5). The action of the pi-
caresque novels of Salas Barbadillo and Castillo Sol6rzano moves the pro-
tagonists, in defiance of the genre's endemic association with kitchens,
ruffians' dens, and sordid inns, into high society salons. So, the hero and
heroine of EI sutil Cordobes, Pedro de Urdemalas (1620) (The Subtle Cordoban
Pedro de Urdemalas) pursue a standard career of disreputable swindling
until their arrival at Valencia, where they pass themselves off as minor aristo-
crats, and become the centre of a literary academy. Here, while Pedro (now
Don Juan de Meneses) entertains his noble friends by relating selected frag-
ments of his past life and ingeniously duping some local butts of ridicule,
Marina (now Doiia Ines, supposedly DonJuan's sister) enchants them by her
singing oflyric poetry in pastoral vein and by relating a nol'ela in verse, 'La
gitana Mariquita' (Mariquita the Gypsy Girl), a disguised version ofher own
criminal career. The same complex effect of thematic contrast and mirror-
ing, tonal variety, and blending of poetry and prose is achieved by other mi~­
cellaneous material: the performance of the comedy EI gallardo Esca"aman
(The Dashing Escarraman), about a ruffian similar to Pedro; the recital of
novelas in verse, whose content and heroic or romantic tone contrast sharply
and exemplarily with the main action.
244 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
From an early stage in Salas Barbadillo's career--to be precise, from the
third edition of LA hija de Celestina (The Daughter of Celestina), retitled LA
ingeniosa Eleua (1614) (lngenious Helen)-his novels, short stories, and
comedies-in-prose are characterized by this quest for pleasing variety, at the
expense of unity of action; and, as the example of Pedro de Urdemalas shows,
academic proceedings are implicitly or quite patently the model.3° Salas
Barbadillo typically conceives of those proceedings as he does in LA casa del
placer honesto, where four well-offAndalusian gentlemen purchase a h~use in
Madrid, furnish it exquisitely, and use it for staging monthly sess1ons of
choice entertainment: the performance of masques and comedies, songs and
dance, the recitation of poetry. Though this is not the activity characteristic
ofhistoric academies, like the Valencian Acadernia de los Nocturnos, it was
the kind of entertainment which undoubtedly did take place in noble pri-
vate houses, and, moreover, it is patently organized in accord with academic
ritual and incorporates some of the associated material. This being so, we are
entitled to discern 'academicism' in a fundamental tendency of seventeenth-
century prose narrative: to set the fiction within a Decameronesque frame
of a kind exemplified by LA casa del placer honesto. l want to emphasize three
ways in particular in which these fictional academies reflect the ethos of the
historic ones: adherence to the Horatian principle of pleasurable profit; as-
sociation of artistic quality with manners and Status; rationalization of liter-
ature in terms of poetic theory. Since these points will be illustrated in the
next two chapters, there is no need to dwell on them here.
lt might seem, at firsc, that Cervantes stands aside from the academicizing
of seventeenth-century Spanish literature. Whereas his successors and imi-
tators in the novela tradition, from Salas Barbadillo onwards, make an im-
aginary social framework the organizing principle of their collections,
Cervantes, by dispensing with it in his collcction of exemplary novelas, in-
curs Tirso de Molina's gibe in the prologue to his Cigarrales de Toledo about
their being strung one after the other like a procession of penitents, with-
out any unifying argument. The gibe is a bit rich in view of the fact that it
is precisely because of the higher priority that Cervantes gives to argument
and function over ornament, and unity ovcr variety, that he avoids furnish-
ing fiction with the kind of artificial pretext that Tirso has in mind and em-
ploys in Cigarrales de Toledo. Yet, as we noted previously, he is far from being
indifferent to the academic gathering, or the Decameronesque one with im-
plied academic overtones, as a structuring device; to a considerable extent,
he internalizes it unobtrusively within his fiction. One would hardly expect
him to be indifferent, granted that he was an assiduous attender of Madrid
academies in his old age, as is attested by his Viaje del Parnaso (1614). This
3° Brownstein (1974: 93 ff.) ofTers an analytic breakdown ofthese elemencs ofvariety.
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 245
burlesque verse allegory, which is in some ways his literary testament, is cast,
in part, in the form of a mythological academy and is steeped in the ethos
and humour of those institutions (Ch. 2, s. ii). The influence of academies is
perceptible in Don Quijote too, particulady part 1. I refer to what transpires
at the inn ofJuan Palomeque between chapters 32 and 46 (the discourse on
Arms and Letters, the reading of a novela) and to the theoretical discussion
about chivalric romances and the comedia in chapters 47-8, set in an idyllic
rustic spot, and concerned with the very themes that contemporary acade-
micians debated.3 1 However, the most important aspect of academicism's
influence upon Cervantes concerns the form, setting, and ethos of his long
fictions, rather than the nature of specific scenes; and it is perceptible from
LA Galatea onwards. In order to define these features, it is necessary to set
them in their historical context.
Though there is no extant record of a formally constituted academy in
Spain before the Valencian Academia de los Nocturnos in the I 59os, and
though the impact of academies· on Spanish literature does not become
heavily marked until the period 1610-30, there are clear signs of their exist-
ence and influence from the mid-sixteenth century onwards (Sanchez
1961: 194 ff.). As far as influence goes, it is apparent in pastoral romances,
particularly in those, from Luis Galvez de Montalvo's EI pastor de Fflida
(1582) onwards, in which esoteric allusions to the writer's literary and social
circle, and to his own biography, increasingly break through, and sometimes
almost shatter, the Arcadian myth.3 2 When Gaspar Mercader, the Count of
Buöol, published his pastoral novel Los prados de Uilenda (The Meadows of
Valencia) in 1600, using the cadre of pastoral fiction to recount his own love
affair, and also to present in fictional guise the poetic labours of the
Academia de los Nocturnos, he merely carries forward tendencies already
evident in EI pastor de Fflida, Cervantes's LA Galatea (1585), and Lope de
Vega's Arcadia (1598). For example, various scenes in Lope's pastoral ro-
mance advertise themselves as impromptu academies by depicting intellec-
tual gatherings in which erudite topics are debated, fahles are glossed,
paintings are described, poets are eulogized.And so that there can be no un-
certainty, they are identified as academias (Arcadia, ed. Morby, 259-()0). The
same is true of Cervantes's LA Galatea. Its ideological centrepiece is a debate
in book IV between Tirsi and Lenio, for and against love, Neoplatonizing
31 Lope de Vega's apology for his own dramatic formula, the 'Arte nuevo de hacer comedi'.15 en
estc ticmpo', which was a reply to detractors like Cei:vantes's priest, was read to th~ Acad~m1a de
Madrid in late 1607 or early 16o8; Tirso de Molina"s defence of that formula m a dJS~O?~se
dclivered by Don Alejo in Cigarrales Je Toledo (e~. V:izquez Fer~andez, ~25-30), and ~~ fesavmes
portrayed in this book, have a notably acaderruc flavour; Jose de Pelhcer wrote h1s ldea de la
comedia de Castilla' for the Academia de Madrid in 1631.
31 On this subject, see Avalle Arce (1974: eh. 5). The relation ofCei:vamine pastoral and Don
Q11ijott to academies is also noted by Fincllo (1994: SJ-'7, 127-42).
246 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
defence versus traditional Christian hostility; the typically academic nature
of the exercise is signalled by the qualifications of the speakers: Tirsi 's train-
ing in 'famosas academias', 'reales cortes y conocidas escuelas' (famous acad-
emies, royal courts, and well-known universities) and Lenio's background of
'loables estudios y discretas conversaciones' Qaudable studies and discreet
conversations).3 3
Now, the increasing 'socialization' and self-referentiality which infect the
pastoral myth in the pastoral romances published between I S80 and 1600
are concurrent with similar developments in the romancero nuevo, the new
ballad corpus, which becomes the literary rage during the same period; and
these tendencies quickly spread to other genres: the comedia, the picaresque
novel, Don Quijote. Using the metres of the old traditional ballads, the lead-
ing poets of that generation-Lope de Vega, G6ngora, Lifiin de Riaza,
Cervantes, and others-write in sophisticated modern style, and replace the
old themes (epic, Carolingian, historical) with new ones attuned to con-
temporary fashions in prose fiction and the theatre: the romantic sufferings
of pastoral or Moorish characters; captives' laments; situations from Ariosto;
and pervasive burlesque of these and other motifs. The prevalence of bur-
lesque is to a considerable extent due to the self-consciousness of this poetry,
as weil as to its formulaic and preciously stylized character; the authors, most
notably Lope de Vega, represent their own amatory experiences in those of
their pastoral or Moorish personages, and the melodramatic posing invites
parodic retaliation. G6ngora was the consummate debunker of the vogue, as
weil as being a brilliant exponent in a serious vein. This ferment of crystal-
lizing and disintegrating poetic myths, enthusiastic literary role-play, and
ironic satire on its falsity was the indispensable prerequisite for the concep-
tion of Don Quijote. lt involves a sharp awareness, incorporated as ingredi-
ent in the poetic artefact, of the presence of the self behind its masks, and of
the conventionality of the literary medium of expression.34
Though the play of irony on the surface of myth is far less pronounced
in pastoral romances than in the new ballads, it is not entirely absent from
them, and surfaces emphatically in the pastoral episodes of Don Quijote part
1. However, what concerns me here is the influence of the form, ethos, and
setting of pastoral romance on Don Quijote parts I and II. The action of LA
Galatea, which is set in an Arcadian version of the countryside round Toledo
and the Tagus, centres on the sentimental dilemmas of a group of shepherds
.
33
La Ga!atea, ii. 44 and 7S· That Cervantes, in this debate in bk. IV of La Galatea, was thinking
m terms _ofhterary academies is suggested by the fact that when the pilgrims of Persiles y Sigismunda
reach ~ila~, they ~ear about a famous academy in the city, due to dispute the theme whethcr love
can ex1st w1thout Jealousy (bk. III, eh. 19).
3
~ O~ ~his poet~c vogue, see Trueblood (1974: eh. 3), and the introduction by Carreno (1982)
to h1s edmon of Gongora's Romances.
SOCIO-GENESIS, IDEOLOGY, AND CULTURE 247
and s~epherde~ses, most of them i~plicitly of genteel status, despite their
ostens1bly rusttc garb and occupat1ons. They are fictional equivalents of
Cervantes's lit:rary friends and their beloveds. Their days, nine to be precise,
each dawn bemg marked by a flowery, formulaic description, are spent in
singing sweetly of their sentiments in elegant verse, courtly gallantry, dis-
creet discussion of nice points oflove, and paying compassionate attention
to the stories told by strangers to that region, all victims of some poignant
affair of the heart. These tales open a window on the real world of courts,
cities, vendettas, bloodshed, honour, in relation to which Arcadia, with its
green meadows, crystalline brooks, and heart-on-sleeve sentiment, stands in
idyllic parenthesis. They are in many ways-themes, status of characters,
dilemmas, episodic structure-precursors of the interpolations of Don
Quijote part 1.
What, precisely, is the main action of LA Galatea? lt is difficult to answer
that question, since our attention, outside the interpolated stories, focuses on
the nature, ethics, and etiquette of amatory sentiment and its poetic expres-
sion, rather than on plot, intrigue, drama. Cervantes is consequently con-
fronted by the problem of how to give some kind of unified focus to this
assembly of miscellaneous material; not that he would have considered it
much of a problem, since this discursiveness is congenital to Spanish pastoral
romance. He partly solves it by concentrating attention on the doings of one
or other group of shepherds either during the span of a journey or of a
festivity or of a period of repose; in all these cases, obviously, the setting is
idyllic. The first method, which is the most common, corresponds, roughly,
to Chaucer's strategy in The Canterbury Tales; the second to Shakespeare's in
his festival plays; the third, to Doccaccio's in the Decameron. In short, these
are time-honoured unifying devices.
All this is repeated, with modifications, in Don Qu(jote part 1. In setting
the action ofhis pastoral romance in the region ofToledo, Cervantes had no
doubt been influenced above all by literary associations, namely, the exam-
ple of Garcilaso, his favourite poet. However, in setting the action of Don
Quijote in the closely adjacent region of La Mancha, he had personal mo-
tives: the fact that in 1584 he married a girl from Esquivias, a small country
town to the east ofToledo, which for the next eighteen years or so would
be his nearest approximation to 'harne'. Though, for many of those years, he
did not reside in Esquivias, nor make more than periodic visits to his wife,
this clearly did not destroy his nostalgia for the place, blended with ironic
awareness ofits parochialism.We infer this from the idyllic picture ofthe life
of a rieb farmer's family that he paints in Dorotea's story (Don Quijote I. 28),
in Don Diego de Miranda's self-portrait (Don Quijote n. 16), and other pas-
sages, together with the more humdrum and satiric image evoked by Don
Quijote's · domestic circumstances. That kind of tranquil, well-ordered
248 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
existence-the routine management of a country estate, the cares and ties
of family life, the giving and receiving of hospitality, leisure for reading, lit-
erary and social cl?ntacts with Madrid, Toledo, and Seville-is a fictitious
version of the life that Cervantes must have led in Esquivias (Canavaggio
1986: 150 ff.). Such is the social background of the circle of family and
friends on which our attention primarily falls in Don Quijote part 1-the
hero, the priest, Dorotea, Cardenio, and so on-and such is the perspective
-provincial, rural, lettered, gentrified-from which Cervantes makes us
perceive and j udge the world: literature, ethics, history. The activities of this
group of people, particularly from chapter 26 onwards, correspond quite
closely to those of the shepherds of La Galatea: that is, they involve leisurely
journeys, in a rural setting and holiday atmosphere, which afford ample
scope for witnessing and hearing about prodigious cases oflove, conunent-
ing discreetly upon their implications, conversing urbanely about artistic
and learned matters. What unites these characters is, above all, their enthu-
siastic interest in books: they read them, enact them, criticize them, ratio-
nalize them, burn them. If the pastoral romance's theme was the nature of
love, Don Quijote's is the nature ofliterature. Not surprisingly, therefore, the
action, just like that of the pastoral romance, shifts frequently into an acad-
ernic mode; and when it patently does, we tend to be given those charac-
teristic reminders of the basic self-referentiality of the story, such as the
undertones of personal grievance in the priest's censure of the philistinism
of actor managers (Don Quijote r. 48), or his quip about his old friend
Cervantes being ·more versed in reverses than inverses (Don Quijote 1. 6).
Academy literature dresses up the writer and his cronies in thinly dis-
guised masquerade. Implicitly, the fable of Don Quij'ote part 1 is about
Cervantes's deeply feit literary grudges and aspirations. Accordingly, he puts
in the foreground of his novel characters who stand imaginarily for his
literary friends, and for different versions of himself, attributing to them an
origin which he identified as 'home'. If, as Umberto Eco has claimed (1992:
64), a text is a device conceived to produce a Model Reader, and is addressed
to such a reader, Cervantes gave particularly concrete application to that
principle by fictionally representing such a readership within its pages. He
do~s s~ again, with modifications, in part II, whose theme is no langer his
asp1rations and grudges, but his achievements.
The increasingly academic ethos of the culture of Cervantes's age directly
affects ~he socio-genesis of its attitudes to comedy. lt is in the nature of
~cade~ue~ to affi~m. norms of taste, define a literary canon, debate theoret-
1cal p~mc1ples. lt ts m their nature also to proclaim themselves as schools of
urbamty. As we shall now see, the appeal to a criterion of courtliness as a
means ofbringing comedy under control, was typically engendered i~ that
context.
CHAPTER EICHT
The New Comic Ethos:
Social and Aesthetic Premisses
(i) Llpez Pinciano~ theory of comedy
1 now want to examine the repercussions of the socio-genetic and ideo-
logical factors studied in the previous chapter on three texts published be-
tween I 596 and 1624.All three, in one way or another, reflect and rationalize
social behaviour, whose presuppositions are continuous with the handling
of the comic in the major literary genres of the period. The texts typify the
comic mentality which crystallizes towards the end of the sixteenth century,
and which consists, essentially, in sharp division and creative tension be-
tween genteel viewpoint and risible object, and the manifold dichotomy of
Jest and earnest, burlas and veras, resulting fiom this. Since all of them to some
extent, particularly Tirso's Cigarrales de Toledo, depict the interlocutors in an
exemplary light, the question arises how far these works can be taken as re-
liable evidence of people's real values and expectations. A positive answer is
suggested by the convergence of their testimony despite their essential lack
of relation to each other, and also by the fact that the interlocutors' attitudes
towards laughter in L6pez Pinciano's and Hidalgo's dialogues are rather pre-
supposed as being typical of a certain social dass than deliberately promoted
as ideal norms of behaviour.
Alonso L6pez Pinciano's influential poetic treatise Philosophia antigua
poetica (1596), while showing familiarity with the Renaissance humanist
commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics, particularly Scaliger's, offers an original
rethinking of all the major problems raised by Aristotle: the nature of epic
and tragedy, cpisodes, style, decorum, the distinction between poetry and
history, and so on. lt includes, in epistle IX, a discussion of comedy, the dra-
matic genre, which, as well as being thoroughly representative, is the most
incisive and intelligent of the Spanish Golden Age. 1 Löpez Pinciano, born
in Valladolid around 1547 and still alive some eighty years later, was a doc-
tor by profession, and for many years attended Doiia Maria, sister of Philip
II and widow of the Emperor Maximilian II. Also a Hellenist and poet, he
1 The most substantial study of thls treatise, which also discusses its relation to Cerva~tt.'S, is by
Canavaggio (1958). However, he does not discuss L6pez Pinciano's comic theory. On th1s aspect,
Sanford Shepard (1962) is rather thin.
-----------------------------------....„
250 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
translated the Hippocratic prognoses and the description of the plague of
Athens by Thucydides, and wrote in his youth the epic poem EI Pelayo, pub-
lished in 1605.
He made his reputation, both in the Golden Age and later, by his poetic
rreatise, which purports to be a series of dialogues recorded in epistles sent
from Madrid by 'el Pinciano', the author's alter ego, to Don Gabriel in
Valladolid. The attributes of the historical author are shared amongst the
three interlocutors of the dialogues (Ugo, 'el Pinciano', Fadrique) and Don
Gabriel. Ugo is a doctor and poet; Fadrique, callcd maestro by the others,
is an illustrious scholar of Valencian origin; 'el Pinciano', as represented in
the treatise, is Ugo's friend, with a more questioning than pedagogic role.
The dialogues take place in Fadrique's hause in the court, that is, Madrid.
Don Gabriel is an intellectually curious caballero of Valladolid, equipped
with some leaming and eager for more. Counterparts to him, of whom
Cervantes's Don Diego de Miranda is one (Don Quijote 11. 16-18), are often
featured in contemporary contexts like this, as motivators for the imparting
of poetic or rhetorical doctrine and as the immediate beneficiaries of it. This
suggests that their presence is not merely to be explained in terms of the
conventions of the humanistic dialogue, but is symptomatic of the desire of
the middle classes for cultural polish, linked to aspirations of social ascent. 2
The correspondence between 'el Pinciano' and Don Gabriel suggests the
court's cultural prestige, seen from the perspective of the provinces; and it
and the dialogues recorded in it evoke the meeting of minds to which the
literary academies of that age aspired.
True to the spirit of the age, Lopez Pinciano does not approach poetry in
a spirit of art for art's sake. The first epistle, laying the foundations of the
poetic theory to follow, expounds a doctrine of moral philosophy, key to the
contented life and subject matter of poetry. Hence the book's title. The doc-
trine is based on Ancient ethics, but is given relevance to contemporary
society by the suggestion that the lot of the comfortably well-off escudero
or hidalgo, the lowest rank of the Spanish nobility, is the happiest. Since
liidalgos, such as Don Quijote, typically lived off the proceeds of inherited
land, the suggestion evokes Antonio de Guevara's praise of village life, with
this social type in mind, in his Menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea (1539)
(Conte~p.t of Co~rt and Praise of the Country). The second epistle rebuts
the preJu~1ced belief that poetry is an ignoble and harmful art, unworthy of
~he attent1on of a ge~tleman. In sum, L6pez Pinciano presents poetry as an
mstrument of moral 1mprovement, and aims at a specific kind of readcr.
2
C::f.. Mar~vall (198~: ii. 16o-3).A similar situarion obtains in the discussion ofpoctry and the
co"'.ed1a m Suarez de F1gucroa's EI pasajero (1617),'alivios' 2 and 3; also inJuan de Robles's EI ailto
sevrllano ( 163 1) (Th~ Lear~ed Scvillian), Luque Fajardo's Fiel Jesenga1io contra la ociosidad y los j11egos
( 16o3) (Trusty Warnmg agamst ldlcness and Gambling), Rodrigo Caro 's Dfas geniales o lildicros (1626).
lj~;., ...- - - - -
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 251
Though his interlocutors, in our modern terminology, rank as 'profes-
sional middle dass', an ideal of courtliness is a basic criterion in their dis-
cussions about style and about ehe comic. According to Classical poetics,
these two things are interlinked. The gearing oflevel of style to social status,
discussed in epistle VI, acquires an unusually sharp focus in L6pez Pinciano's
treatise. The points of reference used for this purpose, are: first, the norm of
courtly, educated, grammatical usage, characterized as 'cortesano'; second,
the grave language fit for royal ears, appropriate to the high style. The first
norm is marked off from its barbarous antithesis by. means of these con-
trasted epithets: '[frasis se dize Ja oracion que es) propia, impropia, clara o
escura, patria o peregrina, cortesana o rustica' (ed. Carballo Picazo, ii. 155)
(the term frasis is used of discourse which is proper or improper, clear or ob-
scure, native or exotic, courtly or rustic); the second is identified by citing
examples of the decorous vocabulary that a servant would employ before a
prince. He would reject badn (basin, also chamber pot), estiercol (dung), cogote
or colodrillo (nape of neck),jarro Uar), as being too crude or prosaic (ii. 195);
instead ofjarro he should choose an approximate synonym like vaso (vessel).
That this example is not merely hypothetical, but is based on the style really
used at court or in noble households, is shown by a passage in Yelgo de
Bazquez's Estilo de servir a principes (42-42") where he offers similar examples
of how the maestresala (head steward, maitre) should correct the uncouth
speech of the pages in his charge:
Quando diga, por dezir, quiero hazer esto, quiero her esto: Hermano, que cosa es
her? estays en vuestra tierra, o en vuestra casa? No digays otra vez her. EI que dixere,
por dezir mi aposento, ni [sie] paJacio: que cosa es paJacio? soys vos Rey? no digays
otta vez sino aposento. Quando por dezir debaxo del bra~o, dixere debaxo del
sobaco, no digays otra vez sobaco, que es lenguage muy grosero.
When he says,instead of'quiero hacer esto' (1 want to do this],'quiero her esto':you
should teil him:'What do you mean by "her", brother? Do you think you're back
in your village or your house? Don't say it again.' And should somebody say, instead
of'mi aposento' [my room], 'mi palacio' [my palace]: he should be corrected with:
'What's this about"palace"? Do you think you're king? Next time say"aposento".'
When instead ofsaying underneath the arm [brazo], he says underneath the armpit
[sobaco], he should be told: 'don't say that ever again, it's very vulgar.'
Now, it had lang been customary to associate good usage with that of the
court or ofToledo.Juan de Valdes does so in his Dialogode la lengua, despite
his insistence in principle that the norm is provided by the usual speech
habits ofjudicious, intelligent persons, whatever their dass and, by implica-
tion, place of origin.3 However, the generalized extension of the concept
3 ed. Montesinos, 77; cf. 75. On the commonplace association of good speech with Toledo, sec
Rosenblat (1971: 58).
252 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
cortesano as a linguistic criterion, and also as an aesthetic. and ethical one, oc-
curs towards the end of the sixteenth century and durmg the seventeenth.
lt is due immediately to the very positive connotations, partly alien to
Spanish tradition,4 that it acquires in the influential t~eatises of ~astiglione
and Graciin Dantisco, and, more broadly, to the evolution of Spamsh upper-
class society in the second half of the sixteenth century.s A .primary witn~ss
to this extension is Cervantes, speaking through the hcent1ate portrayed m
Don Quijote n. 19, who attributes 'pure'.prop~r, elegant: and c~ear lan~~ge
to discreet courtiers, cven though born m MaJalahonda . Desp1te the ms1st-
ence that cortesano is not literally to be understood as referring to those born
and bred at court, and by implication, to courtiers, the link that Cervantes
posits between good lin~istic judg:ment a.n? co~r.tline~s, cortesanla, is
significant. More or less m accord w1th Valdes s pos1t10.n.' 1t ~ugge~ts that
models of usage, provided always that they have the requmte d1scret1on, are
likely to be people who move in courtly circles. This is corroborated by
other Cervantine contexts, in l.A Galatea, Don Quijote part I, and elsewhere,
in which cortesano serves as a positive aesthetic criterion and carries that im-
plication. 6
Both in Cervantes's works and L6pez Pinciano's treatise, the link between
courtliness and style is coextensive with that between courtliness and good
comedy. Let us first briefly consider Cervantes. 'Apodos are for jesters; he ad~
monishes, branding such vulgarity as unfit for the nobleman (see Ch. 4, s. 1
above). In Don Quijote n. 31 the hero indignantly rounds upon his squire for
having cheekily asked the Duchess's dueiia to stable his ass for him:'Tell me,
you newfangled court jester and old-time blockhead, do you think it right
to dishonour and affront a dueiia as venerable and worthy of respect as she
is?' (ii. 277). The place where the reprimand is given, and its motive, are
4 See Morreale (1959: 114 ff.). The promotion of the concept did not obliterate its traditional,
negative associations (deceitfulness, malicious verbosity, self-interested flattery, etc.). Tbey survive
throughout the Golden Age and culminate in Gracian's EI Criticon, e.g. in the portrait of the court
ofFalimundo (pt. I, crisi vii).
S Cf. Chevalier (1993) who offers various linguistic symptoms of the increasing ernphasis on
urbanity, refinement, and decorum in Spain during the period 1590-1630.
6 See the comment on G:Uvez de Montalvo's EI pastor de Filida in the scrutiny ofDon Quijote's
library:'No es l:se pastor ... sino muy cfücreto cortesano' (Don Quijote 1. 6;i. 120) (This is no shcp-
herd, but a most judicious courtier), and cf. the eulogy of the 'razones cortesanas y claras' (courtly
and clear dialogue) of Palmerin de lnglaterra in the same chapter (115), and the refcrence to 'mas
llanos y mis cortesanos comedimientos' (r. 42; i. sr6) (plainer and more courtly courtesies) with
which the discretos follow up Don Quijote's florid welcome to tbe magisttate and his daughter
Doiia Clara. The judgement on EI pastor de Fflida is typical of tbe favourable connotations of
cortelcortesano in LA Galatea (e.g. i. 94-5 and ii. 75), virtually immune to the idealization of coun-
try at expense of court endemic to the pastoral genre. The heroes of Cervantes's 11ovela LA seiiora
Cornelia, epitomes of upper-class polish, are described as 'muy gentileshombres' (Nove/as, ed.
Scbevill and Bonilla, iii. 70),gentilhombre being a virtual synonym of cortesano in Gracian Dantisco's
Galateo espaiiol (see Morreale's edn., 32-3, 135, 167-ll).
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 253
significant: Don Quijote, in the Duke's palace, does not wish to lose face be-
fore his noble hosts. Soon the negative example is followed by positive ones:
a long series of practical jokes engineered by the Duke's servants under his
general supervision; whatever we may think of them now, they are repeat-
edly praised by their creator, Cervantes, for their good fim and refined wit.7
In short, for Cervantes, courtliness and comedy can, ideally, be harmonized.
Now Jet us turn to L6pez Pinciano. The link between comedy and court-
liness is again fundamental, but the conception of it is different from
Cervantes's. Risible comedy is seen as opposed to courtliness; the latter con-
stantly serves as a positive pole by reference to which its antithesis, the
ridiculous, is determined.Yet the difference between the two positions is less
stark than it might seem, since, in adopting this view, L6pez Pinciano is con-
cerned to stress that the genesis of comedy, as distinct from its contempla-
tion and appreciation, falls outside the normal sphere of courtly behaviour.
Cervantes would not dissent from that. For both writers courtliness serves
as a standard of control and as a marker of boundaries of taste.
The basic definition of comedy is given early in L6pez Pinciano's dia-
logue by Fadrique: 'Comedy is a type of active imitation devised to purge
the soul of its passions by means of delight and laughter' (iii. 17). Theo, with
reference to tragedy, discussed in the preceding dialogue, the definition is
defended against the alternatives customarily offered on the grounds that
they are either superßuous or are subsumed in this one. So, the requirement
that kings and commoners should be featured, respectively, in tragedy and
comedy is deemed already implicit in the latter's predominant tone of risi-
bility 'for noble persons laugh seldom, loud and frequent laughter being
only fit for commoners' (iii. 20). And, by corollary, the precept about the
stylistic level of the two genres follows from the dass of characters i~volved
in them (iii. 28). The genres are essentially distinguished by the different
kinds of'perturbation' that they produce in the spectator, tearful and pitiful
in one case, hilarious in the other (iii. 27-8).
The section concerned with basic definitions (iii. 17-3 1) is followed by a
long analysis of risible actions and words, designed to pinpoint the nature of
the ridiculous, and furnish the playwright with an idea ofthe 'places' or gen-
eral cacegories from which situations and jests are derived. Th: ea~ly p~rt of
this analysis fixes a basic distinction between courtly. wit, wh1c~ 1s su 1tabl~
1
for royal consumption, and laughter-producing material, emphatically ugly
and indecorous, which is not (iii. 44):
De las palabras unas son urbanas y discretas, que, sin perjuyzio de nadie notable, d~n
materia de risa; y esta especie es tal, que puede parecer delante de reyes. Las demas,
7 Hence the crushing cbaracterization of the kiUjoy cleric portrayed in Don Qi~ijote 11 • 3 1; ii.
·
178, who sternly d1sapproves ·
of the enJoyntent w h'1ch th e D uke and Duchess der1ve fiom Don
Quijott the book ~nd its twQ heroes in the ftesh (Close 1993c 70).
 254 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
que nacen de la dicazidad y murmuracion y fealdad y torpeza de palabras, son malas,
y ansi se guarde e1 c6mico della en todo caso de acciones delante de reyes y
principes grandes, los quales aborrecen naturalmente a toda fealdad.
As for verbaljokes, some are urbane and discreet, which, without notable prejudice
to anyone, give occasion for laughter; and this kind is such as can appear before
kings. The rest, which are born of vituperation and evil speaking and ugliness or
uncouthness oflanguage, are bad, and thus the actor should abstain from that kind
in any action performed before kings and noble princes, who naturally abhor all
ugliness.
In this passage, 'give occasion for laughter', as applied to courtly wit, should
be understood as 'are mildly amusing' rather than 'are hilarious'.
Now, Lopez Pinciano 's conception of the ridiculous as a form of non-
injurious ugliness corresponds to the standard Aristotelian definition
(Aristotle, Poetics 14493 ). Yet his literal insistence on 'ugliness' both reflects
and intensifies a typical tendency in Renaissance discussions of the risible
(cf. Russell 1969: 32cr1). This is shown in his pungent metaphorical em-
broidery of the Aristotelian formula: 'Olor de fealdad y torpeza ha de auer
. 1
necessariamente en la cosa ridicula' (iii. 36). (The ridiculous must necessarily
give off a smell of ugliness and uncouthness.) lt is vividly exemplified, too,
by his examples of comical actions and sights: grimaces, parodic antics, a
dumsy fall, terrified reactions to unreal dangers, the clever theft of the
gullible peasant's pie in one of Lope de Rueda's most famous farces, and,
particularly, mishaps of a scatological kind. True, the concept of comicality
on offer is not merely crude; Fadrique adds a refinement to the definition
of the ridiculous,primor (exquisiteness or artistry); thus, the maximum risi-
bility is guaranteed by the formula: 'el primor mayor en mayor fealdad' (iii.
42) {the greatest exquisiteness in the greatest ugliness). Yet the acuteness of
the sense of ugliness is demonstrated by Fadrique's confession of distaste for
having to speak about the subject of comedy at all, precisely because 'l
cannot avoid being ugly and clumsy in doing so' (iii. 31-2).
Moreover, the rigid segregation of the ridiculous in terms of the dass of
consumers appropriate to it is, to my knowledge, unique in Renaissance
poetics. 8 lt grounds a series ofinterrelated dichotomies which run through
the whole discussion: tragedy/comedy; royal/plebeian; noble/ugly; grave/
frivolous; witty / foolish. These have their origin in divine providence, which
has determined that the occasions of comedy are many and trifling, while
those which are cause for tears are few and momentous (iii. 32-3). Here,
L6pez Pinciano anticipates Aleman, Quevedo, and Gracian, all of whom
equate laughter with moral wortWessness, tears with life's transcendent
8 There is a kind of analogy for it in ßargagli's Dialogode' gi110€hi (1572: 212). With the rhetor-
ical relation of storyteller to listeners in mind, he rccommends that the subject matter of novelle
should be matched to the social level of the intended audience.
\ '. \
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 255
meaning.9 Yet the guiding criterion of risibility is social, rather than moral
or religious.An important example, which motivates the above-mentioned
segregation, concerns the performance of a comedy in the house of a cer-
tain grandee before an audience consisting of several noblemen and their
wives (iii. 38-9). ln the scene in question a page, threatened by a bombastic
ruffian, is so incensed that he seizes his adversary's sword, holds it aloft, and
bids him make his peace with his maker. At this, the actor playing the part
of the ruffian involuntarily lets out a thunderous fart, and both flee the stage
in confusion, amidst roars of laughter from the noble audience. The host
sends a servant to find out whether this was in the script, and on ascertain-
ing that it was not, rewards the actor handsomely for playing his part so well.
Despite this outcome, Fadrique advises the playwright against resorting to
similar 'ugliness' when writing plays for this kind of audience, a prohibition
which extends to all vituperation, malice, and clumsiness of speech.
The ridiculous is not just opposed to what is royal, but to the values of
honour and nobility in general. This is apparent in the concrete illustrations
supplied for courtly wit (iii. 47-8, 51-2), which is signalled as a landmark
opposed to the risible. These are two apophthegms which appear in the
Floresta espaiiola. Though one is addressed to a monarch (Floresta n. i. 6) and
the other to Cardinaljimenez de Cisneros (r. ii. 2), neither of the authors of
the witticisms is of noble status. Juan Rufo's witticisms in Las seisdentas
apotegmas, whose context is not predominantly courtly, are not mentioned
or quoted, obviously because not known; however, they exacdy correspond
to the definition and examples of 'lo urbano dicho y venusto', gracefully
urbane wit. And as we have noted, the middle-class interlocutors portrayed
in the dialogues sense the repugnance of the ridiculous to their own values.
For them, hilarity, though enjoyable, is a shameful physiological reaction
typically provoked by other such behaviour. Ugo relates an occasion when
he was called to the house of a grandee who, wichout sustaining injury, had
suffered a fall from his horse while hunting (34-5); the memory of it was
enough to reduce the doctor to convulsive laughter, which forced him to
;
hide behind the patient's bed curtains. EI Pinciano interjects that he too is i
'
subject to the same 'infirmity' and is gratified to learn that it is so common.
The use of the metaphor enfermedad is revealing. So is the recurrence of the
epithet descompuesto (disordered, immoderate) as a qualifier of risa, which
is explained by the previously quoted judgement: 'noble persons laugh
seldom, loud and frequent laughter being only fit for commoners'.
9 When, in Gracian's EI Criticon,Andrenio asks what is the point ofhunun eyes having been
dcsigned to weep, Artemia replies: 'Quien no siente, no se siente, mas quien aöade sabiduria, afiade
tristeza. Essa vulgaridad del reir quedese para la necia boca, que es b que mucho yerra· (EI Criti<Jn
l.ix,ed. Romera-Navarro, i. 271-2). (He who bcks fceling, lacks true awarencss ofself;but he who
adds wisdom, adds sadness. Leave the vulgarity of bughter to the foolish mouth, often guilty of
error.) On the dichotomy oflaughter and tears in Gracian, see Halter (1966: 112, 16o-5).
256 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
There is a strange incongruity betwcen the sense of~1um~ur revealed ~y
the interlocutors and the kind of people they are. The d1scuss1on ?f why .ns-
ible acts are 'ugly' is consistently intelligent; yet the acts .are o~ a km~ which,
by our standards, could only be expected to ~rovoke. aJuvemle .aud1cnce to
mirth. Though 'juvenile' is my word, not the1rs, Fadnque and h1s colleagues
evidently sense that their hilarity is beneath them. r.~ coarseness als~ seems
out of alignment with the right-thinking res~ectab1hty and the dehcac~ of
feeling that they reveal in other respects. Fa~nque ~oyly refuses ~o tell a J.est
about a preacher who ingenuously, and w1thout mdecent mo~v~, carned
pious zeal too far in professing, from the pulpit, his love of th.e v1rgmal state;
after Ugo has told it on his behalf, Fadrique ~hen de~lares h~s reverence for
the priesthood and his implicit belief in the1r. ch~sttty, senum~nts war~uy
endorsed by his two companions. At the begmnmg of the d1al~gue, 1~ a
scene clearly intended to thematize the topic of laughter and 1ts typ1cal
causes-in this case, foolishness born of irrational fears-Ugo enters roa~­
ing with mirth at the thought of the futile, extreme remedies adopted by h1s
medical colleague in order to eure Ugo's wife of what seemed to be a dan-
gerous fever. Then, to illustrate the strength of their conjugal feelings in the
early days of their marriage, still undiminished by the passage of ye~rs, he
relates an incident which occurred during his practice in a country v1llage.
His young wife, then very pregnant, still upset by the separation fro~ her
parents, and frightened of being left alone in a !arge house, wo~~ up w~th a
start when he returned late at night after being called out to VlSlt a pat1ent,
exclaiming: ',:Esta es vida? ,:Esta es vida? jLos diablos me Heuen, si me te~go
de casar mis con medico en todos los dias de mi vida!' (iii. 12-13) (Is th1s a
life? Is this a life? The devil take me if ever in all the days of my life 1 marry
a doctor again.) Naturally, Ugo's companions are left 'grandemente de-
scompuestos de risa' (rolling about with laughter) at this evidence of the
young wife's tenderness for her husband. Yet Ugo's perceptiveness about her
hysterical fear, his capacity to talk openly about the deep love between
them, and his friends' solicitude for his anxiety during his wife's illness, all
this reveals a maturity and civility of behaviour which consort oddly with
their frequent surrender to elemental mirth.
In what ways do they show an impulse to curb the excesses of native trad-
itions ofhumour? lt needs tobe emphasized, first, how conservativc and de-
motic are their tastes. Fadrique, though a learned classicist, chooses many
more e.xamples from Spanish literature and popular lore than from Cicero,
Terence, and Ancient apophthegms. The theatre of Lope de Rueda is a
favoured source: his two best-known farces, 'Las aceitunas' (The Olives) and
'La tierra de Jauja' (The Land of Cockaigne), are cited; and the previously
. manly gravity which is partly responsible for these changes. The family of
mentioned confrontation between the braggart and the page conforms
broadly to scenes in his comedies Eufemia and Medoro, certainly to a kind of
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 257
interlude typical of Rueda's school. In the context of scatological mishaps,
honourable mention is made ofVillalobos's account of the administration of
a suppository to the Count de Benavente. Of the traditional jokes that are
cited, the majority, about twenty by my reckoning, appear in Santa Cruz's
Fforesta espaiiola; this, and the fact that they are often recounted wich relish
and in detail, suggest appreciative intimacy with the anthology, despite
Fadrique's apology for wearying EI Pinciano with so many old chestnuts (iii.
53). The most vivid testimony of this traditionalism is the extraordinary en-
comium of the stereotyped figure of the rustic simpleton as an invention by
which Spanish dramatists have supposedly outstripped all the comic play-
wrights ofAntiquity (59--60). ßy portraying this down as a fusion of ignor-
ance, foolishness, malice, and uncouth sensuousness, they have managed to
cram all the essential features of 'ugliness' into one package, thus achieving
a maximum of risibility. One suspects that, given the choice, L6pez Pinciano
would have preferred Avellaneda's coarse version of Sancho Panza, which
closely matches the stereotype, to Cervantes's. That passage, together wich
others in the dialogue, shows L6pez Pinciano's appreciation for the Old
Comedy, the traditions headed by Torres Naharro and Lope de Rueda,
rather than the New, headed by Lope de Vega, which had already taken hold
when his treatise was published.
Granted this tradirionalism, Lopez Pinciano reveals a noteworthy select-
ivcness. The blasphemy and irreverence that were typical of the humour of
his forefathers only survives in mildly attenuated form, to the accompani-
ment of pious bows towards the Church. Ribaldry has vanished; obscenity
merely persists in the form of scatology, which, doubtless by way of com-
pensation, is strongly emphasized.The most important change, by compari-
son with the age of Fernando de Rojas, is the self-conscious, manifold
segregation of burlas from veras. In this L6pez Pinciano is typical of his age:
the same many-sided dichotomy becomes a major structuring principle in
comedy, or criterion of division between it and the non-comic, from about
1600 onwards. Thus, in Guzman de Alfarac/1e, it is repeatedly signalled as a
guide to interpretation of the novel, where it operates a multiple sp!it be-
tween levels of subject matter, status of personages, and styles, a spht per-
petuated in Don Q11ijote part l,Avellaneda's continuation of it, th~ novels of
Salas ßarbadillo, the comedia (e.g. in the distinction between 1t and the
entremes, and between the hero and his servant), and poetry (the use of
burlesco as a modal category, in implied or explicit opposition to gra11e, by the
seventeenth-century editors of G6ngora and Quevedo). .
L6pez Pinciano's treatise is witness to the enhanced valuatlon of g~ntle­
the Duke ofAlba, from whom the witty Dr Villalobos declares that he learnt
how to jest (BAE 36, p. 445), would have found it strange to be told that
258 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
'noble persons laugh seldom'. A century after Villalobos's dialogue was
written, Lope de Vega wrote EI aldegüela (1623) (The Hamlet), a play about
the illegitimate son of a later Duke of Alba, the famous commander in the
Low Countries. This youth is portrayed as unbendingly solemn, in accord
with aristocratic stereotype. This trait, which had long been part of the
Spaniard's self-image, 10 now becomes integral to the ethos of the noblcman
of moral substa.nce, despite the fact that in real life, especially in relaxed and
off-guard moods, caballeros laughed often and with enjoyment (Ilourland
1925: 364). This tension provoked a need to fence laughter off from serious
behaviour, advertise its frivolity, seek justificatory licence for it. A mani-
festation of this is the proliferation of jesters and buffoons in seventeenth-
century Spain, now found not only in noble or royal households but on the
domestic staff of caballeros of middling incomes. 11 The humorous servants of
Lope de Vega and Calder6n, sometimes designated 'hombre de placer',
'truhan', 'bufön' ('funny man', 'jester', 'buffoon'), are modelled on real
equivalents in contemporary society. Sometimes, doubling as lackeys and
kitchen p{caros, they formed part of the lowest grade of the noble house-
hold's populous staff, at the opposite end to the ·secretary, steward, major-
domo, treasurer, chamberlain, all of whom could expect to be treated by the
lord with respect and some intimacy.At other times, as Guzmin de Alfarache
testifies (Gllzman deAlfarache II. i. 2), they enjoyed the same kind of intimacy,
serving as their master's go-betweens and antennae of gossip and scandal,
even as their confidants and counsellors, and arousing the jealous resentrnent
of their fellow servants. The frequent denunciations by moralists and satirists
of the antics, ribaldries, malicious gibes, and fawning flattery of these kept
entertainers, especially at mealtimes, testify to their ]arge numbers. The mad-
men, simpletons, and dwarves who frequently discharged this role, like those
for whom Philip II had such affection, or Avellaneda's Sancho Panza, were
considered to offer more innocent pleasure. ln any event, the various species
and grades of jester served a common function: to compensate for the for-
mality that went with high status, and the gravity and care of weighty busi-
ness, by providing a safety valve of mirth and frivolity which, without that
pretext, would have been deemed unbecoming to the noble master.
(ii) Hidalgo~ Dialoges de apacible entretenimiento
Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo's work (Barcelona, 1605) went through at least
eight editions between its first appearance and 1618, and deserved this
10 See the passage ofVillal6n's EI scholastico, cited in Ch. 6, s. ii. Cf. the comments on Salas
Barbadillo's El caballero perfecto in the same section, and Castiglione's reference to 'quella gravita
riposata peculiar dci Spagnoli', n cortegiano, ed. Cian, 193.
11 See Camos, MiCrPcosmia, 149; Moreno Villa (1939: 15-42);Dominguez Ortiz (1963: i. 278-9);
Close (1973: 46-iJ).
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 259
popularity. 12 The staple fare of entertainment offered by it-abundant motes
in popular taste, many attributed to a well-known wag of Burgos, the
innkeeper Colmenares-is generally very good. Though some of the bur-
lesque set pieces are laborious, the lengthy narratives about purges, suppos-
itories, and the coarsely malodorous jokes played upon each other by the
priest of Ribilla and his sacristan Bartolo are told with wit and polish.
Presumably, the undignified image of the priesthood evoked by these pranks
led to the book being banned by the Inquisition; another reason for the ban
may have been the numerous jokes about unintended blasphemies uttered
in a spirit of nitwitted piety. IJ Typical of the mood of gaiety prevailing in
the early years of Philip III's reign, it purports to be the record of the amuse-
ments of two honourable married couples of Burgos, in the course of three
successive evenings during Carnival. The participants are Don Fabricio, who
is an academic at the university ofSalamanca, his wife Doiia Petronila, Don
Diego, and his wife Doiia Margarita. Castaiieda, the jester of a nobleman
resident in the city, slips away from his master's hause each evening to join
the gathering; he supplies a pretext for its broad humour and enlivens
proceedings with his store of wit and the ballads that he sings to his own
guitar accompaniment.
Hidalgo's book is the first Spanish example of what is to become a hugely
fashionable literary mode in the first half of the seventeenth century, to
which in one way or another most comic fiction of the age pertains: the
entertaining miscellany with pretensions to be tasteful, civilized, and exem-
plary. lt is therefore worth enquiring about its origins. An obvious an-
tecedent is the frame or cornice of ltalian novella collections, designed to
forestall the moralist's accusation of frivolity. One unimpeachable occasion
for the telling of tales was the background of catastrophe, such as the great
plague which motivates the entertainments of the Decameron; it is equivalent
to the main plot of the modern disaster movie, with the difference that dis-
aster is treated by the novellieri as a backdrop to be obliterated from mem-
ory, not harrowingly foregrounded as in the cinematic genre. Another
unexceptionable occasion was the holiday, particularly the Christian holiday
of Carnival, where, as the lady president observes in Grazzini's Le cene (about
1545) (Supper Entertainments), even members of religious orders may
12 The aprobaciJn and privilegio (licence to publish), according to Menendez Pelayo. (1943: iii.
182-3), are dated 1603.Apart from his discussion of the work, the only other study spec1tically de-
voted to it, so far as 1 know, is by Angelina Costa ( 1994). This article studies it as a~ exampl~ of the
eclecticisrn of Renaissance dialogues. Little is known about Gaspar Lucas. Hidalgo. Perez de
Moiltalban, in Para todos, fo. 282, lists him amongst the famous writers ofMadnd. Alvarez YBaena,
in his useful bio-bibliography (1 7 851-91), adds nothing to that info~tion. ~enendez Pelayo
(1943: iii. 187), conjectures that Hidalgo's familiarity with Burgos makes 1t more likely that he was
a native of that town.
•l Hidalgo's work is cited in Zapata's 1632 Index (p. 436), which does not '?13.ke clea.r ~hether
it is to be expurgatcd or banned outright; in Sotomayor's 1640 Index (p. 464) 1t 1S proh1b1ted.
260 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 261
dance, sing, and participate in games (Novellieri de/ Cinq11ecento, ed.
Hidalgo is specifically indebted to Spanish sources too. One of these, ex-
Guglielminetti, 653). Carnival cornices became popular in Italy, and even
plicitly recalled, is Villalobos's dialogue featuring the memorable anecdote
more in Spain: Straparola's Piacevoli notti (1550-3) (Pleasant Nights), trans-
of the Count ofBenavente's suppository, and bearing, as its seal of approval,
lated into Spanish in 1 5So, is one example; the Spanish examples, apart from
the introductory letter by Archbishop Alonso de Fonseca.Another obvious
Lucas Hidalgo's book, which is not, properly speaking, a novella collection,
model is Pero Mexia's Coloquios (1547), especially the second part, where the
include Castillo Sol6rzano's Tiempo de regocije y Carnestolendas de Madrid
first colloquy is offered as a model of pleasant dinner-table talk, the third is
(1627) (Time of Merrymaking and Carnival in Madrid), and Tirso de
a learned discussion of cosmography, and the fourth, anticipating the praise
Molina's Deleitar aprevecl1ando (1635) (Entertaining Profitablr). Maria de
of pox in the Dialoges, is a rhetorically virtuoso praise of the ass by the con-
Zayas's Novelas amerosas y ejemplares (1637) (Exemplary Novellas ofLove) are trary Bachelor of Arts Narvaez. Pero Mexfa's work, like Archbishop
set in a comparable occasion, a lady's convalescence in the Christmas holi-
Fonseca's letter, is testimony to the Renaissance's appreciation of good talk,
days, 'a merry season, fit tobe celebrated with parties, games, and pranks'.
reflected in its courtesy books, such as Guazzo's LA dvil conversatione (1574)
Hidalgo's Dialogesare indebted to Italy not only for the conception of the
(Civil Conversation), which prescribes how to do it and recommends the
cornice, but also, partly, for their content. An obvious model is a work like
liberal use of 'Sentences, pleasant Jestes, Fahles, Allegories, Similitudes,
Girolamo Bargagli's Dialoge de' giuochi ehe nelle veggl1ie sanesi si usane di Jare
Comptes, and other delightful speche'. 16 The jest, aphorism, and story col-
(1572), which describes the various games played by the members of the
lections of Domenichi, Timoneda, and Santa Cruz are explicitly designed to
Academia degli Intronati ofSiena in their nocturnal gatherings: riddles, dis-
enable the gentleman to do just that, or arise directly from that practice; and
cussions of nice questions of love, deciphering of emblems, exchanges of
Santa Cruz's predilection for motes prefigures Hidalgo's. So, Hidalgo's work
symbolic garlands in pastoral masquerades, narration of stories, and so on. 1 4
is a synthesis of several models. Though remote from our conception of a
lt insistently proclaims the civility of these entertainments-the scope that novel, the book exhibits the free hybridization of traditional comic species
they offer for pleasant talk, the display of wit, the graceful refinements of
common to contemporary works like Guzman de A!farache, which do match
mixed company--and assumes that the Sienese of future generations will that conception, and shares their impulse to satisfy a craving for light liter-
find it valuable to have a record of them.Whereas it describes, and Hidalgo's
ary entertainment.
dialogues enact, the step from one project to the other is clearly small, and In part, the dialogues are based on a historical event: the festivities organ-
both derive from a distant, common source: the discussions about the ideal
ized by the academics of Salamanca and the local guild of clothiers during
courtier in the glittering court of the Duke of Urbino, portrayed by
a visit by Philip III to the town injuly 1600; 17 in part, too, they deliberately
Castiglione. Bargagli's book is one of many literary spin-offs from ltaly's
mirror the typical pastimes of the gentry of Burgos during the pre-Lenten
enthusiasm for academies, andin this it is akin to Hidalgo's dialogues, which
festival, both to divert the reader and to offer a model of good fun. Here is
proclaim their academicism both literally and in the broader sense defined how Doiia Petronila describes them (BAE 36, p. 280):
in the previous chapter. Yet they fuse it with domestic, unpretentiously
bourgeois amusements, untypical of the sophisticated salon; their closest La gente vu1gar y callejera en estos dias se entretienen por las calles haciendo burlas
analogue, though I doubt very much whether Hidalgo could have known a los que van y vienen con algunas apacibles y donosas picardias. La gente honrada
it, is French: Guillaume Bouchet's Les Serees (1584), which purports to y recogida suelen convocarse unos a otros en sus propias casas, y con discretas y
record the spicy, varied dinner-table talk of a group of middle-class citizens alcgres conversaciones pasan las noches antes y despues de cena. Los caballeros de
of Poitiers, and incorporates tales from Poggio and ßebel, repartee, de- poca edad, que siempre los pocos aiios engendran poco reposo y cogimiento, tienen
scriptions of strange customs, rcferences to Rabelais, Bodin, Froissart, de costumbre concertar algunas mascaras,juegos de sortija ... y otros disfraces con
Montaigne. 1 5 que alcgran sus personas y las calles de la ciudad.
The common people who frequent the street amuse themselves these days by play-
14 Comparable descriptions may be found in Pietro Fortini's Le notti de' Novizi (c.1530-40), the ing amusing and pleasant pranks on passers-by. Respectable and retiring people in-
companion to his Le giornate de//e novelle de' Novizi, and bk. IV ofStcfano Guazzo's Lt dvil conver-
satione (ist edn. 1574), which provides a modcl social convcrsation to illustrate the precepts ofthe vite each other to their own houses, and spend the evenings before and after supper
preceding thrce books. . . , in wii:ty and merry conversations. Young caballeros, typifying the restlessness of
1 S I have read the edn. published in Lyons, 1615, the first, accordmg to the prmters prologue.

Thc author's •epitre a rnessieurs les marchands de la ville de Poictiers', also featured in the prelim-
inaries, is clated 1s84. 16 From the English translation of Guazzo, quoted in Clements and Gibaldi (1977: 14-15).
17 On this point, see thc informative artide by Layna Ranz (1991: 157-6o).
 ---·
262 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
youth, customarily invent masques and competitions of tilting at the ring and other
forms of disguise with which they nuke themselves and the townsfolk merry.
So, these discreet and merry conversations are appropriate to people of a
certain dass and age, equivalent, we note, to those portrayed in L6pez
Pinciano's treatise. The 'donosas picardias' attributed to the plebs, vividly
etched by Castaiieda in an improvised ballad, conform to the archetypal,
world-upside-down horseplay of Carnival (316):
jQue de grita por las calles,
que de burlas, que de tretas,
que de harina por el rostro,
que de mazas que se cuelgan;
trapos, chapines, pellejos,
estopas, cuernos, braguetas,
sogas, papeles, andrajos,
zapatos y escobas viejas!
Y con ser tan grande el frio,
la gente se abrasa y quema
en un fuego que jamas
mir6 Nero deTarpeya;
que si el hombre es pedernal,
y la mujer tan de yesca,
no es mucho que el eslabon
de sus hierros fuego encienda.
What hubbub in the streets! What pranks, what tricks! How many faces covered in
flour, how many objects attached in sport to people's clothes! Rags, high-heeled
shoes, skins, für, horns, cod pieces, ropes, paper, tattered clothes, shoes, old brooms!
And though it's so cold, people are consumed in a blaze bigger than that seen by
Nero from his Tarpeian rock; for if man is flint, and woman tinder, it's not surpris-
ing that the link of their chains should strike fire.
Although our honourable interlocutors do not stoop so low, they repeatedly
invoke the seasonal revelry associated with these scenes as licence for their
amusements.
They resemble L6pez Pinciano's interlocutors quite specifically in their
tempering of urbane gaiety with decency, piety, delicacy of feeling. Care is
taken to portray the niceties of social and family behaviour: expressions of
tenderness between spouses, pleasant salutations to guests and enquiries
about their domestic arrangements, bantering raillery and gallantry. Doiia
Petronila warns her husband not to lean too near the fire, lest a sudden spurt
of flame should singe bis eyebrows. Castaiieda suggests jokingly that Don
Diego might give him a diamond; and Don Diego suggests this alternative
reward: 'Si como pedis un diamante, pidierades una Margarita, aqui estaba
mi mujer' (307). (If you should ask for a margarita (daisy, also pearl] instead
,J_.Ji~
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 263
of a diamond, here's my wife.) Moreover, though the predominantly free-
and-easy ~one incl~d.es irrever~nce and vul~rity, such as might naturally be
expected m a convlVlal gathermg of good fnends in holiday mood, the par-
ticipants frequently show their sense of where to draw the line. Their reli-
gious piety is matter-of-fact and unostentatious. On seeing Petronila enter,
Margarita makes a joke about her masticating the Paternoster, and Petronila
explains that she has just finished telling her rosary so as to face the evening
in carefree spirit (302). Later that evening, in a serious interlude, Fabricio,
the man ofletters, gives a discourse on the basis in natural law for the popu-
lar prejudice which decrees that woman is inferior to man, and has only one
path to honour-fidelity to her husband-whereas man has several. The
speech, breathtakingly sexist by our Standards and received with solemn ap-
proval by its audience, including the women, follows Don Diego's burlesque
oration in defence of the nobility of pox, and a series ofjokes about comic,
unintentional blasphemies. The switch from burlas to veras is abrupt, and
strikes nobody as odd. One of the jokes just mentioned, coarsely scato-
logical, is about a caballero aspiring to a post in the Inquisition and undergo-
ing the usual investigations of purity of lineage. lt draws an expostulation
from Doiia Margarita about the crudeness of Castaiieda's language. While
the ladies do not shirk scatological anecdotes (296), even obscenity (299b),
they tend to adopt an ironically periphrastic or euphemistic style for the
purpose. When Fabricio teils a wedding night joke, Margarita remarks on
how uninhibitedly he has entered into the Carnival mood, 'que el cuente-
cillo apenas se puede tomar en la boca sino en tiempo tan suyo como el pre-
sente' (281). (One could hardly bring oneself to teil thejoke except at this
season, to which it naturally belongs.) All this typifies the sense that these
merry entertainments belong to a parenthesis in normal life, whose basic
rules are fixed by religion, honour, middle-class decorum, family and social
ties. Although the parenthesis is infused with the spirit of Carnival, normal-
ity exercises a firm, but discreet control.
Though the Dialogos present the same kind of segregation of burlas and
veras as is found in L6pez Pinciano 's treatise, they do so in relation to sub-
ject matter which is partly different. Like that treatise, they show appreci-
ation for native, popular humour, revealed by the abundant motes and by the
scatological burlas. However, the fact that the Dialogos depict a festive social
gathering results in the recitation of occasional burlesque compositions, or
in descriptions of burlesque social events, which have no equivalent in the
Philosophia antigua poetica. This material includes: Fabricio's lengthy recital of
the ritual taunting of fellow academics (gallos) by one of their number at a
degree ceremony presided over by Philip III (dialogue I, eh. ii); his descrip-
tion ofthe comical pageant organized by the clothiers cf Salamanca during
the royal visit (11. i); the reading of a witty student's fantasy about the birth
111111111111111 12111. 121.11„111111111111111111111111111111111111„„„„„~~,,·~~,.~.'S,lii#fl:!„„„„...„,_,,____________~--~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.
264 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
d edding of a prodigious monster, whose comic point is thc virtuoso ac-
an w ( · ) C ~ d •·
cumulation of impossible epithets based on .wordplay I. 1~ .; , astane a s 1.~-
provised ballad about the diabolically ugly v1sages of Fa~r~c10 s lackeys (1.111);
Don Diego's eulogy of pox (m. ii); Castafieda's .descnpt1on of a .burlesque
masque performed in the Count's residence (m. 1) ..All of the spec~es or cu~­
toms in question are traditional, and are absorbed mto the canomcal com1c
literature of the seventeenth century, as are the motes and burlas which make
up the work's staple source of entertainment. 18 My purpose, in dra~i~g at;
tention to the partial difference of subject matter between Lopez ~mc1a~o s
work and Lucas Hidalgo's is to highlight the common mentahty wh1ch
unifies all this material.
(iii) Tirso de 1\folina's Cigarrales de Toledo
The same point applies to Tirso's work (1624). In it, .comic material ~f a
traditionally Aristophanic kind coexists in a state of s1multaneous ~enston
and interdependence with the courtly viewpoint that contemplates tt.
Tirso de Molina (c. 1580-1648), literary pseudonym of Fray Gabriel Tellez
of the Mercedarian Order, attained prominence in the Order as a lecturer
in theology and as its chronicler, and even greater renown outside it as a
prolific and brilliant dramatist. His career of writing for the theatre began
about 1610, a period in which he frequented the aristocratic circles of
Toledo. After a two-year interruption due to his absence in the West Indies,
it resumed vigorously around 1620, when he was based in Madrid and was
fully involved in its literary life: academies, controversies, poetry contests. lt
was effectively terminated in 162 s (see Ch. 7, s. ii). 1 9 He wrote Cigarrales de
Toledo in 1620-1, basing it on his experiences of the life of the Tolcdan aris-
tocracy. . more, uses the festivities as occasions in which further adventures and trials
Like Salas Barbadillo's La casa del placer honesto (1620), it belongs to the
genre of novela collections set in a framework of high society amusements,
and, together with that book, established the popularity of the genre in
Spain. The nove/as featured in Tirso's collection, apart from the comic one
about the competition between three wives to see who can practise the
most ingenious hoax on her husband, narrated in the fifth 'Cigarral', are of
a romantic and courtly nature, and are comparable in tone, plots, and
character types to the cloak-and-sword comedies of which Tirso was a
18
For the fantasy about the impossible rnonstcr and similar pieces of comic virtuosity,
see Chevalier (1992: ch5. s. 8, 9); on academic tauntings, see Egido (1984b); on the burlesque
treatment of pox, see Floresta de poesias eroticas, cd. Alzieu, Jammes, and Lissorgues, no. 144; on
masqucs, including burlesque oncs, and their influence on Don Quijote, see Close (1993c: 71-2,
75-'/).
1
9 Fora general incroduction to Tirso's life and works, sec Wilson (1977).
THE NEW COMIC ETHOS 265
supremely accomplished exponent. 20 Though there is a rough similarity
between Tirso's miscellany and Hidalgo's Dialogos, in that they both feature
diverse pastimes in a convivial setting during a holiday season, the dissimi-
larities are much more striking. These consist in the tone and nature of the
proceedings. Tirso's book presents a series of amusements set in one aristo-
cratic country house after another, all designed to celebrate the wedding of
Don Alejo and Doiia Irene and while away the dog days of summer. The
participants are the cream ofToledan society; Tirso's tone is obsequiously
dcferential to it; and the events include the following: a nautical masque and
tourney on the river Tagus, with Tirso himself amongst the competitors as
a humble shepherd from the banks of the Manzanares (the river ofMadrid);
a chivalresque trial of love in the form of an allegorical labyrinth; the per-
formance of three plays byTirso, of which one, EI vergonzoso en palacio (The
Shy One at Court), is followed by a defenc'e of the comedy ofLope de Vega's
school; the recital of a Gongorine mythological fable. In short, these are pas-
times consonant with the kind of elegant, pleasure-seeking academy por-
trayed in Salas Barbadillo 's collection; we seem to be far removed from the
mix of earnest academicism and robust hilarity of L6pez Pinciano's epistle,
and even further from the jolly, vulgar domesticity of Lucas Hidalgo's dia-
logues. This makes the essential consonance ofTirso de Molina's work with
the previous two, in terms of comic mentality, all the more significant.
The structure of Tirso's miscellany, though partly comparable to
Hidalgo's, is much more complex. lt is not just indebted to the kind of fram-
ing device used in the Decameron, modelled on contemporary Spanish cus-
toms, but also motivates the series of aristocratic festivities by making them
the sequel to the happy conclusion of three interlinked stories oflove, pre-
sented in the long introduction entitled 'Cigarrales de Toledo', and, further-
of love can be narrated in flashback, as occurs in Juan Palomeque's inn in
Don Quijote part I. The result is a sophisticated effect of mise-en-abfme. Tirso
also borrows from Cervantes the technique ofinterweaving and suspension
of narratives, with an effect of intricacy complementary to that of the plots
of his stories, which are reminiscent of contemporary cloak-and-sword
comedies: simultaneous endings in marriage; confusions of identity and
cross-purpose dialogues resulting from disguise; nocturnal encounters be-
neath the lady's balcony, and so on.
The similarity to the theatre includes the relationship of ?on Juan. de
Salcedo to his lackey Carrillo, which reflects the contrast of atntudes typ1cal
of the stock theatrical pair,galan and gracioso. The master's feelings and values
20
The Ciga"ales dt Toledo has been studicd by Nougue (1962), and also, more brießy, by Pilar
Palomo (1976: 87--9I). for further bibliography, see V:izquez Femandcz's edn. (1996).
276 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
jlores de Don Juan (fhe Flowers of Don Juan), LA moza de cantaro (The
Pitcher Girl), Servit a seiior discreto), to predominantly light and risible (La
dama boba, Los melindres de Belisa, EI acero de Madrid (Madrid's Iron Cure) ). 27
Yet, even in its lighter manifestations, the comedia appeals to the audience's
escapist impulse to be moved and astonished at the twists and turns of a ro-
mantic or heroic plot, with the associated predicaments, chance encounters,
confusions of identity, hairbreadth escapes, passions, dilemmas, prodigious
transformations of status and fortune. Its very use of poetry helps to lift the
imagination in this way. And the characteristically noble status of the prin-
cipals, which does not of course exempt them from demcaning acts or even
ridiculous scrapes, likewise invites a response which is at least residually
senous.
Hence, humour is typically treated as complementary counterpoint to a
predominantly noble ethos, and, as a result, does not have the same signi-
ficance as in a work like Guzman de A!faracl1e. The most obvious example of
this is the New Comedy's jesting servant, the gracioso, exemplified well
enough by Tirso's Carrillo. While some of this character's traits link him to
the typical pfcaro (street-wise astuteness, vituperative wit, lack of heroic
fibre), they do not form part of a degraded personality which ridiculously
subverts and counterfeits society's norrns of honour, but present themselves
as the forgivably amusing characteristics of a loyal, affectionate servant.
Moreover, as counsellor and confidant of his master, the gracioso often ex-
hibits worldly wisdom, a smattering of learning, rational prudence; in con-
trast to the master's impulsive, starry-eyed Quixotry, he voices, not just the
deflatingly contrasted attitudes of the commoner, but a sense of moderation
and circumspection with which any member of the audience can identify.
In his last verse collection, the Rimas humanas y divinas of 1634 (Rhymes
Human and Divine), Lope adopts the whimsically humorous persona of
Tome de Burguillos, a penniless, shabby law student in love wich a washer-
woman; though more soft-headed than hard-headed, he is obviously akin to
the gracioso, and typifies Lope 's tendency to identify with this personage. This
shows how far his conception of the primary purveyor of humour in his
plays moves away from el Pinciano 's conception of the ridiculous: vile, alien
to civilized discretion, lacking in moral substance and emotional depth. We
must now consider why Cervantes achieves a similar refinement of the
comic in prose fiction, and what, in particular, he reacts against.
27 On the distinction between lighter and darker comedies, sec Arellano Ayuso's instructive
article (1994).
CHAPTER NINE
Cervantes between Guzman de Alfarache
and its Heritage
(i) The crisis of comedy around i 600
Around 1600, the Spanish comic genres traversed a crisis, in the old medical
sense of the term, for two reasons. First, the publication of the picaresque
classic Guzman de A!farache (1599), combined with the change in the socio-
cultural climate resulting from the accession of Philip III (1598), caused
several which had lain more or less dormant for the latter half of the six-
teenth century to burst into life. The change in climate included the lifting
of the general ban on the comedia, decreed by Philip II in May 1598, but
lifted not long aftcr his death in September of that year. Traditionally, criti-
cism has concerned itself with the resurgence of one genre in particular, the
picaresque novel, and has discussed this in terms of the circumstances
favourable to its revival at this juncture. 1 1 see the resurgence, which is not
confined to the picaresque, as being essentially to do with the discovery of
new possibilities for expressing the comic; it is reflected in a widespread
sense of liberation from previous shackles and the urge to satisfy a com-
munal craving for merry entertainment.
The second reason, conflicting somewhat with the first, lies in the socio-
genetic and ideological pressures described in Chapter 7; these modified and
to some extent checked the coarse and unruly strain in the traditions of
comedy thus revived. The comic fiction that Cervantes wrote in the perio?
from 1600 to 1610 reflects these divergent pulls and reacts to them. His
poetics of it is the fruit of conscious opposition to various things combined:
the didacticism of Alemin and others; the frivolity typified by L6pez de
Ubeda; the lawlessness, as he saw it, of the comedia; the coarseness of the
novela tradition. The purpose of the present chapter is to show how the
comic mentality of the age underlies and unifies the contrasting positions
adopted by Cervantes and his contemporaries, and to situate his poetics of
comic fiction in relation to theirs.
The lethargy that affected the comic genres during the second half of the
sixteenth century in Spain has attracted less comment than it deserves.
1 For the theories put forward to explain this resurgence (by Moreno Baez, Claudio Guillen,
Parker, Cavillac, and others). sec Dunn (1993: r-10, 47-8, 59, 81-2, 134-9).
 1:.~
278 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
Common sense might induce us to treat it as one of those accidents of
literary history, and leave it at that. However, common sense would be an
inadequate guide in this case. One factor surely accounts in large measure
for the inactivity that prevailed from 15 54 to 1599, publication dates of
LAzarillo de Tormes and G14zman de A!farache respectively: the negative
influence of the first Spanish Index, published in 15 59, and of the climate of
repression which preceded and followed it. 2 lt had an obvious impact on
satire in general, particularly of the Erasmian kind. Vigorous in the decade
1520-30, it was severely censored thereafter; already published works, like
the two great dialogues of Alfonso de Valdes, were banned;3 otherwise, such
satire took refuge in unpublished anonymity.
By the mid-sixteenth century, the Aristophanic muse, though not si-
lenced, became subject to visible restraints. The imitations or sequels of LA
Celestina, of which the best is Francisco Delicado 's superbly candid portrait
ofthe life of a Spanish prostitute in Rome, LA lozana andaluza (1524), de-
cline notably in vigour after Feliciano de Silva's LA segunda Celestina (1534)
(The Second Celestina); to all intents, the current dries up after the publi-
cation ofVillegas's Comedia Selvagia in 1554, which Menendez Pelayo ap-
provingly described as one ofthe least scandalous of the Celestinas (1943: iv.
164).1.Azarillo de Tormes (1554), to which modern criticism ascribes a poised
and sceptical subversiveness, was regarded in the Golden Age in a different
light. The hero became famous, amongst other things, for his simpleza,
simple-mindedness; this would doubtless have softened the impact of the
religious burlesque and anticlerical irreverence which this novel takes over
from the Celestina tradition. Though the Inquisition banned it, the modi-
fications that were made in the expurgated version leave much of this
irreverence intact, and suggest that, to official eyes, it was no more offensive
than the traditional hurnour of fabliaux.4 Effectively, the Inquisition's
ternporary prohibition of LAzarillo nipped in the bud the spate of sequels
which it might otherwise have engendered, as did, within their respective
genres, LA Cefestina, Amadfs de Gaula, and La Diana. After the appearance of
a lone 'segunda parte' (Antwerp, I 555), there was no new picaresque novel
until the publication of Guzman de A!farache.
2 Alberto ßlecua makes this point in order to explain the relatively scant editorial success of
Lazarillo de Tormes in the second half of the 16th century. See the introduction to his edition of the
novel (1972), 47. Lasperas (1987: 61-<i, 83-4) repeatedly makes the same point concerning the re-
ception, translation, and adaptation of the ltalian novella after J 550.
3 Dialogo de las cosas 1Kurridas en Roma and Dialogo de Mercurio y Caron, both about 1s30. Valdes
was a fervent follower of Erasmus, also secretary to Charles V.
4 The suppressions include: the whole of the fifth chapter, which features the pardoner's
confidence trick; a couple of stinging gibes in chs. 1 and 2 about priestly concubinage and stingi-
ness respectively; caustic innuendo about jobbery and corruption at court in chs. 3 and 7. for a
detailed list, see Blecua's edition of Lazarillo, 37.
.. · -
CERVANTES BETWEEN CUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 279
The fortunes of the burlesque section of the Cancionero general likewise
reflect this pattern, granted that the popularity of this anthology of court
poetry waned in the course of the sixteenth century. The prologue of the
edition published in Seville in 1535 claims to have cut 'algunas obras que
eran muy desonestas y torpes' (some very indecent and gross works);S and
the volurne containing only the burlesque poerns of the anthology, pub-
lished in I 5 19, was never reprinted. Rodriguez-Moilino infers that the con-
tents were too strong for Spaniards to stomach. Though rnost of these poerns
survive as a sort of insignificant coda of the anthology in re-editions of it up
to 1557, the Indexsounds their death knell in 1559; andin the last edition
published in the sixteenth century, in Antwerp, 1573, the burlesque section
disappears. The burlesque poetry of Crist6bal de Castillejo, ribald, satiric,
and rife with religious parody, suffered a similar fate: the earliest editions
published in Spain (1542, 1546, 1573) were expurgated ones (Foulche
Delbosc 1916).
The same picture of progressive taming is offered by the genres of drama
and the short story. The prohibition, in 15 59, ofTorres Naharro 'soften ribald
and abrasive Propalladia (1517), and its subsequent re-edition. in a severely
expurgated version in 1573, set the tone; the cautionary effect of these meas-
ures may be judged by the fact that it was, in Marquez Villanueva's phrase
(1973: 66), the bible of the early Spanish theatre. The dominant dramatist of
the mid-sixteenth century was Lope de Rueda, whose anaemic pastoral col-
loquies and Italianate cornedies are redeerned by his farcical interludes, col-
loquial, close to folklore, theatrically effective, and showing a vigorous
comic fantasy in their principal types: the sirnpleton and the boastful ruffian.
From the inquisitor's viewpoint, Lope de Rueda poses no threat. This is also
true of the drarna of Lope de Vega and his school which established itself in
Madrid in the 15 8os; however rnuch it attracted the denunciations of
churchrnen for its indecency, it offered scarcely any provocation of a rnore
sinister kind. And so far as the novella is concerned, the insistent consumer
demand for ltalian stories, exernplified by the adaptations of them in Juan
de Tirnoneda's EI patraiiuelo (1567) (The Little Story Collection) and
Crist6bal de Tamariz's novelas inverse (unpublished, around 1570-80), and
by the translations ofltalian noveflieri towards the end of the century, are ac-
companied by heavily signalled repudiations of the anticlerical irreverence
and sexual indecency associated with that genre. The change in climate after
1550 is reflected by the kind of Italian stories, mainly translated, that Spanish
readers could now read, and the modifications rnade by the translators.
Whereas in the first half of the century readers could enjoy the truculent
cornedy of Boccaccio (five editions of the translated Decameron from 1496 ·
S See Rodriguez-Moiiino 's prologue to his facsimile edition of the Cancionero general, i. 29; cf.
the introduction to the Candonero de obras de burlas, ed. Bellön Cazaban and Jauralde Pou.
280 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 281
to 1550) and, to a lesser extent, Poggio, the story collections that were both editor on the title page; this includes Gregorio Gonzalez's picaresque novel
popular and available after 1550 were: Guicciardini'sjest anthology Hore di EI guit6n Honofre (1605) (Thc Picaro Honofre), which makes fun of the
recreatione (1565, Spanish translation 1586), Gianfrancesco Straparola's Jesuits, and, as previously noted, Quevedo's EI Busc6n, of about the same
Piacevoli t1otti (from 1550, translated I 580), and the translation (15 89) of the date.
French version by Boaystuau and Belleforest of eighteen tragic novelle by
And yet comedy flourished, springing to life towards the end of the si~­
Bandello.6 In all these works, wariness of the inquisitors' vigilance is
tecnth century in forms affiliated to its earlier Aristophanic ones. The com1c
refl.ected, first, in titles, where 'honesto' (decent) and 'ejemplar' (exemplary)
irreverence, scatology, and obscenity of the old Cancionero de obras de burlas
ally themselves to 'recreaci6n' and 'entretenimiento', and secondly in selec-
is revived, from 1580, by G6ngora, though he avoids its blasphemy, and, by
tion, suppression, and turns of phrase (Lasperas 1987: 61). The notoriety of
his subtly insinuating style, its outrageous crudeness. 8 The comedy-in-prose
the Italian novella surely e:>...-plains why Spaniards, despite their evident taste
deriving from LA Celestina re-emerges not just in direct conti~ua~ions, li~e
for the genre, had to wait until 1613 for the appearance of the first authen-
the novels in dialogue of Salas Barbadillo (from 1620), but mdirectly, m
tically home-grown contribution to it, Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares.
picaresque novels, which more or less explicitly avow t~eir debt. to. LA
There are exceptions to the general trend, and they are partly accounted
Celestina's character types, ethos, even its form. The allegoncal front1sp1ece
for by the distinction between script and print, the first being much less easy
of LA pfcara Justina expresses the affiliation graphically: it shows Lazarillo in
to control than the second. Also, some genres were subjected, in practice,
bis liule skiff towing the ship of picaresque life, a variant of the traditional
to less vigilant scrutiny than others, either by the Inquisition or the civil ship of fools, across the River ofüblivion to the port ofDeath, who holds
censors. The entremes, which took off in the second half of the century in up the mirror of Desengatlo Qoss of worldly illusions). The travellers in ~he
the wake of Lope de Rueda's success, enjoyed a freedom in the treatment of
ship, sculled by Time and adorned with emblems of carefree sensuahty,
sexuality that was denied to prose fiction; and the licence is greater in manu- include Mother Celestina,Justina, and Guzman de Alfarache. Political and
script entremeses than in printed ones (Asensio 1965: 61). This was ~ncour­ social satire, though subject to constraints unknown three or four gener-
aged by the scope for improvisation that entremeses afforded, hke the ations before, is charged with a new dynamism, chiefly though not merely
commedia dell' arte, which rose to popularity at the same time. However, the
by Quevcdo, whose S11eiios begin tobe composed from about 160~. Other
freedom was curtailed in the wake of the anti-theatre campaign of 1597-8, notable contributors are G6ngora, Aleman, Cervantes, Suarez de F1gueroa,
when it was required that all plays should be vetted by civil censors before
Salas Barbadillo, and the Count of Villamediana. Collectively, these writers
performance (McKendrick 1989: 185). The compilers of the anthology of
project the image of a Spain, particularly its court and capital, corrupt~d
erotic poetry of the Spanish Golden Age, which, though not one of the from within by a degenerate nobility, venal justice and government, dis-
comic genres, is obviously akin to them, draw some of their material f~m
solute sexual mores, snobbery, and avarice.
printed sources, including the successive volumes of ballad poetry wh1ch
In a way, this resurgence of comic literature is unsurprising. When so
feed into the bumper anthology, the Romancero general (1600, 1604).7
much of the culture of the Spanish Golden Age is a sophisticated reinvig-
Sandwiched between sentimental ballads in pastoral or Moorish vein, and,
oration of old national traditions, such as the lyric verse of the Catuionero
Iike most of this poetry, unattributed, the erotic ones doubtless escaped the
general and similar anthologies, the ballad corpus, medieval mysteries, and
censors' attention. Many burlesque or satiric poems in the anthology, in-
liturgical plays, one would naturally expect it to show similar fidelity in
cluding G6ngora's, whose audacious impudence has previously been noted,
rcspect of comedy, within the limits of what could and could not now be
benefit in the same way. The disparity in the treatment of G6ngora and
said. That very fidelity, coupled with the urge to rationalize and control
Quevedo by the censors is another example of this arbitrariness. However,
the old motifs and realign them with contemporary fashions, is basic to
on the whole, censorship became more consistent and efficient in the seven-
the texts discussed in the previous chapter, and also to most of the
teenth century than it had been in the previous one. Comedy, if published,
comic/satiric fiction written from 1599 onwards. Yet the abruptness of the
had to respect its norms or face the consequences. Much of it avoided the
limelight of publication, with its obligation to name the work's author or
R See Jammcs (1967: 163 ff.). In an earlier section ofhis book (93 ff.).Jammes n:Jat~s Gon~ora's
6 Tbc first three parts of ßandcllo's Novelle wcre publishcd in 1554; the inßuential French se- satiric verse to that of variow poetic anthologies of the 16th century, from Barb1er1 s Canaonero
lection in 1568. · (pre-1 530) onwards, and notes that despite the gencral weakcning of_antiderical and anti-monastic
7 See F/Qresta Je poesfas rroticas del siglo de oro, ed. Alzieu,Jarnmes, and Lissorgues, p. x. satire from 1 sRo, Gongora resists that trend, articulating the popular 1rreverence towards the dergy
typical of Boccaccio, l..azarillo, and the proverb tradition.
282 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
revival is startling, and, like the lethargy preceding it, requires some expla-
nation.
One reason for it is the festival atmosphere which marks the opening
years of Philip IIIs reign (from 1598), often contrasted by contemporary
commentators with the severe sobriety of his father's. Pinheiro da Veiga
testifies to this in his Fastiginia, painting a general picture of the court-at
that moment, Valladolid-as a perpetual comedy or farce in which carniva-
lesque dissolution is the norm (26 98-9, 105-6, u8-19, 143).9 This accords
1 s10nal theatre m the maJOr Spamsh towns in the 157os and 158os. Given the
too weil with the spirit of Hidalgo's Dialogos, L6pez de Ubeda's LA plcara
Justina, Quevedo's El B11sc6n, Gregorio Gonzilez's EI guit6n Honofre, and Don
Q11ijote part 1, all written at about the same time and most of them in or near
that very town, to be the result of mere coincidence. Another important
reason was the lifting of the ban on the theatre: a green light to writers in
other genres, who quickly moved to satisfy the demand of a public starved
oflight literary entertainment.We have already seen what a potent effect this
has on Cervantes's thinking about prose fiction. That it was at the back of
every writer's mind is attested by Gaspar Lucas Hidalgo, who, in the pro-
logue to his Dialogos, defends their purely risible, entertaining purpose in
these terms: 'lquien hay que, puesto en el teatro desta vida, no se canse de
ver representar sus melanc6licas tragedias, sin que entre jornada y jornada Je
diviertan con el entremes de un placer y honesto pasatiempo?' (What man,
caught up in the theatre of this life, does not weary of witnessing its melan-
choly tragedies, unless between one act and another he is diverted with the
farce of an amusement and decent pastime?) One can scarcely doubt what
model he is thinking of. The prologue to LA pfcara Justina is particularly
revealing testimony of the liberating effect of that green light, because of its
sanc.timon~ous, transparently insincere approval of the previous red one.
Wh1le paymg fulsome tribute to those saintly men who, in defiance of pres-
sur: from ~~werful interests and the general public, have set their face
aga1?st l~c1VI_ous books and plays, and while ostentatiously deploring the
pro~1~erat1on m every corner of Spain of titillating entremeses and comedias,
lasc1v1ous and impish ballads, together with all kinds of Jow verses Jetters
jests, and s~orics, L6pez de Ubeda justifies the publication of bis self~
avo~edly fhppant toy with the argument:'if you can't beat them,join them'.
While he does not explicidy mention the theatre controversy, the allusion
to the_clash hctween religious men and powerful interests can only refer to
that, smce the representation made by the town of Madrid in favour of
reopening the theatre achieved wide publicity and became a target for sub-
sequent re~uttals. The prologue is significant for the way in which it lumps
together diverse forms of frivolous comic entertainment, treating it as a
9
On the change of dimate after Philip Il's death sec Redondo (1995: 261-2).
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERJTAGE 283
h~m~geneous. floo~. Togethe~ with the theatre, the ballad corpus is another
pnnc1pal mamfestat1on to wh1ch L6pez de Ubeda refers, the motive for this
bei~g the r~cen~ publication of the two parts of the Romancero genera/. IO His
test1mony 1mp!1es, dearly enough, that there has been an opening of
flood~ates prev1ously shut fast. To be sure, this would not have produced any
result m the absence of a pent-up dam of water waiting to be released. The
e.mergence of.a metrop~litan m~rket had stimulated the growth of a profes-
right atmosphere, it was only a matter of time before it produced the same
effect in other sphercs.
(ii) Guzman de Alfarache
The catalyst was Mateo Aleman's masterpiece Guzman de A!farache; its
influence extends far beyond the picaresque genre, as is shown by
Cervantes's extensive indebtedness to it in the fiction that he wrote from
1600 to 1610. lt largely fixed the theoretical battle lines dividing Cervantes
from contemporary writers of comic fiction, who, in those years, were
mostly picaresque novelists. According to an influential formulation of
Cervantes's poetics by Blanco Aguinaga (see Ch. 2, s. ii), the hone of con-
tention between him and them is mimetic realism. In fact, it concerns ques-
tions of tone, relevance, and edification. Aleman's novel poses them starkly
and provocatively, albeit without rationalizing them much; and his practical
solutions are, in part, fiercely opposed by his immediate successors within
the picaresque. Cervantes's poetics and practice are formed in these cross-
currents. He and bis contemporaries saw LAzarillo de Tormes and G11zman de
Alfarac/1e as a pair (Guillen 1971: 144), whichjointly established the formula
of the picaresque novel (see Ch. 2, s. ii above), and they regarded the later
work as being a brilliantly suggestive continuation and transformation of the
precursor, which at the same time involved a controversial denial ofits spirit.
In order to elucidate the battle lines mentioned above, we need to give some
attention to their conception of LAzarillo, and also to distinguish this from
modern conccptions.
_Chevalier's study of the responses to LAzariflo of Spanish Golden Age
readers confirms that they unanimously perceived it as a libro de bl4rlas, a
10 See the edition of La pf<ara]11stina by Rey Hazas, i. 73, where thc rcfc:rcnce to the two gen-
res is perfectly clear. In the apocryphal continuation of G11zma11 deA!farad1t by Juan Marti (16o2),
thcre is a lengthy diatribe ag-Jinst morally harmful literature which seduces and corrupts unwary
readen by its charms (bk. III, eh. 7; BAE III, p.•p7). lt is directly comparable to the prologue to
La plcara ]u$ti„a. While the nature of that literature is not specified, an obvious inference can be
drawn from the fact that the passage occun in the context of the hero's infatuation with an actress
and addiction to the theatre, which leads to his downfall and condemnation to the galleys. Clearly,
the parade oflearning and moralizing in the apocryphal sequel is designed to forestall the objec-
tion that it falls into the morally obnoxious category.
284 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
book of funny sayings and doings. Also, th~y were strongly ~ware_ of the
story's loose structure, similar to that of a strmg ofbeads, :nd m the1r reac-
tions to it tended to dismantle it into those separate 'beads '. each based ?n ~
traditionaljest, fiom which it had been assembled: the bash~ng ofLazarillo s
head against the stone bull; Lazarillo's revenge upon the blmd man for that
hoax; bis trick for siphoning wine from the jar; and so ~n. 1 1 For that a.ge,
one aspect implied the other: libros de b11rlas such as LAzarillo, LA pfcara]ustma,
and EI Buscon were assumed to be amalgams of diverse material conducive
to that effect; and the premium placed upon variety in any kind ofliterature
of entertainment reinforced this preconception. In LAzarillo, apart from
traditional facetiae, the comic material includes: the types and situations
adapted from Apuleius, Erasmian satire, and so on; the ~ardoner~s fraud. bor-
rowed from a novella by Masuccio; the superb repertmre of w1t that 1s the
hero's narrative style (parody of biblical language, laconic understatement,
ironic euphemism, wryly misapplied proverbs, wordplay, the discordant
notes of pathetic lamentation and virtuous pride); and, not least, the motifS
of the Celestina tradition, which are modified and given a new lease of life
in a period when their direct repetition was effectively blocked. So, the blind
man's relationship of malign foster parent and tutor to Lazarillo rcplicates
that of the bawd to Parmeno in Rojas's LA Celestina; the barren house
of Lazarillo's third master, the squire, symbol of his moral hollowness, is
modelled on that of Rojas's braggart ruffian Centurio; Uzaro's sleazy auto-
biography is foreshadowed by the miniature life stories told by ruffians like
Galtcrio of LA Thebayda and Pandulfo of LA segunda Celestina. Abovc all,
Llzaro inherits from Celestina and her girls an underworld ethic, which im-
pudently invcrts the gentleman's code and misappropriates its style and
principles, including the appeal to learned authorities and biblical adages.
At the centre of all these motifs, as their bonding agent, is the figure of the
p{caro. His combination of traits and functions-ignominious parenthood,
servant of many masters, hapless victim of diverse misfortunes, droll auto-
biographer-is destined to give to picaresque novels such family identity as
they possess.
By contrast with the Golden Age, modern readers are more strongly
aware of coherent patterns of development in the relationship ofLazaro to
each of his first three masters, andin his career as a whole, all of which give
new purposefulness to the novel's loose, primitive structure and appear to
transcend it. In Francisco Rico's interpretation of LAzarillo in LA novela
picaresca y el punto de vista (1970) (Point ofView in the Picaresque Novel),
complementary to that offernando Lazaro Carreter in 'l.Azarillo deTormes'
11
See Chevalier (1976: 167-97, especially 181), and Soons (1976: 11). For summary and syn-
thesis of the !arge bibliograpby of scholarship and criticism on I..azarillo, see Rico 's introduction
to his edition (1987), also Dunn (1993: 29-46).
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 285
en /a picaresca (1972) ('Lazarillo de Tormes' in the Picaresque), and, with it,
seminally influential upon subsequent criticism of the genre, each ingredi-
ent in the narrative is designed by its narrator, Lazaro, to explain, prefigure,
and justify his present point of view, including his marginalized outlook on
the world. The ragbag of traditional motifs which enters into the novel's
construction is transformed and unified by the theme of the forging of a
dropout's conscience, and by the perfect circular trajectory of a career whose
conclusion returns us to the prologue and to the inception of the act of
writing. Such, for Rico (1970: 29-SS; cf. Rico 1984), was the original poetics
of the picaresque, subsequently consolidated and developed by Guzman de
A!farache, and frivolously parodied or trivialized by its successors. In his view,
as in Lazaro Carreter's, the realism, poised self-consciousness, and coherence
of this conception of the subject looks forward to the modern novel. For all
the brilliant persuasiveness of these two interpretations, they are open to the
charge of anachronism in allowing true picaresque pedig~ee onl~ to tho~e
features of the genre which appear to prefigure a modermst poettcs, and m
demoting to a condition of shallow derivativeness virtually every picaresque
novel written after Guzman de A!farache. Though, obviously, criticism of
LAzarillo and the picaresque has not stood still since Rico's and Uzaro
Carreter's books came out, their assumptions about the realism and organic
unity of the first picaresque novel, and about its foundation~ signi~cance,
still form the basis of criticism written in the 198os and 199os, mcluding that
marked by a postmodernist slant. 12 .
The essential risibility of LAzarillo, as Rico himself perce1ved (1970: 50),
puts in question the sophisticated purp~ses ~at he_ attribu~es to it, whose
basis is the psychological coherence ofLazaro s relatJ.on to h1s ow? past and
· to the addressee of his story, that anonymous 'Vuestra ~erced' (Sir~. In that
society, acutely conscious of class-distinctions and thetr ~utward s1gns, the
pfcarcr-a term not used in LAzarillo de Tormes, but apphcable to t~e hero
nonetheless-was considered the lowest of the low, ragged and abJect, fit
only for menial occupations such as basket c~rrier, kitchen. ski~, beggar. In
line with the traditional equation oflow subject matter w1th plam style and
comicality, it was taken for granted that such an individ~al could only be
considered a figure of fim. The comic shock effect ?f this an~ subsequ_ent
·
p1caresque nove1s, whi"ch is essentially what they. aim to .ach1eve,b"l"
denves
b
from the hero's droll, impudent flaunting of h1s 0':11 d1sreputa 1 ity Y
means of autobiography, a genre cultivated in the Spamsh G~lden A~e by all
kinds and conditions of persons: Columbus, St Te~esa, ßtshop Di~go de
·
S1mancas, ·
sold1ers an d ad venturers like Alonso Ennquez de Guzman and
· ) s · h ( l9 88). '. Dunn (1993)
12 l rcfcr, for cxample, to Sieber (1978 • mi.t
and numerous revisionist
. ~ d b resentful fury not
rcadings of Guzma11 which treat the narr:itors mora11Z1ng as monva e Y
pcnitence.
286 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MJND
Diego Duque de Estrada, and normally associated with illustrious achieve-
ment and seriously exemplary purpose. 13 So, the picaresque has an implicitly
parodic relation to more serious narrative modes, especially autobiography
and chivalric romance. This carries implications about Uzaro 's nature as a
literary character. Presupposing this to be a composite of comic functions,
Spanish Golden Age readers appear happily to have accepted his discharge
of three traditional roles, without being bothered by the incompatibility of
the füst two with the third: 14 (i) a trickster who lcarns the arts of survival
so weil that he even manages to outwit that epitome of cunning, the blind
man; (ii) a raconteur equipped with the requisite sly wit to tell his life story
in the appropriate style; (iii) a trusting fool, liable to be deceived by appear-
ances from beginning to end: that is, from the moment of the blind man's
invitation to put his head against the stone bull to bis smugly crass conclu-
sion about having attained the height of prosperity and good fortune. So far
as 1 know, they seem never to have questioned Lizaro's show of credulity in
the face of the Archpriest's and his wife's incredible assurances about ht:r
virtue. 1 S Modem readers, by contrast, virtually to a man or a wo man, as-
sume Llzaro to be a disingenuous cuckold, precisely because his stance as
artfully selective and self-justifying recorder of his own life would be in-
conceivable without such lucidity. Yet modern criticism rarely faces up to a
question which quite subverts its assumptions about the realism of this
stance. Whoever, in that age, with all its prickly prejudices about honour,
would have chosen to seek authorial fame and moral self-justification by
pushing under society's nose the transparent evidence of his own marital
horns? 16 And furthermore, whoever would have clone so with such flippant
drollery and smirking innuendo as to incite, quite deliberately, the derision
that these disclosures naturally prompt? Clearly, nobody would, other than
in the extravagant world of comic fantasy, or, conceivably, in a pose jestingly
1
3 1bis is the point of Perlicaro's sarcastic comparison of the plcara Justina, as she is about to
begin her story, with more illustrious narrators of their Jives: Caesar, .Aeneas, St Teresa. See the
edition by Rey Hazas, i. 137-8.
•4 Fray Jose de Sigücnza, in his history of the Jeronimite Order (1595), ascribing the author-
ship of Lazarillo to a member of the order, Fray Juan de Ortega, who rose to become its general,
commends it warmly for the decorum (appropriateness to type, hencc lifelikeness) of the charac-
terization and the propriety ofthe style in so humble a subject. See NBAE 12,p. 145.
1
S Certainly, no shadow of suspicion crossed the mind of the author of the interpolations added
~o the edition ofAlcala, publishcd soon after the original, in 1554 (sec Dlecua's edirion, 175).And,
m both sequels to Lazarillo (Antwerp, 1555; Paris, 1620), Llzaro is ftabbergasted to discover his
wife's infidelity.
16
lt is indeed true, as Blecua points out in the introduction to his edition of Lazarillo (35), that
a ~e. of plebeian presumption frequendy laughed at in the Spanish Golden .Age, in real life as weil
as m hrerarure, was that of the man of vile occupation and morals who claims to be as honourable
as anybody eise. Undoubtedly, Llzaro belongs to this category. However, in deriding this attitude,
men normally took for granted its stupidity, very different from the self-analytic lucidity nowadays
ascribed to him.
CERVANTES BETWEEN CUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGB 287
ad~pted ,by a ~rofes~ional buffoon. For all the psychological finesse with
wh1ch Lazaro ts dep1cted, made all the more attractive by the author's evi-
dent sympathy for the disadvantaged, that sphere of fantasy is where Llzaro
and bis descendants essentially belang.
Now, the conception of character as personified jocular function of an
extreme, degraded kind, and of a 'life' as loose frame for miscellaneous
dro~lery, le~ves ~ deep i~print on the picaresque after Lazarillo, including the
fictton on tts frmges, hke Don Quijote. Obviously it problematizes Alemins
attempt to raise the picaresque to a more serious and reflective level. lt also
problematizcs the consideration of comic fiction in terms of the conceptual
pillars of the traditional poetics: pleasure and profit, unity, decorum,
verisimilitude. Indeed, it discourages that kind of thinking altogether. To see
how and why, let us turn to Guzman de A!farache.
Mateo Alemin (1547-1615?) was an accountant in the Spanish Treasury,also
a judge and dealer in real estate. In recreating the picaresque theme of
l.Azarillo de Tormes in Guzman de A!farache, and doing füll justice to its com-
icality, he gives it the startlingly serious inflection that has already been dis-
cussed (Ch. 2, s. ii). His novel establishes many of the basic assumptions of
Spanish Golden Age comic fiction, though, as embodied within it, they are
largely unspoken, and constitute a significant silence rather than an explicit
poetics.
lt is strange that Guzmin, a learned narrator compulsively prone to self-
analysis, should have so little to say about how his story should be told and
should make such scant reference to contemporary poetic theory. 1 find it
significant that Edmond Cros (1967a), in his seminal study of Alemin's
indebtedness to traditional rhetorics and the miscellany books engendered
by its imitative habits of mind, bases himself much less on what Alemin
explicitly says than on how his novel was interpreted by its translators and
eulogists. To be sure, Guzmin's silence on such matters has an evident ex-
planation: he is above all concerned to wake his readers from the sleep of
moral reason, and this preoccupation with the message understandably
works against the rationalization of its form. Also, the picaresque was a low,
light theme, unrecognized as a distinct genre, let alone a canonical one,
when Alemin wrote part I ofhis novel.Against that, the familiarity with the
prescriptive background that he incidentally reveals, the seriousness of his
project, and the surge ofliterary theorizing in late sixteenth-century Spain,
some of it centred on new or renovatcd genres, still leave grounds for puz-
zlement about this silence.
Those who have written about Aleman's poetics tend to attach signi-
ficance to the two amusing anecdotes about painters which figure near the
heginning and end of the novel, treating ehern as general reflections on his
288 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 289
narrative strategy. Yet this violates their sense and purpose. The first, about a
largamente diziendo el cauteloso trato de la corte' (Tablas poeticas, ed.
painter who needlessly embroiders the picture of a horse with a backg~ound
Brancaforte, 220). (lt would be a fine thing if one were to hear a rustic utter
of sky, clouds, ruins, trees, and fields, can scarcely be read ~s so1?1e k~nd ~f
philosophical maxims, or discourse at length on the cautious behaviour
serious comment on the artistic problem of amplificatory d1gress1on smce 1t
proper to the court.) The comment could obviously be extended to
occurs in the context of Guzmin's burlesque, deliberately self-betraying de-
Guzman de A!faracl1e. ·
fence of his father's character against the supposedly malicious accusations
That infraction of decorum is the one problem to which Alemin and
of his detractors (G14zman de A!faraclie pt. 1, bk. i, eh. 1; ed. Gili Gaya, i.
Guzman rcpeatcdly allude, without ever resolving; it arises from the paradox
49-52). lt is designed to illustrate men's incorrigible proneness to cxagger-
basic to the story, well expressed in Espinel's laudatory epigram (see Ch. 2,
ate. The second anecdote is also about a commissioned painting of a horse,
s. ii). Again and again, Guzmin anticipates the reader's potential objections
which appears vnung to the dient because the painter inadvertently shows
to being preached at by a lowly p{caro and galley slave; the apologies, often
it to him upside down (n. iii. 9; v. 157-8). The application is not aesthetic but
wryly humorous, merely result in ad hoc suspension of the sermon, never its
theological: an illustration of the novel's major theme of the providential
curtailment in principle, for the good reason that this is the essential pur-
trials by which God tests and enriches the spirit ofhis followers. Though at
pose of the book: 'Yo tambien he ido tras de mi pensamiento, sin pensar
first they seem quite arbitrary, they reveal a rational purpose when the canvas
parar en el mundo. Mas, como el fin que Ilevo es fabricar un hombre per-
is seen from a different perspective. In this respect, the difference between
feto, siempre que hallo piedras para el edificio, las voy amontonando' (II. i. 7;
Alemin and Cervantes is striking: the latter's works abound in passages
iii. 187). (1 too have let myself run away with my thoughts, without any
which have the kind of metafictional symbolism attributed to the two men-
notion of stopping. But since my objective is to build the idea of a perfect
tioned above. Maese Pedro's puppet show, discussed in Chapter S above, is
man, whenever 1 find stones for the purpose 1 heap them up.) More par-
one ofthem.
ticularly, it is essential to the book's design that the sermon, including its
Similar indifference to theory is discernible in several aspects of the
scathing censure of contemporary abuses and the typical traits of vice,
narrative which imply either Aleman's adoption of a particular artistic prin-
should come from one who has an insider's knowledge of them, can address
ciple, or his confrontation of a problem which requires a theoretical re~o~u­
tion. Yet the principles are rarely articulated, the problems never explic1tly
tu tu
the reader on familiar terms de a (as thou to thou), unmask his evasions
of self-knowledge, chide or exhort him from a position of disarming
resolved. For example,Alemin refers to his story, in the 'Declaraci6n para el
humility, and, though a lowly plcaro, remind him of their spiritual parity as
entendimiento deste libro' (Declaration for the understanding of this book)
sinners in God's eyes. There are echoes of Erasmian radicalism in these
preceding part I, as a 'poetica historia'. The epithet carries n~o~Aristot_elian
admonitions: 'Take it from me that we're all men equipped with under-
resonance. But what exactly does it imply: merely that th1s is a fict1onal
standing. The habit doesn't make the monk' (1. ii. 3; ii. 36). lt is equally
autobiography rather than a real one, or, more interestingly, that this fiction,
integral to the book's design that the sermon should arise di.rectly fro":1 a
as contrasted with history, aspires to universal truth? 17 And what kind of
compulsively gripping and risible story. On these factors tts persuasive
'poetica historia' is in question: epic or comic? Alemin does not say. 1 find
efficacy depcnds.
it hard to discern in this label the proximity to L6pez Pinciano 's neo-
Now, it would be wrang to suppose that every one of Guzman's m~ral­
Aristotelian doctrine that Cavillac, for one, attributes to him (1993: 180),
istic or satiric reflections is subject to his creator's unease about propnety,
since, as Moreno Diez rightly notes (1948: 166-9),Alemin's attitude to mor-
since scores of them are offered without trace of apology. Only some,
alizing digression is incompatible with Classic~ orthodoxy. lt_ ~an _ha~dly_ be
particularly those where the preacher's or political reformer's tone is insist-
reconciled with the recommendation of necess1ty and probabthty m lmkmg
ent, elicit from the pfcaro those characteristic bursts of knockabout sel~­
episodes and digressions to the main plot, nor with the principle _of ?eco-
disparagement:'jO que gentil disparate! jQue fundado enTeologia! ,No ve1s
rum which requires the matching of speaker to theme. Cascales, thmkmg of
el salto que hc dado del banco a la popa? jQue vida de Juan de Dios la mfa
pastoral novels no doubt, remarks ironically: 'Bueno seria que a un _rustic~
para dar esta dotrina! Calent6se el horno y salieron estas llam~radas' (1. i. 2;
Ie oyessemos consejos sacados de las entrafias de la filosofia, o d1scurnr
i. 92). (Oh what a fine piece of nonsense! How well grounded m Theology!
17 Baltasar Graciin, who, in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio, discourse 56, interprets Guzrmln de Don't you see my jump from the galley slave's bench to the poop? What a
A!faracht in the sense in which Renaissance humanists interp~e~ed t~e <;>dy~uy, as an ~egory of Iife ofJohn of God I lead to give this doctrine! Sorry, the oven overheated
man's pilgrimage through life, would presumably have read this 1mphcatton mto the cp1thet.
and these flames just shot out.) The merely occasional nature of these
 .. „ . . . -
290 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
passages would suggest an underlying conception of limits within which
moralizing and satire are permissible. What are those limits? Cervantes, in
the Coloq14io de los perros, worries insistently over the problem, offering the
t1011ela itself as its solution. Guzmin raises it by means of these clownish
apologies, but, invariably,just leaves it hanging in the air and returns abruptly
to his story.
Yet there is another motive for Guzmin's reticence, and it is, 1 think, the
fundamental one. lt has to do with his conception of the story as having two
aspects, designed to engage the reader's interest on two different levels: first,
the incidents of a disreputable life of thcft, cheating, and humiliating mishap
designed eo offer light, hilarious entertainment; second, the lessons derivable
from that life, conducive to an altogether more serious response. The story
involves a paradoxical disproportion between matter and moral; and because
the former is squalid, trifling, and uproarious, it is not, one infers, a subject
that grips the narrator's theoretical attention: 'EI sujeto es humilde y bajo.
EI principio fue pequeii.o; lo que pienso tratar, si como buey lo rumias,
volviendolo a pasar del est6mago a la boca, podrfa ser importante, grave y
grande' (n. i. 1; iii. 72). (The subject is low and humble. lts beginning was
small; what 1 now propose to treat, if you chew the cud like an ox, passing
it again fiom stomach to mouth, could be important, grave, and substantial.)
I do not mean by this that the composition of the story Jacks care; far from
it, the concern to achieve verisimilitude and consistency is manifest, and is
the basis of the accusation that Alemin brings against the apocryphal
version. 18 No autobiography of the Spanish Golden Age, fictional or real,
apart from St Teresa's, sustains so convincingly the impression of a coherent
moral/psychological trajectory and of a retrospect which discerns signi-
ficant patterns, anticipations, turning points, and remembers moments of
~itter recolle.ction of ~revious rnistakes. Moreover, the comically rumbus-
t1ous sce~es m Guzman de Alfarache are written with as much polish as the
more , senous passages; this is especially true of the second part, where
Aleman sets out to show his own hero outshining Marti's, represented by
t~e c~ara~ter Sayavedra, in criminal audacity and wit. However, so far as ra-
ttonahzat1on goes, this is virtually confined to the admonition not to miss
t~e m~ssage for the delightful envelope. This is expressed with the neat pun-
nmg d1cho~omy of conseja and consejo in the preliminaries to part I:'no te rias
de la conseja y se te pase el consejo' (i. 34) (don't laugh at the tale and let the
moral pass over your head), and by means of the dichotomy of gold leaf and
18
In the prologu~ to pt. 11 c···
m. S 1-3), he accuses Martl of various failures of consistency with
wba:t had be~ P~nused or presupposed in his own pt.1, including Guzmin's completion of a uni-
~erstty educanon tn the humanities and theology. Clearly Alemin attaches importance to explain-
ing, _as the author of l.Azarillo signally fall$ to do, his p(caro's compctence to write his story in a
particular style.
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMÄN AND ITS HERITAGE 291
medicinal pill, equated to that of laughter and tears, in the first chapter of
part II: 'porque con oro fino se cubre Ja pildora y a veces le causari risa
lo que le debiera hacer verter lagrirnas' (n. i. 1; iii. 82-3). (For the pill is
covered with fine gold and sometimes you will merely laugh at what should
make you weep.)
The last quotation rounds otf a train of reflection which contains
Guzman's most sigriificant aesthetic pronouncement: his allusion to the
conflicting demands made upon him by different types of rcader and bis
appeal to the principle of variety in order to justify his refusal to be re-
stricted to just one type of matter. Heliogabalus's feasts were monotonous,
he says, because, while they contained many dishes and courses, these merely
played variations on the same type of food. By contrast, nature is beautiful
because it adorns fields with diverse flowers, makes hills alternate with
valleys, streams, fountains. This appeal to the maxim 'ehe per tal variar natura
e bella' is not simply an excuse to digress along any path that takes the
writer's fancy. Beneath the different species of reader whimsically evoked-
'the melancholic, the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, the sober, the
boisterous, the rhetorician, the philosopher, the divine, the dissolute, the
courtier, the rustic, the barbarian, the discreet, and even Mistress Feather-
brain' (iii. 80)--one detects, easily enough, two broad categories: the low-
brow and the learned. What the former are deemed to want, and what the
second wave of picaresque novelists would copiously supply, was concentra-
tion on the hilarious picaresque life at the expense of the moralistic gloss. lt
is the unintellectual type of reader that Guzman has in mind when, after de-
tailed denunciation of the practice of contraescrituras (false affidavits by which
merchants declare the contraction of a debt}, he comes out with this (11. iii .
•
3; iv. 231-2):
Porque dicin para que aconseja el que a si no se aconseja. Que igual hubiera sido
haberles contado tres o cuatro cuentos alegres, con que la seiiora doiia Fulana, que
ya esta cansada y durmiendose con estos disparates, hubiera entretenidose.Ya le oigo ·
decir a quien esta leyendo que me arronje a un rinc6n, porque le cansa oirme. Tiene
mil razones. Que, como verdaderamente son verdades las que trato, no son para
entretenimiento, sino para el sentimiento, no para chacota, sino para con mucho
estudio ser miradas y remediadas. Mas, porque con la purga no haga ascos y la dejes
de tomar por el mal olor y sabor, echemosle un poco de oro, cubcimoslo por encima
con algo que bien parezca.
For they'll say why do 1 waste time counselling others when 1 can't counsel mys~lf.
That 1 would have done as much good telling them three or four merry tales, wtth
which Mistress So-and-So, who is already worn out and asleep with this nonsense
of mine, would have been entertained. 1 can alrcady hear my reader telling me to
get lost, because he's tired oflistening to me. How right he is! for, since the ma~ter
that I've just dealt with is truly substantial, it's not fit for amusement but for gnef,
292 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMÄN AND ITS HERITAGE 293
not for guffaws, but for serious consideration and reform.13ut, so that you do not
grimace at the purge and fail to take it for its bad taste and smell, let's throw some
cuatro
ffi cuentos
) , . , ,alegres'
. , (three
, .or four merry tales) •'chacota' (gle efiuI jes
· ts an d
gold leaf over it, something which will make it look weil. ~. aws , nsa, grac1as, pasat1empo' (laughter,jokes, pastime), 'un entreten-
1m1ent~ de gust?, con. que llamar el suefio y pasar el tiempo' (pleasing
Here is one of Guzman's familiar apologies for his meddlesome ponti-
enterta1~ment w1th wh1ch to summon sleep and pass the time).19
ficatio~. Significantly, it is deemed offensive from the viewpoint of fcathcr-
.. Aleman, tho~1gh a sup~rb comic novelist, perfectly represents the trad-
brained Mistress So-and-So, and carries the recognition that she too has
1t10nal concept10n of stones in general as light, somewhat frivolous enter-
rights. However, the previously mentioned defence of variety is designed,
tainm~nt, mere 'lies', 20 a prejudice firmly entrenched in Spain from the
just as significantly, to assert the contrasted rights of learned Doctor Such-
early s1xteenth ~ent~ry on~ards, and reflected in the attacks by Erasmians
and-Such, and to deny the demands of Mistress So-and-So that exclusive at-
such as Juan Lms Vives agamst chivalric romances. lt would receive ideo-
tention be given to her.The weight ofthat defence falls emphatically on the
~ogic~l and. i~~titutio~al support after Trent, culminating in the reform
message, not the narrative medium. As in his biography of St Anthony of
JUnta s proh1b1t1on ofhcence to publish ttovelas in Castile for ten years from
Padua,Alemin's concern with theory in his picaresque novel is confined to
. 1625. Fo~ A~~~i_n, fic~ion's inherent mendacity is aggravated by this particu-
just one question, and, given the incompatibility of his project with the
la_r.storys ns1b1h~, w1th all the negative associations attaching to that con-
canonical poetics, his treatment of the question is either frivolous or
d1t1on. After makmg due allowance for humorous exaggeration and false
superficial. To be sure, his learned fan club (13arros, Mabbe, Espinel, Gracian,
modest~, one cannot avoid being struck by his consistently deprecatory
and so on) were prepared to forgive him everything on the strength of the
tone. lt is corroborated by the passage in Guzmin's discourse on the differ-
wit, eloquence, and erudition with which he had treated so low a theme, yet
ent classes of deception or lying in II. i. 3, in which he includes 'tales, nove-
Alemin's scruples continue to show, even after the wave of enthusiasm gen-
las, fab~es and other such entertainments' in the category of non-prejudicial
erated by the first part.
decepttons, bracketing them with sleights of hand and conjuring tricks (iii.
While learned Doctor Such-and-Such is also entitled to apologies, in that
I 16). The pejorative implications of this become apparent if one compares
he too may regard the p{caro's sermonizing as a bit rich coming from him,
the passage with Cervantes's admonition in the Coloquio de los perros regard-
Alemin feels that he owes this type of reader another, very different form of
ing the skills of mim es and jugglers to which the noblemen should not stoop
cont;ition'. motivated not by the sermons but by the 'three or four merry
(see Ch. 4,s. i above).To be sure, the handling of episodes in the novel, which
~es . In his p~logue to the reader in the preliminaries of part II he excuses
mainly consist of novelas and involve personages and events more dignified
its faults by c1tmg the need to rush to give the lie to the published, apoc-
than those featured in the story of Guzman's adventures, implies a positive
ryphal vers~on, sayin~: 'Si aqui los frasis no fueren tan gallardos, tan levan-
justification for them. Introduced on the traditional pretext of the need to
~do el e~tilo, el decrr suave, gustosas las historias ni el modo facil, doy
while away the tedium of a journey or enliven an after-dinner conversation,
d1s~ulpa, s1 necedades la tienen, ser necesario mucho, aun para escrebir poco,
they serve the therapeutic purpose of consoling the listeners for some ad-
Y t1empo largo para verlo y emendarlo' (iii. 54). (If in this part the periods
versity by the pleasure (gusto) and entertainment that they bring. This ap-
sho~ld seem less handsome, the style less lofty, the diction less sweet, the
plies too, to some extent, to comic stories. There is a passage in which
stones less pleasing and their manner less clear, 1 offer the excuse, if follies
Guzman, in prison and condemned to the galleys, receives a letter from his
have any, that much effort is necessary even to write little and much time
mistress, the mulatto slave of the married lady whose estate he embezzled in
to look over it and correct it.) Here the preponderance of rhetorical terms
('fr . ' • 'gallardo ' , ' estt·1 o 17vantado', 'decir suave') implies an appeal to the the capacity of steward. lt is the artless outpouring of an unscrupulous and
. as1s
ignorant woman in love, expressing a view of Guzmin's predicament very
~~d of r~ader who looks m Guzman for the qualities that Gracian found in
different from that of honour and reason, and larded with disparaging com-
. · mventlon
tt· . • el~quence, eru d"1uon, · · Though the abusive epithet necedades
w1t.
ments al;Jout her mistress and the magistrate and inconsequential details
is vm~ally ~qm~alent to the disparates deemed to have put Doiia Fulana to
slee~, 1t pomts m the opposite direction: not at the moralizing but at the l9 'Risa', 'gracias', 'pasatiernpo' are rnentioned in 11. i. 1; iii. 82-3;'un entretenimiento de gusto
com1c adve~tures. Such dis~araging language is habitually used' to refer to · · .'in 11. ii. z; iii. 266. Cf. similar terminology about tales told by or to Guzm.in in 1. ii. 9: ii. 136; II.
them, the d1s~aragement bemg made quite plain by the contrast with the ii. 4: iv. 10; 11. iii. 1: iv. 182-3, 193.
20 On this subject, see Pabst (1972) and Lasperas (1987: 75-80). Ife (1985: 117-44), argues that
gra~e and po1~nt substance that the lowbrow reader, misogynistically the narrative of G11.1:mJ11 de A!farad1t is framed in order to meet this Platonist hostility to fiction:
cancatured• typ1cally overlooks · They are typ1c · all y charactenzed
· as: 'tres o Alcmfo deliberately makes the reader empathize with sin in order to lead him to critical under-
standing of it, and detachment fium it.
294 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
about fellow servants, Guzmin's laundry, and delicacies that she is sending
to him. lt anticipates the comically base epis?es. included ~y Que;edo in ~l
Bllscon and Cervantes in Don Quijote. Guzman mtroduces 1t thus: me env10
una carta, que, por ser donosa, me pareci6 hacer memoria della y porque
tambien es bien aflojar a e1 arco la cuerda contando algo que sea de en-
tretenimiento' (u. iii. 7; v. 123). (She sent me a letter, which, because it's
funny, I thou?ht I would s~t down, and a~so becaus~ i~'s rig~t to ~nwind the
bowstring w1th the narration of somethmg entertammg.) Th1s metaphor
of unwinding is a familiar topos of apologetic contexts about the social use-
fulness of theatre and fiction, and implies, potentially, that funny stories have
just as legitimate a recreational role as more serious ones. However, if
Alemin believes that, he does not reconcile the inconsistency with the dis-
paraging language exemplified above, which refers primarily, 1 think, to the
former kind of story, that is, to Guzmin's exploits, mishaps, and amusing
anecdotes.
This disparaging tone is consonant with his manner of describing the way
in which he entertains his masters, as an ingenious executor of pranks and
as an entertaining raconteur:
AJegrose oyendome, y como haciendo burla me dijo: '(Cual embeleco tienes ya
trazado, Guzmanillo?' (1. ii. 10; ii. 155)
He grew merry when he heard me, and in a joking manner said:'What scheme have
you hatched now, Guzmanillo?'
Gustaba dellas [cosas, burlas] y de mi como de unjoglar. (1. iii. 9; ii. 280)
He took pleasure in these things (i.e. pranks] andin me, as though l were a jester.
Lo recebia de donaires que le decia, cuentos que le contaba y a veces de recaudos
que Je llevaba de algunas damas a quien servia ... Y hablando claro, yo era su
gracioso; aunque otros me llamaban truhln chocarrero. (1. iii. 10; iii. 12-13)
He [the Ambassador) took pJeasure in jokes and taJes that 1 toJd him, and sometimes
in messages that l brought him from some ladies whom he courted ... To speak
pJainJy, 1 was his jester, though others called me shameless buffoon.
Cuando lo via desvelado lo entretenfa con historias y cuentos de gusto. (11. iii. 8;
v. 144)
When I saw him unable to sleep 1 entertained him by telling him pJeasant tales.
Cuando [al caballero] Je dijeron mis partes y supo ser entretenedor y gracioso, no
via ya Ja hora de que me pasasen a Ja popa. (11. iii. 9; v. 159)
When they told this gentleman of my talents and he Jearnt that 1 was funny and
entertaining, he couldn't wait for me to be sent to the poop.
21
Cf. two othcr occasions on which laughter eures Guzman's perturbation, anger in one case,
fcarful apprehension in the other: 11. i. 8; iii. 213; 11. iii. 1; iv. 183.
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 295
Contahale cuentos donosos a Ja mesa las noches y fiestas, procurando tenerle
siempre alegre. (11. iii. 9; v. 162)
At nights and on feast days, 1 told him funny stories at tabJe, trying to keep him
always happy.
The last three examples occur when Guzmin is a convict on the galley, and
endeavours to ingratiate himself with and entertain his superiors, slipping
back into his former role as a courtjester.All the above-quoted passages rep-
resent the primary level on which Guzmin engages the reader's interest. His
relation to the reader is prefigured in his relation to his masters, particularly
thöse of noble status. Just as Aleman takes good care to ensure that his nar-
rator's mrriculum vitae includes university qualifications which will make
plausible his moralistic and censorious role, so does he take equally good
care to render natural his prank-playing disposition and gifts as a wit and
storyteller, by making his career in part I culminate in the role of private
jester of the Ambassador ofFrance in Rome. 22 Since his moral development
in part 1 marks a trajectory of progressive deterioration-from spoilt
mother's boy, to pfcaro led astray by gambling and bad companions, to beggar
congenitally unfit for any honest, settled occupation, each phase corres-
ponding to one of the three books 2 3-his self-qualification for the primary
aspect of his role as narrator coincides with his descent to the lowest of the
low: court jester and go-between combined.
Thus,Alemin's deprecatory attitude towards comic narrative is coexten-
sive with his attitude towards the risible and towards Guzman in that aspect,
which is strikingly reminiscent of L6pez Pinciano's: the opposition of burlas
to veras, laughter to tears and moral gravity; the conception of ridiculous
behaviour and the laughter provoked by it as trifling, vile, and shameful, and
opposed to well-bred reason; the urge to fence it off from the sphere of veras,
courtly civility, honour.An example of this demarcation is the way in which
Guzmin's humiliating pranks on various upstart parasites who abuse the
Ambassador's habit ofkeeping open table are followed at once by the entry
of a Neapolitan gentleman who recounts the macabre affair ofDorido and
Clorinia (1. iii. 10). That is, the sphere of the jester's burlas and of the reactions
and mishaps of his victims-bloody noses, broken teeth, demeaning motes,
brazen bad manners-is juxtaposed with a courtly, tragic drama appropriate
to an Italianate novella, and its separateness and difference are by that means
starkly highlighted. Similarly, the squalid farce of ~uzmin's adve~tures. at
inns on the road from Seville to Madrid, a road wh1ch also takes this Jew1sh
pariah away from God and honourable society, is m:ide to contrast, at the
22 On Guzman 's experience as jescer considered as preparation for his role as storyteller, see also
Carlos Rodriguez (1984); cf. Cox Davis (~9~9). . , .
2 3 See the 'Declaraci6n para el entendinuento deste libro, 1. 36-1·
 -----11·
296 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
end ofbook i of part 1 with the heroic, poignant, and devout interpolation
of Ozmin and Daraja, culminating in the integration of the Moorish lovers
in the Christian court of the Catholic Monarchs. The belittling conception
of the comic inherent in it is made quite explicit in the prologue of part 1
that is addressed to the discreet reader (i. 35):
En el discurso podcis moralizar seg6n se te ofreciere: larga margen te queda. Lo que
hallares no grave ni compuesto, eso es el ser de un picaro el sujcto dcste libro. Las
tales cosas, aunque serin muy pocas, picardea con cllas: que en las mesas esplendi-
das manjares ha de haber de todos gustos, vinos blandos y suaves, que alegrando
ayuden a la digestiön, y mfuicas que entretengan.
In the course of the story you may derive moral reflections as opportunity arises:
there is ample scope for it.Whatever you find in it that is not grave or seemly is due
to the fact that the subject of this book is a p{caro. Such things, though vcry few, you
may toy with: for on splendid tables there must be food for all tastes, soft and smooth
wines, which cheer and aid digestion, music which entertains.
No doubt the nature ofAleman's addressee at this point, that is, the discreet
reader, leads him to understate the quantity of frivolous, unseemly matter in
his book. At any rate, what he has in mind by this is made apparent by
Guzman's first two adventures at inns and by the mule drover's reaction to
the first of them.
After running away from his home and his mother's care, he arrives at an
inn, tired and famished after his first day's hike, seeing the place with the
rose-tinted expectation with which Columbus first sighted the lndics (1. i.
3; i. 108). The violent disillusion that he now suffers has just been preceded
by a distinction between two types of affiiction: first, those sent by divine
providence to test and temper the soul, 'most precious jewels covered with
a thin layer of dust', from which God retrieves the faithful spiritually
enriched; second, those brought upon the sinner by bis own folly, which
bring only material and spiritual harm. This topic of pulpit oratory, a
major theme of the novel, elicits a duster of commonplace images reminis-
cent of the same discourse: the second kind of affiiction is false delight to
the eyes which shatters the body, green fields fuIJ of poisonous vipers,
deceptive jewels concealing scorpions, eternal death which deceives with
brief life. The emblematic imagery is coextensive with the physical circum-
stances of the b11rla that Guzmin now suffers, in which a seemingly tasty
omelette replaces jewels, and its revolting ingredients scorpions. The
innkeeperess, an aged hag with breath so fetid as to make Guzman want to
vomit, and a mother figure who grotesquely replaces the natural mother
from whom he has just run away, sits the boy at a table set with filthy and
dilapidated accessories: an oven rag for a tablecloth, an egg crock for a water
jar, the broken base of a water pitcher for a salt cellar, a loaf blacker than the
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMÄN AND ITS HERITAGE 297
rag. She then serves him an omelette which he wolfs down 'like a pig
rooting for acorns' (i. 110), undeterred by the bad taste, and without noting
the significance of the splintering sensation of little bones between his
teeth and gums. Realization only dawns upon him when he has left the inn
behind, and is made aware by his belches of the foul and indigestible nature
of what he has eaten. He vomits out all the contents of his stomach. In
this adventure Aleman dramatizes a traditional joke, based on the diner's
discovery that his eggs are ha1f-hatched (Timoneda, Portacuentos, ii. 38). Here
as elsewhere in the novel, the narrative occupies two levels: one, hilarious,
addressed to Mistress Featherbrain; the other, symbolic, to Gracian.
Obviously the two responses are not intended to be separate and ex-
dusive.
In this disconsolate condition Guzmin is joined by a mule drover travel-
ling the same road (1. i. 4), who, when he hears of Guzmin's mishap, morti-
fyingly roars with laughtcr, revea1ing soon afterwards that the occasion is not
the boy's discomfiture, but a practical joke subsequently played on the
innkeeperess which has effectively avenged him. Guzmin emphasizes the
uncouthness and immoderateness of the guffaws, which anticipate Sancho's
explosion of laughter when he and his master come face to face with the
banal cause of the clanking and pounding that had frightened them the pre-
vious night (Don Quijote 1. 20). They give rise to this generalizing observa-
tion on the frivolity of such behaviour: 'Porque aun Ja [risaJ moderada en
cierto modo acusa facilidad; la rimcha, imprudencia, poco entendimiento y
vanidad; y la descompuesta es de locos de todo punto rematados, aunque el
caso lo pida' (1. i. 4; i. 123). (For, in a way, even moderate laughter denotes
Jack of self-control; much mirth denotes imprudence, shallow judgement,
and empty-headedness; and uncontrolled mirth is fit for raving lunatics,
even though the occasion gives cause for it.) We remember the habitual
association of the epithet descompuesto with laughter in L6pez Pinciano's
treatise. Dy this time Guzmin and the mule drover have beenjoined by two
clergymen; cleady, Guzmin has deliberately delayed describing in detail the
occasion for the mule drover's mirth until these two personages can pro-
nounce judgement on it.
The drover reveals that he too stopped at that inn, where he saw the
innkeeperess serving an omelette to two youths, apparently soldiers (i.
123 ff.). Unlike Guzmin, they suspected that something was wrong with it
before eating it, discovered the truth, and, pretending not to have noticed
anything untoward, ordered some fish, which they ate instead. Then, on the
point of departure and instead of paying the bill, one of them smashed the
rotten omelette in the woman's face, while the other rubbed it with hot ash.
The physica1 circumstances: her screams of pain, her shrivelled and ugly
features with the aspect of a fish dipped in flour for frying, are graphically
298 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
conveyed. 2 4 The malice of the mule drover's mirth, and of Guzman 's satis-
faction at this outcome, is emphasized too; and Guzman's reaction prompts
one ofthe priests to deliver him a long sermon on the iniquity ofrevenge.
At the beginning of the next chapter (1. i. 5), Guzmin promises the reader
another 'dish' with which to pass the time entertainingly: a culinary meta-
phor that simultaneously refers to the next revolting meal that he is destined
to consume: this time, the fried offal of a mule, and to the previous one. As
we have seen, that metaphor is picked up in the apology to the discreet
reader for whatever unseemly matter that he may find in the book, and the
admonition to toy with it as with a light side dish. The apology is surely
motivated by these two burlas in particular. 2 5
However, these incidents, designed to signal emblematically the baseness
of Guzman's newly embraced career, and how it reduces him to irrational
bestiality, are representative in general of the mishaps, hoaxes, and deceptions
that are narrated subsequently. They are typical, first, in being based on
traditional jests; secondly, in the emphasis on physical and moral degrada-
tion, the malicious glee of the hoaxers and bystanders, and the alienness of
all this to discretion, enlightened morality, and good breeding. Thus, a con-
siderable part of two chapters (n. i. 6 and 7) is devoted to emphasizing the
derision incurred by Guzmin's involuntary, literal piggy-back ride through
the streets of Rome, and the desirability that the Ambassador should be
kept ignorant of it, and should dissociate himself from it. These considera-
tions apply also to verbal wit. When Guzmin, at this stage a jester in the
Ambassador's household, gives his recipe for effective jokes, his essential
ingredient is murmuradon, malicious insinuation, for which the matter is
supplied by diligent enquiry into private vices, particularly those of eminent
people (n. i. 2; iii. 87-8). Later, he gives demonstration of this talent with a
string of stinging motes and apodos about a pedant's carefully trimmed beard,
impressive camoußage for his lack of learning (n. i. 3; iii. 130-1). This
humiliation, inßicted at the Ambassador's table, reduces the victim to un-
controllable fury.We are reminded once again ofL6pez Pinciano, who states
categorically: 'where malicious speaking or ugliness of language or ignor-
ance and simple-mindedness are lacking, the witty saying is merely urbane
and courtly, having little of the ridiculous' (Philosophia antigua poetica, iii. 56).
Does all this mean, then, that the discreet reader is expected to read Guzman
de A!farache with stony unamusement?
2 4 Alemin is thinking here of a traditional practical joke: covering the victim with fiour. This
is made plain by what Costanza says to Bartolo in Lope de Vega's San l.sidro, labrador de Madrid, after
fiouring him: 'A fe que si fuera pez 1 que le pudieran freir' (Obras, RAE 4, p. 570). (In faith, ifhe
were a fish, you could fry him.) Cf. Lope's EI sanlo negro Rosamb1ico, BAE 178, p. 169.
2 S Cervantes, doubtless infiuenccd by Aleman, uses the same metaphor to justify the inclusion
of hilarious indignities at an inn in his prose epic Persiles (quoted in Ch. 2, s. i above).
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITACE 299
Obviously not. The discreet reader's reaction may be exemplified by the
Cardinal's to Guzmin's witty burlas, treated, in effect, as those of a buffoon
(ii. 280). While the Cardinal appreciates, merely appreciates, the practical
jokes played on each other by his chamberlain and secretary 'because they
were inoffensive' (ii. 262), we learn that'se descompuso riendo' (he exploded
with laughter) on hearing of the joke which Guzmin played on the secre-
tary to get revenge for a whipping; it leaves the victim covered in a leprous
rash (ii. 259). Concerning another prank on the same personage, we are told
that 'se solemnizo mas que la primera, porque escoci6 mas' (ii. 266). (It was
applauded even more than the first, because it stung.more.) There is no in-
dication that the Cardinal refrained from this applause. Thus, this epitome of
good breeding and fatherly charity yields to mirth scarcely more civilized
than that of the boorish and callous mule drover. However, there is a differ-
ence between the two cases, and it is pinpointed by a characte~istic pattern
of behaviour revealed by those of Guzmin's masters who occupy gentle-
man 's status. His relation to them as purveyor ofjests and agent of pranks is
comparable to his function as a cautionary example of wrongdoirig, which
he captures in the image of bleach, that is, ash, which is used to wash out
stains then thrown on the dungheap (11. i. 7; iii. 187). Guzman uses a very
similar image to describe the captain's reaction towards him. Having said
that the captain derived amusement and profit from Guzman's swindles, yet
feared both them and him, and resolved to dismiss him, he goes on to ex-
plain why with this sinister maxim: 'Evil doers are like vipers or scorpions,
which, once their substance has been extracted, are thrown on the
dungheap' (1. ii. 10; ii. 161). The attitude towards Guzmin ofhis masters on
the galley also reflects this principle. 2 6 The Ambassador of France, though
less ruthlessly than the captain, behaves towards Guzmin in like fashion.
While he appreciates his good qualities, and greatly enjoys his wit, he uses
him as an instrument for his entertainment and illicit liaisons (1. iii. 10; iii.
12-13), and eventually, regretfully, dismisses him, fearing the damage to his
own good name that will result from retaining a servant of such ill repute
(11. i. 7; iii. 192). This symbolizes the reader's attitude to Guzmin as a figure
of fun: one to be toyed with, enjoyed, and laughed at, with laughter that in-
cludes contempt. The response accords precisely with Alemin's admonition
to the discreet reader to treat Guzmin's picaresque scrapes as a light side dish
in relation to the serious substance of the repast. lt is scarcely surprising that
Alemin keeps silent about the poetics of comic story telling. For him, the
'merry tales' ofwhich the story is composed, with their origins in the trad-
itional burlas of farces and fabliaux, fall into an untheorizable limbo. If it is
asked why L6pez Pinciano, with whose thinking about the risible Aleman
26 See particularly 11. iii. 9; v. 161; c( 11. iii. 8; v. 143-4; 11. iii. 9; v. 170.
 ___ „,

300 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND

CERVANTES BETWEEN GVZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 301
is essentially in accord, theorizes about it whereas Alemän does not, the Thus,just as Guzman, in its moralizing aspect, may be seen as a miscel-
answer is simple. EI Pinciano considers the subject a priori from the
lany of rhetorical topics and devices, so, in its comic aspect, it may be char-
perspective of one of the canonical genres. lt evidently does not occur to
acterized as a .fioresta of merry tales. What species, then, make up the flora of
Alemän to see the picaresque in this light.
this forest?The backbone ofincident in the novel consists of burlas-hoaxes,
thefts, mishaps-as it does in 1.Azaril/o, and will do in Don Quijote and in
Guzmän's repeated references to his narrative in terms of tales, jokes, and
picaresque fiction after Guzman; they are the salient manifestation~ of the
witticisms induce us to see it as partaking of the nature of Läzaro's: a hu-
pfcaro's wit and trickery, and of the poetic justice which chastises h1m. The
morous miscellany. As in other respects, Guzman de Alfarache takes over, and
farcical tales of the ltalian novella tradition and their Spanish equivalents,
also e>..-pands, this aspect of its precursor. In so doing, he poses an aesthetic
fabliellas, are freely mined: ßoccaccio, Masuccio Salernitano, Straparola, and
problem which he does not resolve, and which later picaresq~e novelists. ~i­
Juan de Timoneda being prominent contributors. They provide models for
ther pre-empt or ignore. lt is addressed directly by Cervantes m Don Quyote
the fraud by which Guzmän makes a show oflegitimately reclaiming a purse
and the Coloquio de los perros. What is the unifying thread of the hero 's comic
with stolen money (II. iii. 6; cf. Masuccio, fl novellino, no. 16), the trick by
scrapes and anecdotcs, and how far are they relevant to the serious business
which he is made to spend the night in a filthy tub while a Toledan courte-
of the novel? Alemän's explicit justification invokes teleology and exem-
san and her lover dine at his expense and go to bed (r. ii. 8; cf. Straparola,
plariness: this is a life story told from the nethcrmost point of a downward
Piacevoli notti u. 5), the mishaps that he suffers in trying to procure for the
spiral into sin, which, though essentially risible, permits the drawing of a se-
Ambassador the favours of a virtuous Roman matron (n. i. 5-6; cf. Decameron
rious, universally valid moral. Yet the extensive elaboration of the story's
n. 5 and Straparola, II. 2), the hoax of the omelette of addled eggs and the
comic material, going well beyond the demands of exemplification, makes
bloody nocturnal encounter with the ass at an inn in Malag6n (1. ii. 8). 2 7
this rationalization insufficient. Historically, criticism of Guzman has treated
However, the climate of the age ensured that the favourite form of beffa or
the pfcaro's moralizing as digressive; and many of Alemän's contemporari~s,
hoax amongst the Italians, impudently ingenious seduction, is not one of the
represented in the novel by hypothetical readers like Mistress Featherbram,
pfcaro's typical exploits, and is typically imitated in ways which, while titil-
took the same view. From Alemän's viewpoint, as Rico points out (1970:
lating the reader's prurience, avoid the nonchalant amorality for which Italy
70), it is to a considerable extent the other way round. The sheer scale a~d
was famous. The only such story in Gtlzman de A!farache is the episode of
virtuosity of Guzmän's swindles in the second part, though consonant w1th
Bonifacio and Dorotea, in which Guzmän is not involved. His doings
Alemän's original intention to show his hero plunge ever deeper into the
mainly correspond to the categories labelled by Rotunda as 'Deceptive
crirninal abyss, are clearly morivated by the desire to demonstrate his hero's
ßargains', 'Thefts and Cheats', and 'Deception into Humiliating Position', 28
superiority in trickery to Marti's, hence presuppose some sacrifice of moral
species which are made to harmonize with Guzman's concept of women's
significance to scandalous amusement value. Certainly, the vicissitudes of
duplicity and his own credulity towa:ds it, and of man's fraud~lent an~ s~lf­
Sayavedra,proxy for Marti's hero inAlemän's part II, who recounts them to
seeking attitude to his fellow men. Smce both parts of Guzma11 contam m-
Guzman in book ii, chapter 4, are precisely intended to make this contrast
terpolated novelas whose serious tenor contrasts with the mai_n actio~,
possible (see II. ii. 6; iv. 73), and are ornamental to the extent that, like other
affiliated chiefly to Byzantine and Moorish ficrion and the Ital1an trag1c
episodes in the novel, they are presented as entertainment to distract
novella the novel as a whole constitutes a kind of disguised anthology of the
Guzmän's perturbation and alleviate the tedium of ajourney (n. ii. 4; iv. 10).
genre, ;nd arguably does more than any other work before Cervantes's
Posterity's habitual assumption is contradicted and inverted by the repeated
comparisons of the comic ingredients of the story to unwinding the bow-
Novelas ejemplares to naturalize it in Spain.
string, gold leaf on the pill, a light side dish for the diner to toy with. On the
other hand, Guzmän's conception of the narrative as the story of his own 27 Guzman's encouncer with ehe ass, implying the bestiality ofconcupiscence, corresponds to
life, to which at least his scrapes and swindles, if not his tangential anecdotes, the shephcrd's story in Diego Sanchez de Badaj~z's Fa~a militar ofhow he_chased _:m?ther man's
are integral, points in the other direction; and that conception is articulated wife into thc stable and, in the dark, kissed the ass s nose mscead ofher. See his Rtcop1/aa&n tn metro,
fo. lxvii. Fablidlas. brieffarcical talcs, are descrihed and anthologized by Soons (1976). One ofthe
by ehe novel's very first sentence. The contradiction between these two ten- stories that he includes (66-7) corresponds to the episode ofßonifacio and Dorotea, which gocs
dencies in Guzman does much to explain the sharp divergences amongst its baC"k to the Novellino of Masuccio Salernit:mo (novella 32). For more detailed rcferences to
successors. Alem:in's source-s, sce Cros (1967b).
28 See Rotunda (1942: K100-299, K300-499, K12<>0-99).
302 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
Furthermore, since Guzman's autobiography is a jocose and folksy ser-
mon, rieb in anecdotal illustration, it abounds with cuentecillos (anecdotes
about funny sayings) of oral tradition, such as fill the collections of
Timoneda, Santa Cruz, Lucas Hidalgo, and the ltalians Domenichi and
Guicciardini (cf. Chevalier 1975). Other, more serious exempla include
anecdotes about the doings or sayings of great men, fahles, and moral
apologues, such as appeared in humanistic miscellany books like Pero
Mexia's hugely popular Silva de varia leaic5n (1540) (Forest of Varied
Reading), didactic story collections like Aesop and Don Juan Manuel's EI
Cot1de Lucanor (Count Lucanor), Plutarch's Moralia, his and Erasnius's
Apopl1thegms, the similar compilation by Valerius Maximus. 2 9 Too often
Guzman de Alfarache is discussed as though, in the hero's reflections on his
misspent past, he rnaintains a uniformly bitter and earnest tone. On the con-
trary, Aleman has characterized him as moralizing in a style that befits the
droll trickster and ex-court jester that he was. The story is told with superb
humour: plays on words, on proverbs and lines from the ballad tradition;
droll comparisons, hyperboles, maxims; mock-self-disparagement; comic
sketches of the imaginary reader or dialogues with him; ironic handling of
serious registers. Humour pervades virtually all the exemplary material
mentioned above. Certainly, Alemin tones down the flippancy of LAzarillo
de Tormes, and assumes a causticity, residual sombreness, and learned elegance
to which the precursor did not aspire, otfering lessons to Quevedo and
Graciin in how verbal wit could be harnessed to express a cynically deso-
late view of man's moral nothingness. The elegance of his style includes
a whole repertoire of devices derived from sacred and secular oratory,
including definitions, emblematic descriptions, sententious commonplaces,
amplification of circumstances, topics of praise.
Aleman establishes various comic species or modes that were either ab-
sent from LAzarillo or sketchily developed in it. First, the satiric enumeration
of the characteristic ways and malpractices of disreputable types: innkeepers,
cooks, prisoners, ministers of the law, prisoners, galley slaves, students,
beggars, pages, soldiers, and so on.3° Such passages, which inspire all kinds
of continuation and development in subsequent fiction, reflect the reformist
preoccupation. and also the amused fascination, with the varied miscreants
a~d parasites who flocked to Spain's big towns towards the end of Philip II's
re1gn. They are perfecdy consonant with contemporary texts which, for
29
u Cros, apart fro~ ma~in~ a specific st.udy.of Aleman's sources (1967b), devotes his Protee et lt
g eux (i9~7a) to the mvesugauon ofAieman's mdebtedness to rhetorical and exemplary literature
such as this.
30
!h~ passage~, which do much to thicken the realistic texture of the novel, typically involve
extensive lists of obJects and activities. See, for example 1 ii <· ii 77 . l 1·1•1· . 1·1· •<i-3· 11 u"i 7·
v. 117-23. . . . "'' . t • • 7 • • *J t •
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 303
different motives, describe, censure, or celebrate this fauna: Crist6bal Perez
de Herrera's ~iscurso del a~paro de los legltimos pobres y reduaion de los.fingidos
(1597) (Treatise Concernmg the Succour of the Legitimate Poor and
Reform of the Fraudulent);3 1 Crist6bal de Chaves's picturesque account of
the customs of the inmates of Seville's jail (Relacic5n de la carcel de Sevilla,
c.1600) (Description of Seville Jail); Luque Fajardo's graphic and censorious
enumeration of the practices of gamblers, Fiel desengaiio contra la odosidad y
los juegos (1603) (Faithful Warning of the Dangers of Idleness and
Gambling);32 Quevedo's satiric sketches of the courfs low, extravagant
figuras, 'characters', Vida de la corte (about 16oo) (Life at Court); ballads in
thieves' slang about ruffians and molls, of which Quevedo's jacaras are the
supreme example.
Integral to Aleman's fascination with the theme of the underworld is bis
ambivalent conception of the p{caro and the beggar as enviably independent
of respectable society, contemptuous of its obsession with honour, free to
enjoy the sensuous gratifications of the tavern and the street. The praise of
the picaresque life in contemporary works like the poem in tercets 'La vida
del picaro' (about 1600) (The Life of the Plcaro), of disputed authorship,
though attributed to the poet Linan de Riaza,33 is predominandy ironic and
burlesque. However, beneath the poem's humour, it is easy to perceive in-
dulgent appreciation for a free-and-easy existence, liberated from the .
courtier's obligation to obscrve etiquette, fawn on patrons, keep face.34
There was plenty of humorous poetry written in this vein about this time,
by Gongora, amongst others, and the picaresque is just one of the low
lifestyles celebrated in it. Cervantes memorably exploits the theme in his
praise of picaresque freedom in the opening pages of LA ilustre fregona, and
in the passage of LAgitanilla where the gypsy elder lyrically extols his tribe's
proximity to nature. Alemin 's formulation of it is seminal, and more serious
than most, since it coincides with his savage indictment of his society's
enslavement to honour (1. ii. 2-4 and 1. iii. 4-5). Despite the accusation of
the pfcara Justina that Guzman betrays the essential nature of picaresque life
by his dismal contrition and proneness to return at every setback to menial
drudgery, he defines the essence of the p{caro, the literary type, as that age,
including Justina, would understand it: the carefree dropout, wallowing
31 Thcre is a modern edition by Cavillac (1975). Various passages describing the habits and
frauds ofbeggars read like extracts of a picaresque novel. See, e.g„ PP· 31-8. . .
32 Cros (1 9 67b: 89-97) points out the relation betwcen this treatise and the chapter m which
Guzmin, in Bologna, ßeeces two strangers at cards (11. ii. 3). . „
J3 See Salas Barbadillo, EI caballero puntual, in Obras, ed. Cotarelo Y. Mon, ~· S1 • .
· l• The poem is edited by Bonilla (1902). lt and others rc:Iate~ to. •t arc d!scussed by Bataillon
(1969: 181-4 and 204-5). In eh. s ofthis book, hc treats the 1deahzanon ofp1caresque freedo~ as
thc essence of thc Spanish picaresque, a riposte to the Spanish obsession with honour, genealogies,
• ,
and purity ofblood. Cf. Parker (1967: 14-19).
304 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
happily in a dishonourable life on the streets, and th_e street-wise .busc6n
(sharper, grafter), expert in the associated a~ts of surv1val. These tra1ts are
superimposed on those inherited from Lazanllo. . .
The second major addition that Aleman makes to the com1c reperto1re
established by l.Azarillo is his transformation of the popular ~lac~ legend
about inns, considered as sites of jest, horseplay, brazen swmdlmg, and
wretched discomfort;Aleman turns the inn into the theatre ofhis pfcaro's ini-
tiation in perfidy, with important reperc~ssions on Spanish cotn!c pro~e
fiction after i6oo, notably Don Quijote. Third, he helps to populanze van-
ous burlesque species, including the letter (11. iii. 7), the animal's testament
(u. ii. 5), and, above all, the government edict, which flourishes with the pro-
liferation of edicts in the reign of Philip III, and is represented by the ordin-
ances of the beggars ofRome {1. iii. 2), and by the 'Arancel de Necedades'
(Tariff of Follies), a catalogue of pointless but common mannerisms, like
standing impatiently at a window while waiting for the return of a servant
(rr. iii. 1).JS Fourth, Guzman's blackening ofhis father's character, in the first
chapter of the novel, with multiple stigmas of infamy-Jew, usurer, homo-
sexual, renegade, bigamist-harks back to the vituperative burlesque dia-
tribes in the Cattdonero de obras de burlas against scapegoats like Juan Poeta,
and while it does not inaugurate the topic of the picaro's ignominious
genealogy, sets a precedent for the treatment of it as a virtuoso set piece.
As can be seen, of the humorous species and modalities enumerated
above, only the fourth category is inseparably connected with the pi-
caresque; the others can easily be disengaged from it. For this reason, and also
because ofits dual, confücting tendencies,Alemin's novel served as a model
to later writers which would be richly suggestive, yet at the same time freely
adaptable in the formal sense. lts tacit invitation to experiment was rein-
forced by the fact that the very structure in which all its miscellaneous com-
ponents are housed and unified was the one feature that all his imitators
rejected, with varying degrees of violence: 1 refer to the novel's nature as
penitential autobiography: 'aquesta confesi6n general que hago, este alarde
publico que de mis cosas te represento' (n. i. 1; iii. 73) (this general confes-
sion that 1 make, this public display of my affairs that 1 show to you).As such,
the novel has roots in St Augustine's Confessions, St Teresa's Libro de su vida
(1588) (Book of her Life), the Libro de la conversi6n de la Magdalena by the
Augustinian Mal6n de Chaide, and is also related to Golden Age auto-
biographies Iike those of Don Martin Perez de Ayala, I3ishop of Guadix
3S Cf. Chevalier (1992: 76-'], 83-6, 122). The chief exponent of the burlesque prematica was
Quevedo, from whom Aleman probably derives his 'Ar.mcel de Necedades' (see Garcia-Valdes's
edition ofQuevedo's Prosafestiva completa, 324)). However,Alcman's infiuence on other writers is
dear in the case of the 'Ordenanzas mendicativas', imitated by Quevedo in the code of the sharpers
of Madrid (EI Buscon 11. 6) and by Cervantes in the statutes and ordinances of Monipodio's gang
in Rincqnete y Cortadilla.
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 305
(1566), and of the soldier Jer6nimo de Pasamonte (1604), which, though pri-
mari]y concerned with the narrative of a life, are not lacking in a sense ofits
. cxemplariness and providcntial design.36 In this connection, there is a
significant symmetry of form and purpose between Aleman's life of St
Anthony of Padua (1604) and Guzman deA!farache (cf. Cros 1967a: 166-70).
Though one paints a saint and the other a sinner, both books show the same
tendcncy to highlight virtue by detailed description of the antithetical vice,
and to begin chapters with sententious generalizations and supporting anec-
dotes, before illustrating these points with concrete incidents in the subject's
career.
Having snipped the string which holds Guzman de A!farache together as a
packagc, its successors feit free to reassemble the contents in virtually any
proportion and quantity, and with any admixtures, that took their fancy.37
This is not to say that they failed to recognize that picaresque narratives had
a generic identity. When Cervantes makes Gines de Pasamonte, a personage
obviously akin to Guzmin de Alfarache in his capacity as galley slave and
narrator of his own life, say of his memoirs that they are destined to put in
the shade LAzarillo de Tormes and all books 'de aquel genero' (of that kind)
that have been or may be written (Don Quijote I. 22; i. 271), the phrase 'de
aquel genero', whether or not taken as meaning specifically 'genre', is obvi-
ously significant. Gines's comment and its surrounding context, taken to-
gether with Cervantes's pastiche of picaresque autobiography near the
beginning of Rinconete y Ccrt.Idillo, that is, tbe passage in whic? the two ~"S
briefly exchmge life stories. JYLlke quite clear wlut duster ot c~ctmsttcs
is deemed to constitute 'dut kind': autobiographial furm; ffirr.intfy hu-
morous stvk 2 f.am..ifu.r. degra.:L...J chancter ~-re mJ O..."ttr f"~~- I~5
- - - - r,.,..- •
2 rucceuioo of no-.-efän w combmd to fix ocse le°J' • ::s t::: G:.I.. ! m ce
Sf·.r....;.h ~-»-&·s rr:t:r..d. H~ fredy they '"-"! ~ ~ ~ cl
trrJ r-.o :'!'CC'....-;z:e 2:'-3 r--·· tri1x::e to tht ~ cf! C:;. .....~ '.L""r ~­
a.mpk by in~rpomlng i~ 2:S 2 snu.IJ..s.df-con~:-J ~~ ~~­
all structure of their nO\-els.
36 See. for eumple, die p;;issage in Jeronimo de P;;is;;imome's ;;iut0biognp~ v.iiere he.,like
Guzmin. posits its relation to a gc-neral confession (BAE 90. p. 6o). On the ~on of ~rnan to
St Augustine's Co11fessions. sec Dunn (1993: 192-8), and on its relarion to Malon de Chai~e 5 ~rk.
which is not an autobiography but the study of the spiritual make-up of a. ~orn-~gam. smner,
sec Rico ( 1970: 77-8). An obvious precursor of Guzman, by virtue of its moi:ilizmg ~scumven)s,
humour. and studied word rhymes, is Antonio de Guevara's P.0 ~ular ReloJ de prfnapes (ISA2 9 • a
·
didacric ficuon purportmg· to represent th e !'"
11e and moral op1ruons of Emperor Marcus ure-
lius. . . d 1 d b Lizaro Carreter,
. 37 Though Dunn (1993), reacting against the rigid forma.1 mo e propose y the continuall
treats rhe fiuidity of the picaresque as a common feature ofhterary ~enres, and of. . Y
· k5 d the expectations of success1ve gener:itJons
0f
shifting relaüons betwcen a given c?rpus wor . anhs d ofhis book, especially pp. 12-16,
of readers, h1s comments on Guzma11 de A!faracht m c · 1 an 2
are complcmentary to mine.
306 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
My purpose in dwelling on Gt4.zman de Alfaraclte's miscellaneous, discur-
sive nature as a comic narrative is to insist on its continuity, in this respect,
with its picaresque precursor and successors and with the age's literature of
entertainment in general. This is the principal area in which one may legiti-
mately speak of radical opposition between Cervantes's poetics and the
unanimous assumptions of his contemporaries. And my reason for getting
involved in the fraught question of the generic essence of the picaresque is
to explain why it is reasonable to regard Cervantes as being heavily depend-
ent on it, particularly Guzman de A!farache, and furthermore, why it is
reasonable to treat the poetics of Guzman and its successors as sharing com-
mon preoccupations with Cervantes's, rather than as being, in accordance
with the traditional view (e. g. Llzaro Carreter 1972: 226-8), alien and dia-
metrically opposed to his. The freedom with which Cervantes dismantles
and reassembles the components of Guzman is matched by writers who are
much closer to the picaresque than he is.
So, the pic~esque novelists who immediately follow Alemin--Quevedo,
L6pez de Ubeda, Gregorio Gonzilez-retain the autobiographical form of
his novel, but discard its sombrely exemplary purpose, emphasizing, even
exaggerating, the comic and burlesque features. So far from denying the es-
sential poetics of the genre, they simply carry to fruition its potential for
treatment as a virtuoso .floresta of jests, caricatures, hoaxes. Reacting against
these writers just as sharply as they react against Alemin, Vicente Espinel
effects a very different kind of transformation in Marcos de Obreg6n (1618).
Here, the hero portrays himself as an elderly, honourable hidalgo, now gouty
and verbose, resident in a hospice for pensioners in Madrid; he addresses the
story of his adventurous life to Cardinal Bernardo de Sandoval y Rojas.
Tirelessly moralistic, he draws the ironic sting from LA.zarillo's main theme,
and treats the story as a lesson in how to bear the vicissitudes of fortune with
Stoic patience. He further continues and modifies this prccursor by blurring
the distinction between real and fictional autobiography. Obreg6n's mask
often slips to reveal the face of his creator Espinel, famous poet and musi-
cian, habitue of Madrid's litcrary academies, on friendly terms with aristo-
crats and government ministers. Consequently, he sheds most of the pfcaro's
characteristic traits, and relates with a mixture of humour and aloof disap-
proval his occasional brushes with picaresque types and settings, offering
them as an amusing distraction from care to his noble reader. Ccrvantes's
infiuence is visible in Obreg6n's complex framing of one retrospective nar-
rative ofhis life within another, and in the alternation of picaresque episodes
with hcroic ones, including a period of captivity in Algiers reminisccnt of
the ex-captive's story in Don Quijote part I. Similar hybridization occurs in
Salas Barbadillo's La ingeniosa Elena (1614). Here, the picaresque, though
clearly the dominant model, is like a currcnt mingling in an estuary with
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 307
various others. The. im~ressive opening in the midst of things, a description
ofToledo ablaze w1th hghts and festivity on the occasion of an aristocratic
wedding, evokes a courtly romantic novela. lt is imitated by Tirso de Molina
as the introductory setting for the intermeshed novelas which frame
Cigarrales de Toledo. The chase after the beautiful, unscrupulous Elena by the
besotted Don Sancho, with its fortuitous reunions, twists of fortune, and es-
capes from disaster, also evokes that genre, and, even more clearly, Orlando's
pursuit of Angelica in Orlando furioso. The interleaving of episodes with the
main action and with each other is a sign of the influence of the latter half
of Don Quijote part 1. Yet their heterogeneity-the burlesque ruffian's bal-
lads sung by the muleteer, the heroic and exemplary novella of the discreet
pretender, Elena's picaresque autobiography-and the way in which they
are introduced as a distraction from care, clearly hark back to the inter-
polations of Guzman de A!farache. What we have here is not so much a pi-
caresque novel, as one about the career of a ruffian and bis moll which
skilfully synthesizes themes and forms of diverse provenance, and ~educes
the traditional picaresque formula to an episodic module.
The common denominator of the debt which Aleman's successors owe
to him lies in his spectacular demonstration, after some forty-five years in
which comic prose had been repressed, of the viability of writing a long
work of miscellaneous fictional entertainment, predominantly comic, pre-
dominantly narrative, in which all the previously repressed species could be
revived. The demonstration included an important proviso: the condition
that fiction should advertise its exemplary purpose in terms acceptable to
the prevailing ideology, or at least respect the taboos imposed by Counter-
Reformation orthodoxy by toning down bawdiness and anticlerical irrev- .
erence, and diverting anticlerical satire towards safer butts, peripheral to the
Church. The most eyebrow-raising example of this is the heroine of La pf-
cara Justina, who, despite being affiliated to Celestina and her girls, and de-
spite being the poxy victim of a life of promiscuity, never beds a man in that
part ofher career which is the subject ofher narrative-indeed, displays ex-
emplary tenacity in defending her virginity against all comers.
The demonstration induded an invitation to conduct, in a manner char-
acteristic of the Spanish Baroque, a critical rethinking and sophisticated
recreation of the traditional comic species. In Aleman's case, this takes the
form of subordinating them to a discourse of moral/religious reason, obvi-
ously so as to bring their licentiousness visibly under control. The novelists
who immediately follow him and in some ways oppose him, including
Quevedo and Cervantes, carry out the same radical overhaul, though in dif-
ferent ways.Aurora Egido (1978) has given impressive proofofhow the situ-
ations, characters, and jests of Quevedo's EI Busc6n draw inspiration from
various forms of theatre (the entremes, the Celestina tradition, puppet shows,
 308 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
the commedia dell'arte). from popular festivals and masquerades, from stu-
dents' rags, from burlesque letters and the epithets of the jester Francesillo
de Zuiüga, not to mention Quevedo's own early works of comic prosc and
burlesque and satiric poetry.3 8 All this is grist to the mill of his virtuoso wit,
whose indebtedness to the diverse species of Spanish jocularity, and inven-
tive transforrnation of them, have been studied in depth by Maxime
Chevalier (1992). Cervantes, displaying an even greater eclecticism than
Quevedo, uses traditional humorous material as an ironic counterpoint to
the excesses of an outworn genre of heroic romance, giving it a new critical
exemplariness and, in the process, multiplying its intertextual resonance. The
k.ind of discipline that Alem:in's novel imposes on those traditions is a neces-
sary prelude to Cervantes's poetics, which is concerned to subordinate them
to norms of reason that are primarily aesthetic, rather than moral and reli-
gious. Alem:in also anticipates and makes possible Cervantes's most innova-
tive achievement: the co-ordination of the planes of burlas and veras, and the
transcendence of the severe segregation that Alern:in himself helped to es-
tablish. Since modern criticism ofAle min tends to exaggerate that segrega-
tion to the extent of treating it as an irreconcilable contradiction, this is a
point that needs to be emphasized.
lt might seem that Alem:in, in admonishing his reader not to let the di-
verting envelope distract hirn from the message, is merely repeating a time-
honoured clairn of edifying purpose which features, amongst other places,
in the preliminaries of La Celestina. However, there is more to it than that.
By the end of the sixteenth century, Spaniards perceived the dichotomy of
burlas and veras,jest and earnest, as a much starker opposition than at the be-
?inning. Alemin, in_ taking over the paradigm of Lazarillo, saw it as belong-
mg fully and essenttally to the sphere of burlas. Yet in defiance of its nature
as such, he uses it not rnerely as a kind of anomalous base on which the con-
sejo (moral) is artificially imposed, but as a tapestry into which it is thor-
oughly interwoven. That is why his contemporaries found the achievement
so paradoxical even as they saluted it.
Alem:in, nonetheless, feit qualms about it, and the writers of entertain-
rnent who i~ediately followed him and reacted against him felt them
more strongly still. These conflicts are typical of the age, whose strong sense
~f d~corum and tendency to think of burlas and veras as polar opposites col-
h~e, m Guzman de A!farache, with its genius for mixing comedy and gravity,
p1ety. ~nd. dow~-to-earth familiarity, the popular and the learned. Such
~yb~1~zat~on, ahen to the culture that crystallized in contemporary France,
1s ,vmble m the theol?gical ballads of Jose de Valdivielso, the poetry of
Gongora, Lope de Vega s theatre, Don Quijote, the paintings ofVelazquez, and
38 Th" .1 . . .
L'A . 15 aruc e 15 an extensive rev1ew of the Bakhtinian study of Quevedo 's EI B11scon by E. Cros,
mtocrate et 1e carnaval des gueux (1 915 ).
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMAN AND ITS HERITAGE 309
the sacramental
. , drama of. Calder6n, · One instance ofi't, par t'1c ula r1y re1evant
t~ G_uzman de A!farach~, 1s the age s enthusiasm for stories of the born-again
v~lam; th_e compendious bumper hagiography of the Jesuit Pedro de
Rivadene1ra, the Flos sanctorum (1599), contains abundant examples Al ,
d h' . . . eman
an 1s c?ntemporanes, mcluding Cervantes, saw nothing inherently im-
p~o?able m them (Parker 1973). Guzm:in's repeated apologies for his mor-
ahz1~g are not due to that reason, but rather to a sense of its unfittingness as
co?1m,g fro~ an abject p(caro. The popular genre of the comedia de santos
(samts play) mcludes many examples of ruffians, some of them risible mis-
creants like Guzman, who swing from the depths of crime to holiness:
Cervantes's El ru.fian dichoso, Lope de Vega's EI santo negro Rosambuco Tirso
de Molina's El _condenado por descon.fiado, Calder6n's La devod6n de ia cruz
(Dev?tion to the Cross), and many others. The theme appealed strongly to
Spam~h Counter-Reformation piety: to its insistence, against Protestant
doctnne, on man's freedom to contribute to his salvation by his works, and
also. on the proximity of the divine to the human sphere, visually and dra-
ma~1cally expressed by the paintings of EI Greco. What better way of con-
veymg the message than by the portrait of a seemingly irredeemable sinner,
like Enrico in Tirso's play, or the penitent Magdalene so often depicted by
EI Greco, who finds the strength and is given the grace to reach up to
heaven? If even they can do it, it is implied, so can you.39 Alem:in, author of
a life of St Anthony of Padua, would have seen no essential discontinuity be-
tween it and his picaresque masterpiece; the two 'lives' teach essentially the
same lesson, one by a positive, the other by a negative example. 40 And yet
his insistence on the laughable disreputability of his picaresque hero was
bound to make the hero's penitent moralizing seem problematic.
Though Alem:in does not try to resolve the tension theoretically, he over-
comes it practically by integrating the two aspects. In Guzm:in's first pi-
caresque adventure, concerning the consurnption of the putrid omelette, the
physical circumstances of the hoax are anticipated, as we have noted, by the
emblematic imagery ofthe meditation on its religious meaning. lt would be
39 See Malön de Chaide, La cont'fTSi<!n de la Ma~dalena, ed. Felix Garcfa, i. 82, and cf. the moral
drawn by Pedro de Rivadeneira at the end ofbis life ofSan Guillermo (Guillaume, prcsumably),
Duke ofAquitaine. lt anticipates Guzmin's own language about his convenion, with the metaphor
of God's band raising him from the abyss: 'Que pecador avri tan engolfado en sus vicios ... que
no confie, con 1a gracia de! Seiior, poder boluer en si, y cobrar salud y fuer~as. y llegar a puerto se-
guro, viendo a Guillermo sacado de! abismo profundo de sus maldades por el poderoso bra~o del
Seiior: el qua! siempre esta aparejado a dar la mano al pecador, si el se dexa ayudar' (Stg1mda parte
deljlos sanctorum, 153; cf. G11zman deAlfaracht 11. iii. 8; v. 152). (What sinner can be so sunk in vice
that he cannot trust that with God's grace he can mend his ways, recovcr hcalth and strength, and
reacb safe havcn, seeing Guillaume raised from the deep abyss ofhis sins by the powerful band of
the Lord, always ready to give his hand to the sinner, ifhe allows bimse!fto be belped?)
4° Tue point is explicitly made by Juan L6pez del Valle in bis praise ofAlem:in, included in the
preliminaries of San Antonio de Pad11a.
310 CERVANTES AND THE COMIC MIND
possible to cite many other examples of such continuity. 4 1 Typically, criti-
cism of the novel has been impervious to it ever since the eighteenth cen-
tury, an era whose sense of neoclassical propriety was affronted by Aleman's
yoking of the matter of sermons with that of a racy comic novel. Though
twentieth-century critics have been more perceptive than their precursors
about the integral function of the moralizing passages, 42 they tend to end
up in positions historically affiliated to those ofRene Le Sage and Leandro
Fernandez de Moratin, by affirming discord between the writing and the
written subject in Guzman, between the articulator of conventional moral-
ity and the cynical p{caro, 43 between the p{caro's contrite voice and the glee-
ful gusto with which he narrates his past misdeeds (Parker 1967: 33-4). Such
attitudes are reflected in the tendency since around I 960 to deny the sin-
cerity of the hero's conversion, and attribute his moralizing to rancorous,
subversive, and psychologically hidden motives, either in Alemin or
Guzmin or both, which belie and warp its ostensible sense. As Dunn points
out, it often takes the form of the critical fallacy 'How many children had
Lady Macbeth?' His and Cavillac's refutations of it are condusive.44 Not
least of the paradoxes of Guzman de Alfaraclie is that, even while seeming to
acknowledge the opposition of that age's moral/religious thought to its
comic mind, no work of the period illustrates so effectively their interde-
pendence. The significance of this lesson was not lost on Cervantes, as the
Coloquio de los perros and Don Quijote testify.
(iii) La picara Justina
In the prologue to LA p{cara Justina, which proclaims the novel's dependence
on Guzman by presenting the heroine as Guzman's fiancee and rival in pi-
caresque exploits, 45 Lopez de Ubeda deplores the offence clone to divine
matters by those who lard them with profanities, and insists on the point-
41 1 d~ not cite_them because Rico has already perceptively discussed this kind ofcontinuity.
~e mentmns th~ kmd that I have in mind in passing (1970: 70-1); that which chiefly concerns him
JS ~e prefigurat1on of Guzmin 's penitent conscience by spasms of self-examination and remorse
at different moments prior to bis conversion (69-80).
42
Thus, in ~cGrady's useful introductory book about the novel (1968: 56), the moralizing pas-
5'.'ges, even wh1~e acknowledged .to be. essential to its purpose, are characterized firmly as digres-
sions, :md as bemg secondary to 1ts mam appeal, which is that of a fictional narrative.
43 See de! Monte (1971: 8<>-!><J, especially p. 9.2). Central to this critic's and other critics' view
. . is the .assumption that. Alem'ans• aII eged Jewis
of Guzman · h ancestry places' him
· m · a despamng
.' · Jy
rnargmahz~d relauon .to the Sparush Counter-Reformation ideology with which, nonetheless, he
has no opuon but to tdentify.
~ Dunn (1p93: 1So); cf. Cavillac's substamial review of criticism of Guzmin ( 1993).
See the ~rologo _al lector', ed: Rey ~azas, i. 71-9, and the 'Prologo summario' (i. 81-4),
whhere the herome baptizcs herself wnh a strmg of cpithets which sum up the notable incidcnts of
er career.
CERVANTES BETWEEN GUZMÄN AND ITS HERITAGE 311
lessness. of in~luding devout meditations in books written primarily to
entertam a fnvolous, worldly reader (i. 73, 79). In further justification of
his own treatment of the picaresque theme, he mentions his avoidance of
indecency such as that of LA Celestina, the cautionary value of his heroine's
thefts, the brief, moralizing postscripts that he has added to each section of
the novel, and the edification offered by its diverse poetic metres, 'rhetorical
flowers', and humanistic erudition. Thus, in contrast to Alem:in, he aims
essentially at jocularity, sharply downgrading, without quite obliterating, the
exemplary purpose of his model. In similar spirit, whoever wrote the pro-
logue to the edition of EI Busc6n which was published in Zaragoza, 1626,
without Quevedo's permission,accurately identified the book's purpose and
appeal in saying that it contains what is likely to please most readers: all
manner of tricks, wiles, and frauds associated with the picaresque life, vividly
and wittily portrayed. Anyone wanting more serious edification is recom-
mendcd to pro fit from sermons in church. 46
Despite Marcel ßataillon (1973: 221), I do not believe L6pez de Ubeda's
assertion of morally improving purpose is merely a tongue-in-cheek pose,
since the question how to strike an officially acceptable balance between
entertainment and profit was too genuine a problem in those years to per-
mit such ftippancy, nor do 1 think that L6pez de Ubeda's aesthetics is quite
as opposed to Cervantes's as Bataillon makes out.47 In one way, the two
positions are quite similar: both writers assume that Alem:in's hold mix of
the divine and the human goes too far, and that in a patently comic work,
mildly medicinal sugar is preferable to a lightly sugared pill. L6pez de
Ubeda's carefree nonchalance is thoroughly typical of the times: typical,
within the picaresque, of Quevedo's EI Busc6n and Gregorio Gonz:ilez's EI
guit6n Honofre.48 In Quevedo's brilliant black farce, the hero's narrative of a
roller coaster ride of short-lived triumphs, hairbreadth escapes, and humili-
ating embarrassments in the company of a grotesque charivari of impostors
like himself keeps serious moral implication well below the surface, all the
more thanks to the story's style, a sustained firework display of flippantly sar-
donic wit. Likewise, Gregorio Gonz:ilez's novel, though deeply indebted to
G14zman de Alfarac/1e as weil as to 1.Azarillo, cuts out Alemin's sermonizing
and his romantic interpolations, diverts his rhetoric, particularly the senten-
tious maxims, which often take the form of proverbs, into a humorous key,
46 The prologue's author may have been the bookseller Roberto Duport, or Quevcdo himself.
Its allusion to G11zman is obvious. Llzaro Carreter (196o-3) insists on Quevedo's antipathy to
Aleman's moralizing, while acknowledging the seductive influence on him ofhis novel.
47 For Bataillon, the opposition is not merely aesthetic, but ethical and personal. In this essay,
he recapitulates his extensive discussion of La plcara)usti11a in Pfcaros y picarcsca (1969).
48 Gregorio Gonzalez's novel, though not published before Hazel Genereux Carrasco's mod-
ern edition ofit (1973), was written in 1604; Quevedo's was written about that time too, though
not published until 1626.