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Danza del Santissimo Nacimiento, A Sixteenth-Century Play by Pedro Suarez de Robles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Joseph E. Gillet
Joseph E. Gillet*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

Of this little play two editions have been recorded. Moratin alone, as far as I know, has seen a copy of the earliest known edition, Madrid, 1561. He reproduced the initial stagedirections and gave a short summary of the text, and upon this are apparently based whatever accounts of the play have appeared in later works on the Spanish stage. The second edition, Madrid, 1606, which is here reprinted, has been briefly described by Salvá (nr. 1426), Heredia (nr. 2349) and Gallardo (nr. 3993). When the latter examined it, it was a part of Böhl de Faber's library.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 1928 , pp. 614 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

page 614 note 1 Orttena, Obras, I, 202-204.

page 614 note 2 Cf. e.g., Schick (Mier's tr.), I, 381-383; Alvarei Espino, Ensayo hisorico del teatro espaitol, Cádiz, 1876; La Barren, Catdlogo, s. v.; Crawford, Spanish drama before Lope de Vega, p. 138 f.

page 614 note 3 The function of the lector (the third of the minor orders) in the early hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, which consisted in reading the Gospel, was early in the Middle Ages taken over by the deacon, ordained to the second of the major orders, and designated generally as didcono, more rarely as cvangelislero and here as Clerigo de Eumgelio. The reading of the epistles was the task of the immediately inferior tubdUcono or epistolero, while the singing of the Mass was the privilege of the immediately superior sacerdote or misatantano. Cf. “ala puerta macarena/ encontre con vn ordenado/ ordenado de vn euangelio/ que missa no auia cantado” (Romance de Don Fadrioue maestro de Santiago in Cancionero de Amberes, s.A, ed. Menehdcx Pidal, foL 167 ro. Read “de euangelio.”

page 614 note 4 Probably the town of that name in the province of Salamanca.

page 615 note 5 The three rhyme-schemes are thus represented with the relative frequencies: (1) 33 stanzas; (2) 13 stanzas; (3) 1 stanza. The first two villancicos, in octosyllabic lines, are similar in construction, but of different length. They may be schematized as follows, the heavy-faced letters referring to identical or nearly identical lines: 1. abba//cddc/abba//effe/obb. 2. ab/ab//cd/ dc/abab//ej/je/ab/ab. The second villancico is sung in alternating groups of two lines by the angels and the shepherds. The third, in six-syllable lines, is less regular, but in spite of a number of waif-rhymes, represented by x, it shows the main features of the other two, namely a redondilla for the first cuarteta of each group (except in the first cuarteta of the first eight-line group) and the

page 618 note 10 H. Ménmée, L'art dramatique á Valencia, pp. 5, 6.

page 618 note 11 Pedrell, La Fata d'Elcke, Paris, 1906, p. 25.

page 618 note 12 Regnum papisticum, quoted here in the translation by Barnaby Googe, London, 1570, ed. R. C. Hope, 1880, fol. 45 ro.

page 618 note 13 Jewnal in voyage d'Espagne, Paris, 1669, p. 191. Cassan's reprint, Revue kupanicue, XLVII (1919), p. 168.

page 618 note 14 The descriptions of such Nacinientos, for instance by Emilia Pardo Bazán (Obras completes, XXV, 65) and Galdos (Nocke Buena; La Mula y el Buey) will be recalled.

page 619 note 15 Caballero, Obras completes, XI, 386 f.

page 619 note 16 Ibid., 408 f.

page 619 note 17 M. M. Martinez, A putties para un mapa topogrdJUe-tradicional de la villa de Burguillos (prov. de Badajos), in Bibl. de las Iradkiones populates, VI, 10f.

page 619 note 18 Montoto y Sedas, Representaciones populates, Seville, 1904, pp. 41-43.

page 619 note 19 Juan Valera, Obras completes, IX, 266.

page 620 note 20 Starr, Folklore of Mexico,p. 93 ff. On the festivities in honor of the homeimage of the Christ-child in the River Plate district (fiesta del Nino) see Ciro Bayo, Vocabulario crioUo-espanel, Madrid, 1910, p. 152.

page 620 note 21 F. C. G. Iglehart, Christmas in Old Mexico, n.p.n.d., p. 8

page 620 note 22 “De totes les ordes dels frares ballaren en aquesta jornade dins la Igleya de Sent Frencesch.” Villanueva, Viaje, XXII, 37 /.f“Dicmenge, lo desser dia de Joni, canU missa novella mossenn Bn. Dorta, é ballaren preveres dins la Igleya, com vengueren offerir.” Ibid. On religious dancing in Catalan territory see also Milá, Obras completes, VI, 205-379.

page 620 note 23 Cf. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, I, 161 ff.

page 620 note 24 Schack, I, 131.

page 620 note 25 Gröber, Zur Volkskunde aus Concilbeschliissen und Capilularien [Leipzig, 1893], nr. 55.

page 620 note 26 Enc. Brit., 11th ed., vo. carol.

page 620 note 27 Villanueva, Viaje, III, 128.

page 621 note 28 Sánchez Arjona, El teatro en Seville, p. 74.

page 621 note 29 Novtssima Rccopilacion, L. I, Tit. I, Ley XI.

page 621 note 30 The dancing which was a part of the Mozarabic Mass (partially re-established by Cardinal Jimenez in the sixteenth century) is said to have subsisted after 1750. Cf. Enc. Brit. (11th ed.), VII, 796.

page 621 note 31 The dance takes place during the Octave of the Immaculate Conception (Dec. 8-15), on the last three days of Carnival and at Corpus Christi. Cf. R. Ford, Handbook, 1892, p. 322 (Pt-II); S. de la Rosa, Los Seises de la Catedral de Sevilla. Seville, 1904; M. Serrano y Ortega, BMiografia de la Catedral de Sevilla, Nr. 97, 25, 29, and especially Nr. 166. There is a photograph in Bensusan, Home Life in Spain, p. 72, and a recent description by J. B. Trend,“ The Dance of the Seises at Seville, in Music and Letters, London, Dec. 1920. This author also mentions a dance by boys and girls on August 15 (Assumption Day) in the church of a village near Vigo (The Music of Spanish History to 1600, 1926, p. 85). There were ”seises“ in the cathedral of Toledo (cf. J. Moraleda, Us Seises de la Catedral de Tcledo, Toledo, 1911) and N. Diaz de Escobar (Analcs del teatro esponol, 1600-1613, p. 6) speaks of ”seises“ in Granada in 1600. -

page 621 note 32 Milego, El teatro en Toiedo. pp. 61-65.

page 621 note 33 Cf. Cotarelo, Enlrtmeses, I, clxiiii.

page 622 note 14 The reader may imagine the magnificent background. Cf. La Ptcara Justine (written about 1575-80?), ed. PuyoL II, 40, 44, 293 ff. There are indicationa that certain local organizations, now excluded from the church, may once have had some connection with it. Thus in Asturias, the bardancos of Camp de Caso formerly performed on Twelfth Night, and the guirriones (cf. the guirrios or birrios in León) in Pole de Lena annually presented “The Flight into Egypt.” (Llano, Folklore de Asturias, p. 215 f.) A group of local dancers near Segovia, celled botarias, who at one time were allowed to do their Danta de polos in the church, are directed by a sarragón (Vergara Martin, Vocabulario de palabras usadas en Segovia, p. 84) whose designation, like that of the lomarrones of the Valle de Pas (Santander: Ontaneda, Alceda, etc.; cf. Tober, ConsuUas at diccionorio, 2nd ed., pp. 167 ff.) may be directly connected with the facedores de taharrones mentioned in the Siete Paritidas and classified by Menéndez Pidal (Poesta jnglaresca yjugfares, p. 29) as professionals.

page 622 note 35 Novelas ejemftares, ed. Rodriguez Marin, I, 8. The action of the story is placed between 1606 and 1613. A few years earlier, little Guzmán de Alfarache, asleep one benc in the portal of the Church of San Lazaro after the first day of his flight from home, was awakened by “los panderos y bailes de unas mujeres que venfan a velar aquel die” (Alemán, Guzmán de Aljaracke (1599), Pt. I, L. I, Cap. 3.)

page 622 note 36 The report of this traveler, a certain N.N.. was used by Martin Zefller for his Ilinerarium Bispaniae, Nürnberg, 1637 (Foulche-Delbosc, Bibl. d. voyages en Esp., nr. 63). I am quoting from the Dutch translation, Monorchia Hispanica, Amst, 1659: “op hooghe Vierdagen plegen se in de kerrken te danssen, en grynsen voor't aeugeskht te dotn, gelyck onsen meer-gemelden NJJ binnen Lisbona en Sailien beooght hebben.” For dances in Lisbon churches more especially, see the Cancionero da Ajuda, ed. Mkhaelis de Vasconcellos, II, 864 f.

page 622 note 37 La Rosa, Los Seises, Appendix, p. 364 ff.

page 623 note 38 Journal du voyage d“Espagne, p. 190 f. Pp. 167-168 of Cassan's reprint in the Revue kispanique, XLVII (1919).

page 623 note 39 Cf Rennert, Tke Spanish Stage, pp. 72, 74, n. 1.

page 623 note 40 Rccopilacion en metro, ed. Barrantes, II, 273.

page 623 note 41 This play, although differently conceived, invites comparison with the Dance of tke Seven Deadly Sins in Catalonia, as described by D. Francisco Curet. “The dance,” says J. B. Trend (Modern Spain, p. 119) “began with a dialogue between the Angel and the Devil. The Deadly Sins appeared, and each entered into a discussion with the corresponding Virtue. The Virtues were victorious, and the dance ended with the departure of the Angel, who extolled the piety of the audience and wished them prosperity.” Pérez Pastor (Nuevos dales acerca del kistrionismo espanol, p. 11) records under date of April 23, 1579, an “Obligacion de Jusepe de las Cuevas de presenter en la fiesta del Corpus una danza en que haya 7 virtudes y 7 pecados.”

page 623 note 42 Pedroso, BAE, LVIII, 141, n. 2; J. Garcia Soriano, El teatro de colegio em Espana, BRAE, XIV (1927), 260.

page 624 note 42 These last time are mentioned by Rocamora among the Otuna manuscripts Calalogo airenade, m. 454,1167, 11688

page 624 note 44 Coleccitn de entremeses, I, ccrvii f.