Radical Theatricality: Jongleuresque Performance on the Early Spanish Stage (Prudue Studies in Romance Literatures)

RADICAL THEATRICALITY

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures Editorial Board Patricia Hart, Series Editor Jeanette Beer Paul B. Dixon Benjamin Lawton

Howard Mancing Floyd Merrell Allen G. Wood

Associate Editors French

Spanish and Spanish American

Paul Benhamou Willard Bohn Gerard J. Brault Mary Ann Caws Milorad R. Margitic; Glyn P. Norton Allan H. Pasco Gerald Prince David Lee Rubin Roseann Runte Ursula Tidd

Maryellen Bieder Catherine Connor Ivy A. Corfis Frederick A. de Armas Edward Friedman Charles Ganelin David T. Gies Roberto González Echevarría David K. Herzberger Emily Hicks Djelal Kadir Amy Kaminsky Lucille Kerr Alberto Moreiras Randolph D. Pope Francisco Ruiz Ramón Elzæbieta Sk¬odowska Mario Valdés Howard Young

Italian Fiora A. Bassanese Peter Carravetta Franco Masciandaro Anthony Julian Tamburri

Luso-Brazilian Fred M. Clark Marta Peixoto Ricardo da Silveira Lobo Sternberg

volume 39

RADICAL THEATRICALITY Jongleuresque Performance on the Early Spanish Stage

Bruce R. Burningham

Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana

Copyright ©2007 by Purdue University. All rights reserved. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Design by Anita Noble Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burningham, Bruce R., 1964– Radical theatricality: jongleuresque performance on the early Spanish stage / Bruce R. Burningham. p. cm. — (Purdue studies in Romance literatures ; v. 39) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-55753-441-5 (alk. paper) 1. Theater—Spain—History. 2. Minstrels—Spain—History. 3. Street theater—Spain—History. I. Title. PN2781.B87 2007 792.0946—dc22 2006026138

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For Toni, of course

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El viento iba y venía preguntando ¿por dónde anda Joan Miró? Estaba ahí desde el principio pero el viento no lo veía[.] Octavio Paz Fábula de Joan Miró

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Contents xi Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 13 Chapter One Reinventing Thespis 50 Chapter Two Singers of Tales on Simple Stages 90 Chapter Three Picaresque Actors and Their Theater 132 Chapter Four “Corralling” the Jongleuresque 171 Chapter Five Playwrights and the Actorly Text 215 Conclusion 221 Notes 231 Bibliography 247 Index

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Acknowledgments Radical Theatricality has its roots in a Yale University doctoral dissertation whose precise year of completion I do not wish to recall. What I do wish to recall, however, despite the fact that this project has changed a great deal since my graduate student days, are the names of the many people to whom I remain so greatly indebted. First and foremost, I wish to express my deep gratitude to Roberto González Echevarría for leading me to always-useful sources, for providing thoughtful and thoughtprovoking comments on my work, for generously opening his home to me at irregular hours, and for teaching me what it truly means to be a gentleman and a scholar. A better mentor I could not have asked for. I also owe a profound debt of gratitude to Manuel Durán and María Rosa Menocal for their intellectual support and sage advice; to Harold Bloom for acting as my guide during my forays into the world of Elizabethan theater; and to Robert Burt for the hundreds of hours of stimulating conversation (not to mention bucolic walks around Woodbridge) that I continue to look back on with fondness. Of course, I cannot fail to mention Mary Faust, Sandra Guardo, and Ginny Gutiérrez, all of whom generously provided technical support, words of wisdom, and an occasional shoulder to cry on. Thanks also to my dear friends Daryl and Mary Lee for reading much of the manuscript as it first evolved, and for always being there when I needed it most. If this book has its formal roots in New Haven, its genesis can be traced back to much earlier beginnings. Hence, I must acknowledge my profound intellectual debt to Glen Camomile who, more than two decades ago, first taught me that the essence of theater occurs on the unadorned stage; and to my late granduncle Edward Burningham who, while standing on the opposite side of a work bench day after day, first showed me the radical theatricality inherent in every ballad performance. Along the way, this project has been immensely improved (both directly and indirectly) by the support, encouragement, and feedback I have received from a great many friends and colleagues. In Los Angeles, my heartfelt thanks go to Roberto Díaz, Gabriel Giorgi, Moshe Lazar, Mario Saltarelli, Carmen Silva-Corvalán, Gayle Vierma, Maite Zubiaurre, Martha Galván, Khanh Nguyen, Carlos Cervantes, and Bertha Arce. xi

Acknowledgments Thanks as well to Carroll Johnson, Jim Parr, and Susana Hernández Araico. A very special thanks goes out to Luis Murillo not only for taking me under his august wing, but also because his frequent unannounced visits to my office always turned out to be the high point of my day. To John and Holly Nuckols, Steve McGinty and Rebecca Emigh, Manuel and María Urrutia, and Homero and Lourdes Escobar, I cannot begin to thank you for your friendship. Thanks as well to Jeff and Louella Kanew, Robin Yuan, and Joanne Yuan for welcoming me and my family into your lives. Across the rest of the world, I extend my profound thanks to Lucille Kerr, Ramón Araluce, Loren Kruger, Daniel Eisenberg, and Barbara Mujica. To my AHCT friends and colleagues (with whom I have shared an annual pilgrimage to El Paso, Texas), I send my gratitude and “the essence of Lazarillo.” A special thanks as well to Meg Greer and Amy Williamsen for their tremendous impact on my work and professional life. Closer to home, I wish to thank my parents, Ray and Barbara Burningham, for teaching me the value of a job well done, for instilling in me the self-confidence to set large goals and then work to achieve them, and for being my biggest fans. Thanks to Cassie and Drew for providing me with endless joy, and for putting up with a father who is frequently in the room but not really there (alas, the symptoms of “absent-mindedprofessor-ness” have set in all too soon). And finally, my deepest thanks go to my wife, Toni, without whose love, patience, and immense support this book could never have been written. It is as much hers as it is mine (although I take personal responsibility for any and all errors). Segments of Chapters 2 and 3 originally appeared as “Jongleuresque Dialogue, Radical Theatricality, and Maese Pedro’s Puppet Show,” in Cervantes 23.1 (2003): 165–200, © The Cervantes Society of America. A portion of Chapter 5 was originally published as “Barbarians at the Gates: The Invasive Discourse of Medieval Performance in Lope’s Arte nuevo,” in Theatre Journal 50.3 (1998): 289–302, © The Johns Hopkins UP. I thank the publishers of these journals for permission to reprint this material. I also wish to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting this project.

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Introduction

The hero of this book—if a scholarly work can be said to have a central protagonist—is an actor; or, better yet, a series of actors. But this collective hero does not represent a particular group of known individuals. This book is neither a biography nor a history per se, despite the fact that a number of historical figures will make an appearance. At the same time, this serial hero cannot really be called a “collective” protagonist either. Although one of the things I will certainly examine throughout the course of this book is what scholars commonly refer to as the oral tradition, and although I will engage many of the performance texts associated with this tradition, I have very little use for the notion of folklore and even less for the ideologies of the Volksgeist. I will make no attempt to generalize about what might be called the “Spanish temperament,” nor will I privilege a romanticized version of the underclass in order to comment on its discursive resistance to the aristocracy. Instead, the hero of this book is the street performer—a protean figure I will generically call the jongleur—whose multifaceted work can be traced across time and space, and whose performance has always entailed a great deal more than just the recitation of oral poetry. Of course, the hero of the early Spanish stage has not always been the performer.1 During most of its venerable history, traditional comedia scholarship has assigned the lead role not to the theatrical comediante—whom it has tended to relegate to the status of bit player—but to the literary playwright. For critics in the mold of Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Dámaso Alonso, Américo Castro, Alexander Parker, and Bruce Wardropper, what makes the comedia worthy of study is the intricacy of its poetry, the profundity of its theology, and the 1

Introduction subtlety of its psychological representation of the Spanish national character. For traditional critics, the story of the early Spanish stage begins with the experimental literary works of Juan del Encina, Gil Vicente, and Bartolomé de Torres Naharro; proceeds through the establishment of the mature comedia form by Lope de Vega and his school of like-minded dramatists; and culminates in the refined philosophical and theological plays of Calderón de la Barca (after which time Spanish theater is said to fall into a steep decline from which it has never fully recovered). For traditional scholars, the history of the early Spanish stage is really the account of a particular type of Iberian literary genius best revealed in the pages of carefully edited critical editions. And within this literary trajectory, the contribution of the actor (if noted at all) is more likely than not to involve a discussion of the ways in which real-world theatrical production tends to detract from—rather than add to—a full realization of the artistic potential inscribed within the pages of Golden Age drama. The past four decades, however, have seen the rise of two significant changes in the study of the early Spanish theater, both of which have served to move the actor from the theatrical periphery to center stage. First, beginning in the 1960s a new generation of theater practitioners and critics—informed by a keen interdisciplinary spirit and following in the footsteps of Constantin Stanislavski, Bertolt Brecht, and Antonin Artaud—began to create a field that has come to be known as performance theory. Borrowing tools from anthropology, sociology, and linguistics (including speech-act theory), writers such as Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Richard Schechner, Victor Turner, Marvin Carlson, and Judith Butler have not only diminished the importance of the literary text in the study of theater, but have also shifted the entire focus of study away from the traditional stage itself and toward a much more expansive view of performance, one that includes everything from shamanistic ritual to political protest movements.2 Second, paralleling the establishment of Golden Age theater festivals at El Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso, Texas, in 1975 and in Almagro, Spain, in 1978, a new generation of Hispanists has also turned its attention away from the literary text, focusing instead on the material culture that surrounded

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Introduction and sustained the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century corral stage. Scholars as diverse as Andrés Amorós, José María Díez Borque, Catherine Larson, Rogelio Miñana, Barbara Mujica, Matthew Stroud, José María Ruano de la Haza, and Sherry Velasco have helped revolutionize a field once dominated by a narrow—if superbly rewarding—textual analysis. The intellectual trajectory of Hispanism’s renewed interest in performance arguably began with John Varey’s founding of Tamesis Press in 1963; proceeded through John J. Allen’s ground-breaking architectural reconstructions of various corral edifices; and has culminated in the increasingly performative focus of the Bulletin of the Comediantes, and the establishment of such scholarly organizations as the Asociación Internacional de Teatro Español y Novohispano de los Siglos de Oro (AITENSO) and the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater (AHCT), whose own Comedia Performance is the only academic journal devoted exclusively to the topic. While this book is profoundly indebted to the pioneering efforts of those theorists and critics who have come before me, my work herein diverges slightly from that of other scholars in a few idiosyncratic but significant ways. First and foremost, I view performance as a process rather than as a product; which is to say, my interest in what are normally considered the objects of theatrical study—the dramatic text and/or the mise-enscene—extends only so far as they illuminate the performative practices that went into their creation. In other words, I am much more drawn to the intangible aspects of performance than I am to those tangible traces that still remain once the performative elements themselves have dissipated into the ether. Thus, it is the performative moment that matters far more than the context within which this moment occurs. While other scholars have brilliantly examined the social, political, historical, and cultural milieu that both informed and was informed by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish theater, my own work focuses primarily on what happens on stage while it is happening on stage. Ultimately, I approach the early Spanish stage from the perspective of the performer (which is precisely why I consider the actor to be the hero of this book).3 At the same time, however, because traditional comedia scholarship spent most of the twentieth-century articulating all

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Introduction the ways in which Golden Age drama not only exemplifies an inherent Spanishness (indeed, Castilianness), but also a unique “Golden-Age-ness,” this book seeks to create a broader contextualization of medieval and early modern Spanish theater. Through a synchronic and diachronic exploration that deliberately situates the comedia not only within the context of the early modern theater of England, France, and Italy, but also within a global performance trajectory that includes prehistoric shamanism, ancient storytelling, medieval minstrelsy, and modern cinema acting, this book examines the early Spanish stage as an integral and interrelated part of world theater and performance, rather than as just one more chapter among many in the history of Spanish literature. For this reason, one of the major goals of this book is to redefine what constitutes “acting” in order to draw attention to a variety of performers—both ancient and modern—whose work has generally been relegated to the theatrical margins by a critical discourse excessively informed by literary theory. What I am calling the poetics of jongleuresque performance refers to more than just the oral, folkloric, and quasi-literary activities associated with the Iberian mester de juglaría. For me, the term jongleuresque encompasses a performative aesthetic and set of praxes that underpin a wide range of performance traditions. Hence, while each of the five chapters of this book is specifically dedicated to an exploration of the inherent performativity of the medieval panEuropean jongleuresque tradition and its radically theatrical impact on the development of the early Spanish stage, the book as a whole seeks to articulate a theory of performance that can illuminate a wide variety of performance-oriented activities beyond those of just the Iberian Peninsula. In short, the radical theatricality I invoke here has very little to do with medieval and early modern Spain, except that—as a theoretical approach—it just happens to be spectacularly germane to the theater history of this particular Iberian country during this particular period of time. In that regard, a few initial comments on radical theatricality are in order, especially in an age when the word performance can be equally applied to the design specifications of radial tires, the annual investment return of a mutual fund, a violin concerto, a modern dance recital, and the cultural con-

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Introduction struction of gender and ethnicity in society. Throughout the course of this book I will base my arguments on a number of assumptions about theater and performance that are best made explicit from the outset. I will assume that theater occurs much more frequently than we usually admit; that we are almost always surrounded by theater. I will assume that theater occurs whenever there is a live performer, a live performance, and a live audience, and that this theater can occur at anytime, in any place, with any performer, and with any text or combination thereof. Thus, when poets or novelists read from their work at a café or bookstore, their literary passages become theater (if only temporarily) because the act of vocalization before an audience makes them so. When literature professors read academic papers at the annual MLA convention, they too inscribe themselves in a type of theater (which is precisely why scholars whose written work may be dazzling, but who lack a basic understanding of oral delivery, often turn out to be such bad presenters). The quintessence of theater can be found in such simple acts as the telling of a good joke or the recounting of an urban legend at a cocktail party. Likewise, theater encapsulates activities as diverse as rock concerts, nightclub acts, stand-up comedy, child’s play, prank phone calls, and political speeches. One of the central tenets around which these assumptions revolve, of course, is that there is something unique about the contingencies of performance that sets it off from all other endeavors; that the distinctiveness of theater (in contrast to the cinema, for instance) lies in the moment-to-moment system of open communication that necessarily exists between live performers and their spectators. This ongoing negotiation between performer and spectator ensures that no two performance texts are ever exactly alike, whether they be simple shell games conducted on an urban metro train or Repertorio Español’s most lavish productions. It is the performance that writes the text, not vice versa, because the contingent performance text is always molded by the way in which a particular audience responds to a particular performer. In fact, the stage never really exists (even when an architectural space is pre-designated as such) until the performer creates it; likewise, the play never really exists (even when a dramatist has provided an a priori script) until the performance articulates it. Much more crucial

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Introduction than any hypothetical response by a hypothetical reader is the very real feedback that immediate audiences transmit to performers, feedback that obliges them to modify their work in order to maintain the interest of those who have taken time out of their day to watch the performance. These are admittedly broad assumptions, but they are no more or less arbitrary than any other set of critical assumptions employed by scholars and critics. As will become apparent, however, my broad methodology does have the distinct advantage of shedding light on intertextualities that have generally been excluded from critical consideration. Mine are assumptions that allow us to see that the Homeric bards have as much in common with Spalding Gray as Medea has with Miss Saigon. More to the point of this present study, they allow us to see that the relationship between the medieval jongleuresque tradition and early modern theater is much more profound than one merely of “folklore” to “drama,” of “oral poem” to “play,” of “source” to “work of art.” The singing of epics, lays, ballads, and catches during the Middle Ages—whether by amateurs or professionals—and the acting of masques, interludes, skits, and full-length plays during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are part and parcel of the same performance tradition. As Jody Enders notes, a great deal of medieval orality, including that which involved forensic rhetoric, was conceived of as theatricality (2). Indeed, many of the disparate spectacles catalogued and described in Amorós and Díez Borque’s Historia de los espectáculos en España are tied together precisely by the poetics of jongleuresque performance. To separate these various activities into isolated fields based on definitions of literary genre is to ignore the very centrality of performance itself. Thus, in contrast to other studies of the early Spanish stage, this book does not seek to promote an interpretive model for reading plays. Indeed, when you “deconstruct” the theater, stripping away everything that is extraneous, supplementary, and/or unnecessary, many of the theoretical mechanisms through which we normally view and interpret complex performance texts (including literary drama) are rendered largely inoperable, just as the Newtonian laws of physics become meaningless at the quantum level. When you distill an act of

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Introduction theater to its most basic components, what remains is one person watching another do somersaults on the village green, an act that—despite Mikhail Bakhtin’s assertions regarding the symbolic value of a cartwheel in inverting the hierarchies of official society—essentially lacks meaning, ideology, and subjectivity (Rabelais 353, 363–65, 373).4 For, a somersault is essentially a signifier without a signified—which is to say, it is its own signified—because, at base, theater is not about mimesis. As Peter Brook argues, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged” (9). Theater presents rather than represents, it does rather than shows, it is rather than seems. Thus, the real object of study examined in this book is not a group of comedias, pasos, or entremeses, but the entire performance tradition that gave rise to these performance texts, a tradition comprising a continuum of countless jongleuresque moments. Having said that, this book makes no attempt to provide an exhaustive treatment of all the ways in which the jongleuresque performance tradition informs the rise of the comedia. Instead, it proposes an innovative approach to the study of the early Spanish stage, and thus functions not so much as a work of literary exegesis, but as an exploration that engages the intersection of literary criticism, theater history, and performance theory. This book’s point of departure, then, is the debate over the disputed existence of a medieval Hispanic theatrical tradition (similar to that of France and England) and the lack of textual artifacts around which much of this debate centers. The problem with this debate over texts, however, is that it often depends on a definition of theater that is far more literary than performative, a definition that pushes aside some of our best evidence of Spain’s medieval theatrical traditions precisely because this evidence is either intangible or, worse yet, “undramatic” (a term generally denoting a lack of “dialogue” between characters and/or actors). Because dramatic criticism has traditionally required a written text as proof of object, it has left itself unprepared to deal with the clowns, mimes, acrobats, jugglers, troubadours, and singers that, in one way or another, have uninterruptedly continued to perform their arts from well

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Introduction before the fall of Rome up through the present day. By focusing on the dialogic relationship that inherently exists between performer and spectator in performance—rather than on the kind of literary dialogue between characters traditionally associated with drama—this book examines the performative poetics of the jongleuresque tradition (broadly defined to encompass such disparate performers as ancient Greek rhapsodes and contemporary Nobel Laureate Dario Fo) and traces its performative impact on the theater of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, specifically—though by no means exclusively— that of Spain. Chapter 1, entitled “Reinventing Thespis,” examines the myth of Thespis’s supposed invention of Western theater out of ritual—an evolutionary paradigm often applied to the so-called rebirth of Western drama in the medieval liturgy—and suggests that its reliance on a single moment of transition tends to erase a continuum of performance that has no definite point of origin, but instead extends back beyond the horizon of literate society into the mists of pre-history. This long-standing myth established the reigning literary definition of drama by presupposing an already existing space pre-labeled stage and an already existing written text based exclusively on character dialogue. Yet, because both of these defining components have very little to do with any actual requirements of performance, they do not allow us to properly see those elements that connect the early modern theater to its medieval performative precursors. By examining the work of several dramatic critics and theater historians, many of whom often label medieval performance-oriented texts as merely “semidramatic” or “semirepresentational,” this chapter demonstrates that the Thespis myth problematically forces us to consider medieval performance— especially non-ritual performance—as something peculiar, something pre-theatrical, something awkwardly quasi-literary, while suggesting that the jongleuresque performers themselves remain little more than proto-actors awaiting a messianic Thespis who can lead them to the promised land of genuine theater. As an alternative to this traditional Aristotelian approach, this chapter engages the work of several contemporary theorists of performance and orality, and, through an examination of a thirteenth-century illuminated manuscript depict-

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Introduction ing a fool grimacing directly at the reader, suggests that this jongleur—with his radically theatrical glance outward—constitutes a far better theatrical archetype than Thespis, whose own decisive moment of transition may very well have been influenced by the street performers of his day. Chapter 2, entitled “Singers of Tales on Simple Stages,” traces the performative modalities that governed much of medieval street theater. Borrowing terminology from Albert Lord’s Singer of Tales and Hollis Huston’s The Actor’s Instrument, this chapter makes explicit that which traditional critics could only hint at: that medieval jongleuresque performance always constituted a full-fledged (though by no means complex) theater. By examining a number of residual jongleuresque texts—including the Provençal romance Flamenca, an anonymous comic song from the English tavern tradition, and several Spanish romances and villancicos—this chapter argues that any dialogue between literary characters—not to mention the concomitant impersonation that underlies it—is nothing more than an enhancement of the performers’ discursive world, and that any exchange between two or more actors is simply a complication of the quintessential dialogue performers have always established with their spectators. In other words, the mimos, juglares, and trovadores of medieval Spain—performers who established a simple stage every time they performed their pantomimes, epics, romances, and lays—represent the essence of theater itself; while the carros, corrales, and comedias of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are all belated complications. By focusing on the work of these medieval performers in performance, this chapter argues that, even without a strong medieval church drama, Spain had a thriving theatrical tradition that preceded—as well as paralleled—the ecclesiastical “rebirth” of Western drama. Chapter 3, entitled “Picaresque Actors and Their Theater,” examines the acting profession as an oral tradition in and of itself in which not only are texts handed down from actor to actor, but a whole poetics of performance as well. This chapter begins by noting the inherent connections that tie the poetics of jongleuresque performance to the narratives of the Spanish picaresque novel, focusing specific attention on chapter 5 of Lazarillo de Tormes, in which the pardoner and constable stage an

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Introduction elaborate performance designed to deceive local parishioners into purchasing worthless indulgences. Here this chapter argues that the only difference between the “swindler” and the “actor,” between the “mountebank” and the “jongleur,” between the “pícaro” and the “comediante” (all of whom necessarily engage their spectators in a performative dialogue) is that for the first of each pairing the spectator is explicitly unaware of the performance as performance. The chapter then moves to an examination of the work of Richard Tarlton, Flaminio Scala, and Lope de Rueda, all of whom have been characterized as examples of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque. Taking issue, however, with Bakhtin’s assertion that “carnival does not know footlights” (Rabelais 7)—that, because of its participatory nature, it is pointedly not theatrical—this chapter argues that carnival is, in fact, full of “footlights” that pop in and out of existence as the performative markers “actor” and “spectator” float from person to person in an ongoing performative conversation. Bakhtin’s collective carnivalesque is very much the product of the amalgam of numerous individual jongleuresque moments co-created between and among a myriad of shifting actors and spectators. Finally, this chapter examines the ways in which the jongleuresque, the picaresque, and the carnivalesque all converge in the Maese Pedro episode of Don Quijote. Through an examination of the ways in which Cervantes creates a deliberate microcosm of the early Spanish stage—incorporating storytellers, jongleurs, mountebanks, trained animals, singers of tales, and puppeteers within a performance that gets progressively complex—Chapter 3 argues that this meditation on theater history deliberately entails the “jongleurization” of the novel itself: at a crucial moment, Cervantes’s narrator addresses his audience directly and posits the novel as a hypothetical performance text read aloud by some future reader to a listening audience. Chapter 4, entitled “‘Corralling’ the Jongleuresque,” examines the ways in which the performative modalities of the jongleuresque tradition inform the performance texts of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stage. Beginning, by way of analogy, with a digressive examination of the ways in which the vaudeville and Broadway traditions of the late nineteenthand early twentieth-century United States profoundly influenced

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Introduction the development of American cinema at a time when the discrete concept of the screen actor had not yet come into being, this chapter argues that the jongleuresque performance traditions brought to the early Spanish stage by the picaresque comediantes who flocked to the corrales looking for work during a historical moment of unprecedented theatrical expansion are every bit as important as the literary contributions made by the emerging dramatists themselves. Through a targeted examination of the theater created by such playwrights as Encina, Lope de Vega, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Calderón, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (all of whom form part of a pan-European tradition that also includes such playwrights as Shakespeare, Molière, Racine, and Machiavelli), this chapter argues that jongleuresque performance lies at the very heart of early modern literary drama in much the same way that an ancient town well—which undoubtedly served as a medieval jongleuresque performative venue—sits at the inner core of the Teatro Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares, an edifice that evolved over the course of its four-hundred-year history from a patio into a corral, and then into a fully enclosed Romantic theater, before finally becoming a cinema in the early twentieth century. At the same time, and through an exploration of the double-meaning of the word corral (as both theater and enclosure), this chapter also examines the ways in which the literary and architectural institutions of the early modern theater function to contain and delimit the inherent openness of jongleuresque performance. Chapter 5, entitled “Playwrights and the Actorly Text,” explores the tension between the literary and performance traditions of the Spanish stage. This chapter begins by examining the ways in which the dramatic theorists of the Spanish Golden Age—principally Cervantes in his prologue to his Ocho comedias—often inscribe the Thespis myth into their historiographies by designating Rueda as the “first” Spanish actor/ playwright, ignoring the long jongleuresque tradition that preceded and, indeed, gave rise to him. The chapter then moves to an examination of two prologues written by Juan de Timoneda at the time of his publication of Rueda’s pasos and argues that Timoneda’s conspicuous vacillation between “writerly” and what might be called “actorly” approaches to

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Introduction dramatic text demonstrates a profound ambivalence toward the very nature of theater itself. Finally, this chapter turns to a close reading of Lope de Vega’s Arte nuevo de hacer comedias and argues that Lope’s dramatic manifesto is a text very much haunted by the same anxieties of performance exhibited by Timoneda. Comparing the Arte nuevo to Scala’s “Prologue” to Il finto marito (in which a Player and a Stranger engage in an ongoing debate over the relative importance of the literary versus the performative qualities of any given play), this chapter suggests that the major difference between these two texts is that, while Scala divides his opposing arguments between two characters, both voices in the Arte nuevo come from Lope who is engaged in a dialogic exchange with himself in which neither voice entirely convinces the other. Like the Stranger, Lope seeks to tie his comedias to a respectable set of literary rules, but, like the Player, he finds he cannot easily erase the weight of the jongleuresque performance tradition he has inherited. His text repeatedly breaks down at precisely those points where his discourse slides from a literary vision of theater to a performative one; where he slips from theoretical to experiential questions; where he finds himself unwillingly confirming the suspicions of his scholarly audience that (according to their literary definitions) his jongleuresque comedias are indeed “vulgar,” “vile,” and “barbarous.” Well aware of these textual fissures, Lope ends his manifesto by abruptly deciding to privilege the corral performance over all other considerations. And it is this abiding self-identification with his actors that ultimately remains the most enduring vestige of jongleuresque performance not just in the Arte nuevo, but on the seventeenthcentury Spanish stage itself.

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Chapter One

Reinventing Thespis

If Thespis did not exist, that is, if we had no tradition concerning him, it would be necessary to invent him. Gerald F. Else The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy

The Thespis Myth I begin with a myth of origins. Like all good myths this one has a hero; like all good myths it owes its interpretive authority to its own misty antiquity; and like all good myths it lends itself to infinite re-interpretation. It is the fable of a long-lost “Golden Age,” a creation story that ultimately narrates the triumph of ritual over play, the written over the oral, private space over public space, and high culture over low culture. Aristotle was the first to employ this myth within the context of a critical work and he has been followed ever since by scores of theater historians and literary critics who have relied on this myth as the basis for any initial discussion of theater, both Western and non-Western. Although I intend to quarrel with many of its assumptions and implications throughout the course of this book, I shall not break with tradition here by refusing it its rightful place as my point of departure. As legend has it, several hundred years prior to the mid-sixth century BCE, the ancient Greeks began singing hymns in honor of the god Dionysus. This tradition of bacchic hymn singing so developed that it eventually congealed into a fixed lyric form known as the dithyramb and achieved a ritual centrality for the Dionysus cult. The exact nature, function, and significance of this ritual hymn have been hotly disputed by 13

Chapter One scholars for a number of years, and I will not enter here into a detailed discussion of the debate itself, since such specificity is unnecessary for my mythic retelling. Nevertheless, most accounts agree that the dithyramb essentially consisted of what Arthur Pickard-Cambridge calls an “orgiastic” performance in which a circular chorus of some fifty men—possibly costumed as satyrs—danced to the accompaniment of a flute while responding antiphonally to an improvised narrative sung by a choral leader (31). The evolution of this dithyrambic performance steadily progressed until one day it culminated in a truly miraculous event: a choral leader named Thespis separated himself completely from his chorus in order to engage its members in “dialogue.” With this decisive separation he singlehandedly “invented” drama by making himself the world’s “first actor.” Of course, my hyperbolic rhetoric in this retelling should not be taken too seriously; I assume this voice because it is indicative of the enthusiasm and reverence with which I have long heard actors speak of this ancient Greek figure. Gerald Else puts it a bit more modestly when he says that Thespis’s contribution was really the modification or adaptation of the pre-existing dithyrambic form by either “adding a new dimension to what had been a strictly choral performance [or] bringing out in sharper relief a dimension which was already implicit in it: that of ‘dialogue’ or ‘drama’” (2). Thespis’s pivotal moment of separation from his chorus has become central to our theater historiography not only because it supposedly marks the foundation of Western performative mimesis, but also because it more or less coincides with the establishment of the City Dionysia in Athens in 534 BCE, an annual religious festival and competition that would eventually showcase the dramatic works of the best playwrights of ancient Greece. If Thespis (who is said to have won the inaugural contest) and his successors can be called the inventors of Western drama, then the City Dionysia can truly be considered nothing less than their laboratory. For, Aristotle himself, while not specifically mentioning Thespis by name, nevertheless credits later participants with the further development of the dramatic form, insisting that Aeschylus introduced a second actor, while Sophocles raised the number of actors to three and added scenery (49).

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Reinventing Thespis I do not retell this myth because I am somehow unaware of the fact that it is fairly common knowledge; rather, I retell it precisely because it is so well known. Over the course of many centuries, it has proven to be a powerfully seductive paradigm for explaining the emergence of all drama to the Western mind. A close reading of the Thespis myth (both on its own terms and as a descriptive historiographical model) reveals that this legend has bequeathed to us three essential critical assumptions about the nature of theater. First, the Thespis myth asserts that theater emerges out of ritual, specifically religious ritual. Second, it insists that theater emerges when an already existing choral mass separates into constituent parts, thus creating a verbal exchange among its members. And third, this myth strongly implies that theater emerges when it becomes more or less institutionalized; that is, when its mimetic representation is tied to a pre-written, literary document as well as to a pre-existing performance space. Like Claude Lévi-Strauss’s now-famous division between the “raw” and the “cooked,” these assumptions delineate a distinct border between what critics have traditionally considered “primitive” and “civilized” performance; “civilized performance” being post-ritualistic, post-monologic, post-oral, and post-ambulant. It is precisely because these assumptions circulate so freely, and with so little critical friction that we frequently fail to even notice them—let alone move beyond them—when circumstances do not quite fit the mold we have labored to create. Thus, at those times when the object of our intellectual gaze will not fit nicely into the definitions we have established, we exert a Herculean effort to force the object to bend to our critical will. As Else says of the Cambridge School of Classical Anthropologists’ attempts to ground Greek tragedy within the Thespis myth: “[Gilbert] Murray’s alleged ritual sequence and the misreadings and misinterpretations that have flowed from it are a particular instance of a much broader, more pervasive phenomenon: the determination at all costs to find the origin of tragedy in religion, and therefore in ritual” (4). Going further, David Bynum indicts what he calls the “ritual fallacy” for anthropological attempts to locate not just drama, but all oral narrative within a web of ritual practices. These attempts, he argues, tend to reverse the actual direction of performative

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Chapter One causality: “Cults and rituals that occasionally draw from the fund of motifs in oral fable for renewal may themselves be widespread and very old; but still they cannot be traced so widely or in such diverse multiformity as the tales that periodically serve them as motival reservoirs” (254). In other words, while our critical assumptions may be very useful, they can become so totalizing and so ubiquitous that they often serve to limit our ability to see clearly. Consider Jorge Luis Borges’s story “La busca de Averroes” in which the protagonist, while writing a commentary of Aristotle’s Poetics, struggles to comprehend the difference between the terms tragedy and comedy. De esa estudiosa distracción lo distrajo una suerte de melodía. Miró por el balcón enrejado; abajo, en el estrecho patio de tierra, jugaban unos chicos semidesnudos. Uno, de pie en los hombros del otro, hacía notoriamente de almuédano; bien cerrados los ojos, salmodiaba No hay otro dios que el Dios. El que lo sostenía, inmóvil, hacía de alminar; otro, abyecto en el polvo y arrodillado, de congregación de los fieles. El juego duró poco; todos querían ser el almuédano, nadie la congregación o la torre. (95; original emphasis)

In this brief moment, Averroes has just witnessed a sterling example of theater. And yet, as Borges suggests, because he comes from a culture that has not only constructed an insurmountable separation of performance from text, but considers virtually all mimetic representation to be blasphemous, he simply does not see what he has just seen.1 Even when, a short time later, Abulcásim, who has traveled widely, tries to explain the concept of theater to Averroes and his colleagues, these erudite men simply do not understand. For these scholars, performative mimesis seems merely to be an act of “los locos” (99). In the end, Averroes’s definition of tragedy and comedy remains strictly literary, and his conclusions (stemming from this definition) remain profoundly flawed: “Aristú (Aristóteles) denomina tragedia a los panegíricos y comedias a las sátiras y anatemas. Admirables tragedias y comedias abundan en las páginas del Corán y en las mohalacas del santuario” (103; original emphasis). For Borges, Averroes’s search is absurd: “queriendo imaginar lo que es un drama sin haber sospechado

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Reinventing Thespis lo que es un teatro” (104) and yet our own critical separation of “drama” (i.e., “literature”) from “theater” (i.e., “performance”) is frequently no less problematic even when we think we have a clear concept of both. Hence, after the late Roman institutional theater disappeared along with the empire in the fifth and sixth centuries CE, the “rebirth” of the Western dramatic tradition is said to have followed—uncannily—the paradigms of the earlier Dionysian evolution in ancient Greece. Once again, religious ritual—in this case (ironically) the Catholic Mass—is said to have preceded the drama; once again a choral hymn—the antiphonal song—is said to be the ur-text; and once again the central moment is one of separation, as the choral mass ruptures into distinct constituencies through the intercalation of “dialogue” into the antiphonal song. This intercalation, widely known as the Quem quaeritis trope, allowed one set of priests (representing an “angel”) and another set (representing three biblical “Marys”) to engage in a simple verbal exchange that—we are told—will later develop into the great miracle and mystery cycles, and still later into the works of Shakespeare, Molière, and Lope de Vega. As O. B. Hardison concisely explains in his influential work Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages, the Quem quaeritis represents nothing less than “the bridge whereby medieval culture made the transition from ritual to representational drama” (178). Informed as it is by the Thespis myth, Hardison’s “Christian Rite” model has essentially served as the standard for virtually all preliminary discussions of medieval theater since its initial publication in 1965. Despite their widely divergent theoretical approaches, scholars such as William Tydeman, John Wesley Harris, Jody Enders, and Walter Cohen (among many others) have all incorporated the Quem quaeritis into their work. Even someone as bold as Bertolt Brecht, whose theories of theater marked a radical rethinking of the Western tradition by borrowing so heavily from non-Western performance, largely accepted the ritual model outright: “Theatre may be said to be derived from ritual, but that is only to say that it becomes theatre once the two have separated; what it brought over from the mysteries was not its former ritual function, but purely and simply the pleasure which accompanied this” (181). Within the

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Chapter One specific context of Hispanism, Ronald Surtz succinctly employs the Hardisonian model when he says, “El teatro medieval nace en el seno de la Iglesia, concretamente en el canto litúrgico” (“El teatro” 63). Yet, Hardison’s model is far from perfect. Although implying a theoretical universality (at the very least within the Western European tradition), it does not quite apply equally at all times and in all places. As a theory of dramatic origins, the Quem quaeritis paradigm raises a number of difficult questions. What do we do, for instance, when we cannot tie a particular performance event to a dialogue-based written text? How do we make such an event fit within cultural contexts where this Hardisonian evolution from religious ritual to secular drama is difficult, if not impossible, to trace? Even accepting its relevance for Western Europe, does this mean that those countries lacking a religiously based medieval drama lack a theater as well? More to the point, what should we make of the itinerant street performers who, in one way or another, have executed their craft from well before the days of Thespis up through the beginning of the twenty-first century? Are these people something other than practitioners of theater? The Iberian Peninsula, due in large measure to its own contingent history, offers us a prime example of the cultural and geographical space in which all these questions are not only pertinent but essential. Because the theatrical tradition of medieval Spain represents an idiosyncratic exception to the supposed wider European rule, it demonstrates—more than that of any other Western European country—the need for a nontraditional approach to theater and performance history. Spanish Renaissance drama, whose rhetorical exuberance is at least partially responsible for the designation “Golden Age” in Hispanic criticism, seems to have burst onto the scene almost ex nihilo at the end of the sixteenth century precisely because we cannot seem to tie it directly back to the Quem quaeritis trope. Seeking to explain the apparent gulf separating the thirteenth-century Auto de los Reyes Magos (itself, very probably, a French import) from the aesthetic sparkle and sheer volume that mark the work of seventeenth-century playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, and Calderón, various scholars have examined the question of the dramatic origins of

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Reinventing Thespis the early Spanish stage from a number of critical perspectives and have elaborated two schools of thought on the very limited corpus of extant medieval dramatic texts. The first school insists that the lack of texts indicates a lack of a medieval Hispanic tradition; the second insists that a strong dramatic tradition existed on the Iberian Peninsula throughout the Middle Ages, but that most, if not all, of the textual evidence of this tradition either has been destroyed or has yet to be found. Most scholars concur with the first hypothesis and are skeptically awaiting the discovery of tangible evidence before even considering the second option. In the absence of some verifiable proof that there indeed existed an Iberian dramatic tradition analogous to that of France and England during the Middle Ages, a number of scholars have attempted to deal with this problem by arguing that the Reconquista and the Counter-Reformation actually impeded the development of medieval Spanish drama. Robert Morrison, for instance, has argued that a local Spanish priest, “sensing the divine mission of his Church to preserve traditional beliefs and practices, and remembering a relative or two who had died in battle, was understandably cool toward altering his ritual with innovative dramatic intercalations” (215). Likewise, Narciso Díaz de Escovar and Francisco de P. Lasso de la Vega argue that the Inquisition itself deliberately destroyed dramatic texts in order to impose ideological purity on the Spanish populace (1: 96). For his part, Surtz contends that medieval Iberians had no need for a religiously based dramatic literary form precisely because the entire project of the Reconquista constituted a grand allegory play per se. For Surtz, quotidian life before the fall of Granada in 1492 was experienced as a religious catharsis in and of itself. And for this reason, he argues, people had no need to participate in the kind of vicarious rituals performed in the great miracle and mystery cycles of northern Europe. From this point of (negative) departure, then, Surtz seeks to locate the origins of the Spanish national theater in the ritualistic court spectacles and masques staged by (among others) Encina in the early sixteenth century (Birth 21).2 These various arguments are certainly provocative but remain somewhat unconvincing for several reasons. First, while life itself during the Reconquista may have possessed its own

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Chapter One dramatic aesthetic, we can hardly conclude that this Zeitgeist would have inhibited across the board so natural a human impulse as the desire for mimetic representation. If we have learned anything from social anthropology, it is that all cultures everywhere in the world have engaged in some kind of mimetic representation. Second, locating the origins of what perhaps became the most popular cultural product of seventeenthcentury Spain in so aristocratic a setting as the court does not explain the attraction of the work of Lope de Vega and others for a paying theater-going public largely made up of middleand lower-class spectators. Third, these theories ignore almost entirely a flourishing street performance tradition that thrived on the Iberian Peninsula between 500 and 1500 CE. This is not to suggest, of course, that theater historians are generally unfamiliar with this ubiquitous popular tradition. For, just as nearly all theater scholars mention Thespis and the Quem quaeritis trope at some point in their histories, so too do they almost always acknowledge the existence of various street performers of one kind or another. Within Hispanism, for instance, both Ángel Gómez Moreno’s El teatro medieval castellano en su marco románico and Andrés Amorós and José María Díez Borque’s Historia de los espectáculos en España contain chapters on the jongleuresque. Nevertheless, such recognition of street performance ultimately comes down to a question of focus. The pro forma acknowledgment of these popular performers notwithstanding, they usually receive only passing consideration within standard theater histories precisely because the Thespis myth makes it difficult for scholars to define them as legitimate actors given the nature of their performance. Surtz himself mentions these performers on his way to Encina but then glosses over them when he argues that one major factor that contributed to the blossoming of the Castilian theater in the fifteenth century was the public recitation of epic poetry and ballads. “And surely,” he says, “after the epics had ceased to be recited, the performance of ballads by both professional minstrels and the general public continued to be a semi-dramatic experience in which dialogue tended to replace narrative elements and people and events were called into being through the evocative power of the spoken word” (Birth 22). Such an abrupt transition is indicative of the critical

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Reinventing Thespis restrictions embedded within the Thespis myth. “Genuine” theater demands: first, a text that can be defined a priori as a play (note that character dialogue continues to be the mediating factor); second, a space that can be defined a priori as a stage; and third, a performer who can be defined a priori as an actor. Anything that falls outside these paradigmatic limits must be—by definition—something else. For many scholars, this “something else” turns out to be a literature that is semirepresentational (Alonso 70). Of course, the central problem here is ultimately one of nomenclature. Because many pre-modern literary works often exhibit an underlying performative quality—whose oblique existence has traditionally been associated with this Thespian notion of “dialogue”—we frequently employ the term semidramatic to describe them. Our use of this liminal term, however, is somewhat misapplied insofar as it attempts to mediate not between two contiguous elements of a single continuum, but between interrelated components of two distinct activities. Although it may seem basic to say so, it bears repeating: drama—with its preponderance of un-narrated character dialogue—is a type of literature and is differentiated from other literary genres by a defining set of literary conventions. Theater, on the other hand, whose minimal essence (as I will argue) requires only a “dialogue” between actor and spectator, is a type of performance and is differentiated from other performance genres by a specific set of performative markers.3 By conflating drama and theater, our use of the term semidramatic—along with its implied correlative, semitheatrical— often skews our understanding of many of the world’s various performance traditions. Hence, the Thespis myth compels us to insist that a particular object of study is either “primitive” (i.e., “proto-theatrical”) or, if we are obliged to admit it to the realm of the “civilized,” that it is something outside the world of drama entirely (i.e., “atheatrical”). It is this tendency to taxonomically divide all things “theatrical” from all things “nontheatrical” based on the paradigms of the Thespis myth— which is to say, the granting of theatrical legitimacy solely to those objects that conform to specific assumptions of literary genre and architectural space—that produces many of our critical dilemmas. For, what the Thespis myth has taught us to do

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Chapter One more than anything else is to look for theater in those performances that take place in locations universally recognized as stages and in those residual literary texts where character dialogue is the most salient—if not the exclusive—feature. Ironically, our theoretical preoccupation with both “dialogue” and “stage” often serves to undermine the clarity of our critical discussions of purely literary questions as well. Our tendency to conflate theater and drama not only affects those texts that exhibit an underlying performative quality, despite their nondramatic appearance, but also those that manifest a distinctly dramatic appearance, despite the absence of a performance tradition. Fernando de Rojas’s La tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499; 1502)—universally known as Celestina—is just such a literary text. Formalists have quarreled over this work for decades, because, while it consists almost exclusively of dialogue, and thus would clearly seem to be a play (one of the first, in fact, written on the Iberian Peninsula since the days of Seneca), it conspicuously lacks most of the other required dramatic markers of its day. It is a prose work composed at a time when nearly all drama was (or soon would be) written in verse. Its 21 actos—while certainly inscribed within the discourse of theater—are far too numerous (and in toto, far too long) to be considered truly analogous to the more common jornada of the forthcoming comedia, which almost never allowed for more than three literary divisions. Most crucial of all, of course, it is doubtful that Celestina was ever originally performed. For all these reasons (among others), most scholars have ultimately consigned the work to the category of “atheatrical,” being content to simply label it a “novel in dialogue” or a “dramatic novel.” Of course, Celestina’s much debated theatricality (or lack thereof), although certainly touching on notions of performance, has very little to do with the work’s actual performability. Since its first documented performance in 1941, numerous stage and film versions of the work have demonstrated that it is very performable indeed, even if most contemporary audiences would be unwilling to sit through an entire, uncut production undoubtedly lasting several hours.4 (In order to circumvent this dilemma, at least for modern Englishspeaking audiences, Eric Bentley has created an abbreviated

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Reinventing Thespis five-act adaptation of James Mabbe’s 1631 translation.) Thus, what is ultimately at stake in the debate is whether we can actually tie Celestina to a potential performance on a particular stage sometime around the turn of the sixteenth century. For, without the church portals that partially grant the mystery play its dramatic status, without the courtly dining halls that partially grant Encina’s églogas their own theatrical standing (despite their clearly untheatrical name), without the traveling wagons that grant this same performative classification to Rueda’s pasos, Celestina remains a work of ambiguous literary genre even with its near exclusivity of inscribed character dialogue. The entire issue of Celestina’s performability is, in the end, a variation on the critical theme of authorial intent. For, what we ultimately want to determine when debating its literary genre has very little to do with the work itself and much to do with the mind of its author or authors.5 In order to classify La tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea as a play—that is, in order to justify Rojas’s use of the term tragicomedy—we do not actually need to know if the work was performed for a particular audience at some point during his lifetime; a fact that, as Cervantes ironically notes in the introduction to his own published—but unperformed—plays, is often a function of finding an impresario willing to undertake the commercially risky endeavor (“Prólogo al lector” 11–12). Instead, what we really want to know is whether Rojas wrote the play with a potential performance in mind. In the end, we seem willing to accept the theatrical discourse embedded within Rojas’s title—even if he merely intended the text to be read (possibly aloud) rather than performed—so long as he initially conceived of the work as a “play” rather than as a conventional “dispute” or “novel in dialogue.” Conversely (and leaving these purely literary questions aside), the difficulty we encounter in our examination of medieval itinerant street theater stems from the fact that our contact with it almost always depends on the few written documents we have inherited, works such as epics, ballads, and lays that hardly resemble the kinds of texts we normally categorize as dramatic. And since we have been critically predisposed to see these works as discrete, disembodied literary entities, we have

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Chapter One pushed the individuals who produced them well beyond the range of even our peripheral vision. Because the performance tradition seems only tangentially related to any literary understanding we might hope to gain from our analysis, we have tended to see medieval performers—such as the jongleur—as “accidental poets” who have left behind awkwardly “semidramatic” pieces of “oral literature,” rather than as deliberate actors whose literary texts were part of a much larger theatrical phenomenon. In essence, our insistence that semidramatic literary works can only spring from semitheatrical performances makes perhaps the most ubiquitous actors of the Middle Ages virtually invisible to our post-Renaissance eyes. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, for instance, in his monumental study Poesía juglaresca y juglares, attempts to clearly distinguish between “nonliterary” and “literary” performers. On the one hand, for instance, he wants to downplay any connections that the nonliterary performers might have with the literary ones. He speaks of prestidigitators, animal trainers, acrobats, and puppeteers, but then dismisses them outright, saying that they are of no literary interest (25). On the other hand, however, his own rhetoric frequently belies the fact that he does indeed see a connection between the kinds of jongleuresque activities that create literary texts and those that do not. Speaking of two different definitions of the jongleurs as either “todos los que causaban alegría” or “todos los que hacían profesión de divertir a los hombres,” he pointedly adds the following stipulation: Esta fórmula [. . .] necesita ser precisada añadiendo el concepto de “espectáculo público,” pues el literato que escribe una obra para alegrar o divertir a los hombres no es un juglar si él no la recita ante un grupo de oyentes. Así arreglaremos la definición diciendo que juglares eran todos los que se ganaban la vida actuando ante un público, para recrearle con la música, o con la literatura, o con charlatanería, o con juegos de mano, de acrobatismo, de mímica, etc. (12; original emphasis)

For Menéndez Pidal, the mere act of creating poetic texts is not enough to make someone a jongleur; they must be a professional performer capable of presenting (“actuando”) the text in front of a listening public. So important is this performative 24

Reinventing Thespis function for Menéndez Pidal that in a later chapter, in a section he entitles “El juglar como poeta,” he says: Importándonos ahora conocer el carácter de la poesía de los juglares como forma inicial de las literaturas modernas, observamos que la poesía juglaresca se moldea fundamentalmente por exigencias del género de publicidad a que estaba destinada. Los juglares conciben la nueva poesía como un espectáculo o diversión pública, y de aquí derivan los rasgos más peculiares de su arte. [. . .] El teatro moderno, aun en sus producciones más elevadas, suele también escribirse para un público desigual, y nadie lo juzgará arte esencialmente vulgar o indocto. Pensemos lo mismo del espectáculo juglaresco que precedió al teatral y realizó antes que éste los primeros progresos de un espectáculo literario. (242)

Thus, although Menéndez Pidal clearly considers the mester de juglaría to be a continuing theatrical tradition, he simply cannot bring himself to actually call it “theater.” He does not call this section, for instance, “El juglar como actor” even though he frequently employs the verb actuar to describe the jongleur’s public presentation of text. For Menéndez Pidal, these medieval performances remain something peculiar, something pre-theatrical, something awkwardly literary. Hence, after some two hundred pages of inquiry into these jongleuresque performances, he still sees the jongleurs as little more than proto-actors; that is, as performers who anxiously await the arrival of a messianic Thespis who will lead them to the promised land of true theater.6

Thespis and Performance Theory During the last four decades theorists of performance and orality have successfully transformed our concept of the interrelationship between theater and literature, and in doing so, have eroded the Thespis myth (whether intentionally or unintentionally) by calling into question the very assumptions on which it is based. These theorists have begun to dismantle Thespis’s foundational primacy by demonstrating that the essence of theater is, on the one hand, far simpler than the elaborate textual and architectural structures we have traditionally built around it, while showing, on the other hand, that the complexities of 25

Chapter One theater are far too expansive to be confined within these limited structures. For these critics, performance is not just a secondary element to either the text or the stage space in which it occurs. Since performance inevitably shapes, supports, undermines, obscures, deconstructs, emphasizes, connects, or even ignores completely both the “text” and the “stage,” these critics have begun to describe the essence of theater as a complex relationship existing between the performer, the performance text (however broadly or narrowly one defines this), the performance space, and the audience. Because many of the arguments I intend to make throughout the rest of this book will depend heavily on an understanding of the work of these performance theorists, a brief summary of their most salient ideas is in order. Let us begin with an examination of a contracted notion of what has heretofore been considered one of the central markers of theater: the a priori stage. As we have seen, even as far back as Aristotle, literary criticism has privileged the existence of a pre-existing performance space through an inordinate focus on stage machinery.7 Because this stage machinery—which includes costumes, sets, and a well-structured division between the acting area and the audience area—requires an enormous amount of work to construct, and must therefore be in place well before the performance can occur, dramatic critics and theater historians have tended to assume that the stage always precedes the performance, and that all performances necessarily shape themselves to the theater in which they take place. Logically, these assumptions have led to the conclusion that if we can acquire an understanding of the physical parameters of a particular theater then we will necessarily gain access to the secrets of the performances that took place therein. Yet, despite the wealth of information provided by such ground-breaking studies as Hugo Albert Rennert’s The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de Vega or John J. Allen’s brilliant The Reconstruction of a Spanish Golden Age Playhouse: El Corral del Príncipe 1583–1744 (not to mention the myriad books published on Shakespeare’s Globe, the Roman amphitheaters, and other architectural edifices), the detailed and often lengthy description of materials, measurements, and architectural designs that we find in this scholarship actually tells us relatively little about the particular performances that occurred on the stages exam-

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Reinventing Thespis ined. For, even if the theater could be considered a kind of “bottle” into which the performance is “poured,” there is still a great leap between the shape and dimensions of that bottle and the flavor of the liquid inside. Hollis Huston’s examination of what he calls the “simple stage” offers us an excellent theoretical contrast to the notion that performances are something introduced into already existing spaces. Building on Brook’s concept of theatrical “empty space” (9), Huston defines his “simple stage” as “the circle that the street performer opens in a crowd” (1), a space paradoxically constituted by the very performance it is said to contain: The mimus fills that space by keeping it empty, possessing it, making it impossible for us to enter. That now-empty space is the stage, a proof of presence. The stage is the sign of a contract, and exists for precisely that length of time during which the contract is fulfilled. [. . .] When the show is over, and an act of the simple stage completed, the actor folds up her illusion: people who had been spectators then walk through the place where a stage had been, as if the event called performance had never happened. (76)

For Huston, the stage does not exist apart from the performance itself; on the contrary, the performance space comes into being at the behest of the performer, and anything that is then added to that space—from simple scenery to elaborate laser effects— remains nothing more than a supplement to the imaginary world created by the performer. Anyone who has done any acting knows this to be true. For, even in an elaborately staged production, the initial and most important work of the actor is to create the reality of the imaginative world through voicing, gesture, and gaze. The sets, costumes, and stage properties that enter this world do so incrementally and only come together in their totality at the dress rehearsal shortly before the production opens for an audience. Yet, even when all of these elements have been added to the performance, their referential effectiveness is still very much a product of the actor’s original creation of the imaginary object: the audience sees a character getting slowly drunk, sipping from an “elegant crystal goblet of champagne,” not because that is what really exists on stage, but because the actor treats the plastic “goblet” of sparkling

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Chapter One apple juice as if it were the real thing. And even when these properties never materialize at all, the imaginative world does not dissipate but, in fact, remains intact, often becoming all the more real because the audience, perhaps wise to theatrical conventions, is not left wondering if the “goblet” is really crystal, or if the beverage inside is really champagne. By setting aside the notion that “genuine” theater requires the materiality associated with the complex stage, we can begin to see theater in places where it never occurred to us to look. As Huston says: We will never think clearly about theater buildings as long as we think that the theater is a building. We will never think clearly about how stages work as long as we think all stages have the same properties as ours. Any theater that demands a building is a complex theater, but the simple theater needs no house. Any stage that can only be seen from one side is a complex stage, but the simple stage is no point of view but a behavior. You can still see the simple stage in marketplaces and public squares, in shopping malls when the lords of commerce allow, in New York’s Central and Washington Square Parks, under the ducts and pipes of the Pompidou Center. An articulate performer unpacks illusory space with his act, and it makes a difference to every person in the square: some stop at a distance to watch, those who pass by take a detour around him, and a stage appears, Brook’s empty space in a place that had been full of real life. (75–76)

Closely related to Brook’s and Huston’s subversion of the a priori stage is the calling into question by various theorists of the a priori dramatic text. (Menéndez Pidal’s blanket dismissal of prestidigitators, animal trainers, acrobats, and puppeteers is possible only insofar as he can privilege literary performance over all other types.) Jean Alter’s monumental study of what he calls the “sociosemiotics” of theater clearly demonstrates that our long-standing critical distinction between the literary text and its performance—while perhaps inevitable—does not necessarily (or automatically) imply a pre-established hierarchical relationship. Alter rightly notes that theater’s “core” has traditionally been associated with a theoretically stable verbal text, an association that often leads us to view any particular performance as little more than a secondary “manifestation” of this pre-existing verbal text, but he argues that audiences rarely

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Reinventing Thespis experience theater in this kind of dualistic fashion. For most spectators, says Alter, the “referential function” (that is, the story being told) and the “performant function” (that is, the telling of the story) coexist independently, whether both remain equally balanced, or whether one becomes subordinate to the other. What shapes the total performance event is the unique interplay of referential and performant functions. And even when one of these functions happens to stand out, Alter does not assume—as, perhaps, do more traditional critics—that the a priori verbal text will always remain paramount. On the contrary, when a separation between the two functions does occur for the audience, it is usually the referential function that is pushed into the background. As Alter notes, elements as diverse as “the erotic appeal of the performers,” their status as “celebrities,” or even the aesthetics of the scenic design can all contribute to a subordination of the referential function; that is, to the diminishing importance of the literary artifact (74–75).8 To demonstrate this interaction between the referential and the performant functions in theater, Alter himself offers as a “case study” Arianne Mnouchkine’s 1982 production (in conjunction with the Théâtre du Soleil) of Shakespeare’s Richard II. According to Alter, the enormous success of the production was “Mnouchkine’s bold decision to do what seemed unthinkable at the time: to stage a Shakespeare text in the style of the Kabuki performances” (133). Ironically, however, this particular production’s success came at the very expense of referentiality, since the French audience was confronted with two alien sign systems. In the first place, as Alter notes, Richard II “is not the most accessible of Shakespeare’s plays” for French audiences, relying as it does on a rather detailed knowledge of the arcana of English history (139). In the second place, the Kabuki performance tradition (whose semiotic system Western audiences are very ill-equipped to read) made deciphering this performance text all the more difficult by conveying it in what essentially amounts to a foreign performative language. Thus, the overwhelming success of Mnouchkine’s production had little, if anything, to do with Shakespeare’s “theoretically stable text” and everything to do with what Alter calls the “exotic” appeal and “dazzling display” of the Kabuki performance (138–39).

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Chapter One This example, while beautifully highlighting the weakness in the Thespis myth’s preference for the a priori text, remains the exception to the rule. It stands out in Alter’s analysis precisely because “straight” theater usually seeks to smoothly meld the referential and performant functions. As Alter himself points out, a truly exceptional acting performance in a serious play—which is to say, a near perfect melding of “story” and “telling”—will probably go unnoticed (at least for a time) precisely because the spectators will be so caught up in the story that they will fail to see the actor’s functioning as a stage sign. The actor’s stellar performance as an actor will shift attention away from that very performance: “Applause that interrupts a crucial action signals an appreciation of a performance but a failing in the storytelling” (266; original emphasis). Still, there are other performance genres where the referential function is so routinely subordinated to the performant function that the actual telling of a good story would itself be an exception to the general rule. Opera, for instance, offers us a prime example of this. Generally speaking, the libretto of any given opera is of very little consequence to either its staging or the audience’s enjoyment of its presentation. The hostility with which opera aficionados originally greeted the introduction of “supertitles” into the theater (as a way of making the referential function more accessible to linguistically incompetent spectators) is an indication of the small value opera audiences have traditionally placed on the telling of the story. And while the musical score could perhaps be considered the real “text” of the work, it too remains subordinate to the actual performance. People generally go to the opera not to contemplate the intricate structure of the motifs, but to hear the exquisite voices of singers like Roberto Alagna and René Fleming. Thus, most criticism of a particular operatic production will concentrate not on the effectiveness of the storytelling, but on the performances of the singers themselves. Moreover, opera is also much more susceptible than “straight” theater to the interruption of the story by an audience clamoring to acknowledge the performers as performers. We would consider it highly unusual during a contemporary performance of La vida es sueño, for instance, if the actor playing Segismundo were to stop after his famous solilo-

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Reinventing Thespis quy in order to bow, to receive a bouquet of flowers, to blow kisses to the audience, and perhaps even to do an encore of the speech. Yet, this is often the proper protocol for an operatic performer. This type of ritual praise—embedded within the very structure of the performance itself—has become almost a requirement to the rhythm of the total event. Were Thomas Hampson to endure an entire evening without these ritualistic accolades, he would either consider his performance to have been a failure or consider his audience to be singularly unappreciative (I suspect the latter). Likewise, were a well-trained operatic audience to be prohibited from stopping the performance in order to participate in these rituals of admiration, they too would, no doubt, feel cheated. (Of course, these ritual conventions vary from house to house and from production to production, especially as more and more opera companies have engaged the services of “straight” theater directors to oversee the staging of their productions.) This leads us directly into the work of Richard Schechner, whose theories represent perhaps the most important contribution to the dismantling of the Thespis myth’s traditional hierarchies. While Schechner’s scholarship ranges far and wide, it is his critical expansion of the entire concept of performance—a concept that pointedly encompasses much more than just theater—that makes his work crucial to any complete understanding of theatricality. Going far beyond Huston’s de-privileging of the a priori stage and Alter’s subordination of the a priori text, Schechner’s pioneering examination of various performative “continua” demonstrates not only that performance represents something much more than a mere delivery system for physically reproducing dramatic texts; Schechner’s work reveals that very often it is the play itself that is incidental. The performance text—again, however one wishes to define this term—often exists solely to fill the needs of the performance event. In other words, as far as performers and their immediate audiences are concerned, reciting a soliloquy might be no better (or worse) than doing tricks on a skateboard or conducting High Mass. It is the performance itself that matters, not the act performed. For Schechner, then, “theater” is one of five hierarchically equal categories of performance that also include “play,”

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Chapter One “games,” “sports,” and “ritual.” One of his major theoretical concerns, of course, is the creation of a schematic taxonomy to describe the ways in which these categories overlap as well as the ways in which they differ (Performance Theory 12).9 And while the details of Schechner’s classification have very little practical value for this current study of jongleuresque performance, his work in this regard does demonstrate, nevertheless, that any study of theater—from theories of origins to theories of the semiotics of performance—must take into account the fact that the object of study does not exist in a vacuum. Theater is part of a vast nexus of performative intertextualities whose interrelated components constantly push and pull one another in profound and essential ways. Each of these distinct, but interrelated, performance activities affects our expectations— both as performers and as spectators—of the others as we move along the continuum. Vincent Canby, for instance, the New York Times theater critic, has persuasively argued that the current mania for more and more elaborate special effects on the contemporary Broadway stage is driven by a competition with the cinema: New York audiences (largely made up of tourists) paying $100 or more to see a splashy musical expect to be dazzled in much the same way they are dazzled when they see a summer blockbuster at their local cineplex (see Canby, “Is Broadway Fogbound in a Special Effects Age?”). Likewise, the City Dionysia did not exist independent of the original Olympic games; the medieval mystery cycles did not exist independent of the bull and bear baiting pits; modern Shakespeare festivals do not exist independent of the World Cup or the Superbowl. As Schechner himself says: “The origins of theater—thought since Aristotle’s day to be ritual—look very different when seen from the perspective of popular entertainment,” a phenomenon that links shamanism, acrobatics, ventriloquism, and puppetry (Performance Theory 145). At the same time, Schechner is not interested solely in locating theater along a continuum of all performance genres, but also in locating particular performances along a continuum of all the events that frame them. These events include “special observances [. . .] that lead into the performance and away from it” (such as ticket-taking, locating one’s seat, and the final applause that serves to “wipe away the reality of the show

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Reinventing Thespis re-establishing in its place the reality of everyday life”), as well as the smaller private rituals (like dinner beforehand and drinks afterward) that often accompany attendance at a performance (169). All of these practices—which constitute the total event—greatly reduce the importance of Alter’s referential function of the “theoretically stable text” (assuming there is one) by making it just one element among many of the evening’s entertainments. To highlight this, Schechner describes several experiments the Performance Group conducted in the 1970s to emphasize for the audience that the “performers were telling a story by means of theater” (Performance Theory 82; original emphasis). In one case, for a production of Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime, the stage space was designed to allow the audience to move about the set during the show.10 For another production, entitled Commune and performed in Vancouver, the audience was invited to arrive at the theater for the actors’ call (the time when the actors show up to prepare for the performance) and was thus encouraged to participate in a very intimate way with the total performance.11 Says Schechner: “About twelve people showed up at 6 p.m., watched the Group clean up, set props, get into costume, do warm-ups, establish the box office, admit the regular audience, do the play with spectators, remove costumes, clean up, and shut the theater” (85). Clearly, those few people who took advantage of this invitation experienced a performance that was very different from the one experienced by those who merely arrived shortly before the rise of the curtain and left shortly after its fall. As Susan Bennett notes in her own study of audiences, spectators bring to the theater a “horizon of expectations” that are shaped to a large extent by any number of associated elements (149). Hence, Schechner’s audiences for this experimental production of The Tooth of Crime did not just watch a play; instead, they experienced a much larger performance event. Being part of the total event, however, is an opportunity seldom offered to theatergoers, and again these examples stand out because of their rarity. But participation in the total event has become standard for spectators of another of Schechner’s performance categories: sports, especially on radio or television. These broadcast sporting events—which serve to bring

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Chapter One the audience into the locker room (as it were) in order to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each team, comment on the strategies each coach will likely employ, and offer congratulations and condolences to the winning and losing teams, respectively—almost always include some kind of pre-game show and will usually offer some kind of post-game wrap up. And even when mass media outlets are not available to provide a larger performance for fans, spectators of the live event have themselves developed the tailgate party in order to increase the total event to more than just the official game time. Still, although these pre-event and post-event rituals may allow spectators to experience an event more expansive than the limited play or game would provide, the above examples demonstrate nonetheless the centrality of the play or game itself, without which these supplemental activities would be meaningless. Watching actors get into and out of their costumes and make-up—watching them transform themselves into theatrical characters and then back to actors again—would certainly lose much of its significance without the opportunity to watch them be the characters they have assumed. Schechner’s work, however, shows that even this primary focus on the official text is not unassailable. The audience, he argues, can easily “de-center” the play or the game by simply ignoring large portions of it in favor of a focus on other elements of the total event through what Schechner calls “selective inattention” (202). (Although, as Keir Elam contends, it is precisely the ability to discount what he calls “extra-textual ‘noise’” that marks the “theatrical competence” of any audience [78–79]. For Elam, Schechner’s “selective inattention” is really a failure by the audience to successfully suspend their disbelief.) Nowhere is Schechner’s concept of selective inattention better demonstrated than in relation to a 1973 production of Robert Wilson’s The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, a production in which the dramatic text itself functioned as little more than a pretext for sharing a communal experience. Because most of the audience in attendance had seen at least some of this performance before (in some previous incarnation), the seven-act, twelve-hour production became something of a “retrospective” of Wilson’s work, and the audience space was thus deliberately designed to allow for maximum movement in and around the

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Reinventing Thespis theater (Performance Theory 196). During the course of the marathon performance, the spectators came and went frequently, occasionally leaving the building entirely to get a breath of fresh air on the street. Moreover, many of them who were unable or unwilling to stay until the end simply left early, so that by dawn only about two-thirds of the original audience remained. Most people, says Schechner, “assembled at BAM [Brooklyn Academy of Music] to re-experience the work, to try an all-night performance, to meet again with old friends[,] using the performance of Stalin not only as a thing in itself[,] but as a ritual experience” (196). Thus, the audience’s total experience—which is to say, the real text of the event—became more a matter of those elements they chose to see rather than those either the author or the director intended to present. For them, the contingent performance text included bits and pieces of the show, commentary literally glossed into the margins of the performance space, as well as a general sense of participation in a performance event much larger than the mere presentation of the theoretically stable literary text. This de-centering of the literary (whether through a clash of Alter’s referential and performant functions, or whether through Schechner’s notion of selective inattention) has profound implications for our view of medieval performance (and therefore for our view of the relationship between medieval and early modern theater) precisely because the puppeteers, mimes, and jongleurs who performed throughout the Middle Ages rarely, if ever, delivered a single, literary text to a stable audience on a pre-existing stage. The very notion that a single group of people would arrive at a specific time, watch a specific performance, and politely disperse afterward is itself an idea informed by our near ubiquitous contact with later, more complex, theatrical forms. Walter Ong reminds us that the word rhapsodize originally comes from the Greek rhapso–idein meaning to weave or to stitch (13), while Flemming Andersen points out that many modern ballad singers carry with them different versions of the same ballad for use in different contexts (36). Medieval jongleuresque performance—like street theater of all eras—began whenever the jongleur considered his audience to be large enough (even if that audience consisted of only one person) and continued so long as this audience remained

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Chapter One interested in his songs.12 The medieval jongleur, like the ancient rhapsode before him, quite literally “stitched” his songs together in performance, because, as Huston insists, the performer who failed to create a sufficiently varied tapestry of texts would soon find his audience waning and would literally see his simple stage evaporate before his very eyes. In the end, the performance text of the total jongleuresque event was limited only by the repertoire of the individual jongleur and by the attention span of his immediate audience. Each performance was undoubtedly marked by a great deal of variety. A sterling example of this textual variety is nowhere better represented, perhaps, than in the Libro de buen amor, one of medieval Spain’s most famously jongleuresque literary texts. Angel del Río calls this work a “cancionero personal” and reminds us that Menéndez Pidal saw the work in clearly jongleuresque terms: “el libro está concebido a la manera de los juglares, como un repertorio de materia poética, apta para la recitación, en la que se puede añadir o quitar cuanto se quiera” (1: 185–86). But the Libro de buen amor is much more than a “cancionero.” Were it nothing more than a collection of songs—that is, a written compendium of jongleuresque material—its structure would more likely resemble del Río’s compartmentalized summary of the text than the widely varied book we encounter when we actually read it. The fact that this text begins with an “oración,” ends with a “cantar de ciegos,” and episodically varies its material throughout its pages suggests that the entire structure of the work is informed by a familiarity with live jongleuresque performance. It is decidedly not coincidental, as Juan Paredes Nuñez points out, that the Arcipreste de Hita, sensing the declining interest of his “listeners,” jumps from one story to another, nor that at one tellingly jongleuresque moment he announces his intention to do a somersault, something no strictly literary narrator could ever accomplish (121). In many ways, the Libro de buen amor can be read as a literary performance of an expressly theatrical event whose varied embedded texts—existing within the rectangular parameters of a manuscript rather than within the circular confines of Huston’s simple stage—collectively serve as a brilliant excuse for the performance itself. In other words, the performative whole is greater than the sum of its literary parts.

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Reinventing Thespis

Thespis and the Jongleur I return then to Thespis—to my initial myth of origins—if only to deconstruct him. But in doing so, I do not wish to imply that I reject the idea that the City Dionysia and the ancient Greek dramas grew out of the dithyrambic rituals, or that the medieval liturgical plays evolved unrelated to the Mass. I do, however, understand these specific developments to be limited instances of performative transitions, and hence I question the notion that Western theater was born and later re-born in the transition from these particular rituals to the several dramas that followed. Ultimately, as should be readily apparent, I reject the notion that the Thespis myth can serve as a universal paradigm for the birth of any theater, Western or otherwise. For, in order for the Thespis myth to function at all, a very specific set of critical premises must be in operation. In the ritual/theater paradigm, Thespis, as the “first actor,” functions as a sign of liminality: he is, in effect, the “slash” separating the words “ritual” from “theater” at the beginning of this very sentence. However, in order to function as this sign, “actor,” “ritual,” and “theater” must all be defined so tightly that nothing prior to his contribution can be considered truly theatrical. For, if an actor can be found prior to Thespis, especially an actor who had very little to do with the dithyramb, then not only does he cease to be this marker, but the entire paradigm, dependent as it is on his liminality, begins to break down. Ironically, what allows for a definition of theater limited enough to grant Thespis his liminality is precisely a critical subordination of the very thing he supposedly invents. In order for Thespis to be the “first actor,” acting itself must be removed from the equation; his performance must be considered secondary, adjunct, and belated to both the text he performs and the space in which he performs it. What really separates theater from ritual in this Aristotelian narrative is not a difference per se in Thespis’s acting, but—as so many critics have made abundantly clear—a difference between the dramatic text performed with character dialogue and the ritual text performed without. Likewise, what really separates Thespis’s theatrical performance from all other nontheatrical performance (such as the recitation of epic poetry) is not so much a difference of how it was performed, but where. Thus the distinction between a 37

Chapter One play and a poem becomes a matter of literary formalism and architectural description: a “play” is defined as a text made up of an exchange of character dialogue—with very little, if any, narration—while a “poem” is characterized by its lengthy narrative and/or lyrical elements, and contains only second-hand or reported dialogue; a “play” is performed around the Dionysian altar or on some kind of ambulant cart, while a “poem” is performed in the streets and public squares. Antigone, with its prevailing character dialogue, is therefore a play, while the Odyssey, with its paramount narration, is a poem; likewise Oedipus Rex is a play because it was performed in a theater, while the Iliad is a poem because it was performed somewhere else. In the final analysis, at least within the parameters of the Thespis myth, Sophocles is a “playwright” whose plays just happened to be acted, while Homer is a “poet” who just happened to recite his poems.13 Of course, it should be noted here that during the last four decades a great many theorists have sought to replace Thespis with the “shaman” as the archetypal performer of both Western and non-Western theater. There are any number of extremely good reasons for this theoretical shift, not the least of which is the fact that shamanistic performance obviously predates the City Dionysia by several thousand years. Some of the world’s oldest cave paintings, for example, such as those found in Altamira, Spain, or the cave of Les Trois Frères in southern France, clearly contain visual representations of human performers enshrouded in animal skins and engaged in some kind of ritual observance related to the hunt or to the changing of the seasons [see fig. 1]. Given the antiquity of these images— most dating from the Paleolithic era—the shaman seems to be at least as old as language itself. At the same time, as numerous anthropological studies have documented, the shaman is a much more universal figure than Thespis, given the existence of contemporary shamanistic practices in cultures the world over. Hence, the shaman is a pointedly non-Eurocentric archetype in an age when Eurocentrism has become appropriately suspect. Finally, however, and this is by no means coincidental, the shaman, while largely replacing Thespis, does not necessarily displace him. The rubric “shaman” is expansive enough to include Thespis himself; the Western tradition’s so-

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Reinventing Thespis

Fig. 1. “Sorcerer.” Paleolithic cave drawing from the cave of the TroisFrères in southwestern France, sketched by Henri Breuil. From Henri Bégouën and l’Abbé H. Breuil, Les Cavernes du Volp: Trois Frères-Tuc d’Audoubert, A Montesquieu-Avantès (Ariège) (Paris: Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1958), Plate 20.

called first actor has become just one among many ancient ritual performers who put on a mask, imitated a deity or spirit, and then entered into an “orgiastic” or trancelike state. Still, despite the persuasive arguments in favor of what can be called the shamanistic model, I remain somewhat unconvinced because—like the earlier Thespis myth itself—this

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Chapter One alternative paradigm still posits ritual as the aboriginal theatrical form, a privileging I believe remains simply untenable. We have been so taken with the “mask” as both the first and last emblem of theater that we have failed to really look behind it. In fact, our propensity for privileging ritual actually does a disservice both to ancient cultures now vanished and to those contemporary non-Western cultures still fighting to maintain their indigenous integrity. In the case of the former, we hubristically tend to assume that “ancient” humans—that is, anyone who lived before recorded history, which essentially means prior to the invention of writing less than 5,500 years ago—were essentially nothing “like us,” despite the fact that their physical characteristics as homo sapiens (including the capacity for language and abstract thought) had been fully evolved for tens of thousands of years. And hence, we tend to assume that these noble savages were so frightened by a universe they did not fully understand—an attitude Bakhtin later calls a “cosmic terror” (Rabelais 335)—as to be cognitively incapable of performing narrative simply for the pleasure of performing narrative. As David Bynum rightly complains: “Much mischief has been wrought in the study of oral narrative by treating it as if it consisted of its applications in religion, witchcraft, history, social organization, the private phantasmas and reminiscences of disturbed individuals, or a dozen other occupations of the mind beside story-telling” (79). In other words, our defining image of ancient peoples resists the notion that the world’s first actor might actually have been a hunter who, without positing any supernatural intervention, took great pleasure in recounting— if not boastfully re-enacting—a particularly good kill as he sat around the campfire at the end of the day. At the same time, we seem all too willing to assume that the indigenous cultures of today’s so-called third and fourth worlds are still engaged in a progressive, evolutionary process that will eventually lead them to become more “like us.” In other words, since we insist on seeing ritual performance as the primal form, we tacitly assume that contemporary indigenous cultures are to be considered “primitive” until—and unless—they manage to cross the ritual/ theater threshold. Ironically, then, the emergence of “theater” (as a post-ritualistic cultural development) is seen as an important signpost along the road to “civilization,” and we end up

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Reinventing Thespis dividing the world between “theatrical” and “non-theatrical” cultures in much the same way we have divided it since 1945 between “nuclear” and “non-nuclear” states. But ritual is not the point of departure in an evolutionary chain that leads from lower to higher forms of representation, from “primitive” to “civilized” mimesis. Rather, it is one possible point of arrival among many. Ritual itself is a highly evolved (occasionally deliberate) type of symbolic performance. And regardless of whether we point to the Catholic High Mass or to the Oglala Sioux Ghost Dance, ritual is what often emerges from a narrative that has been told and retold countless times. With each retelling, the story is distilled and refined until what remains is an abstract essence whose meaning becomes inseparable from the official ceremonial context in which it is actively remembered. Ritual is a narrative that has ultimately achieved an almost pure symbolic value, not one that is on the verge of surmounting this symbolism in favor of a more “realistic”—less “demon-haunted” (Sagan)—mode. Likewise, the humble, anonymous storyteller becomes a priestly and venerated shaman only when his performance itself is elevated to the status of ceremony by its performative context. Behind the visually impressive image of the masked hunter/dancer on the walls of the cave of Les Trois Frères stand hundreds—if not thousands—of invisible performers who have gone largely unnoticed. Or, as Albert Lord astutely remarks of the ancient Greek bards: “Homer was one of many singers in his own day; he was preceded by generations of singers like him[.] It would be the height of naïveté to conceive of Homer as the inventor of epic poetry in Greece or in our Western culture. The tradition in which he belonged was a rich one” (150–51). The same, of course, could be said of Thespis, and at least one scholar has argued that the transition from Dionysian “ritual” to Thespian “theater” did not come about through some inherent evolution in the dithyramb itself, but occurred precisely through a multi-generational contact between the dithyrambic performers and those engaged in another discrete mode of performance: epic singing. Like so many other critics, Else is particularly interested in Thespis as a liminal figure. But where others principally focus their attention on Thespis’s postdithyrambic role as the world’s “first actor,” Else is much more

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Chapter One interested in his pre-dithyrambic relationship to the Homeric bards. In one of his more compelling arguments, Else closely examines the etymology of the name “Thespis” and suggests that the appellation itself is actually a nickname for either “Thespesios” or “Thespiôidos,” meaning “divinely speaking” or “divinely singing” (51). And since it is hard to imagine, he says, that either of these names would be given to an Athenian boy “in the ordinary course of events,” and since the Odyssey uses the phrase “thespin aoidên” (the nominative case is “thespis aoidê”) when referring to the divine singing of Demodocus and Phemius, Else argues that the name must have derived from these Homeric passages, and that it explicitly serves to tie Thespis to the tradition of bardic performance (51). He further conjectures that Thespis’s father may have been an epic singer who “gave his son the name either in reference to his own singing or by way of prophecy of the son’s achievements,” or that Thespis himself might have been a singer whose unusual nickname was conferred upon him later in life in order to “connote some ‘bardic’ achievement” (52). In either case, says Else, “Thespis had something to do, either by inheritance or through his own activity, with the profession of epic song” (52). Thus, for Else, Thespis is a pivotal figure, not because he “invented” theater out of the dithyramb, but precisely because he “brought” theater to the ritual: “The rhapsodes did not merely recite Homer, they acted him, and from this quasi-impersonation of Homeric characters it was only a step to full impersonation, from the rhapsode who momentarily spoke in the person of Achilles or Odysseus to the ‘actor’ who presented himself as Achilles or Odysseus” (69). This is a bold statement indeed. Still, like Menéndez Pidal before him, Else seems unwilling to fully accept the critical implications of his own argument. Despite his own astute reading of the Thespis myth, his general discourse—as the preceding quotation makes clear—belies a tendency to see the pre-Thespian performance tradition as something that still required supplement. Else seems to accept absolutely the notion that Western drama has its origins in a dialogue that occurred between two actors. Thus, just as many Hispanists have extolled the “semirepresentation” of a medieval ballad tradition that achieves true theatricality only within an exclusively dia-

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Reinventing Thespis logic framework, so too Else celebrates the “quasi-impersonation” of a rhapsodic tradition that arrives at its own theatrical fullness in realizing (finally) a kind of pure iconicity. At the same time, Else’s depiction of rhapsodic performance, if allowed an unqualified existence free from such neutralizing terms as quasi and semi, points readers in an interesting direction. When coupled with Huston’s and Schechner’s emphasis on the transformation of public space into performance space, and Lord’s explorations into the orality—and hence, performativity—of the Homeric epics, Else’s work on the origins of Greek tragedy demonstrates that the pre-Thespian, rhapsodic performance tradition was no less theatrical—by which I mean here, no less mimetic—than its post-Thespian, dramatic counterpart. In fact, rhapsodic performance is all the more essential because it does not depend on some kind of material referent: “Odysseus” does not exist for the audience because the performer puts on a mask and a robe and stands in front of a picture of Ithaca; he exists because the rhapsode wills him into existence through the nuances of his voice, gestures, and gazes; or, as Surtz would say, “through the evocative power of the spoken word” (Birth 22). What Else’s diffidence regarding rhapsodic performance ultimately comes down to is once again a conflation of drama and theater. But this brings us back to the purpose of this chapter, and indeed to the purpose of this entire book. In order to move beyond what Charlotte Stern calls our “aprioristic notions” of drama (265), we really need to begin where Else leaves off, but head down a path he is apparently unwilling to travel. We need to leave behind our archivist tendencies and approach this long-standing performance tradition with the ear of a historical linguist tracing the phonemes, morphemes, and syntactic structures of the various modern Romance languages back toward their Proto-Indo-European roots. In short, we need to rethink our definitions of what constitutes the archetypal actor, allowing for a definition that requires neither an a priori performance space nor the emergence of literary dialogue. And by doing so, we will begin to see that theater—especially jongleuresque theater—is a much more radically ubiquitous cultural phenomenon than we have previously admitted. From this perspective, we will begin to see that Homer is as much an actor

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Chapter One as Thespis; we will begin to see that a de facto simple stage preceded both Thespis and the dithyramb by at least several hundred years, and that the City Dionysia—the supposed cradle of Western drama—with all of its technical trappings, is itself a belated form of an earlier performance tradition whose origin is perhaps unrecoverable. In short, we need to re-invent Thespis. The archetypal actor of the Western tradition is not the shaman who one day decides to engage the other priests in a conversation for the benefit of those who either silently observe the ritual or take an active part in the ceremony; instead, the quintessential (though not necessarily “first”) actor is this anonymous rhapsode Else invokes so vividly. Of course, the particular terminology one uses to designate this paradigmatic figure is somewhat arbitrary and depends to a great extent on the field in which one happens to work and the specific focus one wishes to stress. While Else, as a classics scholar, uses the term rhapsode for many obvious reasons, any number of alternative markers (including minstrel, jester, or histrion) would work just as well. Huston obviously prefers the term mimus, while Schechner, whose own theories of performance are profoundly informed by social anthropology, repeatedly uses the term shaman. William Willeford, for his part, uses the term fool in his study of clowns and jesters and their audiences. Lord, as we have said, famously referred to this performer as the “singer of tales.” Following Menéndez Pidal, I myself prefer the term jongleur (as should be more than obvious by now), partly because of its specific relevance to the performance traditions of the Iberian Peninsula, and partly because of its theoretical expansiveness, embracing—as it does—both literary and nonliterary, humorous and nonhumorous, mimetic and nonmimetic activities. The jongleur sits at the midpoint on a diachronic axis that stretches historically from Else’s Homeric rhapsode to such contemporary street performers as 1997 Nobel laureate Dario Fo. At the same time, the jongleur sits at the midpoint on a synchronic axis that stretches laterally from the shaman to the mimus to the jester to the histrion, although I would not really attempt to fix their relative positions on any line.14 As such, the jongleur marks the intersection of these two performative axes and arguably constitutes—far better than Thespis—the archetypal actor of the Western theatrical tradition. 44

Reinventing Thespis Sitting at this intersection, the jongleur serves to break down many of the critical limitations imposed on us by the Thespis myth, especially the most pernicious: that genuine, full theater requires character dialogue. Careful attention to the performative poetics of the jongleuresque tradition demonstrates that character dialogue is decidedly not the essence of theater as many dramatic critics have long argued; rather, this too is nothing more than an appendage of the performer’s imaginary world. For, while Aeschylus may have added the second actor and Sophocles the third, these are nothing more than complications of a dialogue that performers have always established with their spectators. And while most contemporary Western theater admittedly consists of literary plays based on a dialogic exchange between two or more characters, we can hardly consider works like Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia or Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 to be nontheatrical simply because a single actor creates the entire theatrical world by speaking directly to the audience. For, if works such as these are not fully theatrical, then Hamlet also ceases to be theater every time its title character offers a soliloquy. The essence of theater is not a literary genre but a performative moment. And the dialogic relationship most important to this moment is not a verbal exchange between several actors, each performing a distinct role, but a functional interaction between the single actor who performs the many roles required by the performance text (including a narrative one, if necessary) and the impatient spectators who can easily evaporate should the performer fail to satisfy them. Huston astutely characterizes this quintessential theatrical “contract” in the following, unspoken dialogue inherent in each and every act of performance: “I will watch, says the viewer, as long as you do something that is worth watching. I will do something that is worth watching, says the actor, as long as you watch” (76). Barbara Freedman posits a similar definition of theatricality in her book Staging the Gaze: Postmodernism, Psychoanalysis, and Shakespearean Comedy when she says, “What do we mean when we say that someone or something is theatrical? What we mean is that such a person is aware that she is seen, reflects that awareness, and so deflects our look” (1). (Unlike Huston and Schechner, however, Freedman clearly views this performative relationship in antagonistic rather than 45

Chapter One co-operative terms; for her, what she calls the “fractured reciprocity” of theatricality results in nothing less than the actor’s “staring down of the spectator” [1, 67].) In any case, Huston’s is a dialogue that (although limited here to theories of acting) uncannily echoes the dialogic existentialism of Martin Buber: “I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You” (62). Buber’s elegant ontological statement appropriately illuminates Huston’s performative contract by demonstrating that it encompasses much more than the mere creation of a simple stage. Huston’s mimus comes into being as a mimus not by impersonating an animal, a deity, another human being, or any combination thereof (although this mimesis—when it occurs—is by no means unimportant), but precisely in uttering the exhibitionistic “I” to the voyeuristic “You.” Likewise, the passive onlooker becomes an active spectator not by willingly suspending his or her disbelief (although, again, this too remains important), but by implicitly responding to the actor in kind. Or, as Buber so succinctly put it, “Relation is reciprocity” (67). And is this not the essence of the performative poetics practiced by the anonymous medieval jongleur whose act comes to fruition in the following declaration? El romanz es leído, datnos del vino; si no tenedes dineros, echad allá unos peños, que bien vos lo darán sobr’ellos. (Poema de Mio Cid vv. 3733–35)15

Is this performative reciprocity not the basic function of the formulaic ballad line “bien oiréis lo que dirá” that recurs time and time again not only to introduce a bit of character dialogue into the fabric of the poetic text, but to inscribe the listener into that performance text as well?16 But even this can be refined still further, as an illumination from one particular medieval document makes clear. The image in question, capturing perfectly the essence of Huston’s performative dialogue, comes from the Bute Psalter, a thirteencentury French manuscript housed in the permanent collection of the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The visual text of this manuscript, profoundly informed as it is by the performative poetics of the jongleuresque tradition, is defined to a great extent by the coexistence of several literary and nonliterary com46

Reinventing Thespis ponents, as a Getty Center pamphlet makes clear: “[T]he margins teem with activity: alongside the text of the Psalms, thieves steal from the church treasury, a demon tries to hook a penitent’s soul, and angel musicians serenade a crowd of enthusiastic readers” (McIlwain Nishimura). Most notable, however, is the image of A Fool Making Face at the Reader [see fig. 2]. Unlike the other illuminated figures on this manuscript, who interact solely with each other (in what could be considered traditional character dialogue), apparently giving no thought whatsoever to the possibility of freeing themselves from the surface of the page on which they are drawn, this fool not only breaks down the conventional fourth wall of the implied proscenium in order to acknowledge the presence of his audience, but he does so in such a way as to almost demand a response. By hoisting up his robes and flashing us with this very phallic bauble and then making a face in the process, he dares us to respond in kind: to stick out our own tongues back at him. This, then, is the radical essence of jongleuresque performance: that this medieval manuscript makes eye contact with its reader; that it inscribes the viewer as viewer into its discursive world, deliberately mirroring the way in which live performers inscribe their spectators, however obliquely, into the performance itself. For, what leaps off the surface of the page is precisely what we might call a quintessential “performative gaze,” an interactive visual exchange—however fleeting—that energizes the space between the performer and spectator, and thereby establishes each participant’s role in the dialogic construction of the performance event.17 And it is this shared look of performative reciprocity that constitutes the basis of all theater. Everything else in the theatrical cosmos—from the mask and skene to the most philosophically sophisticated, psychologically probing literary scripts—emanates from this performative singularity. In fact, we can even find traces of this jongleuresque reciprocity in the Paleolithic image of the shaman painted on the wall of the cave of Les Trois Frères that we examined earlier [see fig. 1]. For, one of the more striking features of this shamanistic image, at least as far as Breuil’s rendering is concerned, is precisely its face, which, although constituting perhaps the least “human” aspect of this costumed

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Chapter One

Fig. 2. Bute Master (illuminator); Workshop of the Passion Master (illuminator). Initial D: The Fool with a Dog Face and Wearing Winged Headgear, Menacing Christ; bas-de-page: A Fool Making Face at the Reader, from the Bute Psalter. c. 1260–1290. Tempera colors, gold, and iron gall ink on parchment bound between wood boards covered with red velvet. Leaf: 17 x 11.9 cm. (611/16 x 411/16 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California. 92.MK.92 (Ms. 46), fol. 72. Rpt. with permission.

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Reinventing Thespis figure, presents us nevertheless with an unmistakably human set of binocular eyes that eerily peer out toward us in a look of shared performative recognition. The similarities between this Ice Age representation of a ritual “sorcerer” and the medieval representation of a theatrical jongleur—specifically with regard to the ways in which they both construct this quintessentially dialogic performative gaze—are not coincidental. Ironically, however, despite the performative interaction inscribed within its pages, we must admit that the Bute Psalter is only “semitheatrical” (rather than full-fledged). But, again, this lack of full theatricality is not due to some set of defining conventions established by literary drama; not due to some semidramatic, quasi-dialogic component of the Psalm itself. The Grimacing Fool page of the Bute Psalter manuscript remains “semitheatrical” only because the lively exchange between the fool and his audience has no life; which is to say, it admits no reciprocity. For, while this jongleur may attempt to engage us in a performative dialogue, he is quite incapable of receiving our response.18 In short, there is simply no actor to be found. Although this fool is very plainly visible, he is, in fact, nothing more than a bit of ink fixed on the page by a rather inventive medieval illuminator. Nevertheless, this inky cipher is a trace of the very real (but invisible) jongleur whose performance tradition gave rise to his mimetic representation. It is a written vestige of a performative dialogue that not only antecedes this particular French manuscript (along with the Psalm it illuminates), but indeed, predates Thespis, the socalled birth of Western drama, and (most likely) the invention of writing itself.

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Chapter Two

Singers of Tales on Simple Stages

A song and its singer may imitate rather than narrate a voice, as the troubadour’s song once represented the crystallized fever of a courtly lover. Hollis Huston The Actor’s Instrument

A Continuing Performance Tradition The popular entertainers I invoked in the previous chapter are not exactly absent in modern scholarly discourse; on the contrary, the jongleurs as a class of performers have been examined in any number of literary and historiographical studies during the last two centuries.1 The problem, however, with many of these otherwise excellent works, such as Richard Beacham’s The Roman Theatre and Its Audience or John Wesley Harris’s Medieval Theatre in Context, is that the examination of the jongleuresque tradition often functions solely as a postscript or a prelude, marking either the lamentable degeneration of a once impressive imperial theater or the woefully inadequate spectacle that preceded the rise of the various national liturgical dramas of medieval Europe. For many theater historians, it is almost as if the period between 800 and 1500 represents a kind of “black hole” into which Western theater fell. Still another group of scholarly works, notably Manuel Milá y Fontanals’s De los trovadores en España and Menéndez Pidal’s Poesía juglaresca y juglares (among many others), examine the jongleuresque tradition of the Middle Ages in phenomenal detail, but tend to view the popular aspects of this performance tradition with a certain amount of

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages high-cultural suspicion, often disregarding the inherent theatricality of jongleuresque performance precisely because such an approach does not fit easily into recognized literary typologies where the term jongleuresque refers only to a type of folkloric literature. William Quinn and Audley Hall begin their book Jongleur, for instance, by defining their object of study as nothing more than a “professional reciter of extended narrative poetry in medieval England” (1). Likewise, in their Historia de los espectáculos en España, Amorós and Díez Borque position Eukene Lacarra Lanz’s excellent chapter on jongleuresque performance not with other chapters on carnival, music, dance, or circus performance, but within a section specifically labeled “Espectáculos de la voz y la palabra” (403–83) alongside chapters on “Poesía en la calle,” “Poesía recitada,” and “Oratoria sagrada y política.” Furthermore, even among those writers who do treat jongleuresque performance as a type of theater there is a tendency to merely note these performers in passing in an attempt to move as quickly as possible to the kind of theater these authors can (presumably) trace directly back to the Quem quaeritis trope. In a number of ways, this move parallels the historical tendency in medieval scholarship in general to ascribe to the period some kind of monolithic, Catholic orthodoxy. Many scholars simply cannot conceive of a medieval society that did not utterly conform to this religious worldview, and thus cannot conceive of a theater that was not intimately tied to the liturgy. Harris, for instance, although discussing jongleuresque performance in an early chapter, explicitly grounds his study on this socioreligious assumption: “This book seeks to set the medieval stage firmly in the context of the society that produced it, by surveying what we know about the plays and their production alongside contemporary social attitudes, particularly those of the Church” (ix). In grand fashion, then, he entitles his first chapter “The Passion of Jesus Christ” and proceeds to recount the historical events of Holy Week before summarizing the development of the Mass as the ultimate medieval ur-drama. Other critics do not even accord the jongleurs a space of their own within the text proper of their scholarship. Christine Richardson and Jackie Johnston divide their study—simply titled Medieval Drama—into two sections (“Mystery Plays”

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Chapter Two and “Moralities and Interludes”). And while they occasionally mention the “popular tradition of entertainment” in passing, the tradition they posit always seems to have ties to the Church, always appears connected to the “sermon literature of its time” (128). In their own introduction, they praise the “travelling players” who “provided dramatic entertainment as they visited towns, villages, courts and monasteries,” but decline to focus any attention on these performers precisely because of the lack of written texts surrounding their performance tradition (3). Not all writers are so quick to dismiss the jongleuresque performers, however. E. K. Chambers, in his monumental work The Mediaeval Stage, devotes his entire first volume to an examination of what he calls “Minstrelsy” and “Folk Drama.” Methodically detailing a histrionic tradition that he traces back through the Middle Ages to before the fall of Rome (a tradition he claims profoundly influenced not only the professional jongleuresque performers, but the amateur folk festivals as well), Chambers highlights those elements already present in the Greek and Roman institutional theaters that resisted dissolution in the political changes following the Teutonic invasions of the fifth century. He discusses the conflicts that occurred as a result of the cultural clash between these classical players and the newly empowered Christian and/or Germanic peoples. In his most provocative argument, Chambers contends that the medieval minstrel was, in fact, a hybrid character who came into existence through a merging of the Latin mimus (the central figure of the Roman spectacula) and the Teutonic scôp (the professional singer of Germanic epic poetry). From the mimus, the minstrel inherited a tradition of performing at celebratory functions, such as weddings and banquets, a tradition of forming small companies of vagabond players and, to a certain extent, the general obscenity associated with the Roman farce. From the scôp the minstrel acquired the cult of warrior personality associated with the heroic song and its celebration of the deeds of the chieftain and the concomitantly heightened social station of belonging on equal terms to a company of warriors rather than a troupe of actors (1: 23–41). The “blending” of these performers, Chambers says, came to its fruition under Charlemagne when “both types of entertainer [came] under the common designation of ioculator,” the linguistic forerunner of

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages the French (and hence English) jongleur, the Italian giullare and the Spanish juglar (1: 35). More recently, Luigi Allegri, in his Teatro e spettacolo nel medioevo, has also connected the jongleur to a broad range of popular performers who he believes survived the passing away of the classical world. Like Chambers, he too begins by looking closely at what he calls the Roman heritage of medieval performance, outlining the development of the Roman theater and the ways in which it differentiated itself—both architecturally and performatively—from the Greek theater. Allegri argues that the Greek stage itself was divided into two distinct types of performance space. The “teatro” was dedicated to an event characterized by its religious, ritual function, while the “odeon” was dedicated to entertainment (8). When the Roman stage came into being as a “sedimentazione architettonica” [“architectural sedimentation”] of the odeon, it was destined, Allegri argues, for a spectacle radically different from both the Greek institutional (religious) theater and the literary Roman theater (which he says was based on that high-cultural Greek model). Instead, it was a stage on which co-existed a literary performance characterized by what he calls a “forte teatralità” [“strong theatricality”] and “debole spettacolarità” [“weak spectacularity”] and a popular performance characterized by a “debole teatralità” [“weak theatricality”] and “forte spettacolarità” [“strong spectacularity”] (9). As the classical period waned, it was this “spectacularity” that came to prevail and that, with the fall of the Empire, continued into the Middle Ages, quickly tying itself to (or even perhaps begetting) the popular festival, thus creating the medieval carnivalesque culture Bakhtin will later examine in such splendid detail in Rabelais and His World. Although the work of such generalists as Chambers and Allegri has contributed greatly to our understanding of medieval performance, the most prolific writers to link jongleuresque performance with the spectacles of the Roman Empire are those that have closely examined the rise of the commedia dell’arte. Among these, Pierre Louis Duchartre and Allardyce Nicoll make the most forceful and sustained arguments for seeing the zanni of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian stage as inheritors of the ancient mimic tradition. Employing

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Chapter Two numerous written sources, as well as hundreds of illustrations (which range from ancient Greek vase paintings and terra cotta statuettes to medieval codices and architectural friezes to Renaissance and Baroque paintings, etchings, and engravings), Duchartre and Nicoll exhaustively trace the performative antecedents of the commedia dell’arte among the Dorian mimes and phylakes of ancient Greece; in the planipes and mimic performers of the Roman Atellan farce and pantomimes; and in the acrobats, jesters, and fools of medieval Europe. Anticipating both Else and Huston, Duchartre even goes so far as to mention Thespis as one of the commedia’s improvisational paterfamilias “à cause de son fameux chariot bondé de barbouillés qui jouaient des comédies mêlées de musique” (7). Still, while all of these studies explore an unbroken performance tradition that has left its indelible mark on the development of theater history, they ultimately fail to make the final, conclusive connection between the ancient world and our own. They make solid arguments in favor of viewing the jongleuresque performance tradition as “genuine theater” in the first half of their books; but, once again, they tend to pull away from these arguments at the very moment they transition into their more traditional discussion of the development of liturgical drama and its inheritors. In the end, these studies tend to fall victim to the Thespis myth by consigning much of the jongleuresque performance tradition of the low Middle Ages to the delimiting category of nontheater. At the beginning of his second volume, for instance, Chambers makes the rather astonishing statement that “drama as a living form of art went completely under at the break-up of the Roman world,” and that if anything of the histrionic tradition survived “it took the shape of pitiable farce, one amongst many heterogeneous elements in the spectacula of disreputable mimes” (2: 2). Allegri is much more explicit with regard to his privileging of the literary modalities of the Thespis myth. As he comes to the end of his own discussion of the jongleurs, he notes that any examination of this popular performance tradition will only take us so far. In order to arrive at theater in the fullest sense of the word, we need the intervention of a new social and cultural figure: the dramatist. And the late-medieval Thespis for Allegri, then, becomes Adam de la Halle, whose Le Jeu de la Feuillée and Le

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages Jeu de Robin et Marion represent the transition into the kind of “genuine” theater the jongleurs cannot offer precisely because these plays provide all the elements we are accustomed to recognize in complex theater: an a priori literary text that prescribes (“pre-scrive”) both the mise-en-scene and the words and actions of the actors (115–16). Likewise, Nicoll—despite his specific focus on the performative and improvisational nature of the commedia dell’arte and its predecessors—has little good to say about the jongleuresque tradition: “Now, without the possible shadow of a doubt, the majority of these ioculatores (with whom, as has been seen, the mimi and histriones are commonly identified) were nothing but ballad-singers and makers of romances” (152). Indeed, Nicoll all but abandons his discussion of performance when he arrives at his own transition from medieval theater to that of the Renaissance. His discursive lateral move is both subtle and decisive. He begins his section on medieval “secular drama” by saying that he intends to “leave literature aside” momentarily; nevertheless, he then spends several pages discussing several literary interludes and farces, including the plays of Adam de la Halle (169). When he then moves to a discussion of “religious drama” he turns directly to the Quem quaeritis trope, apologizing for his sudden analytical marginalization of “the secular entertainers of the Middle Ages” (175). In fairness to these writers, of course, we should stress that—like Huston, Alter, and Schechner—they understand “theater” and “drama” to be two different, although interrelated, things. Unlike Huston, Alter, and Schechner, however, who define “drama” as a type of “theater” (which is to say, as a subset of the larger performative mode), Chambers, Allegri, and Nicoll see “theater” as an inferior precursor to the superior literary genre. Where the performance theorists envision an ever-enlarging series of concentric circles—“Drama is, theatrically speaking, dispensable” (Huston 14)—the literary theorists (“positivist” in a very real sense) see a linear progression in which a “pitiable” endeavor finally achieves “fullness.” Yet, that which is pitiable hardly deserves to be emulated, while that which is empty has no surplus to lend. Only by seeing jongleuresque performance as a legitimate type of theater in its own right can we fully appreciate its legacy in the later literary

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Chapter Two drama. Only by understanding the performative poetics of this medieval theatrical tradition can we locate within its proper theatrical sphere the residual literature this performance tradition has left behind.

Jongleuresque Performance The essence of medieval theater is—above all—what Lord calls the “singer of tales” (whether professional or amateur) performing on Huston’s “simple stage.” Positing a devolutionary version of the Thespis myth, Harris has suggested that this sparse state of theatrical affairs came about long before the fall of Rome through the inordinate ascendancy of the principle actor of the Roman cantica. As the performance of these spectacles began to center more and more on the main actor, he says, the rival performers were nearly banished from the stage entirely, so that the central performer acquired for himself all the other parts. (This obviously meant, of course, that the remaining supporting actors reverted once again to the status of “chorus.”) Soon, it was “the soloist who filled the stage, singing, miming and dancing his way through the whole piece, and giving life and substance to all the action” (11). This theatrical vision, of course, seems somewhat counterintuitive to our modern notions of theater and drama (despite the fact that urban pedestrians frequently encounter jongleuresque performance during their daily commute) precisely because we generally surround ourselves, both on stage and on screen, with a complex performance dominated by character dialogue. And the ubiquitous presence of this post-Renaissance complex stage— by which I ultimately mean any performance that requires something more than Huston’s invisible circle—has led us to view the intrinsic simplicity of medieval jongleuresque performance as a sign of its lack of sophistication, as a demonstration of its essential inadequacy. Simplicity, however, is not a sign of inferiority; rather, it is one of the exigencies of a performance tradition that is inherently nomadic. Performers who must move from town to town (at times, one step ahead of the local authorities) must travel lightly and cannot afford, in terms both economic and practical, to carry all the theatrical trappings of the complex stage.

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages They obviously do not have at their disposal the kind of transportation system that allows contemporary touring companies to present Broadway musicals in Peoria, Illinois. We should not marvel, then, that when traveling performers set up their performance spaces in the various towns and villages of medieval Europe they supplemented their simple stages with as few material elements as possible; limiting themselves, for instance, to a few wooden planks and a blanket hung over the limb of a tree (perhaps the very blanket they would use later that night to provide shelter from the night air as they slept beneath the very same tree). The complex stage—especially as it invariably grows more and more spectacular—constitutes an enormous economic investment, and rarely, if ever, have individuals undertaken its construction. The theaters of ancient Greece and Rome were civic monuments, while the stages associated with both the medieval liturgical drama and the courtly banquet halls (home to such performers as Encina) were established by economic entities far beyond the scope of the individual performer. Even today in the age of Broadway and London’s West End, very few theatrical structures exist independent of some nontheatrical entity—such as a nation-state, a university, or a distinguished list of wealthy benefactors—whose function is to underwrite the costs of maintaining that structure. The commercial success of the Spanish corral represents the exception that proves the historical rule. The vast majority of all those who have ever performed before an audience have done so in spaces few would immediately recognize as theaters. Keeping this in mind, Lord’s description of his singer of tales provides us with an invaluable glimpse into what most medieval theater probably looked like.2 (Obviously, if we accept Lord’s thesis that the formulaic structure of these performers’ texts is part of an oral tradition that extends back as far as Homer, it is certainly not out of the question to posit a kinship between their performative modalities and those of the medieval jongleurs. Indeed, as Katharine Loesch argues in her own study of medieval Welsh bards and their predecessors, there is an uncanny consistency of training and praxis that ultimately ties all these jongleuresque performers back to “the pre-history of Indo-European culture” [177].) The principal location, Lord tells us, for the performance of the guslar songs in the towns

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Chapter Two and villages of what has become known as the “former Yugoslavia,” is (or at least was before the disasters of the late twentieth century) the coffee house, the inn, or the tavern. Inside these ad hoc theaters a number of various people mix and mingle, including farmers, shopkeepers, and even caravan drivers simply passing through town on their way to someplace else. As a location where people can “drop in for a short while to sit and talk, sip coffee or raki, and listen to songs” (14), Lord’s Yugoslav tavern is not unlike the performance space described by Dwight Conquergood in his discussion of the AngloSaxon scôp tradition, a space characterized most by its “feasting and drinking and revelry” (123). The picture Lord paints for us is indispensable because it demonstrates some important connections—as well as highlighting some significant divergences—between the simple stage and its complex counterpart. Most notable among these, of course, is the fact that the basic function of the singer—as both Menéndez Pidal and Chambers so succinctly note—is to “entertain” (literally, “hold between”) an accidental audience on the move from one place to another. In our fierce determination to discover a respectable social relevancy for our dramatic and literary institutions we all too often forget that the primary reason we tell and listen to stories is not because we want to instill “values” in the minds of our children, or because we want to “interrogate” power (although both of these may very well be important secondary considerations), but because first and foremost we simply enjoy telling and listening to stories. The 1992 film Indochine tellingly highlights this point by following the movements of a group of 1950s traveling players who are themselves radical revolutionaries of the Communist movement, yet whose performances are (for the most part) the epitome of tradition. Likewise, the majority of the spectators who flock to their plays come not to aid their comrades-inarms, but simply to see and appreciate the beauty of the traditional theater. Our critical and theoretical preference for the didactic qualities of the artistic endeavor over its ludic qualities is one of the major reasons why theater historians are often so determined to find the origins of theater—be it the drama of the City Dionysia, the medieval liturgical play, or Sanskrit theater—in religious/shamanistic ritual. To suggest that religion

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages grows out of storytelling (and not vice versa) is to suggest that our most treasured spiritual beliefs are perhaps frivolous things.3 Paul Zumthor emphasizes the importance of this ludic motivation (which is ultimately the basis for all literature, but which is most especially central to the simple theater) when he tells of an Inuit man who gathers his grandchildren around him in order to sing to them about their history and their culture: “Cela, dans sa banalité, compte d’abord: chacun de ces récits, grâce à la chaleur d’une présence plus que par son prétexte, comblait un vide du monde” (52). And is not this simple pastime—“que nous désignons du terme ambigu de théâtre” (53)—at the heart of two of the most important works of all of medieval literature: Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? While it would clearly be unwarranted to suggest that either of these works is inherently “dramatic” or “theatrical” (at least according to the literary definition of these terms), they do offer us an indispensable representation of the basic mechanics of the simple stage in its medieval context, especially as that context relates to “filling a void in the world.” In societies where written texts were few and far between, and where the majority of readers could not access them even when available, performed narrative (frequently accompanied by music) was the only means by which most people came into contact with literature.4 And this literature was inherently colored by the vocal inflection and impersonation that accompanies—and, in fact, constitutes—any oral performance. Of course, one could argue (as does Allegri) that this fact alone is precisely why we should not look for theater prior to its “full” incarnation (“in senso pieno”) in the liturgical drama or in the plays of Adam de la Halle (115): jongleuresque performance is simply not theater; rather, it is music or oral poetry. Yet, if theater did not exist during the medieval period simply because it was not sufficiently differentiated from the other performing arts to constitute a separate artistic discipline, then we cannot say that music or poetry existed either, since both of these arts were no more differentiated from each other in performance than from theater. For most medieval spectators, literature was music was theater; or, as María Cruz García

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Chapter Two de Enterría puts it, “Leer y cantar [son] todavía dos formas de oralidad” (“Romancero” 99). It is only in the post-Renaissance world of Shakespeare, Molière, and Calderón that a genuine separation of these activities into music, literature, and dance is possible; just as it is only after Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton that what William of Occam would have called “natural philosophy” subdivided itself into biology, physics, and chemistry. The history of the university curriculum, which has seen the transformation of the medieval trivium and quadrivium into dozens of academic fields since the fifteenth century, is quite literally the history of our evolving, separatist modernity. Thus, it is not inconsequential that the Canterbury Tales begins in a “hostelry” (20), a site not unlike the Yugoslav tavern Lord speaks of; nor is it mere coincidence that Chaucer uses the theatrical locution “Playing your parts” to set up the notion that his travelers should “while the time in tales and fun” (40). He understands that his characters are actors every bit as much as they are pilgrims. Indeed, in his study of Chaucer’s “performability,” William Quinn argues that the “performing ‘I’” of various Chaucerian texts often betrays a self-conscious “mimicry of a jongleur’s obsolete style” (Chaucer’s “Rehersynges” 16). Moreover, because the theater created by the storytelling in both Chaucer and Boccaccio is the product of nomadic movement—in the Canterbury Tales simply as a result of the fact that the characters are travelers; in the Decameron because each day brings a new venue on the estate—the simple stage on which the telling of these tales occurs must be brought into being by the tale itself. Essentially, what both Chaucer and Boccaccio have created in their literary works are significantly rarefied representations of the age-old activity responsible for the very fact that modern researchers are able to catalogue texts like the Spanish romances in the first place. The oral tradition is not just a history of stories handed down from one generation to the next for the mere sake of remembering these narratives. Oral transmission has never simply been an act of rote memorization as is, say, the memorization of times tables by school children. Instead, the oral tradition is the continued history of countless evenings of simple entertainment, countless moments of intensely personal theater. The amateur singers studied by such scholars as Antonio Sánchez Romeralo and

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages Beatriz Mariscal de Rhett are not merely “informants” or “respondents” (Webber 53–73; 247–68); they are people who have sought to brighten the dreariness of a long journey across the expanses of Spain or to make an afternoon of washing clothes on the banks of a river less burdensome (like the lavanderas of Federico García Lorca’s Yerma or the spinners from Richard Wagner’s Flying Dutchman) by singing songs and telling stories to themselves and to each other.

A Multiform Theater in Context The divergence of this simplest of theaters from the ones to which we have grown accustomed over the course of several centuries is striking. In an atmosphere like those described by Boccaccio or Chaucer, there is little room among the bustle of travelers or merchants for intricate stage settings. Not only is this medieval stage an ad hoc creation, but it exists in a natural gathering place that also serves more than one function. As Walter Cohen so astutely notes, “the medieval audience did not enter the world of the theater; the theater entered the world of the audience” (35). Furthermore, because few people have come solely and specifically to hear the performance, the singer must always be conscious of the mood of his audience. Says Lord: The singer begins to tell his tale. If he is fortunate, he may find it possible to sing until he is tired without interruption from the audience. After a rest he will continue, if his audience still wishes. This may last until he finishes the song, and if his listeners are propitious and his mood heightened by their interest, he may lengthen his tale, savoring each descriptive passage. It is more likely that, instead of having this ideal occasion the singer will realize shortly after beginning that his audience is not receptive, and hence he will shorten his song so that it may be finished within the limit of time for which he feels the audience may be counted on. Or, if he misjudges, he may simply never finish the song. (16–17)

Luis Díaz de Viana echoes Lord’s moment-to-moment description of a live performance in his own discussion of the Iberian mester de juglaría (49–50), while something very much like it 61

Chapter Two also appears in studies of the Child’s ballads of the British Isles. Andersen, for instance, describes the way in which Stanley Robertson, a semi-professional Irish ballad singer, uses two different versions of the Child’s ballad “Mill o’ Tifty’s Annie”: “He has a very long version for private use, and a considerably shorter version to be used in public, at festivals and other events where he cannot expect to hold the audience for as long a time” (36). And what is most compelling in all these descriptions of jongleuresque performance—even as they echo Huston’s observations on the ongoing negotiation inherent in any performance—is that they demonstrate the importance of textual fluidity for any notion of medieval theater. Because medieval performance almost always occurred as part of some larger phenomenon, the performative boundaries separating one individual text from other related texts were, to a great extent, far less rigid than the boundaries that have governed much of the modern theater since the Renaissance. Today, for instance, a theatrical event on a complex stage is kept from spilling into other events through a number of economic, social, spatial, and temporal barriers. Like the individual fine arts themselves (i.e., musical theater, performance art, ballet, modern dance, classical music, jazz, etc.), which have become further and further delimited as they have become more and more complex, the modern play has been made a separate and distinct entity by the complex stage itself; a stage that, in many ways, can be defined as the totality of these separating mechanisms. Before we can see a modern theatrical event, for instance, we usually have to buy a ticket whose purchase price often immediately excludes most of those who might wish to see it. Thus, unless we happen to be watching a street mime on the Champs-Élysées or listening to a musician play a steel drum on a Chicago subway platform, we are a long way indeed from the jongleur who invites spectators to make a voluntary payment after the fact. Moreover, since the ticket we buy is valid solely at the place and time printed on its face, and since the theater management usually reserves the right to remove unruly spectators from the performance space, we constitute a very well regulated audience indeed; which is to say, the chances are extremely slim that modern performers on the complex stage—unlike Lord’s guslar singer—will have to

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages drastically modify their performances to accommodate the mood of the spectators.5 Modern performances largely consist of single events that rarely share the stage with other events. Contemporary theater, for instance, almost never offers more than one play on a bill (unless the event itself is specifically made up of several, related one-act plays); contemporary cinema has long since abandoned the idea of the double feature; and even Major League Baseball rarely offers fans a doubleheader unless this doubling has been unexpectedly caused by the previous day’s inclement weather. The reasons for this performative compartmentalization, of course, are obvious. Commercial endeavors designed to extract from patrons the highest possible amount of money—including that gained from automobile parking, concessions, and souvenirs—will package the total event in order to ensure that spectators will have to pay the entire cost of this commodity each and every time they attend. People can only consume a limited amount of popcorn in one sitting no matter how many films they see, but they will probably buy popcorn every time they go to the movies.6 Nevertheless, as Schechner’s work so clearly demonstrates, people will resist this commoditization of the event by re-contextualizing it themselves far beyond the narrow parameters established by its producers, often by inserting the performance of a play into something we have come to call a “night on the town,” a total event—as we noted in Chapter 1—that might very well include dinner at a restaurant, followed by a show at a theater, both of which might culminate with nightcaps and dancing at a nearby club. (In some cases, moreover, even the preparation involved in simply getting ready to attend the play becomes a lavish part of the total event as well. This preparatory ritual may begin very early in the day and may extend up to the very moment of the performance.) Needless to say, medieval performance did not require this explicit and conscious fabrication of total event by individual audience members because the performance almost never existed as an entity unto itself. Medieval performance almost always occurred within the boundaries of an already existing larger phenomenon. In the Decameron, for example, the storytelling is but one pleasant activity among many, while each tale itself is but part of a ten-day narrative competition

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Chapter Two that consists of a hundred such tales. The same holds true for Chaucer’s individual narratives. Likewise, as we have seen, Lord’s singer of tales performs his work in a setting that has neither been erected solely for the purpose of his performance nor exists independent of the setting’s other functions. Few, if any, of the spectators have come to the tavern to listen to only one singer, let alone one song; they have come to eat, drink coffee, converse, listen to the performances of other singers, and perhaps even perform themselves. In many ways, the medieval spectator received in one setting the cumulative pleasure that modern Western audiences can usually find only by going to numerous locations. The communitarian nature of this mixed spectacle has led many scholars (most notably Bakhtin) to analyze the relationship between jongleuresque performance and the fairlike atmosphere that encircled and sustained it. Michael Bristol notes that “theatrical spectacle and the theatricalization of social and intellectual life were common to virtually all social groups, corporations, and communities in Renaissance England, primarily in informal, amateur organizations,” and that “theater and popular festivity were closely related forms of social life” (4). Allegri adds to this Bakhtinian analysis by not only pointing out the centrality of carnival in creating a site for the individual performance, but also in arguing that this carnivalesque tradition has its origins in pagan fertility rites, and thus represents one of the lasting remnants of antiquity that continued into the Middle Ages, one partially propagated by the wandering performers themselves. Allegri argues that in this continuing tradition we can locate the precise characteristics of medieval theatricality: a communitarian event in which the spectators are as much participants as the actor, an occurrence that is an event first and a representation second (50). Chambers echoes these sentiments when he argues that even though many village festivals included “taberers and buffoons” who enchanted the “ring of wide-mouthed rustics on the green” with their ballads, tumbling, and “monkey-tricks,” these actors were hardly the central element of the festival. “The soul and centre of such revels,” he says, “always lay, not in these alien professional spectacula, but in other entertainments, home-grown and racy of the soil, wherein the peasants shared, not as onlookers only,

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages but as performers, even as their fathers and mothers, from immemorial antiquity, had done before them” (1: 90). Of course, since most of our entertainment today consists of massproduced, globally marketed, hermetically sealed packages sold by multinational media conglomerates like Disney and Time Warner, and since we are often more acted upon than active in our participation, it is difficult to imagine the genuine excitement medieval street performance must have inspired in its spectators, people who worked much longer than eight hours at a time and who had no cable television to go home to at the end of the day.7 Jongleuresque performance was hardly an exclusively popular enterprise, however; it was not relegated to just taverns and popular festivals. The aristocracy also sought to enliven their banquets and ceremonies with the kind of vivacious entertainment provided by professional jongleurs. And thus, much of the evidence we have concerning medieval jongleuresque performance comes precisely from descriptions of weddings, chivalric festivities, and court performances. Chambers, for instance, tells of banquets given by Attila the Hun, Clovis the Frank, and Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, in Gaul as early as the mid-fifth century, all of which included minstrel entertainments (1: 34–35). Lacarra Lanz discusses the beleaguered existence of the jongleurs at the court of Alfonso X El Sabio (407), while Leandro Fernández de Moratín notes that Sancho IV had in his service “juglares, bufones y facedores de escarnio, que con cantares y romances, diciendo agudezas, saltando y tocando instrumentos, entretenían privadamente á la familia real” (23–24; original emphasis). Milá y Fontanals, for his part, offers us an intriguing account of how, during the siege of Messina by Duke Roberto in 1300, King Federico sent a minstrel bearing the news that the king’s men were at the disposal of the citizens of the besieged city. Says Milá y Fontanals: “Hallamos aquí un empleo de la juglaría, no sólo para solaz o como vehículo de la sátira, sino para el envío de un mensaje formal e importante” (De los trovadores 235).8 Nowhere is the multiplicity of jongleuresque performance more vividly represented than in the Provençal romance Flamenca, in which a courtly banquet culminates precisely with the kind of “espectáculo público” that clearly inspired

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Chapter Two Menéndez Pidal’s sweeping definition of the jongleurs as “todos los que se ganaban la vida actuando ante un público” (Poesía juglaresca 12; original emphasis). Although the description is a bit long, it is worth citing at length because it represents one of the few medieval eyewitness accounts not intended as a moral condemnation of jongleuresque performance: Quant an manjat autra ves lavon, mais tot atressi con s’estavon remanon tut e prendon vi, car vezat era en aisi. Pois<sas> levet hom las toallas; bels conseillers ab granz ventaillas aportet hom davan cascu, ques anc us non falli ad u; aqui.s poc, qui.s vol, acoutrar. Apres si levon li juglar; cascus se volc faire auzir. Adonc auziras retentir cordas de manta tempradura. Qui saup novella violadura, ni canzo ni descort ni lais, al plus que poc avan si trais. L’uns viola<.l> lais del Cabrefoil, e l’autre cel de Tintagoil; l’us cantet cel dels Fins Amanz, e l’autre cel que fes Ivans. L’us menet arpa, l’autre viula; l’us flaütella, l’autre siula; l’us mena giga, l’autre rota; l’us diz los motz e l’autre.ls nota; l’us estiva, l’autre flestella; l’us musa, l’autre caramella; l’us mandura e l’autr’acorda lo sauteri ab manicorda; l’us fai lo juec dels bavastelz, l’autre jugava de coutelz; l’us vai per sol e l’autre tomba, l’autre balet ab sa retomba; l’us passet sercle, l’autre sail; neguns a son mestier non fail. (Blodgett 32–34) [When they had eaten, they washed again, but just as they were

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages they stayed and drank wine, for such was the custom there. Then the napkins were removed; soft cushions along with fans were placed in front of everyone, so that no one was without one to lean upon, should he wish. Then the minstrels stood up; each one wanted to be heard. Then you would have heard resound strings of various pitches. Whoever knew a new piece for the viol, a song, a descort, or lay, he pressed forward as much as he could. One played the lay of the Honeysuckle, another the one of Tintagel; one sang of the Noble Lovers, and another which Yvain composed. One played the harp; another the viol; another, the flute; another, a fife; one played a rebeck; another, a rote; one sang the words; another played notes; one, the sackbut; another, the fife; one, the bagpipe; another, the reed-pipe; one, the mandora and another attuned the psaltery with the monochord; one performed with marionettes, another juggled knives; some did gymnastics and tumbling tricks; another danced with his cup; one held the hoop; another leapt through it; everyone performed his art perfectly. (Blodgett 33–35)]

What stands out in this spectacle, of course, is the sheer variety of activity that creates it. At each step of the way, every event occurring on this simple stage is part of some larger event. Like the discrete stories from the Decameron, each individual literary text (whose topics eventually include Helen and Paris; Ulysses, Hector, and Achilles; Aenaes and Dido; Hero and Leander; Jason; Narcissus; David and Goliath; the Knights of the Round Table; the Vandals; and Charlemagne; among many others) is but one episode among many. These various literary narratives themselves (again, as with the Decameron)

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Chapter Two constitute just one portion of a total event that also includes dancing, singing, and acrobatics. The jongleuresque performance described by the poem itself is part and parcel of the feast that preceded it. And finally, the banquet where this elaborate performance takes place is only a single component of the chivalric tournament for which all the participants have come together. In many ways, this one passage from a single Provençal poem provides as much information on the multiplicity of jongleuresque performance as does Clifford Davidson’s Illustrations of the Stage and Acting in England to 1580 with its more than 166 images of singers, musicians, trained bears, and knife jugglers all co-existing on same simple stage. While Western theater since the Renaissance has acquired definite borders analogous to those described by Ong in his discussion of the rise of print culture (132–35), Flamenca’s spirited description of this variegated spectacle clearly demonstrates that medieval theater was much more than a text-centered event, occurring in a specific place, at a specific time, and for a specific group of people. Medieval jongleuresque performance was, quite simply, an open-ended, multiform, multitiered phenomenon, occurring in various places, at various times, for—and in collusion with—various people.

The Literary Text in Its Jongleuresque Context The implications of this multiform theater are, then, clear. Singers of tales who share their simple stage with musicians and trained bears must compensate for the general chaos in which their texts takes shape by coloring them as much as possible through their performative talents, a coloring many performers themselves have described as “theatrical” regardless of the literary genre of the performed text. Robertson, for instance, claims that his ballad singing has a certain cinematic quality about it: “I have to re-live a ballad. If I sing a ballad I have to become part of it . . . I see it as [if] I am directing a film” (Andersen 32). Even Colin Smith resorts to this cinematic metaphor when he says of the ballad tradition: “The narrator almost never intrudes himself upon the scene, but acts in an objective, impersonal way, like the eye of the camera” (Span-

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages ish Ballads 3). The performer who cannot rely on an opulence of visual trappings must rely on a richly descriptive language in order to unpack the “illusory space” necessary to maintain the interest of the spectator (Huston 76). Indeed, nothing demonstrates the radical theatricality inherent in jongleuresque performance better than Benjamin Bagby’s contemporary oneman production of Beowulf. For, despite the fact that this modern scôp performs his medieval epic in the original Old English (which means, of course, that the literary text itself is largely inaccessible to everyone except scholarly experts), Bagby’s performance is mesmerizing. He literally embodies what Conquergood calls the scôp’s “highly theatrical, arresting, perhaps even ecstatic” performative mode (120). Epic and ballad texts like Beowulf or the Poema de Mio Cid—texts that are conceived in, or for, performance—display a linguistic style Zumthor characterizes by “la prédominance de la parole en acte sur la description” (125–26). But, of course, the speech acts Zumthor invokes cannot be separated from any notion of dialogue, and thus it is this predominance of inscribed speech in the texts associated with the jongleuresque tradition that has frequently been the fulcrum on which theorists have leveraged their definition of genuine theater. Dialogue, however, as we have already noted, is a poor marker of theater, especially if we consider the text from a performative perspective. In the first place, there exist types of performative interaction (independent of the dialogue between actor and spectator I have posited in this book) that make no attempt to represent human speech in conversation. Classical Blues, for instance, creates just such a dialogue between the singer and the lead guitar in which the vocal performer will sing a stanza of verse—during which time the lead guitar remains conspicuously silent—and then it is the singer who will fall silent as the guitar counters with a melodic stanza of its own. It is this interplay of point/ counterpoint—this dialogic “call and response”—that creates the musical structure on which most Blues songs are constructed. Likewise, the oral tradition itself also contains a type of performative dialogue that is far from conversational. Zumthor reminds us of what he calls “le chant alterné” for which “deux interprètes récitent ou chantent alternativement,

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Chapter Two en une sorte de concours ou de débat” (101, 221). The Romancero contains at least one such song, “¡Ay!, un galán de esta villa,” which exemplifies this type of textual distribution:9 ¡Ay!, un galán de esta villa, ¡ay!, un galán de esta casa, ¡ay!, de lejos que venía, ¡ay!, de lejos que llegaba. —¡Ay!, diga lo que él quería, ¡ay!, diga lo que él buscaba. —¡Ay!, busco a la blanca niña, ¡ay!, busco a la niña blanca, que tiene voz delgadina, que tiene la voz de plata; cabello de oro tejía, cabello de oro trenzaba. —Otra no hay en esta villa, otra no hay en esta casa, si no era una mi prima, si no una prima hermana; ¡ay!, de marido pedida, ¡ay!, de marido velada. —¡Ay!, diga a la blanca niña, ¡ay!, diga a la niña blanca, ¡ay!, que su amigo la espera, ¡ay!, que su amigo la aguarda al pie de una fuente fría, al pie de una fuente clara, que por el oro corría, que por el oro manaba, a orillas del mar que suena, a orillas del mar que brama.10 ....................... Ya viene la blanca niña, ya viene la niña blanca, al pie de la fuente fría que por el oro manaba; la tan fresca mañanica, mañanica la tan clara; ¡ay, venga la luz del día!, ¡ay, venga la luz del alba! (Menéndez Pidal, Flor nueva 100–01)

In the second place, however, dialogue is a problematic theatrical emblem because what we usually mean when we say 70

Singers of Tales on Simple Stages that a given dramatic work has dialogue is that there exist textual markers written into the margins of the published script that specifically call for at least two distinct voices (which is to say, at least two performers). It is the inscription of these character names that usually run down the left hand side of the page—but which are never uttered in performance, and which are barely acknowledged by readers themselves, except peripherally—that marks drama as a recognizable literary form. As we have just seen, however, the alternating song itself inherently calls for two voices (even if it does not name them specifically), and yet few scholars would classify it as dramatic. Chambers confronts this issue by cataloguing the many minstrel genres that contain “semidialogue” and comes to the conclusion that dialogue is an untenable dramatic signifier. It is what underlies dialogue, he says, that really counts: “The notion of drama does not, perhaps, necessarily imply scenery on a regular stage, but it does imply impersonation and a distribution of rôles between at least two performers” (1: 81). Yet, “impersonation” is no less problematic than “dialogue” because, as Huston points out in the citation I have used as the epigraph to this present chapter, even in a text such as the lyric where there is not an explicitly named character, a good singer will inevitably feign a voice that is not necessarily his own, just as a good writer will write a poetic voice that does not coincide with that of the poet. (How else could it be otherwise unless all writing were “autobiography?” And even then—as narratology has clearly taught us—we could not trust the poetic voice to coincide perfectly with that of the authorial consciousness behind the composition of the text.) Thus, the “lover” who sings the medieval lyric is as much a performative construct as “Pedro Crespo” or “Tartuffe” and cannot be taken to coincide with the singer of the piece any more than the “Mariano José de Larra” or the “Don Francisco de Goya” of Antonio Buero Vallejo’s La detonación and El sueño de la razón, respectively, can be taken to coincide either with the actors who portray them or the historical figures on which they are based. The only real difference between the lyrical and the dramatic character is that the lyrical “lover” has not been overtly assigned a specific (that is, “named”) persona. As William Paden astutely notes, the lyric text is precisely a “dramatic

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Chapter Two script which only makes sense in performance by a persona who occupies the constant focus of the audience’s attention” (93). Moreover, the distribution of roles, while certainly endemic, is no more a defining marker of theater than dialogue, since a single performer may impersonate a multiplicity of voices within a given performance just as easily as he or she can impersonate a single voice. For, just as “¡Ay!, un galán de esta villa” does not become something other than an “alternating song” at those times when a single performer sings both verses, a dramatic text with several characters is in no way diminished when performed by a lone actor. In many performances (and for many reasons) a single actor will play two or more roles. Some playwrights, such as Dale Wasserman in Man of La Mancha, explicitly call for this doubling in order to underline some kind of connection between two characters. Other texts contain so many personages that directors will frequently double up on parts in order to reduce the number of actors needed to stage the performance. Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology (which, as anyone familiar with the work knows, is a poetic collection of epitaphs “spoken” by the deceased residents of the mythical town of Spoon River) is a text that richly exemplifies the issue of multiple impersonation. Though the work is technically classified as poetry, it needs very little adaptation to become theater; it merely needs to be performed. In fact, as the 1963 Broadway production (and numerous revivals) have clearly demonstrated, an ensemble cast of five to ten actors can, by each assuming a number of characters, bring to life (as it were) the dead residents of Spoon River. No explicit dialogue exists in the poetic text (each character is, after all, alone in the grave), but two kinds of implicit dialogue exist in performance: first, each speech is a monologue delivered directly to the audience, and thus each character establishes a performative dialogue with the spectators; and second, because the lives of the citizens of the small mythical town were intimately intertwined in life, each monologue participates in a funereal dialogue in which the aspirations and disappointments of these dead residents play off each other. In any case, the fact that each actor plays four or five characters does not in any way confuse the audience; people can distinguish the actor from the several characters she plays. Whether or not

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages the literary text assumes the presence of multiple actors or character dialogue is completely irrelevant in performance. The text does not call the actors to the stage; rather, the actors call the text itself into being. These same performative mechanics are necessarily at work any time someone sings a ballad. The literary text may or may not assume a singer; it may or may not assume multiple characters; it may or may not assume character dialogue. Nevertheless, if performers are to maintain the interest of their audience—even if that audience consists solely of two or three family members sitting around the hearth—they must create these elements in spite of the literary structure of the written text. Thus, if we really wish to locate a large corpus of scripts from the medieval stage, we really need look no further than songbooks like the Cancionero Musical del Palacio or Wit and Mirth: Or, Pills to Purge Melancholy, which, although published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, record some of the oldest songs in European balladry.11 And because various “Early Music” ensembles have recently produced a number of audio recordings of these songs, it is now possible to examine many of these texts in performance (albeit contemporary performance) in order to see how they realize the radical theatricality inscribed within them.12 Encina’s romance “Una sañosa porfía” from the Cancionero Musical del Palacio offers us just this opportunity, appearing as it does on two different recordings: Hespèrion XX’s Juan del Enzina: Romances and Villancicos and the Waverly Consort’s 1492: Music from the Age of Discovery. The following is the text of the romance as it appears in the original Cancionero itself: Una sañosa porfía Sin ventura va pujando. Ya nunca tuve alegria, Y a mi mal se va ordenando: Ya fortuna disponia Quitar mi próspero mando, Qu’el bravo leon d’España Mal me viene amenazando. Su espantosa artilleria, Los adarves derribando, Mis villas y mis castillos,

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Chapter Two Mis ciudades va ganando. La tierra y el mar gemian, Que viene señoreando, Sus pendones y estandartes Y banderas levantando. La muy gran caballeria, Héla, viene relumbrando, Sus huestes y peonage All aire viene turbando. Córreme la morería, Los campos viene talando, Mis compañas y caudillos Viene venciendo y matando. Las mezquitas de Mohama En iglesias consagrando; Las moras lleva cativas, Con alaridos llorando. Al cielo dan apellido ¡Viva’l Rey Don Fernando, Viva la muy gran leona Alta Reina prosperando[!] Una generosa Virgen Esfuerzo les viene dando; Un famoso caballero Delante viene volando, Con una cruz colorada Y un espada relumbrando, D’un rico manto vestido, Toda la gente guiando. (Asenjo y Barbieri 165)

In the Hespèrion XX performance of the Juan del Enzina disc, the first element that stands out is the dirgelike tone that is established from the very first note by the heavy beating of a bass drum. Throughout the song—which is accompanied by violin, vihuela, and bassoon—the incessant pulsating of this drumbeat not only establishes a “warfare” ambience appropriate for a romance about the Reconquista, but is also a constant reminder of the deadly seriousness of the fall of Islamic Spain. It serves to underline the immensely sorrowful tone of the performative voice—the “character” in theatrical terms—of the “yo” that laments the loss of a culture and of a religion. The performative “yo” of this rendition, however, is not an individual but a collective (an implied “nosotros”). Hence, like the voice of “Granada” in the well-known “Romance de 74

Singers of Tales on Simple Stages Abenámar,” the real character created in this song is Islamic Spain herself. And this is what makes this version interesting on yet another level. The main voice on this recording is a feminine one created by a haunting soprano line (probably sung by Montserrat Figueras) that hovers high above the beating drum and thus constructs a mood eerily reminiscent of a medieval planctus. The character created by this voice would clearly like to say to the invading King Ferdinand—as does “Granada” to King Don Juan in “Abenámar”—“casada soy, que no viuda” (Díaz Roig 61), but cannot do so precisely because in this instance the “moras” are clearly being taken captive against their will. This passionate solo lament is underscored by a number of other voices (both male and female) that suggest that the lament does not come solely from a personified Granada, but from her inhabitants as well. And this chorus of voices, like the chorus in Zumthor’s alternating song, engages in a dialogue with the song’s main singer, although this dialogue is certainly not the kind we would normally recognize in a work generically labeled drama. As with the Blues, the dialogue here consists mainly of motival echoes and responses to the lyric voice of the soprano. Still, at the verses “Al cielo dan apellido / ¡Viva’l Rey Don Fernando, / Viva la muy gran leona / Alta Reina prosperando[!]” the chorus vocally marks this inscribed dialogue by singing in a clear unison and by punching the words slightly. In this way, the singers performatively set these lines apart from the rest of the text in the same way the dashes set them apart on the page of the compact disc’s liner notes. The performance recorded by the Waverly Consort on the 1492 disc contrasts markedly with the Hespèrion XX version. First, this version lacks most of the narrative—and thus most of the embryonic interaction—of the Hespèrion XX version, since its lyrics include only the first eight verses of the Cancionero text. Second, whereas the Hespèrion XX rendition follows a linear development that begins immediately with the first line and moves directly verse by verse to the last, the Waverly Consort version begins, instead, with a sung (yet wordless) presentation of the melody by a lone soprano (Tamara Crout) that lasts for more than one third of the total performance time. And third, when Crout finally does arrive at the verbal text, she continues to sing unsupported by a chorus and is accompanied only by a “harp, vihuela, bass recorder 75

Chapter Two [and] viols” (liner notes 7). This decision to use a solo voice is quite deliberate since, as the liner notes indicate, the song “sympathizes with the unfortunate King who lost his beautiful palace and his prosperous domain” (6). Thus, the decision to use a lone singer is an attempt to re-create the intended single voice of the Muslim King (“In first person, Encina captures the tragedy suffered by King Boabdil” [6]); it is a re-creation that contrasts with the metaphoric use of the collective voice in the Hespèrion XX rendition. What is particularly ironic about this version is that the text (abbreviated as it is) actually ends with “King Boabdil” merely being threatened (“amenazando”) by the Lion of Spain rather than conquered. Thus, the song cannot possibly be about the “loss” of the King’s “beautiful palace and his prosperous domain” (6) precisely because the narrative elements that depict this loss—and which make up the majority of the Hespèrion XX version—are completely missing. This version instead offers an enigmatically stunted text not unlike the text of the romance “El conde Arnaldos” whose ending has puzzled more than one critic. In sum, “Una sañosa porfía” as performed by the Waverly Consort is much more an instrumental piece than a narrative piece; its text is less a tragic lament than a nostalgic sigh. Nevertheless, this sigh does not belong to some disembodied entity, but is very much a product of— and a representation of—a human persona; which is to say, a theatrical character. Another romance recorded by Hespèrion XX—“¿Qu’es de tí, desconsolado?”—provides us with a similar example of this creation of a performative persona. The text as it appears in the Cancionero reads as follows: ¿Qu’es de tí, desconsolado? ¿Qu’es de tí, Rey de Granada? ¿Qu’es de tu tierra e tus moros? ¿Dónde tienes tu morada? Reniega ya de Mohama E de su seta malvada, Que vivir en tal locura Es una burla burlada. Torna, tórnate, buen Rey, A nuestra ley consagrada, Porque si perdiste el reino Tengas el alma cobrada.

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages De tales Reyes vencido Honra debe serte dada. —¡O Granada noblecida Por todo el mundo nombrada, Hasta aquí fueste cativa, E agora ya libertada! Perdiote el Rey Don Rodrigo Por su dicha desdichada; Ganote el Rey Don Fernando Con ventura prosperada; La Reina Doña Isabel, La mas temida e amada, Ella con sus oraciones, Y él con mucha gente armada. Segun Dios hace sus hechos, La defensa era excusada; Que donde Él pone su mano Lo impossible es cuasi nada. (Asenjo y Barbieri 159–60)

Like the version of “Una sañosa porfía” on the same disc, this romance treats the fall of Granada with the somber tone of a funeral procession, including once again the same underlying (although not constant) drumbeat and the same slow pace. However, in this particular rendition, the performative “yo” is neither an allegorized “Granada” nor a personified “King Boabdil” lamenting the loss of his kingdom; instead, it represents a “Christian conqueror” consoling both “King Boabdil” and “Granada” on their “fortunate” state of being conquered. More importantly, this “yo” never appears as a linguistic marker either as an explicit pronoun or even as part of a verb tense, but is implied solely through its relationship to the “tú” to whom it sings. And while this “tú” never responds—that is, never becomes its own “yo”—it is very much a presence in the performative moment. The song therefore differs from a soliloquy by assuming two personas rather than one. We recall that in Calderón’s most famous soliloquy, Segismundo speaks only to himself (at least conceptually) and thus implies no other listening presence. This, of course, was the standard theatrical convention for representing thought prior to the invention of the sound recording equipment that makes possible our contemporary convention of the voice over (both on stage and on screen). In this romance, however, the singer creates a 77

Chapter Two performative dialogue with the audience (each of whom, because of the linguistic relationship established between the performing “yo” and the listening “tú,” must necessarily assume the persona of the king of Granada); a dialogue not unlike the implicit dialogue between the “lover” and the “beloved” of the courtly lyric; a dialogue just as discernible as the exchange between the “Marys” and the “Angel” of the Quem quaeritis trope or that of the characters of Adam de la Halle’s plays. The Hespèrion XX version of “¿Qu’es de tí, desconsolado?” is also interesting in its presentation of the voice of a speaker. The performance begins with a sung rendition of the first three stanzas—similar to both versions of “Una sañosa porfía”—but at the fourth stanza the singer ceases to sing and begins to speak the text while the melodic instrumentation continues unabated. This recitation continues through to the final verse, at which point the singer returns to the line “Ella con sus oraciones” and sings a “refrain.” Through this recitation, the song highlights the dialogic nature of the text by stressing the fact that the singer is speaking directly to a listener (a fact that is admittedly harder to grasp when the words are sung slowly and methodically). This recitation also demonstrates that the narrative itself is part of a performance that can recapitulate its material in order to stress both thematic and melodic elements. As the Hespèrion XX version of “Una sañosa porfía” also showed us, however, a dialogue between the poetic voice and that of a listener is not the only type of dialogue we can find in the popular songs of the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. A choral version of a piece can also create a dialogue between the constituent members of a collective voice. Just such a dialogue is highlighted in the villancico, “Hoy comamos y bebamos,” which again appears on both the Hespèrion XX and Waverly Consort recordings. I will begin by discussing the Waverly Consort version, whose text appears in the Cancionero musical del palacio as follows (although, in truth, the Waverly Consort version actually omits the third and fifth stanzas): Hoy comamos y bebamos Y cantemos y holguemos, Que mañana ayunarémos. Por honra de Sant Antruejo Parémonos hoy bien anchos,

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages Embutamos estos panchos, Recalquemos el pellejo. Que costumbre es de concejo Que todos hoy nos artemos, Que mañana ayunarémos. Honremos á tan buen santo, Porque en hambre nos acorra; Comamos á calca porra, Que mañana hay gran quebranto. Comamos, bebamos tanto Hasta que nos reventemos, Que mañana ayunarémos. Bebe, Bras; más tú, Beneito; Beba Pedruelo y Lloriente; Bebe tú primeramente, Quitarnos has deste preito. En beber bien me deleito; Daca, daca, beberémos, Que mañana ayunarémos. FIN Tomemos hoy gasajado, Que mañana vien la muerte; Bebamos, comamos huerte; Vámonos cara el ganado. No perderemos bocado, Que comiendo nos iremos, Y mañana ayunarémos. (Asenjo y Barbieri 181–82)

What separates the poetic voice of this song from that of the other songs we have thus far examined is the explicitly collective nature of the singers inscribed within the first-person-plural subject pronoun. As we saw earlier, the singular “yo” of a song can easily be divided into a plural “nosotros” simply by assigning different verses—different moments of the performance— to different singers. Yet, this type of performative diffusion of the dramatis personae is unnecessary here. Moreover, like “¿Qu’es de tí, desconsolado?” this song creates its own dialogue by having the singer(s) speak directly to each other by name. Here, the song begins with a single soprano voice (Tamara Crout) who once again sings the first ten verses solo. At the stanza that begins “Bebe, Bras,” however, Crout is joined 79

Chapter Two by a chorus of voices who sing with her through to the end, and who then repeat the entire song with her. What we find in this performance is the development of a discernibly “dramatic” relationship between several characters. The initial soprano voice engages in a dialogue with the other voices as she calls them, inviting them both to feast and to sing along with her. And again, their response is not unlike the response of the “Marys” of the Quem quaeritis trope who are drawn into speech by the question posed by the “Angel.” Moreover, it bears remembering that, just as the monks who originally sang the liturgical trope were neither real angels nor female, it would be purely coincidental if any of the singers of this particular villancico (whether early modern or contemporary) were to be named Bras, Beneito, Pedruelo, or Lloriente. These singers assume, if only briefly, a dramatic character, doing more than just use their vocal instruments to create a musical sound. Their performance is thus no mere technical exercise devoid of human impersonation; it is as theatrical in performance—and as dramatic, in fact—as any text associated with a dramatic literary work. An example of this kind of performative coloring of the text—that is, the transformation of a song into a short play— can be found outside the Spanish tradition in a wonderful little song recorded by the Baltimore Consort and the Merry Companions on a compact disc entitled The Art of the Bawdy Song. The text of this song, “The Old Fumbler,” reads as follows in Wit and Mirth:13 Smug, rich and fantastick old Fumbler was known, That Wedded a Juicy brisk Girl of the Town; Her Face like an Angel, Fair, Plump, and a Maid, Her Lute well in Tune too, cou’d he but have plaid: But lost was his Skill, let him do what he can, She finds him in Bed a weak silly old Man; He coughs in her Ear, ’tis in vain to come on, Forgive me, my Dear, I’m a silly old Man. She laid his dry Hand on her snowy soft Breast, And from those white Hills gave a glimpse of the Best; But ah! what is Age when our Youth’s but a Span, She found him an Infant instead of a Man, Ah! Pardon, he’d cry, that I’m weary so soon,

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages You have let down my Base, I’m no longer in Tune; Lay by the dear Instrument, prithee lie still, I can play but one Lesson, and I that I play Ill. (D’Urfey 2: 312)

This song differs from the previous ones we have studied in that the voice of the main singer (an unidentified male) is not a character in the song. Instead, the singer functions simply as a third-person narrator who relates a short story. Thus, the performance space (as opposed to the imaginative space) that predominates in this song is not that of the characters, but that of the singer. Still, as with most stories, including those performed orally in the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales, this one includes the speech of the characters involved, and it is in this character dialogue that the performer must do more than simply sing the words along with the tune. The liner notes to the compact disc include quotation marks to highlight the inscribed speech of these characters. But since these diacritical markings (which indicate a change of voice from narrator to character) are simply unavailable to the listener (as they are to the reader), the singer must “act out” these dramatic parts if the imaginative space of the text is to coincide with the performance space. What is most remarkable about this rendition is the lengths to which the male singer goes to personify the Old Fumbler. For instance, between the phrases “He coughs in her Ear” and “’tis vain to come on,” the music actually stops long enough for the “old man” to cough and sputter. Thus the singer, like the performers who divide up the text of “Hoy comamos y bebamos,” performatively creates elements that are not prescribed by the written text. Moreover, the smooth baritone voice of the narrator constantly gives way to the voice of a stereotypical crackly codger whenever the song cites the words of the Old Fumbler himself. In this explicit creation of a dramatic character, this performance clearly surpasses the others we have examined. But this brings us back to the corresponding version of the Encina villancico recorded by Hespèrion XX. This alternative rendition conceives the creation of dramatic character far more boldly than the Waverly Consort version we examined earlier, because the voices on the Hespèrion XX recording have become much more individualized. In the Waverly Consort 81

Chapter Two performance, the only solo belongs to the lone soprano who incites the chorus into joining with her in song. “Bras,” “Beneito,” “Pedruelo,” and “Lloriente” function as characters in the crowd, but we never actually hear from them as such. Like the “King Boabdil” of the romance we examined above, these characters exist only in the second person. In this particular version, however, not only are these characters members of the chorus, but they are also individuals who respond one to another in much the same way that the disparate voices of the Beatles engage each other in dialogue in “With a Little Help from My Friends.” The performance text, which again exists in a variant form, reads as transcribed below. (For the sake of clarity I have indicated for each segment the singers—and thus the characters—who sing each verse or verses.) [Entire Chorus:] Hoy comamos y bebamos Y cantemos y holguemos, Que mañana ayunarémos. [One Woman:] Por honra de Sant Antruejo Parémonos hoy bien anchos, Embutamos estos panchos, Recalquemos el pellejo. [Entire Chorus:] Que costumbre es de concejo Que todos hoy nos artemos, Que mañana ayunarémos. [Men:] Honremos á tan buen santo, Porque en hambre nos acorra; Comamos á calca porra, Que mañana hay gran quebranto. [Entire Chorus:] Comamos, bebamos tanto Hasta que nos reventemos, Que mañana ayunarémos. [First Man:] Bebe, Bras; más tú, Beneito;

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages [Second Man:] Beba Pedruelo y Lloriente; [Third Man:] Bebe tú primeramente, Quitarnos has deste preito. [One Man, One Woman:] En beber bien me deleito; Daca, daca, beberémos, Que mañana ayunarémos. [Two Men:] Tomemos hoy gasajado, Que mañana vien la muerte; [One Man, One Woman:] Bebamos, comamos huerte; Vámonos cara el ganado. [Entire Chorus:] No perderemos bocado, Que comiendo nos iremos, Y mañana ayunarémos. (Asenjo y Barbieri 181–82)

As performed, the song becomes very much a musical play in which the singers assume the individual personas of the revelers. It is comparable to the distribution of roles that occurs in the fourth act of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, where Autolycus, Dorcas, and Mopsa divide up the various verses of a ballad and sing them as if the song were a playlet (4.4.297– 308; 1639); or the way in which the “shepherds” of Cervantes’s “fingida Arcadia” plan to perform the églogas of Garcilaso de la Vega (Don Quijote 2: 58; 477). It is impossible to listen to this type of performance without imagining a space in which the song occurs and without mentally delineating a particular moment in time that is tied to this imaginative setting. These jongleuresque performers—like Chaucer’s various narrators— are more than just singers, they are actors as well. Of course, what is particularly important about this specific villancico is that it comes precisely from one of Encina’s églogas, which means that it is dramatically inscribed from its

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Chapter Two inception (Encina 159–60). By providing the various named characters a mechanism through which to sing their way offstage, this villancico functions as the conclusion to the play. Nevertheless (and I stress this point because I am much more interested in the contribution of performers than I am of authors), Encina gives no textual indication even in the égloga itself—as I have done for the above version (and as he has done for the rest of the play)—to describe exactly how the verses of the text should be divided among these named characters. For this reason, neither of the contemporary performances we have examined here can claim some kind of authorial imprimatur, since each version is as “correct” as the other (although, in truth, within its original performative context there would have been no soprano voice). Taken out of its original context, the Hespèrion XX rendition remains somewhat more satisfying to our ears because it realizes the dramatic possibilities of the text better than the Waverly Consort version. But within a performance of the entire égloga, both versions would function equally well, since by the end of the play the audience would be very much aware of the individual personalities of “Bras,” “Beneito,” “Pedruelo,” and “Lloriente,” and would thus be less concerned with which character sang which line. In the end, this villancico, whether as part of the performance of a play, or as a separate performance sung within the context of a musical concert, demonstrates the intimate interrelationship between musical performance and theater on the early Spanish stage.

The Etymologies of Jongleuresque Performance The late anthropologist Victor Turner poses an intriguing question within the title of one of his essays: “Are there universals of performance in myth, ritual, and drama?” To answer his own question he posits a theory of interrelationship between what he calls “social drama” and “stage drama” through which he argues that societies work out their archetypal conflicts by portraying them abstractly through “redressive rituals” (“Are There Universals” 11). I do not bring this up here in order to critique Turner’s anthropological approach to performance; rather, I mention his question because it is—I believe—central to any discussion of the early Spanish stage, and because I would like

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages to offer an answer of my own, one that flows from the jongleuresque model I myself have posited in this chapter. Where my answer will differ from Turner’s is really in terms of its focus. Like Bakhtin, Turner finds his inspiration in the collective. And like Bakhtin, Turner finds his answer in the “liminal” (although Bakhtin would obviously prefer the term “transgressive”): Theatre is one of the many inheritors of that great multifaceted system of preindustrial ritual which embraces ideas and images of cosmos and chaos, interdigitates clowns and their foolery with gods and their solemnity, and uses all the sensory codes, to produce symphonies in more than music: the intertwining of dance, body languages of many kinds, song, chant, architectural forms (temples, amphitheatres), incense, burnt offerings, ritualized feasting and drinking, painting, body painting, body marking of many kinds, including circumcision and scarification, the application of lotions and drinking of potions, the enacting of mythic and heroic plots drawn from oral traditions. (12)

Turner’s metaphor of the symphony is suggestive for what it implies but does not say. For, although it is true that all of the various elements of the “multifaceted system” he richly portrays collectively constitute the orchestra, each “instrument” is ultimately played by itself and on its own terms. The “harmony” this passage implies comes about through the union of individual “sounds.” Thus, while Turner seeks universality in the metaphor of polyphonic music, universality can also be found at the “instrumental” level. Throughout this chapter I have juxtaposed a number of classical, medieval, early modern, and contemporary performances in an attempt to highlight those performative elements they have in common, elements I believe they have always shared. One could argue, of course, that these commonalities are simply coincidental; that there are only so many ways one can tell a story and that any similarities between the Roman mime, the medieval jongleur, and modern actors of Spoon River Anthology are due to completely fortuitous convergences; that we cannot reconstruct the outlines of medieval performance based on modern recordings of medieval and Renaissance songs. On the other hand, perhaps these obvious commonalities point to another, less fortuitous explanation. 85

Chapter Two One of the major dilemmas we encounter in mapping the medieval jongleuresque performance tradition—one of the reasons we have traditionally had such difficulty in connecting early modern actors with their ancient and medieval predecessors—is the whole question of nomenclature. Because there does not exist one simple, generic term (especially during the Middle Ages) to adequately describe the various performers and their concomitant performance activities, most scholars— who have been trained to meticulously categorize literary texts according to various conventional models (such as epic, lyrical, pastoral, comical, and tragic)—spend a great deal of time attempting to pin down the exact meaning, specific cultural function, and etymological interrelation of such distinct terms as mimus, ludator, saltator, cantor, venation, histrion, troubadour, jongleur, minstrel, jester, fool, buffoon, charlatan, mountebank, and bard (among several others).14 Moreover, since the term ioculator is usually mentioned in conjunction with a variety of other performers, many scholars have attempted to determine the extent to which jongleur differed from the other various terms. Anyone familiar with these attempts at strict differentiation, however, knows that they have usually created more difficulties than they have solved, since no clear-cut division exists and— more importantly—since, in many places, the discrete definitions seem to slide from figure to figure. Allegri has rightly suggested that the proliferation of terminology was, perhaps, more important at the time than it should be for us today. Medieval society, he says, was profoundly concerned with the correspondence between names and functions (especially as they related to rigid social hierarchies). Because of this, he says, minute differentiations in function would have been marked by equally minute differentiations in name. Nevertheless, from our current perspective these variegated performers had much more in common with each other than the primary sources would lead us to believe, and certainly had much more in common with each other than with other medieval figures (60–61). Thus, from one point of view, the strength of the definitional approach (by which I mean, its exhaustive attention to specific detail) can actually be seen as a methodological weakness. Our preoccupation with the minute differences between various medieval

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages figures and their relative titles, performative characteristics, social classes, and educational levels functions to marginalize many of these performers at the same time it attempts to classify them. As we have seen, Menéndez Pidal worries a great deal about distinguishing literary from nonliterary performers, Chambers unceremoniously dismisses the “pitiable” and “disreputable” actors from his study once he arrives at what he considers legitimate theater in the liturgical drama, and Nicoll himself seems constantly intent on separating the mimetic from the non-mimetic activities. What this definitional methodology fails to account for, however, is the fact that the distinct categories of ancient and medieval performers, whose various names continually surface and re-surface in the writings of such figures as Thomas de Cabham, Isidore of Seville, and others, are not inherent, genetic classifications. While these performers could hardly be considered respectable members of medieval society, they did not belong (at least as far as their professional life is concerned) to some kind of caste system that relegated them to one—and only one—mode of performance. Menéndez Pidal’s caveat that a jongleur might occasionally write poetry, while a troubadour might sometimes condescend to sing a verse or two certainly bears this out, despite the fact that people tend to specialize in one or two things they can do well (Poesía julgaresca 16). Despite our combined “Darwinian” efforts during the last century and a half to classify these popular performers as if they were various species of subtropical bird, it is quite conceivable (if not highly probable) that throughout the Middle Ages individual performers might be seen juggling swords for one particular group of spectators in a particular town one day and then singing an epic geste to the accompaniment of a lute for a second group of people in a second town the following day, before finally doing a bit of prestidigitation with a trained monkey in front of a third audience in a third town on the day after that. Given the interrelated nature of virtually all the various performance-oriented activities that took place during the Middle Ages, it is time, perhaps, to embrace a new methodological approach to medieval theater, one that privileges underlying commonalities rather than superficial differences. Performance, like language itself, exists and has existed in all cultures and during

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Chapter Two all periods. And just as there are no clear origins in language— no clear “births” or “rebirths”—the performative language we speak flows backward into pre-history as seamlessly and as surely as Italian, Spanish, and French flow backward into Latin, and long before that into Proto-Indo-European. We now universally accept the notion that similarities between such modern words as three, tres, and trois and ancient words like the Sanskrit trayas are no mere coincidence; historical linguistics has taught us that there are predictable mechanisms governing the evolution of language, and we have used our knowledge of these mechanisms to reconstruct ancient tongues now lost. Bearing this in mind, we may ask ourselves whether it is purely coincidental that the performative modalities we can trace in the medieval European jongleuresque tradition are clearly recognizable in cultures the world over. We might also ask ourselves if someday we might discover the vague outlines of what could be called “Proto-Indo-European performance.” Theorists such as Turner and Schechner have certainly pushed the frontiers of our knowledge toward this goal. But even if we cannot reconstruct such a paradigm, even if we cannot articulate theater history’s version of a “grand unified theory” (to borrow a phrase from quantum physics), we can at least gain a better understanding of our connection to the more recent theatrical past, realizing that—like the City Dionysia, which did not develop unconnected to the performance and the performers of epic poetry—the early Spanish theater did not simply spring into being without a direct performative connection to the medieval singers of tales and their simple stages. For, just as any competent speaker of a given language can recognize and produce utterances within that linguistic system, so too can individual performers (whether professional or amateur) recognize and produce performative utterances by manipulating and reorganizing the codes of their performative language. The differences between high-cultural and low-cultural activities, between literary and nonliterary activities, between mimetic and non-mimetic activities are qualitative rather than typological. And just as the subject pronoun “I” is infinitely transmutable, properly defined as the linguistic marker temporarily denoting a particular speaker, so too the terms troubadour, minstrel, fool, actor, acrobat, and

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Singers of Tales on Simple Stages mountebank do not inherently define individual types of performers; rather, they describe the types of performance activity in which individual performers might be currently engaged. Likewise, balladry, prestidigitation, juggling, and bear baiting are all “dialects” and “registers” within the context of a single jongleuresque language. The jongleuresque tradition represents, quite literally, the popular theater of medieval Europe (especially on the Iberian Peninsula) with or without the liturgical drama. In fact, continuing the linguistic analogy I have posited above, we might easily say that at a time when the ancient classical world was slowly transforming itself into the modern world—at a time when classical (or, at least Church) Latin co-existed with the developing vernaculars of medieval Europe—jongleuresque performance functioned precisely as the medieval vernacular of a larger performance tradition within which the liturgical drama served as the high-cultural Latinate.

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Chapter Three

Picaresque Actors and Their Theater

When Pushkin said that the art of the theater was “born in the public square,” the square he had in mind was that of “the common people,” the square of bazaars, puppet theaters, taverns, that is the square of European cities in the thirteenth, fourteenth and subsequent centuries. Mikhail Bakhtin The Dialogic Imagination

Picaresque Apprenticeship One of the most notable features of medieval jongleuresque performance is its connection to that of the Roman mimus, the Teutonic scôp, and others, whose performative practices continued—modified to be sure, but unabated—for hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire. The mechanism that allowed for this ongoing performance tradition, of course, even in the face of the much-remarked strong ecclesiastical opposition to the theater, was the institution of apprenticeship, an institution that functioned as such even when it was never formally recognized. A number of scholars, in fact, see the Church’s lack of imprimatur as the driving force behind the solidification of just such an informal system of training. For, without a respectable societal space in which professional acting could be pursued, medieval and early modern street performers were obliged to band together. The performing arts, like any skilled craft, have long depended on a guildlike system of training whose more experienced members pass on the secrets of the trade to younger novices. Chambers, for instance, catalogues several organized minstrel guilds existing in France 90

Picaresque Actors and Their Theater and England between 1105 and 1561 (2: 258–62), while the work of N. D. Shergold and J. E. Varey clearly demonstrates the importance of the cofradías in the development of the early Spanish stage.1 Such institutions are as important today as ever, even though many young actors now hone their abilities in either a university setting, where acting workshops are part of the undergraduate degree curriculum, or outside of traditional academia in workshops taught by famous actors and directors such as Lee Strasberg in his influential Actors Studio.2 Indeed, new performance groups like Mario Moscoso’s “Zarandajas: Escuela del arte teatral” in Buenos Aires self-consciously keep alive a tradition of jongleuresque performance training that goes back several hundred years. Tradition plays an extremely important role in this educational process because the rules and techniques of the craft— like everything else associated with an oral tradition—are passed from one generation to the next through informal transmission. By working closely with their mentors (as well as each other), young artisans gradually acquire a wealth of knowledge about their chosen profession: knowledge of its artistic techniques, of its superstitions, of its unwritten rules of conduct, and of its pre-eminent but bygone performers. Even today, little of this type of information makes it into print, and yet most actors come to know it through their informal contact with other actors. Of course, a large number of acting textbooks are available (and Constantin Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares is often required reading), but the core “text” for any modern acting workshop is still a combination of rehearsal, discussion, and feedback. For performance training, experience is a much more valuable pedagogical tool than lecture, and apprenticeship is still the dominant pedagogical model. Lord highlights the importance of apprenticeship for his guslar singers by noting that they usually go through three stages of training on their way to becoming experienced performers. The first stage, Lord argues, is really one of observation in which the “neophyte” may not even be conscious of the desire to become a singer. During this stage he lays the foundation for his mature techniques by “learning the stories and becoming acquainted with the heroes and their names,” by becoming familiar with the “themes of the poetry,” and by

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Chapter Three “imbibing the rhythm of the singing and to an extent also the rhythm of the thoughts as they are expressed in song” (21). The second stage occurs when the young singer first “opens his mouth to sing” and finds himself struggling to fit his thoughts into the rigid structure of the melodic and rhythmic framework, and to do so at the moment of performance where erasure and redaction are impossible (21–22). In both of these stages, the singer will choose a number of experienced performers as models and will copy their style and technique. Says Lord: “Learning in this second stage is a process of imitation, both in regard to playing the instrument and to learning the formulas and themes of the tradition” (23–24). The third stage begins when the singer is “competent to sing one song all the way through for a critical audience” (24). From then on, he merely adds songs to his repertoire, develops his own sense of ornamentation, and matures in his performative abilities. The guslar’s training comes to an end when he can independently provide entertainment for several nights; that is, when he has become, in Lord’s words, a “finished poet” (26). (“Poet,” of course, is a performative marker for Lord who constantly reminds us that it is the improvisational tradition that lies at the heart of the creation of text for these singers. The guslar does not mechanically reproduce a poem that exists in some fixed form, but constantly creates and re-creates variants.) As we have seen, however, especially with regard to the songs recorded by Hespèrion XX, the Waverly Consort, and the Baltimore Consort and the Merry Companions, the existence of a “written” form does not necessarily change the inventive mechanics of performance. The same process of textual creation occurs whether or not there is an a priori written artifact precisely because jongleuresque performers bring to the stage a whole world of performative techniques honed during their apprenticeship. The sixteenth century, which both realized the commercial potential of moveable type and saw the rise of the public playhouse, marked a turning point in the history of Western European theater. Given the sheer number of plays written and staged—especially in Spain—between 1500 and 1700, it is obvious that the vast majority of the actors needed to produce these plays necessarily came from walks of life other than that of the established professional performative

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater class. As capitalism and imperialism began to restructure the agricultural economies of the emerging nation-states of Western Europe, thousands of people seeking work poured into the major cities from the countryside, many of whom found gainful employment there in the new world of the commercial theater.3 In Spain, Shergold and Varey’s Genealogía, origen y noticias de los comediantes de España, which lists over fifteen hundred actors and nearly one thousand actresses for the period roughly covering the time between Lope de Vega and Calderón, documents the explosive growth associated with the corrales and cofradías of the Hapsburg Empire. Because of this significant demographic shift, early modern acting—whether in Shakespeare’s England, Molière’s France, or Lope’s Spain—can easily be seen as an entirely new and self-invented endeavor intimately tied to the self-invented identity of the literary dramas themselves. Yet, the fact that a great many early modern Spanish actors might have begun life as peasants and artisans rather than performers, and thus did not come to the stage steeped in its historical traditions, but instead joined the theatrical world during a moment of uncommon expansion, does not mean that these people were completely unaware of theatrical convention, nor does it mean that they were not initiated into their newfound profession by those actors who did come to the stage with notable performative pedigrees. As we have remarked, there existed throughout the Middle Ages a strong amateur performance tradition that was profoundly influenced by the professional jongleurs who functioned as experienced models for performers of all social classes and all degrees of talent. Indeed, as Teresa Ferrer Valls notes, many early Spanish actors such as Pedro Montiel, Alonso de la Vega, and Jerónimo Velázquez began their careers as amateur performers associated with various craftsman guilds (much like the “mechanicals” Shakespeare lampoons in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and only later decided to become professional actors (251). Moreover, as still happens today, the members of this new performative class tended to intermarry, and thus, while they may not have originally come from “theater families,” they quickly became such when they began to pass their newly acquired artistic traditions on to their sons and daughters. In many cases, Shergold and Varey’s Genealogía is just

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Chapter Three that: a family tree of early modern performers. Consider the following entry for Francisca de Arteaga (to cite just one notable example): Fue hixa de Francisco de Arteaga y de Maria (de Arteaga), digo, Perez (al margen: Vease en este libro pagina 109 y en el otro 52). Casó con Jusepe Roxo, cuios hixos fueron Joseph Bernardo y Maria, y se halla en la compañia de Manuel Vallexo y que se reciuio en la Cofradia en 26 de abril de 1631, y asimismo se halla en el Libro de los Cofrades en la compañia de Juan Perez, autor de comedias, el año de 1655. (378)

In his own discussion of the Spanish stage, Rennert rather disparagingly notes that, as a group, these early modern actors “were a careless and shiftless lot, [. . .] notorious for their loose manner of living” (Spanish Stage 160–61). His rhetoric, of course, is indicative of the disdain with which society has always viewed actors. But more importantly, it also underlines the often-intimate relationship that existed between the theater and the picaresque. For, in addition to the growing number of discursive ties that recent scholarship has traced between the comedia and the picaresque novel, we might also add the significant fact that a sizeable number of real-life comediantes were effectively pícaros who gravitated to Madrid or Valencia in order to take advantage of the golden opportunities of the new world of the early professional stage. In fact, it is no coincidence that many picaresque novels themselves feature protagonists who are intimately tied to the theater. Given the disdain with which proper society has always viewed the world of the performers, it is not surprising that rogues and actors would—and justifiably could—be considered interchangeable members of the same underclass. For this reason, a great number of picaresque novels—though clearly works of fiction rather than history—offer us an invaluable window on the daily life and performance traditions of these early modern picaresque actors. The protagonists of Francisco López de Úbeda’s La pícara Justina, Alonso de Castillo Solórzano’s La niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares, or Francisco de Quevedo’s El Buscón, for instance, could easily have sprung from the pages

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater of Shergold and Varey’s Genealogía. In a work that playfully parodies many of the standard picaresque conventions, Justina goes well out of her way to detail not just her immediate parentage—as do Lazarillo, Pablos, and Guzmán—but also her theatrical pedigree all the way back to her great-great-grandfather within a family tree that includes a “mascarero” and a “gaitero y tamboritero” (114–15). Likewise, at one point in her own story, Teresa de Manzanares marries an actor named Sarabia who then persuades her to join the acting company (a task made relatively simple by the fact that Teresa had long desired to become an actress: “Tanto me dijo, que me determiné a seguir aquella profesión, a que yo siempre fui muy inclinada desde niña, de suerte que todas las veces que veía comedia envidiaba notablemente a aquellas mujeres della y a las galas que traían” [346]). Finally, during his own life’s journey, Pablos too flirts with the pleasures of the emerging professional theater. Tagging along with a “compañía de farsantes” that is making its way toward Toledo, Pablos soon becomes an integral part of the troupe, moving quickly up through its ranks from his novice position as the speaker of prologues to that of a full-fledged dramatist who writes more than one successful comedia for the company. In fact, he is so successful, he tells us, that he even considers becoming the impresario of his own theater troupe (281–98). Inferior social status, however, is not the only connection linking pícaros and comediantes. Even when fictive characters such as those described above do not explicitly inscribe themselves within the acting profession, the patterns of their meandering lives remain remarkably theatrical in a performative sense. For, the pícaro is above all a natural improvisational actor whose greatest asset is the ability to adopt a myriad of roles for a myriad of difficult situations; which is to say, the picaresque “burla”—the word often used to describe the “tricks” employed by rogues to earn their daily bread—is an inherently theatrical gesture. Indeed, the successful pícaro, whether as a member of an acting troupe or not, is likely to be a talented performer who understands very well the performative dynamics between actor and spectator described by Huston. Hence, it is far from coincidental that picaresque characters like Cervantes’s Rinconete and Cortadillo are essentially

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Chapter Three required to “audition” for membership in Monipodio’s rogue’s gallery by demonstrating such roguish competence as the ability to perform jongleuresque slight-of-hand tricks. Carroll Johnson rightly notes that “Monipodio’s operation is organized like a religious order with its particular rule, which includes a year of novitiate” (Cervantes 43). But it is also true that this picaresque cofradía—with Monipodio as its commanding impresario—is very much like the acting troupe for which Pablos himself auditions in El Buscón (although by demonstrating a slightly different set of performative skills). And for this reason, when Monipodio decides to wave Rinconete’s and Cortadillo’s year of “novitiate,” it is not because the boys have already achieved some kind of advanced level of criminality, but because they have displayed an impressive talent as performers capable of committing crimes much more subtle than those achieved through the use of brute force. It is not coincidental, of course, that Michael Alpert’s English translation of El Buscón is entitled The Swindler. A capacity for deception is the single most important trait any prospective pícaro might hope to attain on his way to becoming a successful rogue; which is precisely why it is significant that Cervantes’s narrator in “Rinconete y Cortadillo” obliquely draws our attention to Rinconete’s prior education as an apprentice to his father, a man who made a living by selling indulgences: “Era Rinconete, aunque muchacho, de muy buen entendimiento, y tenía un buen natural; y como había andado con su padre en el ejercicio de las bulas, sabía algo de buen lenguaje” (Novelas ejemplares 1: 239). And while Cervantes’s narrator never actually depicts Rinconete’s apprenticeship within the confines of the story itself, preferring instead to discuss this early education in terms of its oratorical effect on the young boy’s mind, we might wonder, having read Lazarillo de Tormes (as Cervantes himself undoubtedly did), what—besides pure rhetoric—Rinconete learned at his father’s side. Consider, for example, Lazarillo’s fifth master (also a pardoner) from whom Lazarillo learns so much about acting. After spending three unsuccessful days attempting to legitimately sell his indulgences, the pardoner finally resorts to staging an elaborate and deceptive performance designed to persuade the public to invest its money in his uninspiring product. (In many

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater ways, in fact, the fifth tratado—in which Lazarillo uncharacteristically plays no part beyond that of mere observer and then later reporter—can be read alternatively either as a study of the power of performance to sell merchandise or as a cautionary tale about the need for truth in advertising.) The performance itself—which is structured much like a three-act comedia, and includes both a prologue and an epilogue—depends on a complex interplay between two types of theatrical dialogue. Like any staged comedia, this little “play” requires a traditional dialogue between several characters; in this case, the pardoner and the constable who play “themselves” in an elaborately constructed mimesis. At the same time, like any form of street theater, this performance also requires a jongleuresque dialogue between the performers and the spectators, the latter of whom participate only unwittingly in the fiction established by the performance. The “prologue” for this deliberately deceptive playlet occurs the night before the main event itself, when the pardoner and the constable stage a conspicuous “set-up” at a local inn. After eating and gambling a bit, the two men initiate a noticeable argument that quickly escalates from accusations of “thief” and “forger” to the point at which both men reach for their weapons and have to be restrained by several “witnesses,” among them guests, local residents, and Lazarillo himself. “Act 1” occurs the following morning when the constable, before a packed (but even less enthusiastic) crowd in the church, returns to accuse the pardoner in more detail, saying, “Yo vine aquí con este echacuervo que os predica, el cual me engañó y dijo que le favoresciece en este negocio y que partiríamos la ganancia. Y agora, visto el daño que haría a mi consciencia y a vuestras haciendas, arrepentido de lo hecho, os declaro claramente que las bulas que predica son falsas y que no le creáis ni las toméis” (117–18). “Act 2” begins when the pardoner responds to this shocking accusation with a prayer of supplication in which he specifically asks God not to punish the constable for his false words—piously invoking the discourse of Christ on the cross: “que no sabe lo que hace ni dice” (119)—yet requesting nonetheless some kind of “miracle” that will demonstrate his own truthfulness. Almost immediately the constable is struck by such a fitful seizure—kicking,

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Chapter Three screaming, and foaming at the mouth—that some fifteen men are required to subdue him. Meanwhile, the pardoner apparently enters into some kind of ecstatic, mystical state and remains oblivious to the constable’s contortions. “Act 3” of this performance begins when several parishioners apparently snap the pardoner out of his trance and beg him to do something for the spastic constable. Anticipating the later hypocrisy of both Shakespeare’s Richard III and Molière’s Tartuffe (and William Worthen notes the etymological connection between acting and deception in the Greek word for actor, “hypocrite” [Idea 3]), Lazarillo’s pardoner demurs by saying “vosotros nunca habíades de rogar por un hombre en quien Dios tan señaladamente se ha señalado; mas pues Él nos manda que no volvamos mal por mal y perdonemos las injurias, con confianza podremos suplicarle que cumpla lo que nos manda, y Su Majestad perdone a éste que le ofendió poniendo en su sancta fe obstáculo” (121). He then directs the entire congregation to kneel in prayer, applies a generous amount of crucifix and holy water to the constable, before finally anointing the man’s head with an indulgence that effectuates a miraculous “cure.” The “epilogue” to this play, of course, occurs promptly and for several days thereafter: there is an immediate clamor to purchase indulgences, so much so that not a man, woman, or child living in the village can be found without one. This, of course, is the “pay-off” for the whole performance. And although none of the actors explicitly draws anyone’s attention to this economic component, preferring instead to leave the spectators completely oblivious to the fact that what they have just witnessed is a total fabrication, the performance’s finale conforms very much to the performative economics of the jongleuresque theater: “El romanz / es leido, datnos del vino” (Poema de Mio Cid, vv. 3733–34). Ironically, there are two distinct types of performance embedded within this deceptive staging, and their intersection marks a notable fusion. The first type—what we would normally call theatrical performance—is characterized by mimetic role-playing. The “constable” and the “pardoner,” although actually existing as a constable and a pardoner in other contexts (which is to say, in “real life”), are not simply playing themselves, but instead are creating fictitious representations of

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater themselves, and thus express emotions and desires not (necessarily) belonging to the “self” behind the character. The second type of performance embedded within the pardoner’s “burla” is related to the field of linguistics, and consists of the performative function of “speech-acts,” of which there are (at least) three notable examples during the course of this “comedia in miniature,” one for each “jornada.” The first such speech-act is uttered by the “constable,” who, in denouncing the “false” indulgences of the “pardoner,” inscribes himself in the juridical rhetoric of legal testimony when he says, “que yo, directe ni indirecte, no soy parte en ellas, y que desde agora dejo la vara y doy con ella en el suelo. Y si en algún tiempo éste fuere castigado por la falsedad, que vosotros me seáis testigos cómo yo no soy con él ni le doy a ello ayuda, antes os desengaño y declaro su maldad” (118; original emphasis).4 The second speech act occurs when the “pardoner” prays for a divine manifestation: “Te suplico yo, Señor, no lo disimules; mas luego muestra aquí milagro, y sea desta manera: que, si es verdad lo que aquél dice y que yo traigo maldad y falsedad, este púlpito se hunda conmigo y meta siete estados debajo de tierra, do él ni yo jamás parezcamos; y si es verdad lo que yo digo y aquél, persuadido del demonio, por quitar y privar a los que están presentes de tan gran bien, dice maldad, también sea castigado y de todos conoscida su malicia” (119). The third such speech act is actually twofold. The first part is uttered by the entire congregation—led by the “pardoner” in a gesture of genuflection reminiscent of one of El Greco’s saints—when they sing a litany and beg God to spare the “constable’s” life (121). The second part supposedly emanates from the Pope himself when the “pardoner” places the indulgence—a written utterance of official papal absolution—on the “constable’s” head in an act of “forgiveness” (122). I deliberately placed the names of the constable and the pardoner in quotation marks above in order to draw attention to the fact that it is the theatrical characters who utter these speech acts, not the performers representing these two roles. For, in each case, the speech act in question not only goes deliberately against the real-life truth of the situation, but, in fact, performs a linguistic function against itself. When the “constable” declares that the “pardoner” is a fraud, he ironically tells his

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Chapter Three audience the truth; yet, when he legally declares that he will have nothing further to do with this fraud, not only is his statement a lie (as we quickly realize when he suddenly feigns a demonic fit), but the “testimony” he gives here is itself part of the ongoing fraud. The false “pardoner” who asks God to provide the congregation with a “sign” of his own “truthfulness” cannot possibly be praying in earnest, lest God grant his supplication and bury both him and his pulpit—according to his own stated oath—tens of feet underground; hence, because this prayer is not bona fide (that is, not offered in “good faith”), the prayer itself becomes part and parcel of the “falsehood” it seeks to “disprove.” Finally, when the “pardoner” leads the congregation in begging God to spare the life of the “constable” (who, as far as we can tell, is in no actual danger of death) and then “forgives” this “sinner” by administering the indulgence, not only does the real pardoner not desire the real constable’s genuine repentance (which would, needless to say, destroy the entire performance currently underway), but neither he nor the Pope for whom he claims to “speak” can actually “forgive” the “constable” for an offence he has not committed—that being the bearing of false witness—since the real constable, as we have already noted, actually told the truth when he denounced the “pardoner” as a fraud. This fusion of these speech-acts with the theater that contains them is extremely important because it demonstrates that even seemingly “real life” performances can often mask a deeper theatrical reality, one founded on the actor/spectator dialogue we have been tracing throughout this book. The pardoner’s elaborate deception in Lazarillo is no less theatrical simply because his spectators are oblivious to the theater in which they have become unknowing actors. For, despite the fact that the members of the congregation believe themselves to be equal participants in a collective struggle for the constable’s soul (an endeavor that culminates in a collective ritual purification), the entire performance—ritual and all—is ultimately nothing but theater. In the end, what this chapter of Lazarillo de Tormes demonstrates is that the only difference between the “swindler” and the “actor,” between the “mountebank” and the “jongleur,” and between the “pícaro” and the “comediante,” is that for the second member of each pair, the

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater spectator is explicitly aware of the performance as performance; whereas in the case of the “swindler,” the “mountebank,” and the “pícaro,” the viewer’s attention is deliberately drawn away from the “actorly gaze” by a performer whose ulterior motives remain safely guarded behind the imaginary proscenium.

Acting the Rogue Nowhere is the performative confluence of actor and rogue better demonstrated than in the works of Lope de Rueda, Richard Tarlton, and Flaminio Scala, all of whom represent the kind of radical theatricality depicted within the pages of the picaresque novel. The lives of these three early modern performers span what is arguably the most fecund period of Western theater history. Theirs is the era that oversaw the design and construction of some of the most important theater structures built since the days of ancient Greece and Rome: the Theatre and the Rose in London; the Corral de la Cruz and the Corral del Príncipe in Madrid; and the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza and the Teatro Farnese in Parma. Theirs is the era that saw the rise of the great literary dramatists whose work would become the core of the Western literary canon. Indeed, if any one cohort of entertainers can be said to mark the transition from medieval performance to that of the early modern period, it is the generation that included Rueda, Tarlton, and Scala. Together, these roguish actors, along with countless others like them, represent the very essence of jongleuresque performance on the early modern stage. Given their low social status and itinerant occupation, exact details regarding the biographies of these three performers are frequently hard to come by. Still, their lives are not entirely shrouded in mystery. Rueda was born in Seville shortly before 1510 and died in Córdoba in 1565. Turning away from his family’s artisan roots (his father was a goldsmith), he achieved unparalleled success, becoming what many have called the “founder” of Spain’s professional theater. Over the course of his long career, particularly between 1542 and 1564, Rueda performed in cities from one end of Spain to the other, becoming perhaps the most celebrated autor de comedias of his

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Chapter Three generation.5 Tarlton—whose date of birth remains unknown, but who died in 1588—lived a life that significantly overlapped that of Rueda. First entering the historical record in 1570 as the author of a published ballad, Tarlton is said to have been Queen Elizabeth’s favorite court jester. By 1583 he had become a member of the Queen’s Players, and many scholars consider him to be the performer for whom Shakespeare created such roles as Touchstone, Nick Bottom, and (posthumously) Hamlet’s deceased clown Yorick.6 Scala, for his part, probably lived between 1547 and 1624. Like Rueda, he was the leader of his own theatrical company (in his case, the famous commedia dell’arte troupe Il gelosi); unlike Rueda, however, Scala’s travels took him well beyond the borders of his native land. Scala and Il gelosi were ubiquitous fixtures all across Europe from Italy to France to England. The interlacing web that connects the work of these jongleuresque performers is complex, and there are various ways of organizing any comparison between them. From a strictly literary perspective, the written material left behind by these performers follows an increasingly literary trajectory, one that leads from Tarlton to Scala to Rueda. Tarlton’s Jests, for instance, which was first published in the years following his death in 1588, has come down to us as nothing more than prose anecdotes that describe, many years after the fact, Tarlton’s past performances. In this, the entire collection of vignettes largely exists as a kind of “third-person” reportage (much like the picaresque novel itself) and was undoubtedly written by someone other than Tarlton. As a memorial anthology of sorts, Tarlton’s Jests could hardly be mistaken for traditional literary drama in any sense of the word. Moving up the literary scale, Scala’s collection of theatrical scenarios—which were published in 1611 under the title Il teatro delle favole rappresentative—do approximate our modern notions of literary drama, despite the fact that they lack what Tim Fitzpatrick calls “the completeness of the fully-scripted playtext” (177). For, despite the fact that Scala’s entire book itself, like Tarlton’s Jests, functions as little more than an archival record of his past performances, these scenarios consist of fictitious representations built around a clear plot and involve several interactive characters. They are about as close to literary drama as one can

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater get without actually writing plays; which brings us, finally, to Rueda. Rueda’s pasos—which were published posthumously by Timoneda between 1567 and 1570—achieve the kind of dramatic literary status denied to Tarlton’s jests and Scala’s scenarios precisely because Rueda’s works bear all the hallmarks of genuine drama. They exist as fully-scripted, dialogue-based plays suitable for inclusion within the traditional canon of Spanish literature alongside the works of Lope de Vega, Jacinto Benavente, and Ariel Dorfman. From a theatrical perspective, however, the work of these three performers charts a decidedly different hierarchical path, one that leads from Tarlton to Rueda to Scala. Of the three, Tarlton’s jests represent the most ad hoc, most jongleuresque performative mode, occurring more or less spontaneously in the streets, taverns, and courts of London. Tarlton’s jests require little, if any, scripting and virtually no scenery. Tarlton’s audience, for its part, consists of anyone who just happens to be in the immediate vicinity of his performance, while his “coactors” may not even be aware that they are part of the spectacle. In this regard, Tarlton’s jests are the epitome of Huston’s simple stage. Moving up the theatrical scale in complexity, Rueda’s pasos essentially transfer the performative poetics of Tarlton’s jests to a more complex theatrical venue; specifically, to the kind of platform stage characteristic of early modern itinerant troupes. In other words, Rueda’s pasos, while still conforming to the discourse of the picaresque burla, take place within a space clearly delimited from that of his audience; which is to say, Tarlton’s unwitting spectators have become fictitious characters inside the textual parameters of Rueda’s pasos themselves. Rueda’s is really the picaresque theater rarefied; which brings us, finally, to Scala. Scala’s scenarios exist (potentially) as three-act plays that incorporate their jongleuresque and picaresque vitality within the structure of a full-length plot and stage this fullness within the confines of an architecturally sophisticated theatrical setting. Of course, while I have chosen to designate this street theater as jongleuresque, Bakhtinian theorists might very well prefer to describe it as carnivalesque, especially since this street theater seems to conform to Bakhtin’s notion—developed in Rabelais and His World—that, because carnival “developed

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Chapter Three outside the official sphere of high ideology and literature” (71), its most significant contribution to society is to “[oppose] the official and serious tone of medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture” (4).7 This notion of street performance as carnivalesque (and thus as inherently political) certainly underpins Bristol’s important book Carnival and Theater; it is at play in Schechner’s work on Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Spring Break in Daytona Beach (“Invasions” 99–103); it is the creative force behind Augusto Boal’s “Theater of the Oppressed” in Rio de Janeiro; and it is what grounds the awarding of the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature to Dario Fo, as the Nobel Web site makes clear: “He if anyone merits the epithet of jester in the true meaning of that word. With a blend of laughter and gravity he opens our eyes to abuses and injustices in society and also the wider historical perspective in which they can be placed.” Indeed, what Bakhtin says of his carnivalesque clowns and fools is particularly germane not only to the twentiethcentury work of Boal and Fo, but also to that of Tarlton more than four hundred years ago: They were the constant, accredited representatives of the carnival spirit in everyday life out of carnival season. Like Triboulet at the time of Francis I, they were not actors playing their parts on a stage, as did the comic actors of a later period, impersonating Harlequin, Hanswurst, etc., but remained fools and clowns always and wherever they made their appearance. As such they represented a certain form of life, which was real and ideal at the same time. They stood on the borderline between life and art, in a peculiar midzone as it were; they were neither eccentrics nor dolts, neither were they comic actors. (8)

The problem with Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque, however, despite its ubiquitous application in the work of numerous performers and theorists, is that Bakhtin’s ideas on collective performance remain fundamentally anti-theatrical (as his privileging of “life” over “art” in the preceding quote makes clear) precisely because his notion of the carnivalesque depends on his premise that “carnival does not know footlights” (7). “Footlights,” says Bakhtin, “would destroy a carnival, as the absence of footlights would destroy a theatrical perfor-

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater mance. Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. While carnival lasts, there is no other life outside it” (7). Because of their obvious sensuous character and their strong element of play, carnival images closely resemble certain artistic forms, namely the spectacle. In turn, medieval spectacles often tended toward carnival folk culture, the culture of the marketplace, and to a certain extent became one of its components. But the basic carnival nucleus of this culture is by no means a purely artistic form nor a spectacle and does not, generally speaking, belong to the sphere of art. It belongs to the borderline between art and life. In reality, it is life itself [. . .] (7)

So central is this divisive metaphor of “footlights” to Bakhtin’s overarching theory that he repeats it several times over the course of Rabelais and His World, even going so far as to apply it to one of Adam de la Halle’s thirteenth-century plays, Jeu de la Feuillée: “The ‘Play in the Bower’ has scarcely any footlights, one might say, to separate it from real life” (257). Ironically, of course, as Bakhtin himself admits, most of the activities he extols as prime examples of his carnivalesque— i.e., pageants, banquets, jests, acrobatic feats, etc.—turn out to be precisely theatrical, a fact that does not diminish in the slightest their collective importance, but which does call into question his insistence that carnival “does not acknowledge any distinction between actors and spectators” (7). For, what Bakhtin’s notion of carnival assumes, in its celebration of the masses over the individual, is that the markers “actor” and “spectator” are not just negatively hierarchical (that is, performers are “active creators,” while spectators are merely “passive receivers”), but that both categories are permanent and static as well; that an individual can neither be both actor and spectator at one and the same time, nor both actor and spectator at different times and for different purposes. To suggest otherwise, of course, would greatly threaten the notion of the collective—and “unofficial”—freedom around which much of Bakhtin’s narrative unfolds, because to accept a distinction between actor and spectator is to tacitly imply that carnival

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Chapter Three merely exchanges one form of dogmatism for another. The ecclesiastical domination of the priest, who—from the pulpit high above them—forces his congregants to submit to his interpretive authority, becomes the performative domination of the player, who—from a slightly less elevated position on the stage—continues to control the audience nonetheless by commanding its attention and assent. Bakhtin’s metaphorical footlights symbolize the authoritarian obstacles that alienate the people from their cultural products. The intense heat supposedly produced by these footlights keeps them from stepping over this impediment in order to actively participate in their own festivities. Yet, even on the most complex modern stage—a stage that most certainly discourages its audience’s transgressive impulses through the imposition of all kinds of physical barriers, including a proscenium and an orchestra pit—live theater is always the mutual product of both artists and audiences who, in Schechner’s words, “co-create together in exactly the same time/space” (Performance Theory 203; original emphasis). Having said that, this does not mean that there is no division of labor within the context of performative co-creation. As I argued at the end of Chapter 2, performance is essentially a linguistic mode, and theater is fundamentally a dialogue between actor and spectator, one inscribed within—and created by—the event itself. But like most other interactive exchanges, this dialogue can only occur if each participant agrees to play a distinct role. In other words, the performative markers “actor” and “spectator”—especially within the protean context of carnival—closely resemble the linguistic pronouns “I” and “You,” which, needless to say, function as floating signifiers that migrate from person to person to person over the course of a conversation. And within this performative dialogue, the spectator, though frequently barred from entering the physical space of the performance, has as much power over the trajectory of the conversation as does the actor. As Huston has argued, the stage is not a physical entity but a reciprocal “behavior” inspired by the circle the street performer opens in a crowd (1). Of course, the best place for us to engage the communitarian poetics of this dialogic give and take—what Bristol calls a “festive agon” (202)—is not perhaps in the pages of academic jour-

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater nals and monographs, but on the simple stage of various green shows associated with the many Shakespeare festivals that occur throughout the United States each summer. As active participants, rather than as (ostensibly) objective observers, we can appreciate the nuances of this performance and see that its poetics, while certainly different, are in no way inferior to the poetics governing the modern complex stage. Prior to the beginning of the main event—which is to say, the performance of the full-length play for which the audience has actually paid to attend—many Shakespeare festivals employ a separate cast of actors who stage a version of a medieval or Renaissance fair, complete with all the acrobatics, buffoonery, and music described in the work of scholars like Chambers, Davidson, and others. In contrast to the main play, however, where the actors and audience are clearly separated into constituent components by the complex stage’s infamous fourth wall, the green show creates an atmosphere where the spectators are as much participants as the actors, and where the division between them is ephemeral indeed. Green show activities usually begin a couple of hours before the main play with the actors (appropriately dressed in period costume) circulating among the crowd. Some carry trays of mulled cider and tea or lemon and raisin tarts, selling them as they move among the spectators; others juggle balls and perform magic tricks; still others carry a mandolin, flute, or recorder and sing little comical songs (like “The Old Fumbler”). At some predetermined time, the actors might begin singing a madrigal round in order to call all the spectators to come to a makeshift stage that has been erected on the lawn not far from the main theater. It is here that they continue to entertain the spectators, and where (not coincidentally) the spectators will, to a certain extent, entertain themselves until it is time for the main play to begin. The “show” itself generally consists of an open-ended series of small pieces—some musical, some acrobatic, some farcical—in which audience members are invited (and at times required) to participate. Frequently the actors begin a piece by teaching the spectators what their role in the game will be (i.e., singing the chorus of a song in between the narrative episodes, hissing whenever the villain appears, perhaps even coming up onto the stage in order to act as extras in the playlet, or

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Chapter Three occasionally even functioning as makeshift human props).8 As these shows progress, the improvisational skills of both the actors and the spectators become extremely important. The green show at the 1989 Utah Shakespearean Festival, for example, featured a short play in which a jealous husband endeavored to find out if his wife was making a cuckold of him. During various moments of the performance, the actress playing the wife would leave the stage and circulate among the spectators, flirting with various men. The husband would then come down and accuse these hapless spectators, challenging many of them to a duel. Another piece required the audience to yell “Hazzah!” at various points during the performance. On the night I happened to be there, the crowd had such a good time yelling this interjection that they refused to stop yelling it once its particular piece was over, and instead continued to yell it throughout the rest of the evening. The actors thus had to adapt to this constant threat of interruption, and, in fact, began to use the audience’s enthusiastic participation to enliven the pieces that followed by always including the possibility of yelling “Hazzah!” People who had come to the festival in small individual groups (couples, families, sets of friends, etc.)—and who had been milling around the space outside of the main stage, sophisticatedly indifferent to each other—became a community, a community that continued to exist even after the main play was over. In fact, many continued to yell “Hazzah!” as they walked back to their cars at the end of the night. Here again, just as Cohen reminds us, the audience did not come to the theater, it came to them and made them a part of it (35). Still, the fact that a theatrical event incorporates its audiences into the spectacle does not make it any less theatrical; which brings us back to the jongleuresque performance of Tarlton, Scala, and Rueda. The following is a description of one of Tarlton’s jests: As Tarlton and others passed along Fleet Street, he espied a spruce yong gallant, black of complexion, with long haire hanging downe over his eares, and his beard of the Italian cut, in white sattin very quaintly cut, and his body so stiffely starcht, that he could not bend himselfe any way for no gold. Tartlon seeing such a wonder comming, trips before him,

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater and, meeting this gallant, tooke the wall of him, knowing that one so proud at least looked for the perogative. The gallant, scorning that a player should take the wall, or so much indignifie him, turnes himselfe, and presently drew his rapier. Tarlton drew likewise. The gentleman fell to it roundly; but Tarlton, in his owne defence, compassing and traversing his ground, gaped with a wide mouth, whereat the people laughed. The gentleman, pausing, enquired why he gaped so. O, sir, saies he, in hope to swallow you; for, by my troth, you seeme to me like a prune in a messe of white broth. At this the people parted them. The gentleman noting his mad humour, went his way well contented; for he knew not how to amend it. (13)

Many aspects of this anecdotal performance could easily be called carnivalesque. The Fleet Street setting obviously incorporates the hustle and bustle of the marketplace, while the mockery to which the dandy is subjected certainly undermines the seriousness of official culture. Moreover, Tarlton’s “mad humour” is obviously subject to its own laws (which is to say, the representative of high culture here certainly does not know what to make of him), and the laughter we hear is perhaps “not an individual reaction to some isolated ‘comic’ event,” as Bakhtin argues, but rather “the laughter of all the people,” the “festive laughter” that subversively interrogates official culture (11). At the same time, however, this improvisational jest conforms to many of the theatrical specifications outlined by Huston. Tarlton’s deliberate pratfall creates a fissure in the chaos of the collective movement of the street. Tarlton thus opens up a performance space by forcefully taking possession of the sidewalk. People startled by his unexpected interaction with gravity stop moving and form an impromptu circle, if only to make sure he is not in need of assistance. But at that very moment, “footlights” spring into existence. The performative dialogue has been engaged: I will watch, they say, because I am interested to see what will happen next. You’ll find out what happens next, says Tarlton, as long as you keep standing there. Tarlton, the former “pedestrian,” has become an “actor” precisely by feigning a breakdown in his pedestrian functionality: he stumbles on purpose (although, as we have said, mimesis is

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Chapter Three in no way essential to street theater). Meanwhile, his former ambulant colleagues have now become “spectators” through their direct functional relationship to him as an actor. They are held in suspended animation because they cannot enter the circle he has opened up and still observe his performance. In fact, they intuitively know that were they to transgress the boundaries established by the imaginary footlights he has unexpectedly illuminated, the performance itself would collapse. Moreover, as soon as they realize what is actually happening on Tarlton’s simple stage (that he is deliberately mocking the gallant), they not only function as spectators, but also become accomplices—like the constable in Lazarillo de Tormes—to Tarlton’s theatrical act precisely because of their privileged position at the periphery. There is, it seems, an “inside” and an “outside” to this carnivalesque event (and not just because the dandy is physically contained within the limelight, while remaining cognitively in the dark from start to finish). In fact, the space inside the circle is precisely the “sphere of art” that Bakhtin wished to disclaim. It is the province of simulated affronts and of poetic rejoinders. Tarlton’s rhyming punch line is designed to defamiliarize the language of the everyday. Thus, this jest—however spontaneous—is not life itself. It is strictly theater, because, in the end, it is a self-contained, self-constructed “artifice” that exists precisely because it is being watched. This incorporation of the audience into the spectacle—that is, the conversion of spectators into performative accomplices—is an integral part of Scala’s theater as well. It is perhaps difficult to fully appreciate this component in his Il teatro delle favole rappresentative, however, since the scenarios outlined in the published text give us very little indication of exactly what the various performances might have looked like. In fact, unlike Tarlton’s Jests, which clearly recounts not only the things Tarlton did and said, but also describes how his audience reacted to his performances, Scala’s improvisational scenarios merely prescribe the entrances and exits of the various stock characters and then sketch the general interaction that should take place between them, leaving the performative details to the commedia dell’arte actors themselves. Indeed, as Fitzpatrick notes, it is this problematic relationship between text and performance that has frequently caused literature

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater scholars, “repelled by the synthetic brevity of the scenario format” (177), to dismiss these scenarios as somehow less worthy of critical attention (in much the same way Menéndez Pidal dismisses the work of the nonliterary jongleurs [Poesía juglaresca 25]). Nevertheless, it is precisely in the lazzi—the comic bits of improvised stage business literally inserted between the scenario lines—that this crucial dialogue between actor and spectator often comes to fruition in the commedia dell’arte. Like the ballads and other songs connected to the medieval jongleuresque tradition, most of these comic bits were passed from actor to actor and company to company via an oral tradition associated with the institution (both formal and informal) of theatrical apprenticeship. As Mel Gordon notes in his study of more than two hundred different lazzi: “Most of what is known of lazzi is from descriptions, performers’ autobiographical statements, and notations of lazzi sequences—sometimes no more than titles—in Commedia plot outlines or scenarios that were posted on the wings of the stage or appeared in the Commedia texts that were intended for publication” (6). Many of these bits of stage business clearly relate to Bakhtin’s notion of carnivalesque scatology: they stage burlesque moments of defecation (often involving enemas of one sort or another), urination, vomiting, and copulation. (Indeed, the famous scene in chapter 1 of Lazarillo de Tormes—in which the pícaro inadvertently vomits in the face of the blind man, the latter of whom had stuck his grotesque nose into Lazarillo’s mouth in order to discover whether the boy had eaten one of his coveted sausages—can be seen as little more than an ingenious novelization a commedia lazzo.) Many of these bits involve the kinds of acrobatic pratfalls so typical of Tarlton’s own street performances: characters such as Harlequin or Pulcinella typically fall from ladders, trip over furniture and other stage scenery; or, as Gordon says in a particularly charming turn of phrase, these characters are simply “gravitationally abandoned” (9). Still other lazzi involve a jongleuresque interaction between the actors and their immediate spectators, in which the characters either speak directly to the audience about some issue relating to the play’s turn of events, or are sheepishly “caught” doing something embarrassing or unseemly when they suddenly “notice” that the audience is watching them.

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Chapter Three But even when this actor/spectator interaction is not metatheatrically staged as such, a great number of lazzi depend precisely on the audience’s function as an accomplice to the trick. Two lazzi are particularly demonstrative of this dependence. The first comes from a commedia performance staged in Paris in 1670; the second comes directly from Scala’s Il teatro delle favole rappresentative. Both descriptions below are taken from Gordon’s catalogue: Arlecchino is brought in as a statue or an automaton. He plays tricks on the other characters when their backs are turned, always returning to the statue position when they face him. (11) *** Using candles and lanterns, the characters signified that the scene was taking place at night or in darkness. As total darkness overtook the scene, the characters grope around the street, climb ladders into various houses, falling, bumping into objects and people, discovering what they think are bloody corpses, putting their hands inadvertently down other characters’ pants and blouses, mistaking identities and conversations. (47)

Like Tarlton’s jest (indeed, like the pardoner’s performance in Lazarillo de Tormes), both these lazzi depend on the dual existence of an “inside” and an “outside” with regard to the performance event. Both depend on the audience’s privileged position at the periphery of Huston’s simple stage. For, Harlequin’s ability to freeze and unfreeze in order to mock the other characters when their backs are turned, has no meaning within the strict confines of the stage space itself, just as Tarlton’s mockery of the dandy could achieve no real significance on a pointedly uncrowded street corner. Mockery itself requires a kind of hermeneutic triangulation in which the meaningful (and, indeed, ironic) interaction does not occur between the mocker and the object of his derision, but between the mocker and his accomplices for whom the burlesque gestures are ultimately intended. Likewise, the lazzo involving feigned darkness has no meaning outside of a well-lit performance space. For, without the presence of a privileged third party who can clearly see what is happening on the “darkened” stage—

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater which is to say, should the footlights of the theater really go out, thus leaving both actors and spectators in pitch blackness—there can be no performance. Scala’s entire play would fall apart in the ensuing chaos. And this brings us to Rueda. As I have said, I have no intention of arguing some kind of causality between the work of these three performers. I would argue, however, that the performative intertextualities of the popular tradition—that is, the scattering and borrowing of gestures and plot lines and punch lines across vast geographies and cultures—is at least as pervasive, if not more so, as the literary intertextualities we are more accustomed to observing. It should not surprise us, then, that many of the same kinds of jests ascribed to Tarlton’s famous wit appear among the lazzi of Scala’s commedia dell’arte scenarios and within the pages of Rueda’s pasos. Yet, Rueda’s performative fragments are no more or less artificial than Tarlton’s jests. What does distinguish them, however, is precisely that they—like Scala’s lazzi—acknowledge their own artifice by deliberately carving out their performance space on a platform already recognized as an a priori stage. They essentially transfer the poetics of street theater to a more complex performative venue. But this only serves to underline the fact that Tarlton’s jests were always already theatrical. Rueda’s paso “El convidado” is particularly illustrative (Pasos 147–55). This short skit begins with the entrance of a penniless Traveler who announces to the audience his intention of parlaying a letter of recommendation he carries into some kind of material boon by buttering up a successful lawyer who happens to live in the town. The Lawyer, after having invited the Traveler to dinner, later complains to a third character, the Student, that he simply doesn’t have the resources to feed the now invited guest. To this dilemma, the Student suggests a seemingly foolproof solution: when the Traveler arrives for dinner, the Lawyer can simply hide under a nearby blanket, and the Student will tell the unwanted guest that the Lawyer had to leave suddenly on unexpected business with the Archbishop. When the Traveler returns, however, the Student flatly tells him that the Lawyer—due to lack of funds, and out of sheer embarrassment—has hidden himself under a blanket in order to get out of the dinner invitation. When the Traveler

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Chapter Three refuses to believe him, the Student tells him to take a look for himself and uncovers the foolish Lawyer, who is now furious. The paso ends with the Student very much enjoying his trick, while the Traveler and the Lawyer shout insults both at each other and at the Student. Like Tarlton’s jest, this paso—which is thematically and structurally related to several commedia lazzi—establishes a complex and shifting dialogue with us, its audience.9 At first, the Traveler, with his aside, seeks to make us silent partners to his plan for upward mobility. In effect, he becomes Tarlton toying with the gallant, while we stand by and watch the sequence of events, if for no other reason than for the sheer pleasure of appreciating the aesthetics of a well-devised plan. Our privileged position as both spectators of and accomplices to this performance places us both inside and outside the theatrical space his letter of recommendation will open up on the stage itself; which is to say, the Traveler’s scheme, like that of Lazarillo’s pardoner and constable, functions as a kind of play within the play. Over the course of the paso, however, our performative alliances shift, as do the overlapping performance spaces themselves. When the Student and the Lawyer devise their own plan to renege on the dinner invitation, it is the Traveler who becomes the “mark” within a new performance space opened up by the Student’s clever artifice. Still, we continue to watch, although not because the two have specifically invited us into their confidence (the play no longer contains asides at this point for reasons that will soon become apparent). Rather, we continue to watch for the same reason we find it difficult to look away from a shell game conducted on a subway platform. We know the game is rigged (that is, we know it is not real life; the player does not really stand a “chance” of winning), we feel sorry for the poor sap who is about to lose twenty dollars (we also happen to feel greatly superior at having the good sense not to play the game in the first place), but we cannot help but appreciate the virtuosity of its execution as the prestidigitator reveals that the designated shell does not—and never will— contain the ball. Thus, when the Student of “El convidado” reveals at the end that he has been playing one side against the other, the Traveler against the Lawyer, our appreciation of his performance is doubled. At the same time, however, we suddenly realize that we too have been played, that Rueda has been 114

Picaresque Actors and Their Theater setting us up all along within a performance space that has surreptitiously encircled us when we weren’t looking. As with the Lawyer himself, who never expects his ruse to be so maliciously “uncovered,” the Student’s surprise ending is meant to astonish us as much as it is the other two characters. In the end, the real “spectators” of this paso turn out to be the actors themselves who sneak a sideways glance in our direction as they leave the stage, knowing that, for a time, they had us fooled as well, even if we figured out the jest prior to its culmination. And this brings us back to Bakhtin’s distinction between carnival and theater. Bakhtin qualifies his statement that carnival is “life itself” (as opposed to an “artistic form”), by saying that this is true only because carnival life is “shaped according to a certain pattern of play,” an essential caveat I elided in my initial citation (7). I would suggest, however, that this “pattern of play” is precisely the performative poetics of theater Bakhtin has attempted to minimize throughout Rabelais and His World. Like a green show, carnival is actually full of footlights—however dim—that pop in and out of existence and move from place to place as the performative markers “actor” and “spectator” float from the Boy Bishop to the juggler to the heckler at the back of the crowd (a figure who ceases to be a “spectator” the moment he opens his mouth and the collective gaze turns in his direction). The “nucleus” of carnival—to borrow Bakhtin’s atomic metaphor—is, in fact, “spectacular,” because just as molecules are made up of individual atoms (which, in turn, are composed of even smaller and smaller particles), Bakhtin’s collective carnivalesque is very much the product of the amalgam of numerous individual jongleuresque moments co-created between and among a myriad of shifting actors and spectators. There is a radical theatricality at the heart of carnival that plays itself out in a fluid exchange of exhibitionism and voyeurism. And this theatricality cannot be eradicated simply by turning off the lights. Nor can it be eradicated by transferring it to a different medium.

Maese Pedro’s Puppet Show Cervantes, ever an astute observer of the theater of his day, draws our attention to the jongleuresque, picaresque, and carnivalesque foundations of the early Spanish stage in the 115

Chapter Three well-known episode of Maese Pedro’s puppet show. We will recall that Maese Pedro (aka Ginés de Pasamonte)—like most of the actors listed in Shergold and Varey’s Genealogía—is a relative latecomer to the world of professional entertainment. When we first encounter him, he is, in fact, a galley-slave who seems to have led the kind of life we would today characterize as that of a “career criminal,” having already spent four years in the galleys and currently on his way to spending ten more. His criminal experience notwithstanding, Ginés is far from unaware of the contemporary artistic movements that surround him, and he boasts of having written his own autobiographical picaresque narrative, La vida de Ginés de Pasamonte, a work that, he says, rivals the best that Lazarillo de Tormes has to offer. When Don Quixote inquires as to whether this book is finished, Ginés shrewdly replies, “¿Cómo puede estar acabado [. . .] si aún no está acabada mi vida?” (1: 22; 272). In fact, the forthcoming “Maese Pedro” episodes of his life must certainly be considered some of the best elements of Ginés’s quintessentially cameleon-like career as a pícaro. Nevertheless, as far as we can tell, he has had no prior professional connection to the theater before his decision to adopt a stage name and hit the road with his itinerant puppet show. Yet, if we judge by the enthusiasm with which the innkeeper welcomes Maese Pedro into his establishment, Ginés’s apparent lack of formal training has not kept him from becoming a highly regarded performer (in the short space of about two months!), just as his assumed lack of formal education has not prevented him from writing his autobiography. Indeed, when Ginés declares that misfortune itself can be considered a sign of artistic potential (“porque siempre las desdichas persiguen al buen ingenio” [1: 22; 272]), he merely restates the obvious fact that pícaros of all periods owe at least some of their success to the necessity of having to live by their wits. But this puppet show episode demonstrates more than just the presence of a raw (if no less respectable) talent among the lower strata of society. As George Haley noted in a important narratological study a number of years ago, the Maese Pedro episode is part of a much larger segment of the novel, one that begins some three chapters before and that culminates with the puppet show itself (145–65). It is a segment in which Cervantes shrewdly locates the puppet theater along a continuum of popu116

Picaresque Actors and Their Theater lar performance, and in doing so, creates a kind of microcosm of the early Spanish stage. Like the jongleuresque performance effectuated by Lord’s singer of tales, the locus of Maese Pedro’s puppet show is precisely an inn; and like the multiform jongleuresque performance we saw in Flamenca, the culminating puppet show is but one part of a total performance event that includes such nonliterary elements as a trained animal act. In fact, the total theatrical event actually begins not only before Maese Pedro arrives on the scene, but well before Don Quixote and Sancho even arrive at the inn. And it begins with simple acts of storytelling that are not far removed in form and function from the tales told by Zumthor’s Inuit hunter who surrounds himself with his grandchildren as an audience. Toward the end of the twenty-fourth chapter of the second part, Don Quixote, Sancho, and the young scholar are suddenly confronted with not one, but two examples of simple theater. As they travel down the road, discussing the possibility of finding lodging at a nearby hermitage, they encounter the armscarrier hastily making his way toward an unnamed town. When they inquire as to the reason for his haste he replies that he simply doesn’t have time to discuss the matter, but that he will be spending the night at an inn located beyond the hermitage, and that if the travelers would like to know more they should follow him to the inn, where he will be glad to recount what he calls “maravillas” (2: 24; 225). Whether he has intended to or not, this arms-carrier has acted as his own barker by giving his potential audience a “teaser” of what lies in store for them if they come to his simple stage. And the advertising works so well that Don Quixote decides then and there against sojourning at the hermitage, and instead decides to seek out the “marvelous” show the errant performer has promised. Moreover, on the way to the inn, the simple theater Cervantes has introduced on a purely potential level is quickly realized in the form of a page who arrives singing seguidillas to himself as a way of lightening the burden of a tedious journey. Again, Don Quixote is so taken by this performance that he invites the page to accompany them to the inn where he too can contribute and participate in the marvelous theater that has been promised them. It is significant that the theater represented in these two short episodes, especially the latter, is precisely that of the pilgrim theater of the Canterbury Tales where, in the absence of 117

Chapter Three professional performers, people must create their own entertainment as they go. It is also significant that Cervantes establishes several dichotomies between high-cultural and low-cultural approaches to this indispensable pastime, the most important of which deals specifically with questions of space. The scholar, clearly the voice of high culture, has expressed his strong desire to spend the night at the hermitage in the company of a man who has a reputation for being a “buen cristiano, y muy discreto, y caritativo además” (2: 24; 225), even if—as he readily admits—the austerity of his circumstances cannot rival that of “aquellos [ermitaños] de los desiertos de Egipto, que se vestían de hojas de palma y comían raíces de la tierra” (2: 24; 225). Given such a setting, in which water is likely to be the only beverage available (a fact confirmed a short time later when the travelers stop by the hermitage for a drink on the way to the inn), we can only imagine the corresponding lackluster entertainment to which they would be treated, regardless of the profundity of the intellectual exchange that might very well transpire. Don Quixote, on the other hand, a character so steeped in the popular culture of chivalric romances and ballads that plain reality has literally disappeared from his view, insists on following the jongleuresque storyteller to a setting more likely to provide a complete evening’s entertainment, including proper food and beverage. Thus, upon their arrival at the inn—a space Cervantes is careful to underline as such by insisting that Don Quixote “la juzgó por verdadera venta, y no por castillo, como solía” (2: 24; 229)—they immediately seek out the arms-carrier in order to coax out his story. And it is here that they make their initial approach toward Huston’s simple stage. In essence, what they attempt to do is get the arms-carrier to fulfill his part of Huston’s performative contract. He has promised to recount “maravillas” if they would come to the inn; they now present themselves as active co-creators eager to engage in the immanent performative dialogue he has pledged to initiate. Unfortunately, however, simply agreeing to watch (as Huston put it) is not always enough. For, although Don Quixote and company have seemingly fulfilled their part of the bargain, the armscarrier still defers his promised performance, saying: “Más despacio, y no en pie, se ha de tomar el cuento de mis

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater maravillas” (2: 25; 230). The arms-carrier’s temporary refusal to engage his audience highlights the fact that it is not just the recounting of the narrative itself that matters; it is also the leisurely creation of an effective performance space within which that narrative can unfold, a creation he would prefer not to undertake while feeding his mule. Though the simple stage can spring into existence almost anywhere, its “timing”—as they say—is everything. And it is here, then, that the economics of the simple stage come into play. As anyone familiar with the activities of street performers knows, very few engage a crowd without at least inviting some kind of monetary remuneration for their work. Watching is one thing; compensation is something else altogether. Hence, in response to the arms-carrier’s performative reticence, Don Quixote humbly offers to help him with his mundane chores almost as a way of paying for the pending performance: “humildad que obligó al hombre a contarle con buena voluntad lo que le pedía” (2: 25; 230). By pre-enacting this required jongleuresque payment, Don Quixote seeks to recompense the arms-carrier’s goodwill through a kind of barter of labor. And it is really a remarkable offer on his part, since throughout the novel he exhibits a marked sense of his own rights and prerogatives as a knight-errant. The fact that he would agree to “lower” himself to the level of muleteer—that he would offer to perform manual labor, despite his social standing—demonstrates the clear importance of this economic exchange within the world of the jongleuresque stage. And it is only after this humble payment has taken place that the performer finally sits down and begins to weave his story of the “Braying Tale.” Because the storyteller of any performance such as this is usually a single actor, the theater encapsulated in the story (or song or poem), although divided into various components, necessarily must come together through the figure of the performative narrator. But unlike a literary narrator, who more often than not slips unnoticed from the reader’s view, disappearing into the text itself, a performative narrator is always already present. He or she is a corporeal entity whose voice— the vehicle of textual transmission—has a pitch and a timbre, and whose physical intrusion into the very real space of the

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Chapter Three listener cannot easily be ignored. The modern reader of the Decameron, for instance, in the dazzling proliferation of days and narratives, can easily forget which character is telling which story (although this in no way detracts from the reading). The various listeners within the book, however, know all too well whose turn it is to narrate, and in fact, they devote at least some attention to the manner in which it is told, since the storytelling activity is a contest of sorts. The audience for such performances, then, like all theatrical spectators, must therefore juggle two contrastive artistic spaces: the imaginative world of the narrative itself (a space inhabited by the characters, whose actions and speech are a very real product of the performer) and the physical world of the performance (the very same space inhabited by both the audience and the storyteller, the latter of whom physically creates the theoretical entity telling the story). The only figure present in both spaces, of course, is this narrator—nothing less than a performative construct of the actor—who must function as a bridge between the two overlapping worlds. The arms-carrier begins, then, as do most performers on the simple stage, by addressing his audience directly in order to establish the imaginative setting of his tale. In Huston’s words, he “unpacks illusory space with his act” (76): —Sabrán vuesas mercedes que en un lugar que está cuatro leguas y media desta venta sucedió que a un regidor dél, por industria y engaño de una muchacha criada suya, y esto es largo de contar, le faltó un asno, y aunque el tal regidor hizo las diligencias posibles por hallarle, no fue posible. Quince días serían pasados, según es pública voz y fama, que el asno faltaba, cuando, estando en la plaza el regidor perdidoso, otro regidor del mismo pueblo le dijo: [. . .] (2: 25; 230)

This brief “prologue,” which ends with the promise of a direct quotation—that is, with the imminent realization of performative characterization—is, in fact, little more than a preamble to a burgeoning exchange of character dialogue that will continue for a number of paragraphs (despite the various interruptions of the narrator). In this, the “Braying Tale” exhibits a structure not unlike the epics and romances performed count-

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater less times before in just such a tavern setting and in just such a manner, and whose character dialogue is frequently offset from the rest of the text by such formulaic snippets of jongleuresque dialogue as “bien oiréis lo que dirá” (a phrase that is directed, of course, toward the performer’s immediate audience). With regard to the “Braying Tale,” the storyteller’s performance, like that of countless jongleurs before him, remains punctuated by such simple statements as: “respondió el hallador” (2: 25; 230) and “dijo el otro” (2: 25; 231). For the reader of Don Quijote, this story within a story is clearly part of the narrative structure of what has become known as a novel; it is just one among many narratives that make up the larger text. For the fictional audience inscribed within the frame story, however, the “Braying Tale” can be taken as nothing less than a piece of simple theater whose characters come to life through the vocal characterization of the single actor/narrator. Of course, this simple theater is only the first of several texts to which the audience will be treated during the evening. As the arms-carrier finishes this tale, Maese Pedro—without missing a beat, as it were—arrives on the scene with his fortunetelling ape and puppet show. At this, the innkeeper, who is undoubtedly familiar with the poetics of jongleuresque performance involving a total spectacle composed of multiple performance texts, gleefully announces the arrival of the puppeteer. Clearly, he has spent many pleasurable evenings participating in just such entertainments and relishes the possibility that the arms-carrier’s lively and entertaining story will be followed by other stories and other shows. In fact, he is so excited by the prospect of a continuation of the burgeoning theatrical event currently underway that he makes the rather outrageous statement that, even if the inn were full, he would put the Duke of Alba out of his room in order to make a place for the newly arrived performers, a statement made all the more scandalous when we remember that Maese Pedro is, in reality, an escaped fugitive from the King’s galleys. The puppet show itself (and we will briefly skip over the fortune-telling ape for the moment), like the cantares de gesta from which it purportedly takes its material, features the voice of a single actor who will render all the necessary verbal aspects of the play. Despite the existence of a physical stage

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Chapter Three (complete with properly costumed characters and a proscenium of sorts), the boy actor must still create the imaginative space of the performance by giving his audience some crucial information on its origin and history. Unlike the opening of the “Braying Tale,” however, which moves almost immediately into the “argumento,” the puppet show’s introduction moves much more slowly toward the actual story, pausing as it does to pointedly tie itself to the street performances of the ballad tradition and to highlight its predominant balladistic theme. (The boy narrator even sings a couple of lines from a romance as a way of underlining the performative context of his show.) In fact, this prologue moves from “program notes” to “play” in mid-sentence when its speaker, at long last, draws our attention to the puppets themselves, saying “vean vuesas mercedes allí como está jugando a las tablas don Gaiferos” (2: 26; 240). When the boy actor finally does arrive at his story, he goes on at length recounting its plot and describes not only the action pantomimed by the puppets, but many of their psychological states as well; which is to say, his narration alone determines the flow of the story. This last fact seems to have bothered Haley somewhat: “the words themselves of the puppet play are not in the dramatic mode that even puppet plays require. The puppets do not have voices, let alone individual voices, supplied by the puppeteer” (152). In other words, what is ironic about this performance is that, while claiming to be taken “word for word” from the French chronicles and Spanish ballads, it is far less “dialogic” than most of these “precursor” texts (hence Haley’s complaint). In fact, throughout the puppet show there are only two instances of explicit character dialogue: once when Charlemagne declares: “Harto os he dicho: miradlo” (2: 26; 241); and then again when Melisendra (in a moment reminiscent of the romance “La esposa fiel”) says to Gaiferos himself, “Caballero, si a Francia ides, / por Gaiferos preguntad” (2: 26; 243). Thus, not only does the entire performance text itself virtually belong to the single actor, but the vast majority of its discourse emanates from the voice of an all-too-literary narrator. As Nicholas Spadaccini and Jenaro Talens rightly note with regard to another famously Cervantine spectacle (the “Retablo de las maravillas”), “the wonders of [the] puppet theater will depend

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater on the power of language” (56). But the irony of this, of course, is that, despite the prominence of the narrative voice, the boy’s narration itself has converted his “audience” into “spectators”—that is, “hearers” become “viewers”—precisely because the aural formulaic locution, “bien oiréis lo que dirá,” so typical of romancero texts, has been pointedly transformed here into visual markers: “vean vuesas mercedes allí,” “miren vuestras mercedes,” etc. (2: 26; 240, 241). And here we confront a thorny—though admittedly, esoteric—question, one intrinsically raised by numerous critics who have defined jongleuresque performance as (only) a “semidramatic” mode. Can this puppet show truly be considered genuine theater? As we noted in Chapter 1, the cantares de gesta and the romances are said to hint at—but ultimately lack—theatrical legitimacy, despite the clear performative nature of their inscribed character dialogue, because they make no attempt at visual mimesis; they exist somewhere half way between narrative and drama. Conversely, Maese Pedro’s puppet show stands accused of lacking a theatrical legitimacy because it contains virtually no character dialogue, in spite of its strong visually mimetic components. Most people (including, I suspect, both Haley and Alonso) would certainly agree that the puppet show is nothing if not theater. But is this because the puppets pantomime the narrated actions and thus embody, in the words of Alter, a requisite theatrical “iconicity” (97–98)? Or, is it because Cervantes’s young singer of tales vocalizes the story into existence? If we are inclined to take a strictly literary view we must insist that the actor/narrator is responsible for this theater since the text (by which I mean the linguistic component of his performance) is produced by him alone; in which case, the visual elements of the puppet show become, in a Platonic sense, an even paler imitation of an already pale imitation. If, however, we conceive of a theatrical text, the vast majority of whose composition consists of narrative rather than literary dialogue, then we must locate the theater of this puppet show in the interaction between the puppet icons themselves (as does the puppeteer when he subtly privileges the “spectacular” over the “aural” within his retablo by telling Don Quixote: “operibus credite, et non verbis” [2: 26; 239]). This, however, severely reduces Maese Pedro’s theater

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Chapter Three to a kind of dumb show or pantomime not unlike that of the early silent films (or even opera for most modern monolingual audiences), a theater that cannot stand on its own without some kind of writing inscribed in the margins of the performance space. As Haley himself noted: “The assistant stands alongside the stage, yet he is a central figure in the spectacle. His physical position shows that he is not part of the play, yet the operation he performs from the sidelines is essential to it” (151). In either case, as happens so very often in Don Quijote, Cervantes is already way ahead of us in moving beyond these kinds of questions. What is remarkable about this segment of the novel is that the thematic thread that ties the sequence of episodes together is the whole question of “performative mimesis,” especially one that erases the usual boundaries of literary genre, establishing instead a more expansive notion of theater. In the “Braying Tale,” for instance, the story itself revolves around the issue of vocal mimesis; that is, the performative talent for imitating a voice not one’s own. The two aldermen who wander the mountainside in search of the lost ass, braying as they go, do such a fine job of mimicking its voice that each mistakes the other for the real thing, and not once, but several times, each ends up finding the other instead of the missing animal. And thus, as an echo of the literary dialogue vocally created here by the single performer between these two characters, the story itself presents a mimetic dialogue between the two braying aldermen so exquisite that the characters have to devise a numerical system of brays in order to distinguish the “acting” from the real thing. The story is, in essence, a contemplation on the poetics of performative representation. For, the first time each man runs mistakenly toward an ass that turns out only to be the other alderman, each praises the other’s braying as if both were deferential nominees for the title of best actor at the Academy Awards. Conversely, the central issue of the fortune-telling ape episode is not that of vocal mimesis (although that certainly does play a part), but of theatrical personification, especially a personification that pretends precisely not to be a mimetic representation. Maese Pedro, as we have already observed, is a stage name—an alias—for Ginés de Pasamonte. And thus the “puppeteer” who greets Don Quixote and Sancho is as much a

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater “dramatic character” as “Segismundo,” while the actor who plays him, Ginés, must always be wary of maintaining a convincing performance out of fear that he will be caught by the Santa Hermandad, who would undoubtedly recapture him if given the chance. This, of course, draws our attention to the performative similarities between “Maese Pedro” and “Don Quixote” (whose own identity is also a mimetic construct), since the dialogue that takes place between these two roleplayers is an echo of the ongoing dialogue that occurs throughout the novel within which various characters assume what can only be called “theatrical roles” in order to engage Don Quixote on his level of performative discourse. In this regard, Maese Pedro’s eye patch is significant in a doubly performative sense. It functions both as disguise and as theatrical mask, allowing Ginés to both “watch” and “be watched” at one and the same time. For, what this patch hides is not the eye of the puppeteer, but the eye of the pícaro whose invented puppeteer persona—like the pious “pardoner” enacted by Lazarillo’s fraudulent pardoner—is part of an elaborate theatrical ruse designed to separate spectators from their money, while concealing the true nature of the picaresque actor who performs this character. Ginés’s performative eye patch allows him to change careers (like so many other pícaros before him) precisely by obscuring the actorly gaze of an escaped convict whose greatest worry is not that his immediate audience will evaporate, but that these spectators will recognize him as the author of La vida de Ginés de Pasamonte and will thus hand him over to the Santa Hermandad. (Of course, like the unwitting parishioners duped by Lazarillo’s pardoner and constable, Ginés’s tavern audience in Don Quijote is so blinded by all the footlights that have suddenly sprung up around Maese Pedro that they don’t even notice the more fundamental performance enacted by the pícaro behind the mask.) At the same time, and in stark contrast to the kind of trained animals we find in numerous illuminated manuscripts whose performances are generally confined to demonstrating some kind of acrobatic trick, Maese Pedro’s fortune-telling ape also engages in an anthropomorphic mimesis by pretending to be endowed with super-human cognitive powers. In a paradigmatic reversal of the vocal mimesis of the “Braying Tale” (in

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Chapter Three which the human characters mimic the “speech” of animals), the fortune-telling ape feigns human speech by pretending to whisper into the ear of Maese Pedro who pretends to understand him and then pretends to relay the information to his audience. And, as in the episode in which the two aldermen praise each other’s braying, Don Quixote becomes a theater critic here, pondering the seemingly unnatural abilities of the performers. Yet, instead of seeing and properly appreciating mere representation where it exists, like the representatives of the “Santo Oficio” whom he invokes (2: 25; 237), Don Quixote attributes this performance to some kind of Faustian bargain. Don Quixote’s criticism of the poetics of this performative representation echoes the complaints of churchmen through the entire medieval period that performative representation is an inherently evil activity whose essence must certainly be something nefarious. (And it is perhaps not rhetorically coincidental that Ginés’s theatrical “mask” covers his left eye, and thus serves to obscure his ultimately “sinister” motives.) If the “Braying Tale” and the “Adventure of the FortuneTelling Ape” exist as meditations on performers and their representations, the puppet show complicates this meditation by bifurcating the mimesis between two very different performative elements: namely, the puppets and the narrator. In other words, there no longer exists within the puppet show a one-to-one relationship between the individual performer and his creation. Thus, by juxtaposing the “Braying Tale” and the “Adventure of the Fortune-Telling Ape” with the culminating puppet show, all of which occur during a single performance event that gets progressively more and more complex with each new component, Cervantes creates a kind of allegory of theater history.10 (Haley even describes the interactive braying of the “Braying Tale” as “antiphonal” and thus ties it—even if unintentionally—to the commonly recognized origins of medieval liturgical drama [149]). And by locating this multiform theatrical world within the context of the pilgrimage and its roadside taverns and inns, Cervantes demonstrates the enduring strength of the jongleuresque tradition, ubiquitous in Spanish society even at the height of Lope de Vega’s stellar career as a professional dramatist. In essence, the voyage from the open countryside to the enclosed inn is not just a physical journey; Don

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater Quixote’s meandering route from the arms-carrier’s simple theater to Maese Pedro’s retablo can also be seen as a performative itinerary leading from medieval ad hoc stage to delimited early modern corral. And this brings us to the central moment of jongleuresque dialogue in the text. At the end of chapter 25, as the puppet show itself is about to begin, the narrator (by which I mean, Cervantes’s narrator) describes the setting as follows: Puestos, pues, todos cuantos había en la venta, y algunos en pie, frontero del retablo, y acomodados don Quijote, Sancho, el paje y el primo en los mejores lugares, el trujamán comenzó a decir lo que oirá y verá el que le oyere o viere el capítulo siguiente. (2: 25; 239; my emphasis)

Haley carefully examined this passage in his own essay, but because he was interested primarily in exploring the ways in which the puppet show functions as “an analogue to the novel as a whole,” one that “reproduces on a miniature scale the same basic relationships among storyteller, story and audience that are discernible in the novel’s overall scheme” (163), his interpretation of this passage serves primarily to inscribe the reader within the confines of Cervantes’s written text: “We are promised that what the assistant tells will be both heard and seen either by the one who hears the assistant, the spectator at the inn, or by the one who sees the next chapter, the reader of the book” (150). His reading of the audio-visual verbs in this passage essentially sets up a two-tiered subdivision in which the visual action is performed by the “idle reader” who stands outside the text looking in, while the aural action is accomplished by Don Quijote’s several characters themselves who remain well inside the discursive framework established by the narrator. In this way, Haley argues, “the audience seated in the room at the inn has been subtly expanded to encompass the reader explicitly” (150). Coming from a slightly different angle, I would like to suggest an alternative reading of this passage, one that does not subdivide the narrative space, but that ultimately places the “hearer” within the same exterior frame as that of the “idle reader.” What is most striking about the locution “lo que oirá y verá el que le oyere o viere el capítulo siguiente” is the way in 127

Chapter Three which it uncannily echoes the aforementioned romancero formula: “bien oiréis lo que dirá.” This echo, of course, is highly appropriate here given that Maese Pedro’s young assistant is about to become a jongleuresque narrator, recounting the story of Gaiferos and Melisendra within a performance event purportedly based on a cycle of ballads in which this very locution occurs not once but four times. In this, the echo functions as a kind of inside joke for those perceptive enough to hear it. More importantly, however, by setting up the next chapter in this particular way, the narrator (again, Cervantes’s narrator) inscribes himself performatively within the jongleuresque tradition. For a very brief instant he becomes the fool grimacing at the reader, the jongleur speaking to the crowd, the actor making an aside to the audience. In essence—to borrow and reformulate Haley’s apt phrase—the theater occurring at the inn has been subtly expanded here to encompass the narrator explicitly. And within the dialogic framework established by this formulaic echo, the reader then necessarily (and ironically) becomes a “hearer” of sorts simply by virtue of his position opposite the jongleuresque narrator (in contrast to the book’s interior audience who, as we have said, become “viewers” opposite the boy narrator). It might be objected, of course, that the syntactic structure of the sentence in question makes this reading a bit hard to sustain, especially given the existence of the indirect object pronoun immediately preceding the verb oyere. Clearly, the “le” refers to the “trujamán,” which is precisely why Haley ascribed to him the oral action of the sentence while ascribing to the book its visual action. Yet, what is at stake here is not the issue of who is being heard, but who is doing the hearing. And on this point, the syntax actually supports my reading in a number of ways. Within the Romancero itself the “bien oiréis” formula always functions to set up the imitation of character dialogue by the jongleuresque narrator whose mimetic representation of this secondary speech will be “heard” not only by the other characters within the text, but by the performer’s own exterior audience as well (which is precisely why so many scholars have sought to classify the Romancero as a “semidramatic” form). The very same dynamic holds true for Cervantes’s narrator the minute he inscribes himself within this oral tradition.

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater By echoing the “bien oiréis” formula, he highlights the fact that the young assistant’s words will be “heard” both by Maese Pedro’s interior spectators and by Cervantes’s exterior audience at one and the same time. The syntactic existence of the indirect object pronoun does not change this; the assistant’s words must pass through the narrator on their way to both the interior and exterior audiences. Still, if Cervantes is deliberately mimicking the romancero formula, we are faced with the nagging issue of his decision in this sentence to change the traditional second-person-plural conjugation of these verbs into a third person singular. In other words, why does “oiréis” become “oirá?” And to whom does this new third-person-singular subject pronoun refer? In Haley’s reading, of course, there are actually two interconnected subject pronouns at play: the “el que viere” refers to the reader, while the “el que oyere” refers to the “spectator at the inn” (150). But this in itself raises a number of questions. Having just told us, for instance, that “everyone” at the inn had gathered for the performance (“Puestos, pues, todos cuantos había en la venta, y algunos en pie, frontero del retablo” [2: 25; 239]), why would the narrator switch from an established plurality to an unprecedented singularity when conjugating the verbs that follow? Moreover, what is the function of the future subjunctive verb tense? After all, while he may not know the exact identity of the reader at hand, having enumerated the various characters now sitting in front of the retablo, there would seem to be little reason for the narrator to posit such an openended “listening” audience. Taking both these issues into account—and accepting for the moment Haley’s reading—we might be intrepid enough copyeditors to recommend that Cervantes rework this sentence to read as follows: “el trujamán comenzó a decir lo que oirán los que estaban en la venta o verá el que viere el capítulo siguiente.” Having said that, however, what Cervantes ultimately does here is to deliberately create a narrative ambiguity. For, as we have said, this very brief jongleuresque moment occurs at the center point of what is essentially an extended exploration of the multifaceted performative poetics of the early Spanish stage, from simple storytelling to trained animal acts to elaborately mounted plays (relatively speaking). Of course, what

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Chapter Three would seem to be lacking in this theatrical microcosm—especially at a time and place where universal literacy was quite literally inconceivable—is a representation of reading aloud as a form of communal entertainment (as happens in the first part of the novel when the priest reads El curioso impertinente to a slightly different tavern audience). Yet, by inscribing himself within the jongleuresque poetics of the oral tradition, the narrator here posits his “text” not only as something he is in the process of narrating, but also as a written document that may be experienced in two different ways at some hypothetical future date: it may be “seen” by a literate reader, or it may be “heard” by someone who sits listening to that hypothetical reader voice the text aloud.11 The future-subjunctive listener becomes the theoretical audience for a performance event constructed by a future-subjunctive reader. In essence, what the narrator does is fold the narrative back on itself, placing himself in a position usually occupied by those literary characters whose words must pass through a jongleuresque performer in order to be “heard.” He draws attention to this fact in the first sentence of the next chapter by deliberately uttering an implied first-person pronoun: “Callaron todos, tirios y troyanos, quiero decir, pendientes estaban todos los que el retablo miraban” (2: 25; 239; my emphasis). This verbal intrusion into the narrative space—which goes far beyond simply commenting on Cide Hamete’s original material—serves to highlight the underlying performative nature of reading aloud. In the mouth of Cervantes’s future-subjunctive (oral) reader, this narrator suddenly and inevitably becomes a physical entity, a corporeal and vocal “yo”; just as the possessive pronoun embedded in the modern title of the Poema de Mio Cid—which is taken from an epithet that frequently appears within the text itself—is a vestige of the very real performer who originally sang the epic narrative. This is truly a remarkable moment within the text of Don Quijote because it functions to create a significant performative context for the entire novel. It can be seen as a kind of backward glance toward the orality that lies at the origins of both literature and theater. According to Cervantes’s narrator himself, Don Quijote can literally be read—to borrow a phrase from Sylvia Huot’s elegant study From Song to Book: The Po-

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Picaresque Actors and Their Theater etics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry—“as a script prepared by the poet for future presentation by others” (42). (The same, of course, can also be said of the Poema de Mio Cid. For, even if one accepts Smith’s thesis that this epic is the exclusive product of Per Abat’s thirteenthcentury literary imagination [The Making 73–103], the text’s subsequent life as a “script” for future jongleuresque performances cannot be denied, as Smith himself observes [207].) And thus, in contrast to Jill Syverson-Stork’s well-known contention that the theatrical aspects of Cervantes’s novel reveal themselves more and more as the narrator slowly moves “off stage” (33), I would argue that the exact opposite is true. Don Quijote is at its most theatrical when its narrator, like Maese Pedro’s young jongleuresque apprentice, moves front and center in order to draw attention to himself as a performative construct. For, it is at this moment that Cervantes—the frustrated dramatist who published his Ocho comedias y ochos entremeses nuevos, nunca representados only because he was unable to sell them to theatrical impresarios—achieves his greatest success as a “scriptwriter,” implicitly recognizing that Don Quijote could (and would) be “performed” far more often than all of his plays combined. It is at this moment—when Cervantes deliberately conjures up images of future readers and listeners “co-creating” an intimate readers’ theater (whether in a darkened tavern or on a ship bound for the Americas)—that Huston’s performative contract is most clearly articulated in the text. It is at this radically theatrical moment that the essence of theater fully emerges within a new literary genre said to be the antithesis of drama.

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Chapter Four

“Corralling” the Jongleuresque

Les farceurs, les tragiques, les poètes, les marchands d’orviétan sont de tous les temps et, comme dirait le docteur bolonias, le premier art théâtral, c’est l’improvisation. Pierre Louis Duchartre La comédie italienne

Performative Intertextualities Criticism of poetic influence has a long and venerable history in the Western literary tradition and exists in various forms. The most common of these are examinations of direct influence that attempt to trace links between texts by locating the sources one author has used in the formation of his or her own work. Traditional scholarship such as that found in Richard Hosley’s Shakespeare’s Holinshed, Smith’s The Making of the “Poema de Mio Cid,” and Jerome Aaron Moore’s The “Romancero” in the Chronicle-Legend Plays of Lope de Vega are typical of this type of analysis. Less traditional examinations such as Harold Bloom’s well-known work The Anxiety of Influence attempt to trace a less direct type of influence by determining how one writer’s work generally affects that of another; or, in Bloom’s words, how one poet misreads another. Finally, given Roland Barthes’s “death of the author,” a number of more recent studies of influence have grounded their examination on the concept of intertextuality, in which texts themselves are said to speak directly to one another in an ongoing conversation, one to which both the author and the reader are only imperfectly privy (49–55). What these various studies of influence share is their dependence on written, tactile texts as the primary cata132

“Corralling” the Jongleuresque lyst for literary cross-fertilization. In his introduction to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, for instance, G. Blakemore Evans insists that Shakespeare’s inspiration for this work principally came not just from Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana Enamorada, but possibly from “Yonge’s English [translation of Montemayor], published 1598 but in MS sixteen years earlier” (80). Bloom notes Cervantes’s debt in Don Quijote to Erasmus and to Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, but believes his “deepest affinities” are for Rojas through Celestina (Western Canon 135). And even though del Río has written that Cervantes’s learning reveals “una educacíon viva [. . .] más que educacíon de libros” (1: 457), this has not kept scholars from analyzing the many titles listed among the books in Don Quixote’s library for clues to the author’s literary knowledge, for hints of textual influence. Ultimately, critical works as divergent as H. R. D. Anders’s Shakespeare’s Books: A Dissertation on Shakespeare’s Reading and the Immediate Sources of His Works and Stephen Greenblatt’s Shakespeare’s Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England depend on the very materiality of modern literature. Our predilection for viewing literary texts primarily as the unique manifestation of a particular authorial consciousness (along with seeing literary history as an ongoing conversation among geniuses) has produced centuries of brilliant exegesis. But our longstanding critical dependence on written, authorial texts is not without its own limitations, especially when it comes to dealing with “authors” who necessarily stand outside the institution of literary publication. In his work The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the “Libro de Buen Amor,” John Dagenais attempts to come to terms with these limitations, noting that one of the consequences of our document-based approach to literature is that we tend to view medieval authors as unoriginal plagiarists because of their continual reworking of what is called “source” material. In trying to discover Juan Ruiz’s literary background for the Libro de buen amor, for instance, Dagenais says he searched manuscript sources for “glosses, accessus, and more extended commentaries,” but did not encounter the kind of material he was looking for (xvi). Instead, he found that the medieval literature he had been studying, a literature based on “texts” and an established canon

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Chapter Four of authors, was not the same medieval literature he encountered in the manuscripts where the “clean, carefully pruned lines of critical editions” gave way to the “rough edges” of a very “fluid and dynamic” manuscript tradition that included “glosses, marginal notes, pointing hands, [and] illuminations” (xvi). Dagenais’s solution to the critical edition prejudice he finds so prevalent in the Western tradition is to apply the assumptions of the oral tradition to the manuscript tradition, viewing the creative work more as a process than an archaeological artifact. At the center of this process stand the individuals who manipulate it—the “scribe, rubricator, corrector, [and] illuminator”— and Dagenais’s study is an analysis of the effect all these differing people have on the work itself, on the ways in which their labors constitute the text as much as the contribution of the author whose name is officially attached to the title (17). Dagenais’s book is important not only because of its insights into the Libro de buen amor itself, but because, in its attempt to account for the creative work of those nominally “mechanical” reproducers of text, it highlights the centrality of the creative relationship that exists between jongleuresque performers and the texts they too are said to mechanically reproduce (xvi). Because performance texts also tend to be fluid, dynamic, rough around the edges, and are often filled with interpolated commentary (from both performers and spectators), Dagenais sees an important connection between what he calls “manuscript culture” and the oral tradition, noting such similarities as the “uniqueness” of each manuscript, the fact that it is very often the “work” of many people, the ability of the “audience” (which is to say, successive readers) to modify the text through “generations of glosses” (17). And thus, just as Dagenais examines the traditions of medieval scribes in order to reveal important information on the creation and dissemination of what he calls “lecturature” (20), comedia scholars can more closely examine the performance traditions of early modern Spanish actors in order to uncover valuable insights on the evolution and dissemination of late medieval and early modern Spanish drama, since even canonical playwrights like Lope de Vega or Calderón would have taken these performance traditions into account when writing their plays.

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque Every individual production—indeed every distinct performance—of a dramatic script is never simply a mechanical reproduction of the “original” text; rather, each performance text always represents a particular “reading”; or, as Dagenais might say, each performance represents a “gloss.” And because performers, like Dagenais’s scribes, bring to the work their own set of interpretive assumptions and performative strategies— elements that are rarely present within the boundaries of the literary text—they very often play as crucial a role in the creation of the performance text as the literary author who first composed its script. As Susan Paun de García rightly notes, “the printed text represents the author’s conception of the work, both as literature and as spectacle, but gives us no information about the changes made by the impresario group at the moment of staging the work” (61). More importantly, because literary authors themselves are very much aware of the assumptions and strategies of their potential performers when they undertake the creation of their own texts, the performance tradition itself can very often influence them just as strongly as any literary source they may utilize. When Isaac Benabu argues that “there is a ‘shorthand’ operating between playwright and actor, based on factors that remain silent in the text” (25), he is simply acknowledging what actors have long known: that live theater depends on a symbiosis that necessarily occurs between the literary and performance traditions involved. In order to highlight what could be called theater’s inherent “interperformativity,” I would like to digress here briefly to examine just how such a symbiosis affected a performance genre historically much closer to us than the Spanish comedia— specifically, early twentieth-century American cinema—under the working hypothesis that the performative transference between the nineteenth-century American popular stage and the twentieth-century movie screen is by no means an isolated event in the history of world theater. Indeed, in contrast to the strict liminalities posited by the Thespis myth in its description of the evolution from ancient dithyrambic ritual to literary tragedy, this very modern paradigm can provide a much better account of what is arguably a similar transference between the medieval jongleuresque tradition and the early Spanish stage.

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Chapter Four Consequently, this more recent transition from popular stage to screen is worth examining in some detail not only because the performance traditions of the nineteenth-century American stage bear an uncanny resemblance to the medieval jongleuresque traditions of Spain, but also because it is precisely the performance tradition itself that ultimately shapes what will become the most significant dramatic form of the last hundred years. The multi-billion dollar phenomenon that today commands such respect and attention from audiences, critics, and scholars alike was actually born of very humble origins. Before the release of Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery in 1903, cinema existed as little more than an appendage to the popular spectacles of the day. Traveling carnivals often carried a motion picture blacktop as part of their standard equipment, dramatic repertory companies frequently showed films between the acts of their plays—in this, the early cinema functioned very much like the entremeses performed between the acts of the Spanish comedia—and early film often found its commercial outlet on the vaudeville stage among the various other entertainments presented there. As Charles Musser has noted, The Great Train Robbery itself—a work, it should be reiterated, that has been said to represent the “birth” of the feature film—“was initially shown as a headliner in vaudeville theaters with its integrity intact” (264). Thus, from its very “beginnings,” cinema was always already part of a multiform carnivalesque spectacle not unlike the jongleuresque performance tradition we have been examining. Musser and Carol Nelson document this multiformity in their examination of the relationship between the cinema and vaudeville performers, noting that Edwin Hadley, a traveling showman, founded the Hadley Kinetoscope Concert Company in order to present before the public a virtual potpourri of amusements that included films, songs, and a concert phonograph. This traveling exhibition—like the jongleuresque performance consisting of acrobatic feats, sword juggling, and the singing of cantares de gesta—relied heavily on a poetics of variety for its aesthetic attraction and thus included among its various performers “a musical eccentric, mimic, mandolin virtuoso, and palm whistler”; “an operatic tenor and balladist who had once sung on the vaudeville circuit”; and “a

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque good lecturer, monologue artist and singer” (Musser and Nelson 79). During the period of its maturation, film evolved from being a mere peepshow novelty into being one among many elements of the performance event before finally becoming the main (and sole) feature of the event. Throughout this crucial development, however, its origins in the multiform poetics of carnival played a profound role. (It is no mere coincidence, for example, that movie theater concessions still consist of popcorn, candy, pickles, nachos, and soft drinks, and that these items can be eaten inside the theater itself during the film, while stage theater concessions generally consist of beer, wine, cocktails, and some limited candy or cookies that may be properly consumed only during intermission and only in the lobby.) John Fell notes that, precisely because many of the early short films were seen on or near the carnival stage, these films needed to match the standard fare of this performance space if they were to meet the expectations of the audience who frequented such venues (15). For this reason, W. K. L. Dickson (an employee of Thomas Edison’s own film company) picked performers from New York music halls and vaudeville variety acts in order to supply bits of self-contained performance (13). But attracting vaudeville audiences to cinema screenings was not the only issue confronting early twentieth-century filmmakers when it came time to start rolling the cameras. Not only was there no Screen Actors Guild, there were—quite literally—no screen actors. Most serious theatrical performers looked down on the cinema and wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. Thus, the greatest dilemma for early filmmakers was simply finding performers, and many of Thomas Edison’s nascent attempts at filmmaking feature members of his own laboratory staff, a situation that did not change until Edison struck on the idea of filming “re-enactments” of famous events (such as important war battles) using the original participants as performers (Musser 29–33). Still, none of these early performers considered themselves actors, and it was not until 1912 when Porter, Daniel Frohman, and Adolph Zukor organized the Famous Players Film Company (which featured such theater greats as Sarah Bernhardt, James O’Neill, James Hackett, and

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Chapter Four Mary Pickford) that cinema acting acquired what Musser has called “the mantle of respectability” (465). Nevertheless, even though we can begin to speak of legitimate screen actors after 1912, we cannot speak of a legitimate “screen acting” that radically differed from “stage acting.” And it is in this that the importance of the performance tradition becomes evident. Because the early films relied on actors who had been trained on either the vaudeville or the Broadway stages, the performative paradigms of these traditions were as indelibly imprinted on the cellulose nitrate as the faces of the performers themselves. In other words, the early silent films can easily be seen as a museum of the dramatic conventions of the turn-of-the-century stage. Yet, the term museum is perhaps too static a metaphor for the relationship between the stage actors and their film work, since it implies a “dead” tradition, not unlike that of the ancient Egyptian or pre-Columbian art housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Instead, what we really see in the early films is a flowering of the performative possibilities of the vaudeville and Broadway stages within a different medium. Where once filmmakers merely captured moving images of vaudeville performers in action in order to show them along side the real thing, they now begin to create a legitimate performance space within the feature films themselves, and the stage actors who worked in this space played as important a role in its evolving definition as the writers, directors, or producers. Let me offer two examples. First, many of the films of the silent period, for instance, exhibit a strong proclivity toward melodrama. Richard Koszarski believes this is due to the fact that melodrama “dominated the American stage at a time when Ibsen, Shaw, and even Pinero were considered too radical for the mass audience” (181). There is much truth to this, of course, but the mere fact that “less sophisticated filmgoers could hardly be expected to patronize more subtle entertainments at their local nickelodeon” (181) does not completely explain cinematic melodrama. Koszarski actually moves us toward a more comprehensive understanding of this performative transliteration when he says that the early filmmakers “inevitably turned to the melodramatic tradition for instant characterization of heroes and villains, simple dramatic confrontations that could be powerfully

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque sketched in visual terms, and familiar thematic structures invoking traditional nineteenth-century ideals” (181; my emphasis). Because film lacked the technical ability during this early period to connect sound to image (with the exception, of course, of the ubiquitous theater organ that echoed out of the flickering darkness), these filmmakers desperately needed a semiotic system that was not orally/aurally based and that would thus not depend on a great deal of spoken dialogue. As it happened, the actors of the nineteenth-century stage—and in particular, the actors of popular melodrama—had developed an acting style that was extremely gestural in nature and highly stylized, a style reminiscent of the codified gestures still seen in the Kabuki tradition of Japan. It also happened that this acting style lent itself superbly to a performative structure that could not accommodate real vocalization. Hence, many of the early silent films are melodramatic precisely because, by adopting the actors of the melodramatic tradition, they happily adopted by synecdoche the performative paradigms of this genre. And once this paradigmatic system had entered the cinema through the actors it continued to wield creative influence over even the most mature feature films for years to come. A second, and perhaps better, example of the convergence of the stage and the cinema—precisely because it is an example that lies at the heart of the intimate relationship that always existed between vaudeville and early film—can be found in the work of the great comedy teams of the first half of the twentieth century, specifically that of Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers. Like the early cinema itself, these teams were born and came of age on the burlesque stage, and like the actors of the nineteenth-century melodrama, they brought with them the performative paradigms they developed in their stage work. As they moved from vaudeville to Hollywood these performers brought with them many of the performative elements they had developed during this crucial training period. As Bob Thomas notes, when Abbott and Costello made their first feature film, Buck Privates, Alex Gottlieb, the producer, helped them develop a formula they would continue to use throughout their film career: “The script would consist of four or five Abbott and Costello routines surrounded but not confined by a plot” (81). Thus, variations of material the Marx Brothers

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Chapter Four used in their stage show Fun in Hi Skul later surfaced in productions such as Horse Feathers, and Wes Gerhing notes that “the Marxes-at-a-party theme” (21) figures prominently in both Monkey Business and Duck Soup. Furthermore, many of Harpo’s pantomimed stage bits (such as dropping silverware or slipping his leg into another actor’s hand) were also incorporated wholesale into the films with little regard being given to so literary (and Aristotelian) a device as plot. Most importantly, of course, these performers brought to their cinematic work the energy that comes from years of improvisation. Gehring, for instance, argues that the ad-lib “became a norm in Marx Brothers work,” and that one factor that made their stage work so successful was “the repeat business they received from fans who were curious to see what comic evolutions had occurred” (39). Likewise, Thomas—prefacing a transcript of Abbott and Costello’s signature routine “Who’s on First,” which he includes in his appendix—notes that over the course of their career they delivered this famous absurdist dialogue “in endless variations” (211), and that the version he has chosen to include is just one among many. In this, above all, these vaudevillians clearly demonstrate their performative kinship with the medieval jongleurs, the actors of the commedia dell’arte, and the twentieth-century guslar singers. Taken together, these two comedy teams defined a major segment of American popular entertainment during the fiftyyear period from 1910 to 1960. Abbott and Costello performed on the burlesque stage of the 1930s, made some forty feature films between 1940 and 1959, and appeared in various radio and television programs like The Kate Smith Hour, The Colgate Comedy Hour, and even their own The Abbott and Costello Show.1 For their part, the Marx Brothers were a raging success as an ensemble on the vaudeville circuit and on the Broadway stage during the 1920s, and they made thirteen feature films between 1929 and 1950. They also appeared individually on stage, on radio, and on television in such programs as Groucho’s You Bet Your Life, Chico’s The College Bowl, and Harpo’s particularly memorable appearance on I Love Lucy for which he and Lucille Ball performed the mirror scene from Duck Soup. During this time they influenced two generations of performers who followed them to Hollywood (if not from a

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque geographical vaudeville then at least from a conceptual one). Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (among many others) owe much of their success to these performative precursors. And both Alan Alda (during his eleven-year tenure with the television show M*A*S*H*) and Bill Cosby (in various incarnations) have made careers of mimicking Groucho’s performative style. It would be a mistake, however, to see the films and the radio and television programs of Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers as nothing more than “reproductions” of their previous vaudeville routines, because, as with cinematic melodrama, the convergence between the two performance genres is not due to some authorial (or directorial) decision to raid the vaudeville tradition for material. The vaudeville routines are not “sources” (in the traditional literary sense of the word) for the movies. Instead, vaudeville itself came to Hollywood when its actors moved west, and in reality, the cinematic works of these jongleuresque vaudevillians are themselves no more than performative variants of texts that they simply modified yet again to fit the new celluloid performance space. In the process, however, these performative variants modified the cinema every bit as much as they were modified by it. Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers epitomize a performance tradition that easily moved from one medium to another, always adapting itself to the specificities of each new medium, while always maintaining a singular performative poetics throughout each metamorphosis. Likewise, because the mature theater of early modern Spain required the services of performers whose training had been largely informed by the poetics of jongleuresque performance, it inherited by synecdoche a plethora of traditional themes, poetic meters, and performative praxes of this tradition. And, as in the period following the fall of Rome a thousand years before, which brought with it a new socio-political order, but which left intact many of the popular performative practices of the mimi who merely modified their spectacles slightly to accommodate the tastes of the Teutonic Christians, the Renaissance did little to change the practices of the early modern bearers of this histrionic tradition. Humanism may have represented a somewhat abrupt shifting of the intellectual

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Chapter Four winds for scholars and poets, but for the popular performers whose activities revolved around the town square rather than the university quadrangle, the new intellectual philosophies and literary techniques were little more than a summer breeze. These entertainers continued to perform in much the same way they had always performed, and in doing so profoundly shaped the contours of even the high-cultural drama in the process.

Performative Narrators on the Complex Stage While innumerable studies have been carried out on the architectural evolution of the Renaissance stage, its essence (especially in England and Spain) is still the same simple stage that existed for the medieval jongleur, still the same performance space called into existence by Tarlton, Scala, and Rueda. Shakespeare’s Globe is an excellent example for a number of reasons. First, while it is certainly true that this structure—with its resident company and its commercial status—is much more closely tied to our modern concept of the theater than it is perhaps to the medieval itinerant tradition, Robert Weimann nevertheless notes that the sites of many early English playhouses were public spaces long associated with “bear-baiting, bull fights, wrestling, and fencing, as well as juggling and other displays” (170). Second, the Globe’s central focal point is a thrust stage, a stage that insinuates itself as closely as possible into the audience space. Thus, while there exists a definite separation of performer from spectator (quite unlike the close interrelationship that occurs in the purely jongleuresque theater), this separation is mediated, in part, by the extent to which the thrust stage moves out into the audience and therefore projects the actors into their physical space. Finally, as David Bevington notes, it is just this “neutral” staging area—created by its very design—that allows for the unlimited scene changes that characterize (and in fact, mold) the world of Shakespeare’s plays (118). Shakespeare is not bound to the neoclassical “unity of place” precisely because his stage—like that of the jongleur or Maese Pedro (in which the boy narrator leads the mind’s eye of his audience seamlessly from Gaifero’s castle to the Aljafería)—is both everyplace and no place at all. Similarly, Spain’s early carros, patios, and corrales are even finer examples of the simple stage than the Globe quite simply 142

“Corralling” the Jongleuresque because they are, in many cases, less complex and still more contingent. The Globe, at least, was originally built as a permanent edifice designed exclusively (and from the ground up on open land outside the city) for the purpose of creating a performance space, while the construction of theaters like the Corral de la Pacheca in Madrid, the Corral de Almagro, or the Casa y patio de comedias of Pamplona was a more ad hoc affair. The space around which the designers of these corrales built their theaters already existed as such when they came to it: they were, as their names clearly imply, the patios and courtyards of existing buildings within the confines of existing city blocks. As Miguel Ángel Coso Marín, Mercedes Higuera SánchezPardo, and Juan Sanz Ballesteros rightly note, “el corral de comedias no constituye la evolución de la plataforma escénica renacentista, sino una derivación de la plaza pública castellana y de los patios populares de vecindad” (73). Prior to the creation of permanent theater structures, the urban spaces of medieval and early modern Spain had been used for various kinds of theatrical performances, whether professional or amateur. Javier Navarro de Zuvillaga points out, for instance, that the first written mention we have of a corral as a performance space occurs in a request by Rueda to set up his ambulant theater in just such a pre-existing courtyard (87), while Allen clearly recognizes the inherent theatrical potential of the patio de la Misericordia de Guadalajara: “ Aunque de fecha relativamente tardía (c. 1618), el plano de este patio de comedias […] nos ofrece un ejemplo muy interesante de la disposición de los elementos existentes de un patio de hospital para la representación de obras teatrales” (Ruano de la Haza and Allen 198). The corral, then, constitutes an elaboration of an already existing simple stage. For, despite the specific architectural details that might distinguish one edifice from another, the playhouses of early modern Spain represent performance spaces codified rather than created by their designers. No exploration reveals more eloquently, perhaps, the jongleuresque “source” (by which I deliberately mean “fuente”) at the heart of the Spanish stage than that undertaken by Coso Marín, Higuera Sánchez-Pardo, and Sanz Ballesteros in their archeological excavation of the Teatro Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares. Since 1981, this group of researchers has meticulously peeled away the architectural layers that have 143

Chapter Four enclosed and enshrouded this performance space, and in doing so have quite literally “uncovered” much of Spain’s theater history. The Teatro Cervantes, as an edifice, can trace its origins precisely to October 13, 1601, the date on which the governing council of Alcalá (La Junta de Ayuntamiento) voted in favor of a proposal put forth by Francisco Sánchez, a local carpenter, to build a “patio de comedias” on a site purchased from the Iglesia de Santa María. Over the next three centuries, this nascent “patio” would slowly transform itself first into a “corral,” then into a “coliseo,” and still later into a “teatro romántico,” before finally ending its theatrical life as a cinema in the early twentieth century, ultimately trading the performative depth of its ancient three-dimensional stage for the technological expansiveness of a two-dimensional silver screen. At the same time, however, the site on which the Teatro Cervantes first arose and then later metamorphosed was not performatively neutral. Prior to the construction of Francisco Sánchez’s “patio de comedias,” this urban space located near the University of Alcalá de Henares had often been utilized by itinerant troupes of jongleuresque performers. One such performer, Diego de Santander, rented the patio in December of 1594 in order to stage several performances during the Christmas season that year. It may have also been used by Alberto Naseli (aka Zan Ganassa), whose commedia dell’arte troupe passed through Alcalá during the 1580s. More importantly, as the documents uncovered by Coso Marín and his colleagues clearly attest, long before it became the preferred locus of an early modern corral, this patio was known quite simply as the “Plaza del Mercado.” This nomenclatural connection to the marketplace is extremely meaningful, of course, because it situates the enclosed architectural component of this theater precisely within the open-ended, ad hoc performance space of the jongleuresque tradition, linking the comediantes and melodramatic actors of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries with the picaresque mountebanks of the late Middle Ages. In fact, the remnants of an ancient town well located at the very heart (and, indeed, oldest level) of this theater suggest that this very spot has functioned as a natural gathering place since the very founding of Alcalá itself. This communal well, around which the Teatro Cervantes was ultimately built, con-

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque nects—both in time and space—the flickering images of twentieth-century movie stars to the resounding strains sung by medieval jongleurs. If we contrast the Spanish and English theaters with those of Italy and France of the same period, the differences are quite striking. The Italian and French theaters are not edifices that exist as an appendage to the jongleuresque tradition, nor do they accommodate themselves well to jongleuresque performative paradigms. Rather, they constitute an explicit architectural experiment that will, in fact, dictate the type of performance permissible within. In Italy, for instance, where an interest in the archaeology of the Roman theaters piqued an interest in reviving these types of classical structures, both the Teatro Olimpico and the Teatro Farnese harken back to the ancient design by mimicking the semicircular seating arrangement and the colonnaded façade of the classical amphitheater. Moreover, the Teatro Farnese features an unmistakable proscenium, a window that frames the picture and thus codifies the separation of performer and spectator. In France, for its part, despite the immensely important influence of the commedia dell’arte on the performative structure of the plays of Moliére and others, the elaborate scenery produced for stagings at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, the Théâtre du Marais, and the Palais Royal—even for performances presented by commedia dell’arte troupes—seems deliberately designed to re-create an idealized classical world, a world that never really existed outside of the imagination of the neoclassical designers who constructed these visually intricate settings. Within these neoclassical theaters, the early modern spectator is very much reduced to the status of voyeur who neither participates in— nor is acknowledged by—the performance. Of course, this creation of a picture on the French and Italian stages is itself part of a larger movement in architectural and artistic theory—that being, the discovery of visual perspective—and it is not coincidental that one of the first Renaissance texts to discuss contemporary stagecraft is Sebastiano Serlio’s Architettura. The newly constructed theaters of Italy and France are designed not only to imitate the classical theater edifice, they are also constructed to maximize the kind of perspective scenography that renowned stage designers such as

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Chapter Four Bernardo Buontalenti, Giulio Parigi, and Inigo Jones spread throughout Europe at the time. The classical five porticos of the Teatro Olimpico, for example, are built like long hallways that “fan out” more or less away from a single vanishing point located at center stage. Thus constructed (and properly decorated), these permanent facades trick the eye of the spectator into thinking that each portico is an arch over a different city street. It is a magnificent illusion, of course, but it is also an imperfect illusion, since the only seat in the theater for which the vanishing point has optimal value is usually that of the reigning monarch. In other words, the farther one sits away from this royal “point of view,” the less effective the illusion. It is a fantasy that limits, in fact, the ability of the actor to create fantasy. For, if the stage so resembles the convergence of streets in an urban European city, then it cannot easily become the forest of Arden in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, it cannot represent the garden and its surrounding environs of the King of Fez in Calderón’s El príncipe constante, it cannot be the tomb of Don Gonzalo de Ulloa in Tirso’s El burlador de Sevilla. For all its splendor, the Renaissance proscenium theater is a very poor performance space for the actor because it severely delimits the otherwise unlimited possibilities that the performer brings to it. The medieval singer of tales is something of an alien in the Teatro Farnese or the Hôtel de Bourgogne because his creative powers are necessarily constrained by the “virtual reality” that surrounds him. The rise of perspective sceneography does indeed constitute a novel development in Renaissance culture, and its late arrival in Spain and England demonstrates the tenacity of the medieval jongleuresque tradition in holding its ground in these two European regions, in stark contrast to their French and Italian counterparts. As Navarro de Zuvillaga points out, perspective scenery did not appear in Madrid until 1626 when Felipe IV specifically imported Cosme Lotti from Italy (101). Hence, it is this spatial element, perhaps, that really binds the English and Spanish theaters to each other, as well as to the medieval jongleuresque performance tradition. The similarities between the plays of Lope de Vega and those of Shakespeare are not due to some kind of corresponding national temperament (Cohen’s sophisticated arguments in Drama of a Nation not-

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque withstanding), but to the very similar performance spaces for which they were written. As with the jongleurs’s simple stage, the relative sparseness of Shakespeare’s Globe and Lope’s Corral del Príncipe profoundly shapes the composition of the plays written for these stages by requiring that the performers compensate for the lack of visual trappings by offering instead a rhetorical opulence that imaginatively creates scenery where there is none. The very openness of these theatrical spaces forces dramatists to write scripts that demand that audiences supply for themselves much of the imaginary signified. 2 Shakespeare, ever the magician who delights in giving away the trick, draws our attention to this jongleuresque performative strategy in the opening lines to Henry V when his “prologuelike” Chorus says: Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? O, pardon! since a crooked figure may Attest in little place a million, And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, On your imaginary forces work. Suppose within the girdle of these walls Are now confin’d two mighty monarchies, Whose high, upreared, and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder. Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance; Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth; For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings [. . .] (1.1.11–28; 979–80)

While this Chorus is certainly a personification of an individual, and thus fulfills what many theorists consider the sine qua non of dramatic performance, the speaker of these lines engages in his (or her) dialogue with no one except the spectators themselves. Yet, despite the fact that this performer occupies a physical space distinct from that of the other actors who will soon emerge from the wings, it is precisely through this

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Chapter Four initial dialogue that the audience is made an integral part of the imaginative space of the play. For, without the spectator’s willing suspension of disbelief, there can be no horses, no “vasty” French fields, no mighty monarchies. In fact, while occupying the physical world of the players, this Chorus actually stands with the audience outside the boundaries of the playwright’s fiction, and thus serves as a performative go-between—as a theatrical trotaconventos—who arranges trysts between the eager spectators and the all-too-willing actors who strut and fret their hour before them. The voice that speaks these lines—and which effectively springs from them—is no mere theatrical character, no completely fictive personification; the Chorus that addresses the audience here is essentially a performative narrator who, like the medieval jongleur before him, establishes a simple stage and then invites the audience to enter into his imaginative world. “Narrative,” then, is no more a fundamental part of the exclusive domain of literature than “dialogue” is of the theater. What really separates these two phenomena is not their structure, but their dissemination. One need look no further than such diverse examples as an elementary school pageant, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, or Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods to find plays in which a “narrator”—so named in Sondheim’s case—is hardly a marginal figure. (And it is far from coincidental that within many of these plays the scenic elements are kept to a bare minimum; the performative requirements of a narrator diminish in inverse proportion to the increasingly visual elements supplied by the stage crew.) It is through the act of telling the story to a group of listeners that the space (wherever it may be at the time) ceases to be commonplace, flat, and mundane. It is through the act of performative narration that the space becomes a magical sphere, one that holds spectators in its orbit for as long as the performer can maintain the illusion. “Scene painting,” so important to Aristotle’s theory of the development of Western drama, is really nothing more than a visual aid for the ever-present performative narrator. As Anil K. Dhingra notes in his examination of modern performances of the folkloric drama of the Indian state of Rajasthan: “No existe ninguna escena como tal para su actuación, ya que sólo una plataforma elevada y

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque descubierta sirve al propósito. El narrador dirige al grupo. Actuando como director, gerente y apuntador, él dirige las salidas y entradas de los actores, el ritmo y tiempo del acto” (90). Although it is commonplace to note, it is worth remembering nonetheless that, because the performances of the English and Spanish theaters took place in broad daylight, one of the more pertinent issues that needed to be addressed by both playwrights and actors was the nagging question of setting, especially as that setting relates to issues of illumination. Twenty-first-century playwrights can rely, of course, on hightech lighting systems that, when manipulated by talented designers, can create just about any setting required by the imaginative demands of the mise-en-scene. A play like Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, in which short bits of dialogue are punctuated by rather lengthy and highly detailed segments of scenic description, owes its very structure to the fact that O’Neill can count on a modern stage crew to provide for the spectator what would otherwise be available only to the reader. And this structure, which is far more “narrative” than “dialogic,” ultimately finds its real outlet not on the stage, but in the cinema where most screenplays depend heavily on a plot that revolves around not what the actors say, but what the camera watches them do. For early modern acting companies, however, such a structure was literally inconceivable; if the play was to be seen at all, and if it was to move intelligently from start to finish, it was to be seen under the glare of the afternoon sun, where nearly every semiotic component of the performance text depended almost entirely on the verbal acrobatics of the actors. It is thus not coincidental that so many Renaissance plays make explicit reference to the quality of the light the audience should be imagining at any given moment of the performance. Romeo’s famous “But soft! what light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!” is both poetic metaphor and essential stagecraft. It is just one instance among many of verbally decorating the performance text. A similar setting of the stage ambience occurs in the first scene of Calderón’s La vida es sueño, where the play opens to reveal Segismundo’s tower prison with its door slightly ajar.

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Chapter Four The stage directions explicitly tell us that the action begins at dusk, but as with nearly all dramatic scripts (both ancient and modern), this marginal gloss is unavailable to spectators in performance. Thus, in the absence of modern scenic technology, the only way to create the required “twilight setting” of the opening scene is for the two characters to engage in a rather lengthy discussion of their surroundings: ROSAURA. ¿Quién ha visto sucesos tan estraños? Mas, si la vista no padece engaños que hace la fantasía, a la medrosa luz que aún tiene el día, me parece que veo un edificio. CLARÍN. O miente mi deseo, o termina las señas. ROSAURA. Rústico yace, entre desnudas peñas, un palacio tan breve que al sol apenas a mirar se atreve. Con tan rudo artificio la arquitectura está de su edificio, que parece, a las plantas de tantas rocas y de peñas tantas que al sol tocan la lumbre, peñasco que ha rodado de la cumbre. CLARÍN. Vámonos acercando, que este es mucho mirar, señora, cuando es mejor que la gente que habita en ella generosamente nos admita. ROSAURA. La puerta —mejor diré funesta boca—abierta está, y desde su centro nace la noche, pues la engendra dentro. ................................... ROSAURA. ¿No es breve luz aquella caduca exhalación, pálida estrella, que, en trémulos desmayos, pulsando ardores y latiendo rayos, hace más tenebrosa la obscura habitación con luz dudosa? Sí, pues a sus reflejos puedo determinar—aunque de lejos— una prisión obscura,

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque que es de un vivo cadáver sepultura. Y, porque más me asombre, en el traje de fiera yace un hombre, de prisiones cargado y sólo de una luz acompañado. (1.1.49–72, 85–98; 101–04, 106–07)

The rhetoric of these passages is extremely lush (and the poetry itself is certainly a pleasure to either read or hear), but Rosaura and Clarín do not realistically need to describe to each other what they see because each sees the exact same thing. Notice too the superabundance of imagery involving the description of light. Like the often-awkward exposition at the beginning of any play, these speeches function solely to set the stage for the viewer and are indications of the pure artificiality of the theatrical world. They do for Calderón’s audiences what Inigo Jones did for the courtly audiences of Ben Jonson’s masques, or what modern stage designers can do for O’Neill’s plays: this entirely redundant dialogue aids the spectators in creating a stronger theatrical signified. Thus, these exchanges can hardly be considered “dialogic” if what we mean by the term is a Hegelian (or even Bakhtinian) dialectic that produces a synthesis between two opposing points of view. This dialogue between Clarín and Rosaura is nothing more than a rarefied narrative that divides itself between two performative narrators. And this, of course, necessarily calls into question generic definitions of drama that rest primarily on notions of character dialogue. Very few dramas consist of anything approaching pure dialogue. More often than not, they are an admixture of dialogue and narrative, and have been so ever since Oedipus first recounted his lengthy story of killing Laius on the road to Thebes, or the moment when the Messenger of Antigone first related the grisly details of the protagonist’s suicide. Jongleuresque narrative performance lies at the very heart of the comedia, just as the ancient town well still constitutes the inner core of the Teatro Cervantes in Alcalá de Henares. Lope’s Fuenteovejuna contains at least one such moment of jongleuresque narrativity through which Flores—during more than seventy-five uninterrupted lines—describes the sacking of Ciudad Real by the Maestre de Calatrava (1.455–528; 1: 831– 32). Within the context of the plot, this very lengthy speech

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Chapter Four does not really stand out; Western drama is full of such accounts. Pascuala and Laurencia ask Flores for information on the battle, and like a good war correspondent, he vividly reports on the bloody combat between an army of Moors and nearly 2,500 Christians. Yet, if we look at the way in which this narration actually functions within the context of a live performance—a staging that necessarily takes place using a limited number of actors in a very real and limited corral space—we can see that this narrative scene takes on a much greater significance. At the moment of telling this story, Flores ceases to be a “character” in any functional sense and becomes, instead, a performative narrator (and not just for Pascuala and Laurencia, but for the audience as well). Through this narrative voice, Lope manages to verbally create a scene that was quite simply impossible for him—or any other playwright of his day—to stage. The actual staging of a sweeping battle scene like the one described by Flores will have to wait for Cecil B. DeMille’s panoramic lens, million-dollar budgets, and thousands of extras. (And even then, DeMille’s relatively crude technology will be supplanted in turn by the kind of computergenerated imagery now routine in the Hollywood blockbuster.) Another important example of the critical function of jongleuresque narration in the early Spanish theater can be found in Alarcón’s La verdad sospechosa, in which Don García (who is pointedly prone to fictive “storytelling”) elaborately describes a party he never actually attended. Like Flores in Fuenteovejuna, Don García engages in the performance of a lengthy jongleuresque narration (in this case, eighty-three uninterrupted romance lines in Act 1, scene 7). Unlike the imaginative stagecraft constructed by Flores (or Shakespeare’s Chorus or Calderón’s Rosaura and Clarín), however, Don García’s depiction of these lavish festivities constitutes a double artifice: through his jongleuresque mouthpiece, Alarcón paints a verbal picture for his corral audience that is a fiction both within the performance space of his actors and within the imaginative space of his characters. As such, Don García’s speech can be said to function as nothing less than Alarcón’s metatheatrical celebration of the very artificiality of his theater, a point made explicit by Don Juan—who serves as

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque nothing less than the voice of Alarcón’s contingent spectators—immediately following Don García’s narration: “Por Dios que la habéis pintado / de colores tan perfetas, / que no trocara el oírla, / por haberme hallado en ella” (1.7.749–52). For, is this not the ultimate measure of theatrical success posited by Shakespeare in his prologue to Henry V: that, despite the paucity of visual scenery, the actors can make the audience see precisely that which does not exist? Thus, if we really want to differentiate between the simple and the complex stages, between jongleuresque performance and literary drama, here is where we might find a truly decisive feature. It is not that works written for the complex stage include any greater or lesser amount of “dialogue” than works performed on the simple stage, but that their narrative elements—and hence the narrator as a performative figure—no longer stand completely outside the fictive world of the text. The singer of tales has been swallowed up by his performance; his mediating function must now shift from character to character within the spectacle itself, like the melody of a symphony that moves from the strings to the woodwinds to the brass sections. And this loss of a third-person performative narrator will continue in the Western theatrical tradition until the eye of the camera again restores the narrative function of performance to its once and future place outside of the story, creating—rather than existing within—the fictive world. Of course, since all narrators—but especially performative ones—must necessarily speak to a narratee, the jongleuresque relationship between actor and spectator once again comes into play. Surtz, for instance, discusses the function of dramatic prologues in the works of such Spanish dramatists as Torres Naharro, Vicente, and Encina, and in doing so demonstrates (if only unintentionally) the connection between the “newborn” Castilian theater (such as the momos and entremeses) and the kind of jongleuresque spectacles depicted in Flamenca and Don Quijote. Echoing Brook’s and Huston’s work on the relationship between the stage and the empty space it carves out, Surtz argues that prologues often serve to transform some small corner of a banquet hall into a recognizable performance space for an audience that has not necessarily assembled for the

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Chapter Four purpose of viewing a play. In this way, he says, prologues often function as a “bridge” between the “reality of the audience and the reality of the play” (Birth 130). Weimann discusses the continued convergence of these spaces on the stage of the late medieval English folk play, and labels them the “platea” and “locus” of the popular tradition (79). Roughly speaking, Weimann defines the platea as the “unlocalized” space inhabited by the actors as performers (the space Huston refers to as the empty circle created by the performance itself) where both actors and spectators share the cultural activity, while the locus refers to the space inhabited by the actors as characters (which is to say, to the imaginative setting of the story, a space more often than not related to whatever stage machinery appears as part of the performance). Because these very different spaces overlap but do not entirely coincide during any performance, Weimann is particularly interested in the interplay between them. What he finds is that the platea is frequently occupied by low-born characters (such as fools and clowns) who “move about in a neutral area rubbing shoulders with the plebeian audience” (79), whereas the locus is dominated (but not exclusively given over to) highborn characters who seem to be completely unaware of the existence of these low-born characters and their world (73–81). Bristol argues that this performative division is due to the fact that “clowning and devilment are theatrical practices in their own right, [who] exist precisely in order to evade and willfully to misinterpret prior authority.” Devils and clowns, he says, “double as characters and as critical interpreters of a play’s crude and immediate contiguity with the wider world of public and collective life” (155). At the same time, Dhingra again demonstrates that the multispatial poetics of jongleuresque performance are not limited to medieval or Renaissance theater (or even the Western tradition, for that matter): Cada Nautanki cuenta con un personaje principal—la persona del bufón—quien caricaturiza y satiriza a las personas de autoridad. Mientras que la acción principal se desarrolla en verso, el bufón utiliza prosa improvisada durante todo el tiempo, haciendo observaciones satíricas acerca de los señores malos, exponiendo males e injusticias sociales e improvisando asuntos que directamente conciernen a los aldeanos. (90)

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque In both cases, these characters have inherited the jongleur’s privileged position both inside and outside their texts. By creating the very relationship that binds them all together, these fools and buffoons function precisely as performative mediators who bridge the gap between the world of the audience and the world of the other fictive characters. No figure on the early Spanish stage better exemplifies the jongleuresque function of this performative bridge than the ubiquitous gracioso who, as Kenneth McKee points out, is a theatrical descendant of the zanni of the commedia dell’arte tradition (xix). And no gracioso mediates so thoroughly, perhaps, as does Sor Juana’s Castaño (from Los empeños de una casa), a figure whose deliberate transvestism has made him the focus of a number of recent studies on the performance of gender and sexuality in early modern Spain. Like most graciosos—and I am thinking specifically of Catalinón in Tirso’s El burlador de Sevilla, Tristán in Alarcón’s La verdad sospechosa, and Clarín in Calderón’s La vida es sueño— Castaño spends a great deal of the play keeping one eye on the play’s characters and one eye on the audience, frequently uttering asides to this latter group under his breath. (In this, we might say, his performative status as an intermediary is a function of his bifurcated performative gaze, just as Maese Pedro’s performative status as a character separate and distinct from Ginés de Pasamonte is a function of his own partially obscured performative gaze behind the mask of his eye patch.) However, unlike most graciosos (with the possible exception of Clarín, who utters a lengthy soliloquy in the opening scene of the third act of La vida es sueño), Castaño is accorded the distinct privilege of having the audience all to himself in a scene in which his dialogue is neither a soliloquy (that is, an outwardly voiced monologue intended to represent his inner thoughts, as occurs in the earlier mentioned case of Clarín) nor an aside uttered under his breath toward no one in particular (3.4; 684–85). Castaño’s dialogue throughout the entire course of this scene, like that of the grimacing fool of the Bute Psalter, represents the epitome of jongleuresque performance in its deliberate interaction with the actor’s contingent spectators. As Georgina Dopico Black notes, Castaño’s direct address, not just to the audience, in general, but specifically to the women of the audience invests his performance with what she calls a “double 155

Chapter Four sense” (again, somewhat like Ginés’s performance of Maese Pedro): “it is not just a drag performance, or a performance onstage, but the (theatrical) performance of a (gender) performance and vice versa” (189). And this doubly performative representation—coming as it does immediately on the heels of Sor Juana’s second sainete, in which a rarefied version of the audience itself has been “staged” in the rowdy figures of Muñiz, Arias, and Acevedo, all of whom “talk back” to their own contingent actors by whistling at a performance in a deliberate attempt to ruin the play—serves to underline the fact that the most important thing occurring on Sor Juana’s stage is not mimesis, not the attempt to fool the audience into thinking that they are actually watching the lives of real people, but the telling of a story “by means of performance” (Schechner and Appel). An even more brilliant example of this jongleuresque interaction occurs at the very end of Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla’s farce Abre el ojo. In this final scene, Rojas Zorrilla completely dissolves what has become by this point in his play a paperthin fourth wall. Following the standard theatrical conventions of his day, Rojas Zorrilla has his characters turn toward the spectators, asking them to acknowledge the playwright’s efforts and to forgive any faults they may have found in the play (144– 45). But where other dramatists are merely content to allow one principal actor to speak on behalf of the entire company (essentially becoming a singular jongleuresque narrator who merely reiterates the title of the play and then asks for a round of applause), Rojas Zorrilla converts this conventional ending into a rather lengthy and complex dialogue between his several actors and their immediate spectators. Dividing themselves into two groups—a chorus of men and a chorus of women—these performers speak directly to the audience in order to underline both the moral of the story and the title of the play: “Abre el ojo” (145). At first, this dialogue, which deliberately inscribes the spectators into a specific theatrical context by invoking the Corral del Príncipe and the Corral de la Cruz, is directed toward the audience as a whole: DOÑA CLARA. Oidme todos, Ya veis que todos los hombres Son falsos y mentirosos.

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque DON CLEMENTE. Ya veis que toda mujer Es más falsa que nosotros; Pues escarmiento, y dejarlas. (144)

But as this jongleuresque interaction progresses, it subdivides itself into smaller and smaller units—at one point directing itself alternatively toward the women in the audience and then toward the men—until finally becoming particularized “conversations” between individual actors and (theoretically) individual spectators in which the speaking “yo” directs itself toward a specific listening “tú”: DON CLEMENTE. Y yo á todos deste modo: Galán, que entras por un lado Con dama de mucho toldo, Pensando que eres querido, Y el otro no, Abrir el ojo. DOÑA CLARA. Abre el ojo, la que tienes Mocito como un pimpollo, Que son todos de oropel Y parecen todos de oro. DON JULIÁN. Abre el ojo, tú que das Estrado, y advierte, tonto, Que tú entras por el estrado Y otro por el escritorio. DOÑA HIPÓLITA. Abre el ojo, dama honrada. REGIDOR. Tú, que gastas, Abre el ojo, Que pagas á una criada Que ha de servir á los otros. (145; original emphasis)

I argued in Chapter 1 that what marks the radical theatricality inherent in the visual representation of the Bute Psalter’s grimacing fool is precisely the eye contact he makes with the viewer. But I also noted that this performative gesture, through which the grimacing fool boldly elicits a response from his reader, is inherently compromised by the fact that, as nothing more than an illustration on the page, he is unable to engage his viewer in the performative reciprocity essential to an act of live theater. Rojas Zorrilla’s jongleuresque actors, however, are able to accomplish what the grimacing fool cannot. When the performers of Abre el ojo engage their immediate spectators in 157

Chapter Four a jongleuresque dialogue during the final scene of the play, they do so by looking them straight in the eye, perhaps even going so far as to tug on their own lower eyelids in the traditional gesture associated with the expression of warning, “¡ojo!” In this, they precisely reiterate the performative gaze projected outward by the grimacing fool. But unlike the grimacing fool, these live actors are capable of receiving their audience’s reflective response, whether this response be disdainful whistling (as occurs in Sor Juana’s second sainete in her Festejo de los empeños de una casa), polite applause, a standing ovation, flowers hurled toward the stage, or perhaps even a meal purchased for them in a nearby tavern after the show. Jongleuresque performance always occurs on a radically theatrical two-way street, even on the most complex stage, even within the most sophisticated dramatic literary text.

Jongleuresque Multiformity and Early Modern Performance Among the things that characterize the festival-like stage of the jongleuresque tradition is the great variety of performance activities that take place on it, a variety that stands in sharp contrast to the delimited focus of most modern literary drama. Yet, when the early modern stage subsumed the medieval jongleuresque tradition into its world, it did not summarily discard the inherent multiformity of this tradition in deference to the new, humanistic aesthetics of Renaissance literature. Rather, the early modern stage embraced this multiformity and continued to offer its spectators an amicable mixture of literary drama, acrobatic farce, and musical delights. This is as true for the high-cultural stage—be it the court of the Medicis, King James I, or the Duke of Alba—as it is for the popular corral. Indeed, as Margaret Greer argues, Calderón, the most philosophical of Spain’s seventeenth-century playwrights, “might well rank as the consummate dramatist of the European court spectacle play not only because he most effectively synthesized its polyphonic medium of poetic text, music, dance, stage scenery and machinery, but also because he crafted his works polysemically” (394). And the persistence of this jongleuresque multiformity on the early modern stage necessarily calls into question the

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque foundational status accorded to Renaissance playwrights like Encina, whose own court spectacles are often said to epitomize the luminous “re-birth” of Spanish drama after so many centuries of darkness. Consider the following preamble to Encina’s Égloga de Mingo, Gil y Pascuala: Égloga representada por las mesmas personas que en la de arriba van introduzidas, que son: un pastor que de antes era escudero, llamado Gil, y Pascuala, y Mingo y su esposa Menga, que de nuevo agora aquí se introduze. Y primero Gil entró en la sala adonde el Duque y Duquesa estavan, y Mingo, que iva con él, quedóse a la puerta espantado, que no osó entrar. Y después, importunado de Gil, entró y, en nombre de Juan del Enzina, llegó a presentar al Duque y Duquesa, sus señores, la copilación de todas sus obras, y allá prometió de no trobar más, salvo lo que sus Señorías le mandassen. Y después llamaron a Pascuala y a Menga, y cantaron y bailaron con ellas. Y otra vez tornándose a razonar, allí dexó Gil el ábito de pastor que ya avía traído un año, y tornóse del palacio y con él juntamente la su Pascuala. Y en fin, Mingo y su esposa Menga, viéndolos mudados del palacio, crecióles embidia y, aunque recibieron pena de dexar los ábitos pastoriles, también ellos quisieron tornarse del palacio y probar la vida dél. Assí que, todos cuatro juntos, muy bien ataviados, dieron fin a la representación cantando el villancico del cabo. (171)

Much of this representation is extremely novel. It is part of the wave of Renaissance humanism that swept through Spain during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Like the construction of the Teatro Olimpico, Encina’s égloga—with its classical title and pastoral theme—is an experiment in classical imitation; it is part of a much larger attempt to redefine the cultural landscape so that the classical authorities of ancient Greece and Rome become the apparent precursors of Renaissance thinkers. But many aspects of the performance event described here by Encina are still firmly grounded in the performative poetics of the medieval jongleuresque tradition. In the first place, this spectacle occurs in a courtly banquet hall. What this means, of course, as we saw in Flamenca, is that, at the moment of performance, Encina is quite literally

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Chapter Four treading in the footsteps of jongleurs who have sung before generations of dukes and duchesses on occasions just such as this. In fact, while contemporary critics may wish to look back on Encina with critical awe, remembering him as one of the “founders” of the Spanish national theater, his own aristocratic patrons probably did not distinguish him in any real sense from the lowly court jester they perhaps employed the year before. In the second place, much of this short text (nearly 20 percent!) is given over to the singing of two villancicos that, although clearly related to the theme of this égloga, seem to be included here more for what they add to the aesthetics of the performance than for what they add to the plot. More importantly, however, even though it is a fiction every bit as elaborate as Ginés de Pasamonte’s “Maese Pedro” disguise, Encina appears before his patrons here as nothing less than a performer. In other words, although he may pretend to be the pastoral figure “Mingo,” he does not pretend to be a working shepherd who has come to court with a delivery of either sheep or wool. Instead, he self-consciously portrays himself here as a “troubadour” who has come to deliver a critical edition of his works with the added promise not to perform them in the future without his patron’s permission.3 Aquí hago despedida que, juria Dios, en mi vida no me vean más trobar en veras ni por burlar, quanto más para Pascuala, que en aquesta mesma sala por ti me quiso dexar. Trobe y cante quien cantare, que yo te prometo, Gil, so pena de ruin y vil, sí yo nunca más trobare, salvo quando lo mandare qualquiera destos mis amos. (176)

Surtz points out that Encina’s seventh and eighth églogas are “plays about role-playing” (Birth 10), and thus, like the Maese Pedro episode of Don Quijote, these texts function as meditations on performative mimesis itself. Still, the fact that the major theme of this égloga is the leaving behind of the pastoral

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque life—with its concomitant wandering hardships: “Desque en palacio me vea, / luego olvidaré el luchar / y el correr con el saltar, / y no jugaré al cayado” (182)—in favor of a permanent place at the court highlights the significance of Mingo’s promise to “nunca más trobare, / salvo quando lo mandare / qualquiera destos mis amos” (176). This entire égloga is nothing more than a variation on the jongleuresque theme of “el romanz es leído, datnos del vino.” Encina, the trovador, presents his completed work to the Duke (his paying audience) and asks for his reward. Like so many other early modern performers, Encina instinctively inscribes himself both musically and economically within the medieval jongleuresque tradition. The multiform poetics of the Spanish theater are not limited to the work of early Renaissance playwrights like Encina, however. As Spanish drama becomes more and more complex during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it becomes more and more multiformly so. We know, for instance, that most of the mature three-act comedias were performed with entremeses presented between acts, while most of the players in any given theatrical company were quite capable of singing and dancing in addition to acting in the comedia (Rennert, Spanish Stage 69). Cristóbal Pérez Pastor’s Nuevos datos acerca del histrionismo español en los siglos XVI y XVII repeatedly documents the conjoined employment of “representantes” and “músicos,” and frequently notes the contractual obligation of “menestriles” and “danzantes” (24, 64, 135). One particular entry, however, makes explicit the intimate connection between the dramatic text and its “polyphonic” components: Concierto de Gabriel Núñez, autor de comedias, con Francisco López, cirujano de Nava del Carnero, mayordomo del Rosario, sobre ir á dicho lugar para el domingo I.º de Agosto con la xente y hato que fuere necesario á representar en la víspera del dicho domingo una comedia á lo humano que ha de ser de Los Comendadores y con su música y entremeses y el dicho domingo siguiente otra comedia á lo divino por la mañana y otra á lo humano por la tarde, que sean los Enredos de Benitillo ú otra que le fuere pedida, si la tuviere entablada, con los dichos entremeses en cada de las dichas comedias con su música de biola y guitarras [. . .] (36–37; original emphasis)

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Chapter Four What is most illustrative about this citation is the use of the possessive pronoun su in describing the relationship between the comedias and the other performative elements that accompanied them. This possessive pronoun suggests two important facts. First, the audiences and local authorities who hired actor/ managers like Gabriel Núñez envisioned a performance event much more complete than we do today when we either read or stage a comedia whose “música y entremeses” have long since ceased to be part of the published script. For early modern Spanish audiences, the performance text—and thus the contractual obligation of the acting company to perform that text— was not complete unless it included all of its performative components. Second, the Spanish playwrights themselves conceived of their comedias in much the same totalizing way as did the local authorities that commissioned their performances. In this regard, the playwrights attached specific entr’acte entertainments to specific comedias, perhaps even going so far as to suggest their specific location between particular acts. Sor Juana’s entire Festejo de los empeños de una casa, with its precise set of loas, letras, sainetes, and saraos, certainly suggests that this was (at least occasionally) the case. What is remarkable, of course, is that, unlike the vast majority of published comedias, Sor Juana’s Festejo has remained intact; which means that, even today, we can still read (or stage) her total performance event as she originally conceived it, analyzing its various components in order to better appreciate the complex intertextualities that exist between its multiform elements. Critics such as Susana Hernández Araico and Julie Greer Johnson are certainly moving in this direction. But what of other playwrights and their comedias? Did someone like Lope de Vega also have an opinion on the entremeses that should separate the acts of his several hundred plays, entremeses that would necessarily form an integral part of the spectacles bearing his name? Could a more detailed knowledge of the greater comedia text—which is to say, the total performance event encompassing the entire spectacle— also aid us in our interpretive work as scholars? Lope’s Romancero-inspired play El último godo certainly raises just such a series of questions. Recounting the Moorish invasion of Visigothic Spain in the year 711 (supposedly resulting from Count Julian’s revenge on King Rodrigo for having raped his 162

“Corralling” the Jongleuresque daughter Florinda), Lope’s dramatic representation of Spain’s great “national tragedy” is based largely on a cycle of popular ballads that grew out of the jongleuresque tradition. As a matter of fact, the first two jornadas of this play so closely follow the Romancero that for almost every ballad in the cycle the comedia offers spectators a corresponding scene. Act 1 stages the development of Rodrigo’s growing lust for Florinda and culminates with her violation; Act 2 presents the subsequent invasion and its aftermath and culminates with Florinda’s suicide followed closely by Rodrigo’s own death in a mountainous cave where, as part of his penance, he is fatally bitten on the penis by a poisonous snake (3: 636–56). What is most interesting about the culminating moments of these first two acts is that they are conspicuously absent from the literary text. Both Florinda’s rape and Rodrigo’s death— which are precisely the high points of the ballad cycle—actually occur between acts. One way of explaining this “missing” material, of course, is to note that, while Lope deliberately chose not to stage these culminating scenes (probably because of the sensitive nature of the material involved), he knew he could rely on his audience—most of whom were amateur performers of these missing ballads at one time or another—to complete his text by filling in its gaps from memory. But there is also another way to account for these “missing” ballads. Were it possible to track down some documentary evidence indicating the exact nature of the original entremeses that accompanied this play during its original performances (that is, if we could ascertain the nature of the hypothetical possessive pronoun that links this comedia with its concomitant entremeses), we just might discover that its original entr’acte entertainments actually consisted of performances of these absent ballads. These textually independent ballads, then, would have functioned precisely as a kind of performative bridge between the jornadas, not only linking Lope’s deliberately staged episodes from the ballad cycle with those that do not appear in the text proper of his comedia, but also connecting the narrativity and performativity that underpins the work of both jongleurs and comediantes. Jongleuresque multiformity occurs on the early modern stage in ways that go far beyond Lope’s well-known “citation” of romances in his comedias. Shakespeare was famously partial 163

Chapter Four to the inclusion of lyrical songs and dances within the confines of many of his plays (mostly among the comedies), and Lope included so many intercalated songs within his own comedia texts that a comparison to twentieth-century American musical comedy is not entirely inappropriate. As Francisco Javier Díez de Revenga notes, “uno de los aspectos más apasionantes del teatro de Lope de Vega, que, como hemos visto por su carácter mixto, excede del estudio del teatro y también del estudio de la poesía lírica, para integrarse de una forma compleja en el amplio campo de la fiesta teatral del siglo de oro, en la que música y drama, poesía lírica y danza, funcionaban armoniosamente creando esa obra de arte con que Lope sedujo a su público ansioso de diversión” (44). Gustavo Umpierre’s detailed analysis of the function of these songs within Lope’s plays clearly demonstrates that this seduction was by no means haphazard, that Lope did not insert these songs unthinkingly. But it is also true that a great many of these songs have their origins deep in the oral tradition. Like Encina before him, Lope incorporates the multiform poetics of the jongleuresque tradition into his theater at the same time he embraces its performance texts. As Davidson says of Elizabethan drama, but which is equally true of the Spanish comedia: “The songs embedded in these dramas are very numerous, and the men and boys who sang them must be seen as the inheritors of the medieval minstrels who cast their spell upon listeners from very ancient times” (127). Ian McKellen, the well-known Shakespearean actor, once remarked sardonically that he thought so many female characters in Shakespeare’s plays change into breeches as quickly as they do because the male actors who played these roles desperately needed an excuse to get out of the female costuming. This sardonic hypothesis may or may not be true, of course, but it does show that actors (if only McKellen himself) frequently expect at least some of their needs and demands to be addressed by the playwright within the literary text. As we previously noted with regard to the intimate relationship between vaudeville and early American cinema, the final product delivered to the public may actually represent a very real textual compromise negotiated between the actors and the writers, directors, and producers who employ them. We could perhaps say much the same thing about the numerous songs that are embedded 164

“Corralling” the Jongleuresque within the confines of so many comedias. In addition to seducing the audience, these songs give the performers an opportunity to show off their multiple talents. While contemporary literary critics may obsess over minute differences between “jongleurs” and “troubadours,” between “actors” and “singers,” between “plays” and “songs,” performers regularly ignore such differences and easily slide from one activity to another. It is neither surprising nor unusual that contemporary popular singers such as Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Tina Turner, and Jennifer Lopez have appeared in movies, while actors like John Stamos, Keanu Reeves, Bruce Willis, and even Woody Allen have supplemented their acting careers by performing as singers/musicians in various ensembles. Barbra Streisand’s career (while uniquely grand) is actually the rule rather than the exception, and it would be a mistake to think that the songs incorporated into the film Yentl have everything to do with its plot and nothing whatsoever to do with the famous voice that sings them. Likewise, unless our contemporary movie stars are endowed with a very different human psychology from that of seventeenth-century comediantes, we must assume that the two thousand “representantes,” “graziosos,” and “músicos” listed in the pages of the Geneología, orígen y noticias de los comediantes de España, and residing in Madrid during the “Golden Age” of Spanish drama, exerted at least some influence on the playwrights and their literary creations. In other words, it is highly unlikely that early modern dramatists like Lope, Tirso, and Calderón would write thousands of comedias without giving any consideration whatsoever to the professional desires of those actors who (they hoped) would convey their work to corral audiences; which brings us back to the issue of performative intertextuality. We confront, here, the same kind of question I raised at the beginning of this chapter with regard to early American cinema: Why the dependence on what would seem to be an antiquated performative paradigm (medieval popular music) in conjunction with such an innovative activity as early modern literary drama? But we also confront an answer not unlike that discovered by the early Hollywood moguls themselves. Because the early modern Spanish stage relied on the talents of men and women who had honed their craft within the jongleuresque tradition, the comedias presented on this stage inherited 165

Chapter Four by synecdoche a plethora of traditional themes, poetic meters, and modes of acting brought into the corrales by the actors themselves. And while we might attribute the preponderance of epic material in the comedia to a national mania for history and myth (through which the ideology of the Hapsburg empire made itself hegemonic), we can just as easily attribute this phenomenon to the fact that early modern audiences had been conditioned by several hundred years of performance tradition to expect to be entertained by just these songs and just these stories.4 In some ways, it is simply a question of priority. Did a national interest in mythos and epos create the demand for plays like El último godo, Las mocedades del Cid, and El bastardo Mudarra? Or did a history of telling and retelling these stories create the culture of national myth we point to today as one of the markers of seventeenth-century Spanish theater? Regardless of how we might answer these questions, it is clear that by the early seventeenth century, jongleuresque performers who had traditionally sung about the Cid, about King Rodrigo, and about Fernán González when entertaining both kings and peasants alike continued to perform these songs within the confines of the newly emerging dramatic forms, due in large measure to the willingness of playwrights to incorporate these narratives into the comedia itself. As Catherine Connor-Swietlicki rightly notes, “the vast majority of Spanish society were a público more attuned to the oral-aural performance technologies of the street and to the flexible socialcultural boundaries of carnivalesque experiences and social rituals than they were to theater as manuscript or print” (“Preceptistas” 420). Seen from this perspective, Lope de Vega becomes more than just a playwright who “borrowed” from ballad material when it suited his authorial needs; he ultimately becomes one in a long line of Spanish jongleurs who, as he insists in his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, constantly modified his performance texts in order to give the people what they wanted to see.5

Performative Containment on the Early Modern Stage This chapter—and, indeed, this entire book—has been as much about definitions of theater as it has been about theatrical space. 166

“Corralling” the Jongleuresque In fact, it has focused on the ways in which theatrical space itself often functions to define and delimit what occurs within it. Definitions, however, especially as they relate to something as amorphous as theater, can be problematic, as Schechner shrewdly notes in a work specifically about the relationship between performance and architecture: “As soon as you define something, you are framing it. You are putting a finiteness on it, boxing it in, packaging it” (“Behavior” 97). But this desire to “package” the performance event is precisely what separates medieval performance from our modern theatrical traditions. Packaging the theatrical commodity is—by definition—what modern theater does. And if it is true that the poetics of jongleuresque performance constitute the very core of early modern drama—despite the number of complex literary and architectural components we have built around this core (and which often serve to obscure this performative undercurrent)— it is also true that these complex structures have continued to dominate the modern stage (the recent popularity of Cirque du Soleil and Blue Man Group notwithstanding) since the time of Vicente, Encina, Rueda, Tarlton, and Scala. In fact, although I have resisted the temptation to posit any liminal boundaries throughout the course of this book, I would have to say, perhaps, that this one thing does indeed provide a line of demarcation. Modern Western theater—by which I mean literary drama—comes into being in the very act of commoditization. Thus, while my analysis here of the relationship between jongleuresque performance and dramatic literature is generally applicable to a wide range of theatrical traditions, it is most visible within the Spanish context precisely because of a particular confluence of Spanish etymologies. As a theatrical term, the Spanish word corral refers to the physical locus of the Spanish comedia, a performance space fortuitously co-opted, as we have already noted, from within the confines of the adjacent exterior walls of existing architectural structures. Corral has another meaning, of course, one that most likely resonates first and foremost for native English-speakers of the United States in large part because of the Mexican-American heritage of the Southwest that bequeathed to American English such words as lasso, rodeo, and buckaroo (vaquero). As a term of animal husbandry, the Spanish word corral has long denoted (at least since the eleventh century) a fenced-in pen, a space 167

Chapter Four explicitly carved out of an open field in order to tame and restrain livestock. Although these two meanings evolved somewhat independently of each other, they are expressly interrelated. Both revolve around notions of “enclosure” and “containment,” and both exhibit an underlying desire for physical control not simply of space, but of bodies in space as well. Not coincidentally, modern theater directors often refer to their actors are “cattle.” What they mean by this somewhat unflattering metaphor, of course, is that the primary job of performers is simply to follow directions: to stand where they are told to stand, to move when they are told to move, and to say what they are told to say. As Huston puts it: “The director decides where I shall go on the stage and what I shall do there; he determines through me the limits of my role and its relationship to other roles; she decides, with the help of specialists, what I shall wear, what light I shall stand in, and what objects will surround me” (12). Of course, this is not to suggest that there is something singularly uncommon (or even nefarious) about this directorial approach to the logistics of theatrical montage. Directors clearly see themselves as “painters” whose performers are nothing more than pigments and brush strokes to be carefully applied to the imaginative canvass of the stage. Despite the obviously collaborative nature of their art, modern directors conceive of themselves as analogues to the modern writer: a central figure who guides the aesthetic vision of the artistic endeavor by exercising substantial authorial control over the physically enclosed space of the stage. It is thus not coincidental that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain the term “autor de comedias” referred not to the dramatist but to the manager/director of a theatrical troupe, nor that we continue to employ the French word auteur to describe strong-willed directors (both theatrical and cinematic) whose particular vision dominates the productions they guide. These observations, however, do not really explain the peculiarities of the bovine metaphor I have cited above. Clearly, directors who conceive of their actors as “cattle” envision themselves, as it were, as privileged “ranchers” who must drive a herd of rather mindless, unruly beasts toward a performative slaughterhouse they might not otherwise enter voluntarily.

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“Corralling” the Jongleuresque Directors who send out a “cattle call” must necessarily view the theater (even if this assumption remains unspoken) as a kind of rodeo ring where directorial supremacy is made manifest through a domination of the actors. Successful directors, like consummate bull riders, demonstrate their capacities by taming the wild and unbridled impulses of their unruly performers. But where does this leave jongleuresque actors? Performance theorists such as Schechner and Huston have argued that theater is basically a “behavior,” one that also happens to be “interactive” (Schechner, “Behavior” 97; Huston 76). Throughout this book I myself have refined these definitions by insisting that theater is essentially an intimate relationship, a performative dialogue between actor and spectator that does not naturally include a great deal of room for intermediaries. Yet, intermediaries are precisely the stuff modern commercial dreams are made on. And with this in mind, I arrive at yet another telling etymology. The Spanish word for “cattle” (ganado) is a term derived from the verb ganar (to earn, to win, to gain), which as Joan Corominas indicates was itself probably derived from a Gothic word meaning “to covet” (Breve diccionario s. v. “ganar”). Ganado originated roughly at the same time as the word corral, and is a term, not unlike “pecuniary” (from the Latin pecus also meaning “cattle“), that underlines the economic value of livestock, but only for those who can control and contain it (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s. v. “pecuniary”). Thus, the bovine metaphors so frequently employed by both dramatists and directors alike are not entirely innocent. For, they speak not only to the packaging of the performance, but also to the very commoditization of the performers themselves. If the theater is that space where—as Schechner tells us—we become aware of our behavior, then this “perceptual transformation” of our performative behavior is telling indeed (“Behavior” 97). Long before Henry Ford converted automotive craftsmen into just one more component of the assembly line, early modern entrepreneurial directors began the process of turning actors into oxen. (Moreover, improvements in the technology associated with computer generated animation—especially the technique known as “image capture”—

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Chapter Four bring us closer every day to a future era when entire films can be made without employing a single non-virtual performer. And when this day finally arrives, cinema will achieve what the modern theater has ultimately sought: an actorless performance.) At the moment of its inception, Western commercial theater “domesticated” its performers by encircling them, by containing them, by “corralling” them. In short, for the modern theater to be commercially viable, modern directors—by necessity—had to convert actors into “cattle,” because otherwise there is simply no way of “milking” them.

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Chapter Five

Playwrights and the Actorly Text

Ce conte est celui d’Erec, le fils de Lac: / devant rois et devant comtes, / il est souvent corrompu et réduit à l’état de fragments / par ceux qui content pour gagner leur vie. Chrétien de Troyes Erec et Enide

Thespis Reborn Throughout this book I have argued that the genuinely theatrical nature of the jongleuresque tradition has been undervalued by many modern critics precisely because our historiographical models have been inordinately informed by the literary legacies of the Thespis myth. The purpose of this present chapter will be to examine this issue from a different perspective in order to demonstrate that this is not a concern that has surfaced only recently. While it is true that early modern Spanish texts on dramatic theory number far fewer than similar writings in Italy, France, and England, those few that do exist clearly demonstrate that for many seventeenth-century Spanish writers the Thespis myth—with its notions of classical births and Renaissance rebirths—constituted the primary theoretical paradigm for describing the origins of the comedia. In other words, our tradition of assigning “absence” to medieval Spanish drama begins with its absence in the theoretical discussions of Cervantes, Timoneda, and Lope de Vega. Still, if a strong jongleuresque performance tradition existed in medieval Spain, and if the early Spanish dramatists were aware of its existence, we might ask ourselves why these writers failed to acknowledge both its presence and their own debt to it. The answer, I think, is twofold. 171

Chapter Five First, there is the obvious reason that, given the intellectual climate of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, anything that did not fit well into the newly rediscovered paradigms of Aristotelianism was either relegated to a secondary and inferior status or ignored entirely. Thus, like the misnomers “Romanesque” and “Gothic,” which were applied to the great architectural products of the Middle Ages in order to suggest that they were not the accomplishments of the innovative culture that produced the architecture of the neoclassical revival, but represented instead the remnants of late Roman decadence and barbaric Goths, the medieval jongleuresque performance tradition was also consigned to “barbaric” status by a steadfast refusal to acknowledge its legitimate existence. (Of course, the reason why the cathedrals had to be dealt with linguistically, while jongleuresque performance could simply be ignored, is precisely because the edifices themselves could not be ignored; they represented a permanent text that was there for all to read, while the medieval street theater was largely oral in nature and thus would eventually slip into oblivion if ignored long enough.) Cervantes’s famous prologue to his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, nunca representados provides us with an excellent example of the enormous rhetorical influence Aristotle’s theoretical writings had on Renaissance dramatic theory and why any theorist looking to imbue his texts with a stamp of approval would defer to “the Philosopher.” Johnson reminds us that Cervantes strongly allies himself in this prologue with neo-Aristotelianism by supporting such literary conventions as the separation of comedy and tragedy and the unities of time, place, and action, and that his preoccupation with “el arte” is in the end a “classicist” aesthetic (“El arte viejo” 95). Yet, what makes this literary aesthetic possible and, more to the point, what makes the prologue an important work in the initial erasure of the medieval jongleuresque simple stage is Cervantes’s re-inscription of the Thespis myth into the context of the rise of the comedia. Writing of a conversation he had with some friends, he says: Tratóse también de quién fue el primero que en España las sacó [las comedias] de mantillas y las puso en toldo y vistió

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text de gala y apariencia; yo, como el más viejo que allí estaba, dije que me acordaba de haber visto representar al gran Lope de Rueda, varón insigne en la representación y en el entendimiento. (“Prólogo al lector” 7–8)

Obviously, by assigning him pride of place in the history of the early Spanish stage, Cervantes transforms Rueda from just one among many sixteenth-century actor/directors into the founder of what del Río will later call Spain’s “teatro ambulante” (1: 354). That there may have been other companies like Rueda’s, which were perhaps not as good, or perhaps—and infinitely more importantly—left no written record of their works, is unimportant. Of course, we know that both Vicente and Encina wrote and staged various dramatic representations even before Rueda, and we also know that most scholars generally prefer to cede primacy to these recognized dramatists, but it does not really matter who we designate as “primero,” so long as we create some kind of Thespian liminality, because as we have seen, once we establish this liminality everything that existed prior to our selected point of “origin” immediately ceases to be genuine theater. In this fashion, Cervantes’s praise of Rueda subtly implies that all Iberian performance between the glorious days of Roman Hispania and his own remembered childhood is part of the realm of nontheater. What is uncanny about the beginning of this prologue is how closely it follows the rhetorical development of Aristotle’s own discussion of the dramatic evolution of tragedy from the dithyramb. It is difficult to determine whether Cervantes is consciously following the Aristotelian model or whether, by implicitly invoking the Thespis myth, he spontaneously fixates on the same kinds of questions of architecture, scenic design, and literary form that are recurring themes: Las comedias eran unos coloquios, como églogas, entre dos o tres pastores y alguna pastora; aderezábanlas y dilatábanlas con dos o tres entremeses, ya de negra, ya de rufián, ya de bobo y ya de vizcaíno: que todas estas cuatro figuras y otras muchas hacía el tal Lope con la mayor excelencia y propiedad que pudiera imaginarse. No había en aquel tiempo tramoyas, ni desafíos de moros y cristianos, a pie ni a caballo; no había figura que saliese o pareciese salir del

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Chapter Five centro de la tierra por lo hueco del teatro, al cual componían cuatro bancos en cuadro y cuatro o seis tablas encima, con que se levantaba del suelo cuatro palmos; ni menos bajaban del cielo nubes con ángeles o con almas. El adorno del teatro era una manta vieja, tirada con dos cordeles de una parte a otra, que hacía lo que llaman vestuario [. . .]. (“Prólogo al lector” 8)

What Cervantes paints for us here is a picture of a fairly simplistic stagecraft, comparable in its technical capabilities to Thespis’s own early stage. From here, he proceeds to contrast this primitive stage with the elaborate stagings of the mature comedia of his own day. He tells us that after Rueda’s death a certain “Navarro, natural de Toledo” succeeded him in the company, and began making changes in the basic stage adornment as well as the methods of costuming and scenic design, and that this Navarro continued inventing “tramoyas, nubes, truenos y relámpagos, desafíos y batallas,” to which Cervantes adds the caveat “pero esto no llegó al sublime punto en que está agora” (9). In his description we hear echoes of Aristotle’s own discussion of the physical development of the ancient Greek theater: “It was Aeschylus who first increased the number of the actors from one to two and reduced the role of the chorus, giving first place to the dialogue. Sophocles [added] the third actor and [introduced] painted scenery” (49; original brackets). Whether consciously engaging Aristotelian theory or not, we can see that Cervantes is trying to build an evolutionary chain. But unlike Aristotle, Cervantes can (and does) write himself into this historiography by discussing his own contribution: “me atreví a reducir las comedias a tres jornadas, de cinco que tenían; mostré, o, por mejor decir, fui el primero que representase las imaginaciones y los pensamientos escondidos del alma” (9). (Notice that his major contribution—aside from his talent for creating psychologically profound characters—is purely a question of literary formalism.) It is only after he lays his pen aside in order to occupy himself with other pursuits that Lope de Vega, “el monstruo de naturaleza,” enters the scene and establishes his “monarquía cómica” (10). Thus, by recounting this brief history of the life and work of Rueda, by describing the evolutionary contributions of a long line of dramatists, and by crowning Lope de Vega “king” of the

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text comedia, Cervantes establishes a temporal point of departure for early modern Spain’s emergent national theater—the single moment of transition—and traces its development to his own day by focusing on where the players performed, what they wore at any given time, how they came and went from the stage, the extent of the battle choreography, and the number of structural divisions in the literary text. And although he makes mention of the stylistic “suavidad y dulzura de don Guillén de Castro; la agudeza de Aguilar: el rumbo, el tropel, el boato, la grandeza de las comedias de Luis Vélez de Guevara” (11), for him, the sublimity of the mature comedia lies in its three-act form, its advanced stagecraft, and its technical trappings. Following Aristotle’s lead, Cervantes establishes with this one prologue all the theoretical parameters by which the comedia will largely be evaluated and categorized for the next four hundred years. We see here the importance of the figure of Thespis not solely to the development of the comedia, but to the entire project of the Renaissance as well. By invoking the Thespis myth, Cervantes implicitly compares the development of the complex national theater of Spain with that of ancient Greece, both of which he implies came from similarly simple origins and both of which developed along similar lines. He thus creates an artistic equivalency between the plays staged for the City Dionysia and those staged in the corrales and public theaters of seventeenth-century Spain. In this we can clearly perceive the functioning of the Renaissance mythos of foundation: by leaping over nearly two thousand years of theater history— or more appropriately, nearly two thousand years of a continuing performance tradition that stretches back to the ancient mimes and rhapsodes—Cervantes seeks to make precursors of Thespis, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. In short, he seeks to categorize Spanish dramatists like himself as the true inheritors of the lost-but-newly-rediscovered classical world, and his invocation of the Thespis myth is a crucial move in the construction of this “rebirth” of classical grandeur. Yet, does Cervantes succeed in completely erasing a jongleuresque theater that spans the centuries between Seneca and Rueda? Does he completely succeed in erasing a performance tradition that ties Homer and Thespis to Guillaume

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Chapter Five d’Aquitaine and the Arcipreste de Hita, and that subsequently ties these fourteenth-century troubadours to twenty-firstcentury performers like Mump and Smoot, Bill Irwin, Dario Fo, or Mario Moscoso? Twice during his history Cervantes mentions the performance of romances—once explicitly and once implicitly. I would like to examine each separately. El adorno del teatro era una manta vieja, tirada con dos cordeles de una parte a otra, que hacía lo que llaman vestuario, detrás de la cual estaban los músicos, cantando sin guitarra algún romance antiguo. (“Prólogo al lector” 8)

The image created here is very curious, and a number of questions come up. But what Cervantes essentially tells us is that from the very “beginning,” from the very first moments when our Rueda/Thespis undertook his primitive attempts at the proto-comedia, the Romancero was already part of the spectacle; which is to say, from the “start,” the performative paradigms of the oral tradition were subtly written into the margins of the performance space. Thus, as Rueda experimented with his innovative pasos and entremeses—undoubtedly delighting audiences with these lively new works (and they certainly left a lasting impression on the young Cervantes)—the old, familiar, jongleuresque performance texts were literally part of the background. Now, if we accept the modalities of the Thespis myth—that genuine theater requires a literary text based on character dialogue, a performance space pre-labeled “stage,” and a properly costumed cast of actors; if we agree with Dámaso Alonso that the medieval jongleuresque tradition offered only a “semirrepresentación” (70); then we are bound to accept as true Cervantes’s statements that Rueda’s pasos are among the first examples of genuine Spanish drama. They are proof that Lope de Vega and Guillén de Castro are the true inheritors of Euripides and Sophocles. However, if we agree with Huston— that the simple stage represents the essence of theater—then the presence of romances on (or at least near) Rueda’s stage takes on a new significance, and we can trace a developmental trajectory quite different from a literary model based primarily on dramatists. Cervantes’s recounting of this performance with its echoes of the Romancero wafting unaccompanied from 176

Playwrights and the Actorly Text behind the tiring-house curtain can be seen as confirmation that early modern Spanish drama is at least as indebted to the medieval singers of tales as it is to the great classical writers. (In fact, as we will shortly see, it is perhaps even more indebted to this performance tradition, since one of the chief complaints often lodged against the comedia is that it is not enough like classical drama to merit equal consideration with that of Italy and France.) It is evidence that the theatrical culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain is not exactly the product of rebirth it purports to be. Cervantes’s second reference to the Romancero comes in his discussion of the innovations of Rueda’s successor, Navarro, who he says, “sacó la música, que antes cantaba detrás de la manta, al teatro público” (9). This second reference merits discussion more for what it assumes than what it asserts. Because Cervantes assumes, or at least implies, that there was no real theater before the pasos, his reference to Navarro’s “demarginalization” of the Romancero can only be part of a trajectory that supposedly begins with Rueda and culminates with Lope de Vega. The positing of a temporal sequential development—first this, then that, then that—works to confirm the privileging of each anterior element in the sequence. Moreover, this mention of the music’s “newfound” prominence only serves to corroborate the impression that the romances were of little importance before comedia dramatists discovered what fertile topoi they could be; it underlines the presumption that the textual value of these ballads is really a function of their incorporation into the properly delimited literary work. If we assume, however, that Rueda was neither the first nor the only performer to present romances as part of a theatrical spectacle, then it follows that Navarro’s “innovation” may not be all that new; Rueda’s pasos themselves may represent the idiosyncrasy, while Navarro’s “re-centered” romances may well denote a kind of “return of the repressed.”

The Oral Becomes the Written This brings us to the second reason why early modern Spanish writers did not openly embrace the jongleuresque performance tradition they inherited. It is a reason much more subtle than

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Chapter Five the first, certainly much more interesting, and somewhat more pernicious. We can find it expressed succinctly in yet another prologue of the period, a prologue Timoneda wrote for his initial publication of several of Rueda’s pasos in 1567. Viniéndome a las manos, amantísimo lector, las comedias del excelente poeta y gracioso representante Lope de Rueda, me vino a la memoria el deseo y afectación que algunos amigos y señores míos tenían de verlas en la provechosa y artificial emprenta. Por donde me dispuse (con toda la vigilancia que fue posible) ponerlas en orden y someterlas bajo la corrección de la Santa Madre Iglesia. De las cuales, por este respecto, se han quitado algunas cosas no lícitas y mal sonantes, que algunos en vida de Lope habrán oído. Por tanto, miren que no soy de culpar, que mi buena intención es la que me salva. Et valle. (“Epistola” 53)

This prologue is a marvelous little text because of the incredibly dense amount of information contained within its seemingly innocuous 108 words. Although written nearly fifty years prior to Cervantes’s own prologue, it can easily be read as a response to this later document, since it addresses issues later raised by Cervantes himself. Timoneda’s prologue begins with a formulaic address to the “amantísimo lector,” an address that echoes the “lector carisimo” of Cervantes’s own opening line (not to mention the “desocupado lector” of Don Quijote). This vocative is an immensely important moment in the text because it tells us in no uncertain terms that the plays printed on the following pages have ceased to be part of the performance tradition. That they may still be performed goes without saying, just as Celestina can be staged whether it was written for performance or not. However, as far as Timoneda’s prologue is concerned, the transmission of these plays will no longer be a product of a communal experience, an experience that includes multiple actors, multiple spectators, and multiple textual variants; a communal experience that spans thousands of years and has as its chief component the performer rather than the author. From this moment of publication onward, the transmission of these plays will be the product (in the extreme) of a single reader sitting alone with the published book, completely cut off from the performance tradition that gave rise to the

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text plays, completely separated from any live performer, and completely isolated from the social communal experience of participating as a member of a sixteenth-century audience. Timoneda proceeds to underline this disjuncture and isolation by stressing that Rueda is an “excelente poeta” first and foremost and a “gracioso representante” second. Where Cervantes finds primacy, Timoneda finds belatedness. For Cervantes, Rueda is a great figure because he invents a performance mode that pushes earlier performance modes into obscurity and inferiority; for Timoneda, performance itself is inferior and is pushed into its own area of obscurity. The very act of publication is just one more step along the road to erasure, just one more move that effectively severs the ties that bind the early modern Spanish stage to its medieval jongleuresque precursors. The next few phrases provide a complex intertext with the Cervantine prologue and demonstrate a textual playfulness that perhaps only Stanley Fish (in his Surprised by Sin stage) could fully appreciate: “me vino a la memoria el deseo y afectación que algunos amigos y señores míos tenían de verlas [. . .].” Like Cervantes, Timoneda defers to memory, but rather than defer to his own memory, he defers to that of his friends who, he says, had a desire to “see the plays.” I deliberately ended the above citation with “verlas” precisely because, up to that point in our reading of the sentence, “remembering” and “seeing” suggest not a literary representation of the plays, but a performative one; up to this point, Timoneda’s sentence has been toying with our expectations: “plays” are “seen.” (Cervantes certainly remembered seeing these plays, as did many of Timoneda’s own esteemed contemporaries.) Thus, as we move through the sentence our minds are firmly situated inside the world of performance. But, as Timoneda finishes his thought, this performative world closes in on us and we are left with nothing but the page in front of our eyes: “[. . .] de verlas en la provechosa y artificial emprenta.” A vision of text that at the beginning of the sentence was spatial and three-dimensional— four-dimensional if we consider that each contingent performance existed in time as well—has been rendered two-dimensional. It has been flattened to include only the surface of the printed page and has been rendered permanently present by no longer admitting textual variation. In this, Timoneda nullifies all

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Chapter Five memory of the performance text and privileges the literary text that accompanies his prologue. However, Timoneda has done more than just privilege this printed text; he has rendered it new and improved: “Por donde me dispuse [. . .] ponerlas en orden y someterlas bajo la corrección de la Santa Madre Iglesia. De las cuales, por este respecto, se han quitado algunas cosas no lícitas y mal sonantes [. . .].” In other words, the texts that came into his hands— which were undoubtedly “guiones” (that is, “guides” for performance)—were defective, as were the performances that grew out of them. Before these texts could be converted from mere scripts into literary artifacts they had to be “corrected” according to the precepts of the Church and expunged of those elements that were “mal sonantes.” Now, pointing out that an author’s work has been posthumously exposed to ecclesiastical censorship and literary editing is not to say something surprisingly new or revolutionary. William Tydeman refers to a French manuscript of a 1456 play that reads: “Rejected and not included in this manuscript are any unusual additions which some of the players of this mystère thought fit to add at will [cuidèrent adjouster à leur plaisance], in that they were irrelevant to the subject and were censured by masters of theology” (214; original brackets). What is at stake in Timoneda’s passage here—and indeed in his entire prologue—is the problem of textual authority, as the continuing phrase makes clear: “[. . .] que algunos en vida de Lope habrán oido.” In other words, lodged in the memory of those who saw Rueda’s plays performed originally—Cervantes, for instance—is at least one if not several versions of these plays. These versions are both defective and illicit. You, gentle reader, are now in possession of the one true and authoritative text, and no matter what someone else may tell you about Rueda’s own performances, no matter who comes along to offer new (perhaps “illicit”) variants, the textual authority will forever reside in the published version you hold in your hand. Charles Oriel speaks to these issues when he notes (in a discussion of Juan Labrador’s tombstone in El villano en su rincón) that words inscribed in stone have a “monumentality” that intensifies their rhetorical power: “They have the authority of a general announcement that is seemingly from nobody in

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text particular to nobody in particular. [. . .] The inscription seems to speak with absolute authority and to demand a controlled and passive response on the part of its readers” (24). The fact that we tend to treat all published material as if it were “written in stone” makes this assertion equally applicable to Timoneda’s prologue. Once Rueda’s plays have been published and begin circulating as a book, to whom can readers complain if they remember an alternative version? Once the recollection of their original performance has disappeared from living memory, is such a complaint even possible? And to whom can performers petition for permission to “alter” these texts should they desire to present a new performative variant? Most importantly, even if this permission is somehow granted can it prevent spectators who are familiar with Timoneda’s critical edition from seeing the new performance as anything other than the malformed progeny of the published “original?” Again, Huot discusses a similar transference from performance to artifact when she explores the increasingly literary poetics of the medieval manuscript tradition of lyric poetry and the way in which the “oral tradition of the jongleurs was reformed into a written tradition” (329). The earliest French lyric, says Huot, was intimately tied to the same performative poetics we examined in Chapter 2. And the jongleuresque orality of this phenomenon exerted a substantial influence on the few tangible artifacts produced by this tradition. The scribes and/or poets who committed the songs to paper saw their material primarily as performance-oriented text (“The romance can be thought of as a script prepared by the poet for future presentation by others” [42]), while they saw themselves primarily as performers (“[the scribe] is an intermediary between the audience and the story, and the book is the space in which his written ‘performance’ takes place” [26]). In fact, one of the illustrations Huot includes at the start of her book shows Folquet de Marseille sitting at a writing desk—obviously composing a piece—with both arms outstretched and his head held aloft “as though on the verge of bursting into song” (4). More importantly, however, the artifacts created by these scribes bear a striking resemblance to the oral texts they record: a particular song exists in variant forms among the many manuscripts that include it, while the manuscript collections themselves

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Chapter Five demonstrate the kind of multiformity we have seen in the performance texts of the medieval jongleuresque tradition. For, just as the performance event depicted in Flamenca consists of a collection of various unrelated songs and musical entertainments, the early cancionero manuscripts consist of a varied mix of “pastourelles, jeux-partis, lays, religious lyric, and Crusade songs” (232–33), in which there seems to be no concern for the particular arrangement of these various texts (“Neither thematic nor generic categories have been respected. Satiric pieces, religious works, and fabliaux; narrative and nonnarrative works in a variety of verse forms; all are intermingled in no discernible order” [215]). This, of course, is a situation much like that found—and quickly rectified—by Timoneda in publishing Rueda’s manuscripts, except that Huot’s lyric manuscripts usually did not even focus on one particular poet. All this began to change, says Huot, when the lyric tradition became more self-conscious of its place in the literary world. The performer who once simply recorded scripts of his works for future generations of singers became a writer whose texts— while still influenced to a great degree by the poetics of orality—began to take shape as an integral literary entity. The cancioneros become delimited works that focus more and more on the songs of one particular poet and organize these songs more and more along generic and thematic lines. Pliegos sueltos become compilations; compilations become anthologies; anthologies become books. Says Huot: “The clerkly trouvère is a new kind of author figure, combining aspects of the clerkly romance narrator, the scribal editor and compiler, and the amorous protagonist” (64). Of course, as the trouvère became more and more “clerkly,” he began to distinguish himself more and more from the “unclerkly” performers, thus establishing a distinct social division in what had been to that point something of a generalized profession. Milá y Fontanals notes that the singers who inscribed themselves (quite literally) in the writerly profession of literary poet differentiated themselves absolutely from singers who were merely content to sing the same old oral texts, or who performed those new songs composed by the literary songwriters. In short, the division between the old oral mester and the new written mester created a definite social partition

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text between troubadours—who came to symbolize the epitome of the aristocratic courtly lover—and jongleurs—who remained part of the performative underclass, often relegated to the status of personal secretary or emissary for the clerkly poets: “el distintivo del trovador era la composición de la letra y de la música [. . .] y el del juglar la ejecución cantada de poesías ajenas” (Milá y Fontanals, De los trovadores 37–38). And it is this performative division of labor between composers and singers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that became the model for the later division between playwrights (whose sole function is to provide written guiones for the dependent performers) and actors (whose sole function becomes the faithful rendering of the author’s a priori written text). The dynamics of this division between authors and performers are again demonstrated by Cervantes in the Maese Pedro episode of Don Quijote, in which much of what occurs during the puppet show is nothing less than a minor battle for control of the performance text. The boy actor, like all live performers, conceives of the show as “belonging” to him, to be embellished as he sees fit in order to maintain the interest of his immediate spectators.1 His performative technique in this regard does not seem to bother any of the other spectators with the exception of Don Quixote (who, as we saw in Chapter 3, has already inscribed himself within the role of “theater critic” by commenting on the nefarious nature of the fortune-telling ape’s cognitive abilities). Don Quixote interrupts the performance several times in order to insist that the young actor is perverting the text, but when the boy interjects his comment that “entre moros no hay «traslado a la parte», ni «a prueba y estése», como entre nosotros,” the knight/critic explodes: “Niño, niño, [. . .] seguid vuestra historia línea recta, y no os metáis en las curvas o transversales; que para sacar una verdad en limpio menester son muchas pruebas y repruebas” (2: 26; 242). Needless to say, Ginés—who, although a performer in his own right, clearly embodies an authorial consciousness—takes the critic’s side rather than coming to the aid of his young apprentice: “Muchacho, no te metas en dibujos, sino haz lo que ese señor te manda, que será lo más acertado; sigue tu canto llano, y no te metas en contrapuntos, que se suelen quebrar de sotiles” (2: 26; 242). And when he repeats this call for “llaneza” (2: 26; 243) a short

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Chapter Five time later, the young actor, like any good performer facing an antagonistic author, wisely says nothing. Don Quixote’s critiques of the performance become more prominent following this initial exchange, and it is not long before the young actor himself is pushed from the discussion entirely. When the boy mistakenly puts bells in the towers of the Andalusian mosque, Don Quixote shouts: “—¡Eso no! [. . .] En esto de las campanas anda muy impropio maese Pedro, porque entre moros no se usan campanas, sino atabales, y un género de dulzainas que parecen nuestras chirimías; y esto de sonar campanas en Sansueña sin duda que es un gran disparate” (2: 26; 244); to which Ginés replies: No mire vuesa merced en niñerías, señor don Quijote, ni quiera llevar las cosas tan por el cabo, que no se le halle. ¿No se representan por ahí, casi de ordinario, mil comedias llenas de mil impropiedades y disparates, y, con todo eso, corren felicísimamente su carrera, y se escuchan no sólo con aplauso, sino con admiración y todo? Prosigue, muchacho, y deja decir; que como yo llene mi talego, siquiere represente más impropiedades que tiene átomos el sol. (2: 26; 244)

Like all self-respecting dramatists, Ginés can only tolerate so much criticism, and once he has reached his limits, he simply tells the critic to pay attention to the totality of the performance and to stop focusing on minor details. Notice, however, that Ginés still refuses to come to the immediate aid of his protégé, being much more interested in showing that this performance, while defective, is no worse than any of the thousand “disparates” staged every day in the corrales of Madrid (which, of course, is Cervantes’s not-so-subtle jab at Lope de Vega). What this episode demonstrates (in addition to the previously noted fact that the performative poetics of the jongleuresque tradition are still alive and well in seventeenth-century Spain) is that the performer associated with this tradition, a performer defined by an improvisational approach to text, is increasingly unwelcome on the complex stage. With the rise of the literary dramatist whose written text is a reproducible economic commodity comes the rise of the verbatim text. And this verbatim authorial text will always and necessarily be “cor-

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text rupted”—to use Chrétien de Troyes’s terminology (29)—by the uncontrollable performer who is forever caught between the author and the critic, both of whom would rather dispense with the actor entirely, preferring instead to speak directly to the reader without the messy contingencies of performative mediation. Tellingly, Jonson’s play Bartholomew Fair acknowledges this authorial desire for unmediated contact with the audience by staging it unequivocally. The play opens with something of a “prologue” spoken by a “Stage-Keeper” who enters and apologizes to the audience that the play is not already underway, explaining that there have occurred some problems backstage, but that the play should begin shortly. What is interesting in this monologue is that this character clearly drawn from the performance tradition is visible frightened by the prospect that the “author” will hear him corrupting the “text” of the play with his apologies and unsolicited comments: “But for the whole play, will you ha’ the truth on’t? (I am looking, lest the poet hear me, or his man, Master Brome, behind the arras) it is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English” (4). His trepidation notwithstanding, this Stage-Keeper informs the audience that they should not expect too much from the performance, since the author has chosen not to include any of the kind of jongleuresque fare that the spectators might have come hoping to see. There will be no jugglers, no well-educated apes, no hobby-horse man to creep in to his she-neighbor. In fact, says the Stage-Keeper, when he tried to explain to the playwright the need for such performative elements, he was summarily sent packing: But these master-poets, they will ha’ their own absurd courses; they will be inform’d of nothing! He has, sirreverence, kick’d me three or four times about the Tiringhouse, I thank him, for but offering to put it, with my experience. (4–5)

The Stage-Keeper’s theatrical “experience,” of course, is impressive indeed, given that he claims to have worked with Tarlton himself. For a stage now dominated by literary rather than performative concerns, however, this weighty experience is useless. Thus, in the middle of his scathing review of the

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Chapter Five literary text, two men enter the scene—a “Book-Holder” and a “Scrivener”—and ask him what business he has talking to the audience in this manner. The Stage-Keeper defends himself by saying that “the understanding gentlemen o’ the ground here ask’d my judgement,” to which the Book-Holder replies: “Away rogue, it’s come to a fine degree in these spectacles when such a youth as you pretend to a judgement” (5). This Book-Holder then proceeds to tell the audience that he has been sent by the author himself to draw up a legal document—an “Articles of Agreement”—between themselves and the playwright. This written contract specifically permits and proscribes a number of crucial activities: the spectators are prohibited from moving to better seats for which they have not paid; they are free to like or dislike the play, but only in direct proportion to the amount of their admission fee; they are prohibited from expecting more than they will get (a clear reference to the Stage-Keeper’s criticism); and finally, and most importantly, they are prohibited from any attempts to decipher any covert meaning from the text (6–8).2 In true “modern” fashion, the “author” of Bartholomew Fair wants to limit the spectator’s access to his theatrical commodity, while at the same time, delimiting its interpretation. The Stage-Keeper who appears at the beginning of this legalistic prologue represents the antithesis of this desired authorial control, since he—like all other jongleuresque performers—will generally offer the play to anyone willing to watch (without the fanfare of an “Articles of Agreement”) and will freely give his opinion on that text, encouraging his audience to do the same. Hence, his dismissal is neither coincidental nor insignificant. Bearing this in mind, what Timoneda’s prologue demonstrates so perfectly is why the dramatic theorists of the early Spanish stage beat such a hasty retreat from the medieval jongleuresque tradition they inherited. Like Chrétien de Troyes, they had a profound ambivalence toward performance and a deep distrust of the orality inherent in the performative. This distrust centers, above all, on the belief that performers are bound to betray the integrity of the written text any time they come into contact with it, and that this ideal, Platonic, essential text must be preserved at all costs against the barbaric onslaughts of those performers professionally committed to a

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text negotiated dialogue with their spectators. As we have seen, jongleuresque performance is characterized by, if nothing else, a vision of text that is fluid and variable. Yet, this vision is abhorrent to someone who insists on a text that is invariable, stable, and infinitely reproducible in its verbatim form. Such are the prejudices, though, of a culture in the process of internalizing the new technology of printing—a culture that has begun to invest the written word with more authoritative value than ever before—and such are the needs of a publisher wishing to preserve the work of the founder of Spain’s early modern commercial theater. Timoneda, however, is not consistent in his conferral of textual authority primarily on the printed word; otherwise, we could consider his pruning to be an occupational hazard, nothing more than the inevitable habit of mind of someone engaged in publishing books. In a prologue written just three years later for the Registro de Representantes (in which he again publishes several of Rueda’s plays), Timoneda writes: Aqui van registrados con mi pluma los pasos más modernos y graciosos; aqui cuasi vereis en breve suma, descuidos simplicisimos, bravosos. De aqui, el representante que presuma hacer que sus colloquios sean gustosos, puede tomar lo que le conviniere, y el paso que mejor hacer supiere. (Prologue, Registro 3)

Unlike the earlier prologue, this one contains no reference to a reader, “amantissimo” or otherwise. In fact, the vocative is directed to the “representante,” and thus the implied reader of this text is not singular—not an individual sitting alone with a book in hand—but a plural “vosotros,” a community of performers. And this plurality implies that the work has been conceived as a collection of scripts and published for the benefit of—and directed toward—actors. Unlike Timoneda’s first prologue, this one does not privilege the world of the printed word, but rather, privileges the world of the performance tradition. And by doing so, Timoneda privileges a vision of text that perhaps could be called “actorly” (as opposed to “writerly”)

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Chapter Five because he conceives of the text as fluid, variable, and malleable: “puede tomar lo que le conviniere, / y el paso que mejor hacer supiere.” In this second prologue, Timoneda does not isolate Rueda’s plays from their origins in orality; he does not, for example, claim to put them in any specific order, thus implying a fixed sequence. Instead, he prefers to recognize the contingencies of performance and therefore to authorize the very fluidity of their nature.3 Still, Timoneda’s earlier prologue would not interest me as much as it does were it to have ended where I last left off citing, with “habrán oído.” It is the final sentence that actually makes the text noteworthy because it tells us a great deal about early modern dramatic theory: “Por tanto, miren que no soy de culpar, que mi buena intención es la que me salva.” This concluding statement displays more than just ambivalence toward performance, it confirms a true anxiety. For what grave sin is Timoneda “not to blame?” Why does he seek expiation? And what salvation does he believe lies in his “good intention?” By ending his prologue with this “(non) mea culpa,” Timoneda demonstrates that, like Jonson, he feels somewhat guilty for betraying the very essence of theater, an essence that does not lie on the printed page but instead occupies the space between the performer and the spectator (the very space he makes room for in his 1570 prologue). As a “librero” Timoneda seeks forgiveness for erasing the very things not present in the 1567 literary work, but which were “heard” by Rueda’s original audiences. Among those things no longer available to the “prudente lector,” of course, are the comic bits of stage business between the actors, the mutual rapport created between the performers and the spectators, and most importantly, the songs of the Romancero that Cervantes notes in his own prologue and that ultimately tie the early modern Spanish stage to the medieval jongleuresque tradition. In sum, Timoneda is stuck with a dilemma. To publish the plays he must necessarily function as an editor, as a representative of the growing literate culture made possible by Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in 1440. But by doing so, he recognizes that he is wresting the textual authority from the performance tradition that produced the plays, and is thereby granting it to a decidedly literate community that will

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text not perform these plays, but read them, discuss them, possess them, and finally determine their literary merit. At the same time, were he to decide not to publish them, Timoneda would take the chance that these plays might disappear entirely, like the numerous classical Greek tragedies for which we have a title and nothing more, or the countless medieval plays for which we lack even that. Like Cervantes and Chrétien de Troyes, Timoneda knows that actors are simply too unreliable to be given the massive responsibility of being the guardians of the national literature, and it is this knowledge that forms the basis for his uneasiness toward performance.4 His anxiety stems from the fact that he is all too aware that he cannot have it both ways. He cannot have a corpus of plays without publishing them, and yet by publishing them they cease to be plays in a profound sense.

Villainous Actors, Barbarous Theater In his now famous advice to the players, Hamlet admonishes the clowns of his acting troupe not to add more to the text than its author has intended: “And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be consider’d. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it” (3.2.38–45; 1210). His complaints in this passage against the improvisational techniques of his actors—like those voiced by Chrétien de Troyes—demonstrate the inherent antagonism between literary and theatrical approaches to dramatic works, a conflict that often manifests itself in a contempt for the performer who always seems intent on subverting—if not in fact destroying—the text, and who thus cannot be entirely trusted with something so important as literary artifacts. Why is the performer the “villain” of this particular melodrama? The term villain, of course, meant something slightly different to Shakespeare than it does to us today, although our current usage obviously grew out of its original meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary delineates its semantic evolution from a term originally referring to a “low-born base-minded

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Chapter Five rustic” (not unlike the Spanish villano) into “a man naturally disposed to base or criminal actions” (2nd ed., s. v. “villain”). What began as a marker of social caste has become over the course of several hundred years a marker of anti-social behavior; the difference between being “common” and being “criminal” has slowly eroded so that today we recognize only the synecdochic meaning: “commonness” equals “criminality.” Hamlet considers the performers “villainous” not (necessarily) because he regards their treatment of the dramatic text as some kind of crime per se, but because he suggests they represent a “rustic” approach to the stage. These “clowns” are not sociopaths who consciously undermine the literary order; rather, they are buffoons who do not understand their rightful place within that order. His pejorative adjective insinuates that they cannot be trusted precisely because they come from the intellectual rabble of society and are thus bound to betray the text because they understand nothing of the higher values of “art” and “literature.” Succinctly inscribed within Hamlet’s term villainous is the age-old clash between low culture and high culture, and more importantly between the pre-modern world of medieval, jongleuresque actors and the “renewed,” early modern world of Renaissance authors. This clash is nowhere better represented (although in a much less vituperative fashion) than in an earlier play by Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which a group of “hempen home-spuns” (3.1.77; 266) present “The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby” (1.2.11–12; 259) before the aristocratic court of Duke Theseus. These rustic performers are much more than just “Hard-handed men [. . .] / Which never labor’d in their minds till now” (5.1.72–73; 276), however, much more than just “villains” standing in opposition to “aristocrats.” Quince, a carpenter, Snug, a joiner, Bottom, a weaver, Flute, a bellows-mender, Snout, a tinker, and Starveling, a tailor (with their all too allegorical names) are, themselves, figures of a medieval popular performance tradition that stands in opposition to an elite, courtly one. As is very well known, most of the economic and logistical support for medieval theatrical production in England—especially for the great cycle plays—fell squarely on the trade guilds (similar to the cofradías in Spain) whose

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text responsibilities included providing the actors, sets, and costumes, and who generally oversaw all aspects of the final production. Thus, during important periods of the year the members of these guilds constituted a semi-professional (although clearly amateur) performative class. Shakespeare’s “mechanicals,” each representing one of the various trades involved in these guilds, are symbols of this class and his parodic treatment of their dramatic production is a searing critique of their amateurism. Hamlet’s later advice to his players is little more than a recapitulation of this critique. Yet, this allegorical tie to the confraternities is not the only thing A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s players have in common with the medieval jongleuresque performance tradition. If the essence of theater (especially for medieval singers of tales and their audiences) is not a “dialogue”-based text delivered by a plurality of actors, but a “performed” text in which the multiple characters are created by a single actor feigning a plurality of voices (including a narrative voice), Bottom clearly has a firm grasp on the poetics of this performance tradition. During the first rehearsal, he exuberantly offers to play all the roles and then shows off his performative ability to change character. Having already been assigned the part of Pyramus he exclaims, “And I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too. I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice, ‘Thisne! Thisne! Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisby dear, and lady dear!’” (1.2.51–54; 260), thus demonstrating the kind of vocal characterization a jongleur would have created when performing a romance like “Abenámar,” thus highlighting the radical theatricality inherent in all ballad performance.5 Moreover, like the presence of romances on Rueda’s stage, the ballad tradition is not far removed from the performance space of these rustic mechanicals. Near the end of Act 4, when Bottom unwittingly awakes from what he thinks is a dream, conspicuously wearing an enormous ass’s head, he exclaims: “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. [. . .] I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream.6 It shall be call’d ‘Bottom’s Dream,’ because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke. Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death” (4.1.205–19; 275).

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Chapter Five Conditioned by a lifetime of contact with the kind of tavern performers that Milman Parry studied in Yugoslavia; the kind of epic performers responsible for the initial dissemination of Beowulf, the Chanson de Roland, or the Poema de Mio Cid; and the minstrel performers of the jongleuresque tradition; Bottom thinks nothing of including this sung narrative within the (con)text of the performance. The fact that the ballad would not make the “Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe” more “gracious” demonstrates how far Renaissance performance had diverged from a theater that was open-ended and contingent on the immediate needs of both performer and spectator to a theater very much constrained by the textual closure of literature. The singer of tales is as out of place on the high-cultural stage as the ass’s head is on the very human Bottom.7 Both represent hybrid monstrosities worthy of ridicule; both are “villainous.” The term barbarous functions in much the same way in Lope de Vega’s Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, where the author—like Sir Philip Sidney in The Defense of Poesy—seeks to justify the literature of his own society by tying it, in part, to the authority of the classical world. Responding to critics who had faulted his apparent lack of intellectual rigor, Lope attempts to reconcile his extremely popular theater with the humanist philosophies that seemed at the time to be the measure of all things. Because the word barbarous was historically and etymologically connected to the Goths, Franks, and Huns who invaded the “literate” classical civilization, establishing in its place the “illiterate” culture that Renaissance humanism later seeks to supplant, it cannot be understood without its pejorative connection to medieval society. Similarly, in the context of a dramatic theory like Lope’s, bent on positing Renaissance theater as the renewed continuation of the lost, classical, literary drama, barbarous cannot be understood without its pejorative connection to medieval popular performance. Specifically, the adjective barbarous cannot be disassociated from the mimes, scôps, minstrels, and jongleurs who—long after the fall of Rome and its classical drama—continued to work their performing arts right up to the moment when Western theater was supposedly reborn within the sacred and erudite confines of the Church. This is certainly true for an Enlightenment writer like Giambattista Vico when he says: “The first lan-

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text guage of the Spaniards was that called ‘el romance,’ and consequently that of heroic poetry, for the romanceros were the heroic poets of the returned barbarian times” (144). The Arte nuevo—which, as Juana de José Prades notes, is a somewhat anomalous text, given that few early modern Spanish dramatists bothered to write their dramatic theory so directly (241)—is an occasional piece written for presentation at the Academy of Madrid sometime between 1604 and 1608. As such, it is a performance text in its own right and thus bears all the hallmarks of what Juan Manuel Rozas characterizes as a dramatic soliloquy (52). With palpable irony, Lope, the most successful playwright of his generation, claims to appear before the learned tribunal almost under subpoena, stating he has been “commanded” to write an “art” of making plays in order to defend himself against the very charge we have seen Hamlet level at the “villainous” clowns: that his works are nothing more than “barbarous,” “vulgar,” and “crude” entertainments unworthy of high-cultural consideration. And because the very linguistic structure of the debate is prejudiced against Lope from the outset (the greatest opprobrium Hamlet can assign the emissaries of low culture, for instance, is simply that they are indeed representatives of low culture, that they are “villainous”), no further accusation is necessary; this one alone is almost indefensible. Thus, no clear consensus has been established concerning the meaning and importance of this short manifesto. Rudolph Schevill labels the work “pedantic” and “naïve” (10), while Rinaldo Froldi calls it an “elegante y socarrona sátira de los pedantes,” a work exhibiting an “ingenio de primera magnitud” (178). Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo deems it “superficial y diminuto, ambiguo y contradictorio, fluctuando siempre entre la legislación peripatética y las prácticas introducidas en el teatro” (Historia 1: 775); while Menéndez Pidal sees it as an essential text for understanding the relationship between the Romancero and the comedia, arguing that Lope ultimately prefers the “naturaleza” of the medieval ballad tradition over the “arte” of Renaissance dramatic theory, and that by doing so he necessarily echoes the eternal “disidencia de Platón y de Aristóteles” (De Cervantes 74). In short, critics have generally held the Arte nuevo to be a divided text in which Lope vacillates between dramatic theory and

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Chapter Five theatrical practice, between the exigencies of the classical literary rules and the demands of his contemporary public. These divisions, though widely noted, are not isolated characteristics of Lope’s text alone. On the contrary, the impulses behind them are part of the greater pan-European transition from medieval to Renaissance theater, a transition triggered in large part by the technological shift from oral to graphic culture that substantially accelerated in the fifteenth century. Gutenberg’s invention of movable type and the ensuing rise of the modern, literary author greatly served to shift theatrical power away from the actor and toward the playwright, although by 1608 a clear-cut division between the two had not yet emerged entirely. Indeed, there still existed some confusion at the turn of the seventeenth century between the English words “author” and “actor,” while the Spanish term “autor de comedias” (as we previously noted in Chapter 4) clearly referred at the time not to the dramatist who wrote the plays, but to the actor-manager who staged them (Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s. v. “actor”; “author”; Diccionario de la lengua española, 21st ed., s. v. “autor”). Thus, the textual frictions in the Arte nuevo—between the values of the literary elite and those of what Lope calls “el vulgo”—are much more profound than the concurrent tensions between a work of humanist theology like Luis de León’s De los nombres de Cristo and the popular chivalric novels parodied by Cervantes in Don Quijote. The Arte nuevo’s divisions are, in fact, a product of the cultural clash between the residual performance traditions of medieval jongleuresque actors and the newly asserted literary role of early modern playwrights. Lope’s ambivalences stem less from his own imprecise thinking than from the inherent ambiguities of the shifting critical discourse he must employ. The Arte nuevo shares with other early modern European texts a concern for the growing differentiation and concomitant friction between “authors” and “actors.” Scala’s prologue to Il finto marito, for instance, features a “Stranger” and a “Player” who debate the relative importance of playwrights and performers in the creation of theater. The Stranger argues that it is the poet who best knows how to make good plays, being well-versed in philosophy and the rules of oratory, and knowing best how to (pre)serve the Aristotelian precepts of dramatic

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text composition. The Player, on the other hand, counters that it is performance that matters most, and that experience in fact produces art: “L’esperienza fa l’arte, perché molti atti reiterati fanno la regola, e se i precetti da essa si cavano, adunque da tali azzioni si viene a pigliar la vera norma, sì che il comico può dar regola a’ compositori di commedie, ma non già quegli a questi” (cxi) [“Experience produces art. A rule is made by the frequent repetition of actions, and if rules derive from experience, then the valid rule is that which comes from such actions. Thus the player may give rules to the playwrights, not they to him” (Richards and Richards 199)]. The major difference between this prologue and the Arte nuevo, of course, is that while Scala divides his opposing arguments between two characters, both voices in the Arte nuevo come from Lope who is engaged in a dialogic exchange with himself, where neither voice entirely convinces the other. Like the Stranger, Lope seeks to tie his comedias to a respectable set of classical literary rules; like the Player, however, he finds he cannot easily erase the weight of the jongleuresque performance tradition he has inherited. Over the course of several attempts, he earnestly tries to argue that the Spanish theater is indeed a worthy inheritor of its Greek and Roman precursors, yet this argument breaks down at precisely those points where his discourse slides from a literary vision of text to a performative one, where the poetics of the medieval jongleuresque tradition breach the walls of his Renaissance literary criticism. Time and again he finds himself unwillingly confirming the suspicions of his scholarly audience that (according to their literary definitions) his works are indeed “vulgar,” “vile,” and “barbarous” and are no better than the theatrical buffooneries vilified by Hamlet.

Lope the Stranger Lope begins his manifesto with a rather straightforward declamatory sentence: “Mándanme, ingenios nobles, flor de España, / […] / que un arte de comedias os escriba / que al estilo del vulgo se reciba” (vv. 1, 9–10; 125).8 In the middle of this declaration, however, he inserts a very long, very baroque parenthesis comparing the members of the Academy of Madrid to such eminent figures as Plato and Cicero.

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Chapter Five (que en esta junta y academia insigne en breve tiempo excederéis no sólo a las de Italia que, envidiando a Grecia, ilustró Cicerón del mismo nombre, junto al Averno lago, sino a Atenas, adonde en su platónica Liceo se vio tan alta junta de filósofos) (vv. 2–8; 125)

Aside from noting Lope’s obvious ironies here, few scholars really spend much time on this digression (Rennert, for instance, entirely omits these verses in his English translation [Life 179–84]). Nevertheless, if we pause to consider its function, we can see that what is at stake here is the creation of a mythos of foundation that will directly connect the “classical art” to the “new art” while happily skipping over the barbaric influence of the medieval jongleuresque tradition. Thus, Lope posits an intellectual kinship between the classical academies— an image not coincidentally visualized for the Renaissance eye in Raphael’s School of Athens—and his own contemporary erudite audience. What he does not mention here, of course, is precisely the same period Cervantes also neglects to account for in his discussion of Rueda and the rise of the comedia; that is, the portion of history separating Athens from Madrid. Whether this omission is deliberate or simply due to the time constraints of Lope’s oral performance makes little difference. His effective leap from ancient Greece and Rome directly to early modern Spain creates tacit support for the notion that the medieval period contributed little to the contemporary cultural landscape. And if the sparkling court of Alfonso X el Sabio (1221–84)— which produced an enormously important body of legal, historical, and poetic work—can be dismissed this easily, how much more so the anonymous jongleurs who sang inside his palace and on the surrounding streets of his capital?9 By beginning in this fashion, Lope firmly inscribes himself within the ascendant humanist discourse whose authority he appears not to question. In the next segment, however, this unquestioning support for the literary begins to wane. Lope’s praise becomes further colored in irony as he bestows a backhanded compliment that at

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text one and the same time reaffirms and then undermines the authority of the very organization he currently addresses: Fácil parece este sujeto, y fácil fuera para cualquiera de vosotros que ha escrito menos de ellas y más sabe del arte de escribirlas y de todo, que lo que a mí me daña en esta parte es haberlas escrito sin el arte. (vv. 11–16; 125)

While Lope ironically defers to the theoretical knowledge of the Madrilenian academy’s illustrious philosophers (who, like the poets praised by Scala’s Stranger, apparently know more about the art of writing plays than he does), he also notes that these scholars have written far fewer of them. Moreover then, by the logic of equivalency he has created in the first section, he has also just reaffirmed and then undermined the authority of the classical precursors as well, whose own philosophers possessed no more concrete experience than Lope’s contemporaries. Thus, by association, he has also just called into question the very authority of the classical art itself. In the following segment Lope initiates a different rhetorical strategy, one that functions as both a defensive move and an attack: No porque yo ignorase los preceptos, gracias a Dios, que ya, tirón gramático, pasé los libros que trataban de esto antes que hubiese visto al sol diez veces discurrir desde el Aries a los Peces. (vv. 17–21; 125)

By arguing that he has long been schooled in the “grammar” of dramatic theory, Lope seeks to defend himself against the indictment that he is nothing more than a celebrated but ignorant player, one of Hamlet’s villainous clowns who does little more than wander about singing for his supper. More than this, however, he assails the very notion that this grammar is of any real importance; after all, he says, he learned everything there was to know before he was ten years old. The point of this obvious

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Chapter Five bit of bravado, of course, is to show that in many ways the classical art is child’s play, that any ten-year-old can memorize rules of composition, can learn Aristotelian theory. Lope’s implicit question remains: How many children can write successful plays? And with this he drives home his earlier point about his audience’s collective lack of experience. The next section marks the beginning of the first fissure in the text: Mas porque en fin hallé que las comedias estaban en España en aquel tiempo, no como sus primeros inventores pensaron que en el mundo se escribieran, mas como las trataron muchos bárbaros que enseñaron el vulgo a sus rudezas, y así se introdujeron de tal modo que quien con arte agora las escribe muere sin fama y galardón, que puede, entre los que carecen de su lumbre, más que razón y fuerza la costumbre. (vv. 22–32; 125–26)

This passage illustrates the centrality of the Thespis myth as the reigning critical paradigm for describing the birth—or in this case, rebirth—of Spanish theater. Specifically, Lope’s rhetoric is profoundly haunted here by the ghost of Rueda, who, as we have seen in Cervantes’s prologue, was widely viewed as a kind of Spanish “first actor,” a performer who appeared on the national scene after so many centuries of supposed theatrical inactivity. Indeed, in this and other texts, Lope designates Rueda as one of the “first inventors” of the Spanish stage and argues that—like the classical playwrights before him—he closely adhered to Aristotelian dramatic precepts. Nevertheless, given that the medieval ballad tradition was also very much a part of Rueda’s spectacle, he also happens to uncannily resemble the “barbaric” actor-managers Lope complains of here, popular entertainers whose theatrical pedigrees reach back to the jongleurs of the European Middle Ages. Hence, the “custom” Lope mentions above (like any tradition) does not surge out of a vacuum: in order to be “tradition”—as Scala’s Player so aptly reminds us—it must be informed by a

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text historical continuum of common performative practices. Lope’s adversarial opposition here—between the Western theater’s “first inventors” and the “barbarians” who came along later and badly deformed it—strongly implies that it was the Iberian Thespis himself, Rueda, who very likely contaminated the pure literary drama of the nascent Spanish theater with his own medieval performative “rudeza.” Lope’s discourse in this passage suggests (for better or worse) that what corroded the “lumbre,” “razón,” and “fuerza” of the rediscovered “classical art” is precisely the caustic influence of the “barbaric” jongleuresque tradition from which Rueda’s performance borrowed so heavily. In the next segment Lope returns briefly to his privileging of the “classical art,” although this privileging remains short-lived: Verdad es que yo he escrito algunas veces siguiendo el arte que conocen pocos, mas luego que salir por otra parte veo los monstruos, de apariencias llenos, adonde acude el vulgo y las mujeres que este triste ejercicio canonizan, a aquel hábito bárbaro me vuelvo, y, cuando he de escribir una comedia, encierro los preceptos con seis llaves; saco a Terencio y Plauto de mi estudio, para que no me den voces, que suele dar gritos la verdad en libros mudos, y escribo por el arte que inventaron los que el vulgar aplauso pretendieron, porque, como las paga el vulgo, es justo hablarle en necio para darle gusto. (vv. 33–48; 126)

Lope states here that at one time he wrote according to the classical art’s constraints, but that when he saw the success the competing plays experienced, he returned to his “barbarous” ways and locked up the “civilized” authorities in order to devote himself fully to that lesser art preserved by those who have always sought the applause of their vulgar spectators.10 With this admission, Lope confirms the fears of Chrétien de Troyes and Hamlet that, whenever performers must choose between

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Chapter Five fidelity to the high-cultural literary text and the applause of a popular audience, they will invariably choose the latter. Thus, Lope winds up bolstering the very thing he set out to supplant. From the beginning of this section of the Arte nuevo he has endeavored to defend himself against the charge that he writes without art; that is, without well-defined literary precepts. Yet, he has ended up confirming this accusation by admitting that he routinely banishes the classical authorities from his study; that he has found it better to follow the traditions of those performers he calls “bárbaros,” “vulgares,” and “necios,” performers whose “art” is frankly all too jongleuresque. In the minds of his audience this is as much as to say that he does indeed write without art. What began as Lope’s attempt to acknowledge and sustain the myth of the classical foundations of early modern Spanish drama has ended with the re-inscription of the medieval precursors into the debate. Thus, this entire section has become a dead end. For, we can locate no synthesis between the polar extremes of the classical literary art and the medieval jongleuresque tradition. In short, there is no “new art” yet to be found in Lope’s manifesto. And faced with this unnerving truth, Lope simply starts over in an attempt to “take it from the top,” hoping perhaps to get a better run at it the second time around. Critics seeking unity in the Arte nuevo have not been totally oblivious to this first disjuncture, but in trying to account for it within the parameters of some overarching rhetorical schema they have labeled the first five stanzas a “captatio benevolentiae” (Rozas 179) or an introductory preamble (José Prades 51). Nevertheless, the fact remains that the argument of this first section has proven unconvincing at best (even to Lope himself), and as we shall see, the next section will become nothing more than a variation on a theme: Ya tiene la comedia verdadera su fin propuesto, como todo género de poema o poesis, y éste ha sido imitar las acciones de los hombres y pintar de aquel siglo las costumbres. También cualquiera imitación poética se hace de tres cosas, que son plática, verso dulce, armonía, o sea la música,

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text que en esto fue común con la tragedia, sólo diferenciándola en que trata las acciones humildes y plebeyas, y la tragedia las reales y altas. ¡Mirad si hay en las nuestras pocas faltas! (vv. 49–61; 126–27)

As with the opening of the Arte nuevo, the initial segment of the second section again harkens back to the classical world. This time, however, Lope attempts the myth of equivalencies not by relating the present academy to its presumed predecessors, but by going straight to the primary source of classical literary authority: Aristotle’s Poetics. Like Scala’s Stranger, Lope finds it useful to defer to “the Philosopher” in order to establish the limits of interpretation for this second Golden Age. Glossing Francesco Robortello’s (1516–67) version of the Poetics, he once again invokes the discursive authority of Aristotelianism in order to establish the classical definition of the term comedia. At the end of this stanza he makes what he thinks will be a foundational tie, arguing that the Spanish plays rarely lack any of the essential classical elements: “Mirad si hay en las nuestras pocas faltas.” And here it occurs to him to offer an example: Acto fueron llamadas, porque imitan las vulgares acciones y negocios. Lope de Rueda fue en España ejemplo de estos preceptos, y hoy se ven impresas sus comedias de prosa tan vulgares, que introduce mecánicos oficios y el amor de una hija de un herrero, de donde se ha quedado la costumbre de llamar entremeses las comedias antiguas, donde está en su fuerza el arte, siendo una acción y entre plebeya gente, porque entremés de rey jamás se ha visto, y aquí se ve que el arte, por bajeza de estilo, vino a estar en tal desprecio, y el rey en la comedia para el necio. (vv. 62–76; 127)

Here we encounter the second textual fissure in the Arte nuevo, and once again it revolves around Rueda’s jongleuresque theater. 201

Chapter Five This latest rupture occurs precisely because, even as Lope seeks to tie the Spanish comedia to its presumed literary predecessor (that is, the “comedia verdadera,” by which he means Greek comedy), his rhetoric once again subtly implies that the former has forsaken the latter’s theoretical values. He begins by insisting that Rueda was an inheritor of the classical art, a writer whose commitment to Aristotelianism was plainly manifest in his respect for the unities. Rueda initially seems then to be a literary stalwart whose fine example has been betrayed by the “vulgar” Spanish dramatists who came after him. Yet, as Lope moves deeper into a discussion of Rueda’s plays themselves, he seems unable to keep his own discourse from pitting the classical writers against the “barbarous” actors of the Spanish jongleuresque tradition, including Rueda himself. Thus, what stands out most in this section is that the early Spanish theater was “vulgar” from its inception, and that this vulgarity continues to influence the plays up through Lope’s day. And if this is indeed true, then what the Arte nuevo demonstrates here is that the pasos, entremeses, and autos of early modern Spain are not, in fact, pillars of classical theory, but rather “prosaic” farces that have caused the entire concept of “art” to fall into disrepute. If Rueda was indeed an “inheritor” of Aristotelian precepts, it is an inheritance he himself immediately squandered. Hence, if Lope had hoped to tie the comedia to the classical stage through Rueda, he has demonstrated instead just how “barbarous” the whole of early modern Spanish theater really is. For a second time he finds himself at an ambiguous dead end, and once again must start over. Aristóteles pinta en su Poética, puesto que escuramente, su principio: la contienda de Atenas y Megara sobre cuál de ellos fue inventor primero. Los megarenses dicen que Epicarmo, aunque Atenas quisiera que Magnetes. Elio Donato dice que tuvieron principio en los antiguos sacrificios; da por autor de la tragedia a Tespis, siguiendo a Horacio que lo mismo afirma, como de las comedias a Aristófanes. Homero, a imitación de la comedia,

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text La Odisea compuso, mas La Ilíada de la tragedia fue famoso ejemplo, a cuya imitación llamé epopeya a mi Jerusalem y añadí «trágica»; y así a su Infierno, Purgatorio y Cielo del célebre poeta Dante Alígero llaman comedia todos comúnmente y el Maneti en su prólogo lo siente. (vv. 77–96; 127–28)

If up to this point Lope has only hinted at the Thespis myth as a way of tracing his works back to the classical origins of drama, he invokes it directly in this segment by designating Thespis as the “first inventor” of Western tragedy. Still, if we are expecting that this latest Aristotelian evocation will enlighten us, we are soon disappointed. The opening lines of this latest trajectory constitute a two-part digression that is both highly intriguing and totally antithetical to Lope’s project. In trying one more time to create an equivalency between his own “comedy” and the Greek “comedy,” he attempts to tether his Jerusalén conquistada to the literary authority of both Homer and Dante. But this allusion to the generalized use of “comedia” in relation to the Homeric epics and the Divine Comedy destroys any chance he might have to connect his plays to the classical ones. For, if the term comedia can be applied indiscriminately to both “dramatic” and “nondramatic” texts alike, on what lexical authority can Lope rely when he insists that his theater is commensurate with that of its ancient inventors? If he is attempting to connect the Spanish comedia to the literary authority of its presumed Greek prototypes, then he has just nullified his best argument by showing that there is nothing really particular about the term comedia that relates solely to theater—let alone, his theater. By erasing the specificity of his nomenclature he has raised the specter that perhaps his is, after all, a bastard art. Again he confronts a rift in his argument and for a fourth time must start over. In the next section Lope seems to shift tactics by glossing Aelius Donatus (the fourth-century Roman grammarian and commentator) on the evolution of what is called Greek New Comedy and on the function and relative prestige of the chorus. Here, instead of trying (unsuccessfully) to tie the Spanish

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Chapter Five plays to the “razón,” “lumbre,” and “fuerza” of the classical ones, he endeavors to tie the former to the latter by demonstrating parallel deviations from the established norm. We might suspect that what he hopes to accomplish in this current trajectory is to further demonstrate his own respect for the ancient precepts, while at the same time pointing out that even some of the greatest classical writers were accused—like him—of ignoring them. This latest strategy leads him to make the following assertion: Por argumento la tragedia tiene la historia, y la comedia el fingimiento; por eso fue llamada planipedia del argumento humilde, pues la hacía sin coturno y teatro el recitante. Hubo comedias palïatas, mimos, togatas, atelanas, tabernarias, que también eran como agora varias. (vv. 111–18; 128)

Here Lope finally does succeed in establishing an equivalency between the classical stage and that of early modern Spain. Yet, this argument, it should be stressed, leans precariously toward a vision of theater grounded more on Huston’s performative notion of the simple stage than on any literary art. Closely following Donatus, Lope differentiates tragedy from comedy by contrasting their relative foundations in truth and fiction. However, whereas Donatus counterposes “de historia” with “de fictis,” Lope translates the second term as “fingimiento,” and although he undoubtedly seeks to merely distinguish fact from fiction, his translation introduces linguistic resonances that are more performative than literary. For, what is theater but acting, and what is acting but “fingimiento”? And if, as Alarcón’s La verdad sospechosa makes abundantly clear, “fingimiento” is the primary emblem of the theater, then, as Lope points out, certain elements of the tragic costume and even the stage itself are unnecessary complications of the performance space created by the actor. Lope, of course, is not unique in seeing an important connection between the planipedia and the early modern theater. His contemporary, Thomas Heywood—in the Arte nuevo’s

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text English cousin An Apology for Actors—not only insists on a nexus between the Roman popular theater and the Italian commedia dell’arte, but explicitly links several touring commedia actors with a number of contemporary English performers such as Tarlton (D1). More recently, Elaine Fantham has outlined the many “affinities” that tie these late Roman performances to the commedia dell’arte (23–32), while Ezio Levi has demonstrated the important influence these Italian improvisational players had on the seventeenth-century Spanish stage itself (20–26). Thus, comparing the comedia to the planipedia is hardly the most fortunate of strategies for Lope. Instead of tying his theater in any effective way to the delimiting literary authority of the classical erudite world, he has just tied it instead to the late Roman popular theater—a theater about to descend into complete “decadence,” a theater on the verge of becoming the multiform, ad hoc, medieval jongleuresque tradition that the humanist literary establishment would prefer to forget. Obviously, this link will hardly improve the standing of the Spanish comedia in the eyes of Lope’s learned audience. For, just as the puritanical I. G., in his A Refutation of the Apology for Actors, condemns the “Mimicks, otherwise called Planipedes” for their extreme licentiousness (22–23), the neoAristotelians of Madrid will condemn the “depraved” actors of the Spanish corral. Lope immediately senses this and tries to retreat from this connection by admitting that the classical authorities routinely awarded prizes to the playwrights for reproving “vicios y costumbres” in their plays (vv. 120–23). In order to bring the discussion back into an arena of discourse that his erudite colleagues will accept, Lope has to endow both his plays and those of Terence and Plautus with some higher value than mere entertainment. This retreat from equivalency comes just slightly too late, however, and Lope finds himself at yet another impasse. His connection of one “artless” theater with another has once again torn the fabric of his manifesto.

Lope the Player Having finally grown weary, then, after four unsuccessful attempts at the creation of an equivalency between the classical stage and his own (one framed within the acceptable literary

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Chapter Five discourse of the Madrilenian academy), Lope seemingly decides to abandon this project entirely: Pero ya me parece estáis diciendo que es traducir los libros y cansaros pintaros esta máquina confusa. Creed que ha sido fuerza que os trujese a la memoria algunas cosas de éstas, porque veáis que me pedís que escriba arte de hacer comedias en España, donde cuanto se escribe es contra el arte, y que decir cómo serán agora contra el antiguo y qué en razón se funda es pedir parecer a mi experiencia, no al arte, porque el arte verdad dice, que el ignorante vulgo contradice. (vv. 128–40; 128–29)

He admits that by glossing Donatus and others, by trying to relate their notions of classical drama with the current performative practices, he has succeeded only in creating a theoretical confusion. In essence, he briefly admits defeat by conceding the difficulty of discussing the art of making plays at a time and place where everything that is staged goes against the whole concept of “art” as his audience understands it, by highlighting the near impossibility of defining the “new art” against the “old art” when the latter can be discussed in terms of “reason,” while the former can be discussed only in terms of “experience.” In sum, he plainly admits that his endeavor to defend the Spanish comedia from within the rhetoric of classical literary theory has repeatedly come to naught, as the next sixteen verses make clear: Si pedís arte, yo os suplico, ingenios, que leáis al doctísimo Utinense Robortello y veréis sobre Aristóteles, y aparte en lo que escribe de comedia, cuanto por muchos libros hay difuso, que todo lo de agora está confuso. Si pedís parecer de las que agora están en posesión y que es forzoso que el vulgo con sus leyes establezca la vil quimera de este monstruo cómico,

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text diré el que tengo, y perdonad, pues debo obedecer a quien mandarme puede, que, dorando el error del vulgo, quiero deciros de qué modo las querría, ya que seguir el arte no hay remedio, en estos dos extremos dando un medio. (vv. 141–56; 129)

Lope, it seems, has decided to abandon his attempts at equivalencies. His parallel construction in these two stanzas (Si pedís [. . .] / Si pedís [. . .]) creates an either/or dichotomy by which he forces his audience to choose their mode of discourse. In essence, he says, “I cannot continue to compare two very different modes of representation in terms of only one of these modes: if you wish to know about the ‘classical art,’ go to the source of its discursive world: Aristotle and his commentators. If, however, you wish to know something about current performative practices, ‘vulgar’ and ‘vile’ though they may be, I will tell you all I know.” In this, Lope apparently shifts from playing the role of Scala’s Stranger to performing that of his Player. Yet, even as he makes this concession—however ironic—to the medieval jongleuresque tradition, he seeks forgiveness for deferring to its barbarous authority by uncannily echoing Timoneda with his own mea culpa: “y perdonad.” This formula of contrition is ultimately an indication of the same kind of resistance to performance exhibited by Hamlet, and it lies at the heart of the Arte nuevo’s many ambivalences. If, as we have said, the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries mark an exponential acceleration in the awkward transition from the oral, performative poetics of nearly all pre-modern literature toward the written, literary poetics of the modern world, then drama remains a problematic genre apart. Unlike modern novelists, who can wield considerable control over the final version of the text that reaches the reader, modern dramatists must continue to rely—if only as a self-imposed fiction—on performative mediators who imperfectly transmit their words to an audience. For this reason, Lope’s request for forgiveness here manifests the deep uneasiness literary authors necessarily feel when trying to bridge the gap between stage and page, a gap that hardly existed prior to the time of the writing of the Arte nuevo when

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Chapter Five concern for a stable, reproducible, authorial text had not yet become paramount.11 Thus, Lope does not long remain consistent in his decision to defer to the “vil quimera de este monstruo cómico” (v. 150; 129), since he almost immediately seeks yet another reconciliation. By “dorando el error del vulgo” (v. 153; 129), Lope hopes to find a middle ground—“dando un medio” (v. 156; 129)—between the two extremes, and once again hopes to have it both ways. As Lope moves, then, into what most critics refer to as the “doctrinal” section of the Arte nuevo—the body of the work wherein he expounds on the mixed nature of the Spanish comedia—his stratagem shifts to a two-fold attack on the nagging antithesis he seeks to bridge. First, he insists that the comedia does not—or should not—completely supplant the rules of the classical theater; at the very worst it should merely “bend” rather than “break” them. Thus, in his discussion of the Aristotelian unities he strives to show how the comedia can accommodate both visions: in the case of the unity of action, he wholeheartedly concurs with the Aristotelian rule; with regard to the unity of time he argues that, even when the average Spaniard demands to see the history of the world “hasta el Final Juïcio desde el Génesis” (v. 208; 131), these demands can be accommodated by placing the temporal leaps between acts (like the gaps that occur in the virtual text between the jornadas of El último godo). Second, he continues to argue that, even when the early modern Spanish dramas diverge from the established rules of the classical art, there exist precedents even among the Greek and Roman plays themselves. In a discussion of the introduction of royal characters into a form labeled “comedia,” he points to Plautus’s Amphitryon; in a discussion of the presence of dancing on the stage, he relates the “baile” with the “coro antiguo”; and in admonishing the playwright against creating “imposibilidades” in the plot, he holds up Sophocles as an example (“no acordarse Edipo / del haber muerto por su mano a Layo” [vv. 292–93; 133]). Most of all, however, throughout this section he exhibits the same ambivalence toward performance we have seen in Timoneda’s prologues, at times privileging the literary art (“perdonen los preceptos” [v. 158; 129]), while at other times deferring to the performance tradition (“cierren los doctos esta vez los labios” [v. 173; 130];

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text “pero no vaya a verlas quien se ofende” [v. 200; 130]). In sum, he continues to oscillate between what Fish would call two conflicting interpretive communities (Is There a Text 14). The most interesting aspect of the “doctrinal” section is precisely how it transitions into what Rozas calls the text’s “parte epilogal” (180). This fifth trajectory begins with a discussion of the concept of tragicomedy, shifts to a discussion of the neoclassical unities, and then to the generic divisions of the literary text. It moves shortly thereafter to a discussion of linguistic style, of meter, of rhetorical figures, and finally of themes. It then transitions into a consideration of the length of the performances and ends with a reflection on the sets and costumes. In this transition we can detect a subtle shift from a literary to a performative understanding of the early Spanish stage. And as Lope drifts from one mode to another, his discourse turns more and more on the residual influences of the medieval jongleuresque praxes that have plagued him all along: Los trajes nos dijera Julio Pólux, si fuera necesario, que, en España, es de las cosas bárbaras que tiene la comedia presente recibidas: sacar un turco un cuello de cristiano y calzas atacadas un romano. (vv. 356–61; 135)

For all his relative success in synthesizing his two stated extremes, Lope ends this “doctrinal” section not by solidifying that synthesis, but by undermining it one further time. His latest words on the Spanish comedia again demonstrate the power of the medieval performance tradition to mold and define the early modern dramatic forms. Lope is not oblivious to this, and with his utterance of the word “bárbaras” (a word he has not used until now in the “doctrinal” section), he sees whence his treatise has taken him: Mas ninguno de todos llamar puedo más bárbaro que yo, pues contra el arte me atrevo a dar preceptos y me dejo llevar de la vulgar corriente, adonde me llaman ignorante Italia y Francia; pero, ¡qué puedo hacer si tengo escritas,

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Chapter Five con una que he acabado esta semana, cuatrocientas y ochenta y tres comedias! Porque fuera de seis, las demás todas pecaron contra el arte gravemente. Sustento, en fin, lo que escribí y conozco que, aunque fueran mejor de otra manera, no tuvieran el gusto que han tenido porque a veces lo que es contra lo justo por la misma razón deleita el gusto. (vv. 362–76; 135)

This segment should be read as a companion to the opening two stanzas of the text, because together they create a frame within which to view the Arte nuevo. Lope creates a series of contrastive parallels between the first segment and this last, parallels that trace an arc over the middle segments of the text and that unite its various trajectories by demonstrating his own awareness of the manifesto’s problematic fissures. In the first section Lope mentions the famous classical academies of ancient Greece and Rome and compares them favorably to the Academy of Madrid, thus implying a reverence for their critical influence; in the last section he makes reference to the neoclassical academies of France and Italy and implies that he has grown indifferent to their authority. In the prologue he praises the great knowledge of his erudite audience with regard to their understanding of the art of writing plays; in the epilogue he compares this with his own experience of writing several hundred—which he pointedly notes were very well received—and by implication finds the academic experience wanting. Finally, in the opening verses he complains of being hindered by the accusation that he has written his plays without art; in his conclusion he states that it is often better to write against the rules in order to please his paying public. What these frame stanzas demonstrate is that Lope recognizes his own inability to synthesize the Stranger and the Player quarreling within him. He remains locked in a dichotomy from which he cannot escape, a dichotomy that will forever leave him begging forgiveness from one group or another. And it is in this light we should examine the next ten verses: Humanae cur sit speculum comoedia vitae, quaeve ferat juveni commoda quaeve seni,

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text quid praeter lepidosque sales excultaque verba et genus eloquii purius inde petas, quae gravia in mediis occurrant lusibus et quae jucundis fuerint seria mixta jocis, quam sint fallaces servi, quam improba semper fraudeque et omnigenis foemina plena dolis, quam miser, infelix, stultus et ineptus amator, quam vix succedant quae bene coepta putes. (vv. 377–86; 135–36) [Why is the comedia a mirror held up to life? What benefits other than the pleasure of its entertainment does it provide for both young and old? What good is it, you ask, aside from the charms of its jests, the elegance of its words, and the purity of its eloquence? In the middle of its fun and games, what serious questions does it ponder; mixed among its jests, what transcendent issues does it consider? That the servant who seems true, is, in fact, false; that the woman who seems honest and chaste, is, in fact, perverse, full of whiles, and unmitigatedly fallacious; that the lover who seems happy, is, in fact, unhappy, miserable, foolish, and simple; and that the thing that seems to begin well often ends poorly. (my translation)]12

This is the third time in the Arte nuevo that Lope has ruminated on the question of the purpose of the theater and its function as a “mirror held up to life,” and in doing so, he employs a metaphor that both Shakespeare and Scala use in their own discussions of the topic.13 For Lope, however, this performative “mirror” reveals something very different from the images of the “mirrors” of either Hamlet or Il finto marito, where the voice that speaks the metaphor clearly belongs to the literary critic (in the guise of the author/director, Hamlet, and the welleducated Stranger). In the Arte nuevo, however, the voice that stands out is not Lope the theorist, but Lope the Player; or, more accurately, the face staring out of the “mirror” is Lope the performance theorist critiquing Lope the literary playwright. This only Latin passage of the text becomes a final gloss on the Arte nuevo itself, because it represents a simulacrum of the process that Lope has just gone through in trying to discuss one medium in terms of another, in trying to define the limits of one discourse from within a discourse prejudiced from the start against the first. He makes this fact explicit by 211

Chapter Five both asking and answering the essential questions about the performative Spanish comedia from within the language of the classical literary tradition itself. For, this is in reality what he has been doing all along: discussing the Spanish popular theater on Greek and Latin erudite terms. And just why is the comedia a mirror held up to life? Precisely because it highlights the baroque preoccupation with “being” and “seeming.” More importantly, it demonstrates that “the thing that seems to begin well often ends poorly” (my emphasis). Together, these represent Lope’s own criticisms of his manifesto. He began hoping to create a myth of equivalence that would tie his theater—in some acceptably erudite fashion—to the classical drama, to see a likeness of the ancient literature in his own plays. But, as it turns out, the mirror image is only an inversion and a distortion likely to deceive: the classical academies only seem to be the precursors of the contemporary literary academies of Europe; the collective experience of the members of the Academy of Madrid only seems to equal that of Lope; the “new art” only seems to have to justify itself in terms of the “old art.” In the end, Lope says, his numerous attempts at reconciling the “literary” with the “performative,” each of which seemed to begin so well, have all ended badly. He admits, in fact, there is no synthesis. And this recognition leads directly into his concluding statement: Oye atento, y del arte no disputes, que en la comedia se hallará modo que, oyéndola, se puede saber todo. (vv. 387–89; 136)

Here, Lope simply refuses any further comment on the Spanish comedia from within the classical literary discourse. His final assertion—which he frames in an aural rhetoric for a listening audience—is that the only way to really know the comedia is in performance. This is quite a remarkable declaration, ceding—as it does— definitive textual authority to the corral actors. We might expect such a statement, of course, from Rueda, whose plays were primarily performance-driven texts and who became an author only posthumously when Timoneda did us the immense favor

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Playwrights and the Actorly Text of publishing his scripts; we might expect such sentiments from Scala, whose commedia dell’arte scenarios are little more than blueprints for performances greatly enhanced by the improvisational skills of the zanni; we might even expect such words from Shakespeare, who, before becoming the “center” of the Western literary canon (Bloom, Western Canon 45), was first and foremost an actor in a successful theatrical troupe, and who seemingly gave no more thought to his future literary reputation than did Rueda. Lope de Vega, however, was at base a professional author, a member of the vanguard of post-Gutenberg literary figures for whom writing was something more than just a cultivated hobby. Thus, his deference here to the performance text has caused no small amount of consternation among critics.14 Yet, even this deference itself is an integral part of the dialogue that has been unfolding throughout the Arte nuevo; it is as much a product of the performative dialectic functioning within the text as any of Lope’s other ambiguous statements. For, at its core lies the quintessentially jongleuresque assumption that all texts are inherently oral, that the written word exists primarily in order to provide scripts for future performances. That Lope would view the corral rather than the bookseller’s storehouse as the ultimate locus of his work, demonstrates how very different his seventeenth-century concept of text is from our own. As we have seen, Cervantes—who perhaps did more than anyone else to establish the parameters of modern authorship— bitterly resented Lope’s theatrical success, and considered himself to be a literary failure simply because he could find no actor-manager willing to stage his plays. Likewise, despite (or perhaps because of) his own highly successful literary career, Lope shares with Cervantes this very jongleuresque vision of performance-oriented texts; he simply does not see himself— as many future playwrights eventually would—as an exclusively literary dramatist. Lope’s abiding self-identification with his actors ultimately remains perhaps the most enduring vestige of jongleuresque performance in the Arte nuevo. For, this literary dramatist still considers himself something of a “player,” even though the increasing division of labor between playwright and performer means that his actual contribution

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Chapter Five to the corral spectacle—unlike that of Rueda, Scala, or Shakespeare—ends precisely at the tip of his pen. We will never know, of course, how many of the illustrious members of the Academy of Madrid took up Lope’s challenge and revisited the corral (perhaps surreptitiously) in order to view the performance with a renewed critical eye; in any event, it is unlikely the experience would have changed any minds. Still, a firsthand look at the comedia in performance, measuring it on its own terms, would have revealed more or less what Lope ended up insisting at the end of the Arte nuevo, and what most of the academicians had undoubtedly suspected all along: that the theater of the early Spanish stage had very little to do with the ancient Greek and Roman literary worlds; that the “new art of making plays” depended very little on the “old art,” if by the latter term one meant rules associated with classical drama. “Listening” to the comedia, these humanist scholars would have confronted an object that was still very much a performer’s art, an art still very much grounded on the performative poetics that had thrived throughout much of the Iberian Middle Ages. They would have experienced a mise-en-scene imbued with all the acrobatic energy of medieval fools, clowns, and buffoons; they would have witnessed a play frequently invaded by jongleurs who—as barely disguised narrators—sang or recited the selfsame ballads that their performative precursors had sung for generations before them; they would have encountered a multiform spectacle in which the literary work— when not existing merely to provide an excuse for the performance itself—often survived as just one more performative variant of texts that had circulated orally for perhaps hundreds of years. In short, they would have come face to face with a very “barbarous,” very actorly, very jongleuresque theater indeed.

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Conclusion

I return here at the end to the Thespis myth and to its application to the so-called rebirth of Western drama. We are told that this rebirth occurred not only within the physical confines of the Church, but also within the interpretive confines of the Mass sometime in the ninth century. As the Quem quaeritis trope evolved and became more and more elaborate—which is to say, as its dialogic exchange between the “Angel” and the “Marys” was transposed from the celebration of Christ’s resurrection to the celebration of his birth (a dialogue now occurring between an “Angel” and a set of “Shepherds”)—its staging also became more and more elaborate. What began in the tenth century as the mere intercalation of sung dialogue into the antiphonal song became, as the trope spread across Europe in the eleventh century, a fully developed theatrical event, no longer limited to the choir, but set among the various naves in what has been labeled “mansion” staging. Soon the sacred edifice itself could not contain this theater (for reasons both of space and doctrinal purity), and the plays were forced to move outside the walls of the church itself, becoming the folk drama of the popular festivals and the mystery and morality plays of the great processional cycles. And as the dramas became more and more elaborate, they became more and more secular, resulting in the humanistic literary dramas of early modern Europe. Of course, the problem with this evolutionary model is that there are a number of crucial missing links. The medieval liturgical plays are separated from the early modern literary dramas by much more than just the passage of time. The biggest difference between Everyman and Much Ado About Nothing, between the Auto de los Reyes Magos and La dama duende, is really what I would call “performative energy,” and the 215

Conclusion standard historiographical narrative simply cannot account for this difference. What stands out in liturgical drama is its very static approach to performance, a stasis we can trace directly back to the Quem quaeritis itself. By definition, a choral dialogue between stationary monks sitting in a church choir will not have a great deal of physical movement. Likewise, the later mansion staging—which essentially amounted to tableaux vivants crammed into the constrictive space of the naves, and requiring the audience to move from scene to scene—remained an inert performative mode. And this physical inertia exerted a profound influence on the imaginative formation of the theater it engendered. Liturgical plays, by and large, exhibit a great deal of representational dialogue coming from the mouths of very allegorical figures. As a didactic theater, designed to aid in the teaching of doctrine and in the promotion of faith, the Church drama is very much an author-centered activity that cannot help but create rather cardboard characters. The jongleuresque theater I have explored in this book, on the other hand, indeed was exploding with performative energy. The jugglers, acrobats, and fools of the popular tradition literally bounded into the town square, taking possession of the simple stage and mesmerizing anyone who happened to be within earshot. They moved easily among the crowd, engaging people and making fun of them; they threw dangerous things in the air; they danced on swords; they played lively music; they “kidnapped” spectators and made them as much a part of the spectacle as the performers themselves. To really see the difference between the elegant but static performance of the church naves and the bawdy and energetic performance of the street just outside the church doors, one need only compare the Gregorian chant with the popular songs we examined in Chapter 2. Likewise, the epic singers of the cantares de gesta carried their audiences from one part of Europe to another, presenting before their imaginative eyes stories full of life and death, stories of battles, of palace intrigue, of love, of honor, and of betrayal. And the characters who inhabited these epic worlds were no mere figures of cardboard; they were, on the contrary, much larger than life: Charlemagne, Roland, the Cid. This was a performer-based theater whose be all and end all was ludic rather than didactic, entertaining rather than teach-

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Conclusion ing. It was a theater whose performative poetics reached their apogee in the Italian commedia dell’arte, while the performative poetics of the medieval liturgical drama really came to fruition in the Spanish auto sacramental. Again, as with the historiographical narrative associated with the development of Greek tragedy and the City Dionysia out of the dithyramb, I do not dispute the facts that surround the evolution of medieval liturgical drama. I merely reject the importance that those facts have been assigned by most writers of Western theater history. Like Latin itself, Western theater simply did not die out with the fall of the Roman Empire, and therefore had no need to be “reborn” in the church or elsewhere. Liturgical drama was but one of several performance genres thriving between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries, and like Church Latin itself—which existed alongside the evolving vernacular languages—it owes its literary prominence to the fact that it was the genre most closely tied to the political and intellectual centers of power and thus commanded the most attention and respect. As Bakhtin reminds us, “‘official society’ (that is, the privileged classes), with their ‘official’ arts and sciences, were located by and large beyond the square” (Dialogic 132). Yet, precisely because this official theater did not exist in a performative vacuum, its so-called development from antiphonal song to morality play to secular drama was anything but a purely autochthonous evolution. The performative etymologies of the early modern stage are much more complex than we have traditionally been willing to admit. Following the work of Else, I argued in Chapter 1 that Thespis’s possible ties to the performance of the Homeric epics provide the impetus for his separation from the dithyrambic chorus; that is, for his status as the Western world’s so-called first actor. I argued that as a possible singer of tales, accustomed to impersonating characters and their speech, he saw a dialogic potentiality in the dithyramb that others simply did not. This conjecture, of course, is difficult—if not impossible— to prove because of its historical remoteness, but its corollary for the development of medieval European theater is not so far removed from our present experience. Study after study has shown that the so-called evolution of the medieval liturgical drama into early modern secular drama is really a history of

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Conclusion what I would call its jongleurization; that is, of its “contamination” by the popular performance tradition. And just as the Church itself, during its own evolution and expansion, modified and incorporated many pagan customs from the existing local religious traditions as a way of efficaciously bringing people into the fold, liturgical drama modified and incorporated many of the paradigms of the local performance traditions as it too evolved and expanded, becoming more and more secular in the process. In other words, as the locus of the liturgical dramas moved from inside the ecclesiastical edifice out onto the streets, the vitality of its language began to resemble that of the witty medieval storytellers, its high-born characters became more and more like those of the epics and romances, and its lowborn characters began to interact with the audience in ways more than reminiscent of the buffoons and acrobats who juggled knives in the town square. Above all, its themes became less and less doctrinaire and all the more recognizably human. In The Western Canon, Bloom poses two provocative questions about Shakespeare and his work: (1) in the context of a discussion on New Historicism he asks: “If ‘social energies’ wrote King Lear and Hamlet, why exactly were social energies more productive in the son of the Stratford artisan than in the burly bricklayer Ben Jonson?” (60); and (2) with regard to the fact that Shakespeare’s plays were only edited and published posthumously he queries: “How can there have been a writer for whom the final shape of King Lear was a careless or throwaway matter?” (52). While Bloom may have raised these questions solely for their rhetorical impact, I will presume to answer them nonetheless by suggesting that, in fact, each answers the other. I would suggest that the reason Shakespeare excelled in the creation of character (the reason he has become, as Bloom says, the Western canon itself), yet at the same time the reason he seemed so uninterested in his position within that canon, is primarily because he was more an actor than a writer. Shakespeare, the player, understood better than Jonson, the writer, that a performer simply cannot act literature. An actor cannot act a medieval allegory any more than a performer today can act a Marxist, Lacanian, or postcolonial reading. These are intellectual issues that are solely available to the reader

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Conclusion and/or spectator, and are wholly unrelated to the aesthetics and praxes of performance. An actor can only act character; can only simulate a human being with his or her concomitant hopes, motivations, and fears. The determination of that character’s meaning (or lack thereof) within the context of the play or within the context of the play’s social milieu simply lies beyond the scope of the performer’s work. Thus, Hamlet, Falstaff, and Rosalind exist as unique personas precisely because they were conceived both in and for performance by a man who profoundly understood acting. That Shakespeare cared little for what happened to these brilliant characters once the run of the show ended demonstrates the inherent primacy of performativity inscribed within his plays. For, what good are published scripts to an actor who has already memorized his part in a play that may never be produced again? In many ways, Shakespeare had much more in common with Lope’s and Scala’s actorly comediantes and comicos than he ever did with such writerly contemporaries as Marlow and Jonson. These men were, after all, primarily poets; Shakespeare was only secondarily so, even while he eclipsed everyone else in this, his ancillary, vocation. Thus the question “How can we account for the grandeur of the Spanish comedia in the absence of a strong medieval liturgical drama?” is, to my mind, really misplaced, positing, as it does, the utter necessity of some kind of Iberian Quem quaeritis without which La vida es sueño could not have been written. What particularly interests me in Bloom’s discussion of Shakespeare is the way in which he points to precursors who, as we have said, are themselves tied to the medieval jongleuresque tradition: Boccaccio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (“Like Iago, the Pardoner combines the gifts of dramatist or storyteller, actor, and director” [Western Canon 122]). And without wishing to deny Shakespeare or Lope or Molière their respective geniuses, I would suggest that in many ways their “originality” is far more dependent on the performance traditions they encountered every day in the streets of London, Madrid, and Paris than on the literary traditions of the Church drama. Falstaff, Hamlet, Segismundo, Don Juan, Sganarelle, and Tartuffe are all impossibilities within the performative aesthetics of the morality play or the courtly

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Conclusion masque; denied the energy, both physical and imaginative, of the jongleuresque performance tradition—which is to say, reduced merely to representing abstractions like “Gluttony,” “Indecision,” “Impetuousness,” “Lust,” “Ingenuity,” and “Hypocrisy”—these characters would simply suffocate and die.

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Notes Introduction 1. Although I will occasionally and deliberately employ such phrases as “early modern theater” and “early modern Spanish stage,” my rationale for using the general phrase “early Spanish stage” (in both my title and throughout the course of this book) is as follows: Regarding my use of the rather vague word “early,” I have borrowed this term from a book entitled The Genius of the Early English Theater (Barnet et al.) in order to cover all medieval and early modern theatrical activity in Spain and Spanish America. In other words, the phrase “early Spanish stage” includes everything from the performance of the early twelfth-century cantares de gesta up through Sor Juana’s late seventeenth-century Los empeños de una casa. Regarding my use of the word stage, this term covers everything from Hollis Huston’s “simple stage”—which consists of nothing more than the empty circle a street performer opens up in a crowd (69–89)—up through the architectural structures that enclose the seventeenth-century corral stage. In essence, I have deliberately chosen the locution “early Spanish stage” because it covers as many dramatic and/or theatrical and/or performative things as possible in the fewest necessary words. 2. I am very much aware that the term performative has a specific meaning within Butler’s work on gender construction. However, I will use this term throughout the course of this book in ways that do not conform to Butler’s usage. My rationale for this is twofold: First, since I am concerned with performance as process (rather than product) I have found that the adjectival use of the word performance (as in “performance text” and “performance event”) too often implies a product, whereas the term performative (as in “performative gesture” and “performative moment”) does imply—as it does in speech-act theory, from which Butler herself borrows the term—a process. (My one exception to this will be my regular usage of the standard term “performance tradition.”) Second, given that I frequently juxtapose notions of “literary” versus “theatrical” approaches to performance texts (within which I prefer the word performative rather than theatrical precisely because the former is a much more expansive concept), I use the word performative as an aesthetically balanced adjective to the term literary. 3. In her book The Medieval Theater in Castile, Charlotte Stern issues a call for a “new poetics” capable of rescuing the early Spanish stage from what she characterizes as a “stubborn allegiance to ossified and anachronistic criteria that fail to recognize [the] vitality and dynamics” of medieval Spanish theater (264). What such a “new poetics” would require above all, of course, is the positing of a new “poet,” one not measured by the “aprioristic notions of drama” she rightly condemns throughout the course of her study (265). My book seeks to posit just such a “poet” in the figure of the jongleuresque performer.

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Notes to Pages 7–29 4. One need only substitute a different acrobatic feat—a leap, for instance, or an act of juggling—to completely disarm Bakhtin’s theory of vertical inversion.

Chapter One Reinventing Thespis 1. Note that, even though this scene centers on a religious ritual, the drama in question does not “evolve” out of the ritual itself, but comes into existence as an independent parody. 2. Ironically, Surtz’s hypothesis does not call into question the efficacy of the Thespis myth; on the contrary, it reaffirms it by showing it to be a useful paradigm outside the boundaries of religion proper, insisting that even secular ritual can serve as the impetus for the “rebirth” of theater so long as the ritual in question allows for the emergence of dialogue out of choral monologue. Hence, unable to trace the comedia directly back to the Quem quaeritis through a series of written texts, Surtz assumes that if Spanish drama was not born in the rituals of the Church, then surely it must have been born in the rituals of the court. 3. For more on this discussion of “theater” versus “drama” see Schechner, Performance Theory 6–16; Pavis 24–47; and Elam 2–4. 4. For a catalogue of the major productions of Celestina staged between 1957 and 1989, see Oliva 49–52. 5. For a description of the authorship of Celestina, see Severin 11–16. 6. The exact nature of the performativity associated with the mester de juglaría is a hotly disputed issue. In very general terms, “oralists” and “traditionalists” insist that the cantares de gesta and romances came into being through a process of oral improvisation in which generations of singers—relying on a repertoire of metrically and thematically determined formulas—re-created the songs anew each time they sang them, and that these texts were only written down much later. “Individualists,” on the other hand, insist that the cantares and romances came into being like any other literary text—that is, composed at a particular point in time by a particular writer, however anonymous he or she may be today—and that these literary texts were only performed after the fact. Although I lean toward the oralist/traditionalist viewpoint, I find a number of individualist arguments to be quite persuasive. Still, especially with regard to the theatricality of the jongleuresque texts, I am less interested in the circumstances of their composition than I am in the performative context of their dissemination. For more on these issues see Eisenberg, Ong, Smith (The Making of the “Poema de Mio Cid”), and Zumthor. 7. This focus on stage machinery has become so entrenched that most people probably recognize the term “deus ex machina” primarily as a literary trope and only secondarily (if at all) as part of Western theater history. 8. A graphic illustration of this (pardon the double pun) can even be found in a literary work like the Book of Kells in which the biblical text

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Notes to Pages 32–36 serves as mere hub around which the “performance” of the intricate illuminations turns. Regardless of whether the medieval illustrators conceived of their text in this fashion (although I would venture to say that they did), it is certain that today the “text” functions solely as a pretext; no one consults the Book of Kells to read the Bible, they open it up to view the illuminations. 9. Note that Schechner does not consider ritual merely to be a less evolved “precursor” to theater. For him, these five categories of performance are something like the Romance languages: they all spring from the same source (i.e., the human drive to play), but none is a less sophisticated form of any other. He examines, for instance, whether there is a “special ordering of time” or a “special value for objects”; whether the activity is “non-productive”; whether it requires a “special place”; if an “audience” is necessary; whether it is “performed by group”; if it has “symbolic reality”; if it is “scripted”; etc. (Performance Theory 12). 10. This experiment did not always yield positive results, as Schechner admits: On one occasion a man disrupted the performance several times by making inappropriate remarks, finally taking hold of the prop gun just before Hoss’s suicide. The play stopped. Shelton talked to the man, inviting him to stick around after the play ended. About fifteen spectators remained after the play and the argument almost became a fist-fight. I don’t recommend resolving a performance by fisticuffs, but I do say that this event was definitely part of the performance called The Tooth of Crime for that night. (Performance Theory 83).

11. A 2003 Globe Theatre Company touring production of Twelfth Night at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse offered something of a meta-theatrical variation on this theme. As audience members walked through the auditorium on their way to a specially constructed replica of an Elizabethan theater built on the Freud stage itself, their path took them through a replica of an Elizabethan tiring-house in which the all-male cast not only prepared themselves for the performance of Twelfth Night, but did so as if they were Elizabethan actors. 12. Menéndez Pidal has suggested, in effect, that it was precisely the audience’s selective inattention that led to the creation of the Spanish romances in the first place: the audience, tired of sitting through lengthy cantares de gesta, began to demand to hear only favorite selections of these epics (Flor nueva 11). Roger Wright, on the other hand, incisively counters this notion of an “evolutionary” relationship between the epic and the romance by arguing that both these forms always co-existed in performance: “Are we to believe that whenever the inhabitants of early and mid medieval Spain chose to sing in octosyllabic form, they were never able to stop until they had sung for well over three hours or so?” (252). In either case, the jongleur’s performance event was transformed

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Notes to Pages 38–49 from one that centered on a single epic text (if such a thing ever existed) into an event that incorporated a number of smaller, perhaps unrelated, ballad texts. 13. Needless to say, I use the term Homer generically to refer to all those performers associated with the Homeric tradition, since it is highly unlikely that a single individual named Homer actually composed the ancient Greek epics associated with this name. 14. Again, I am greatly indebted here to Schechner’s Performance Theory (xiii–xv). 15. This explicit was added to the manuscript of the Poema de Mio Cid by a fourteenth-century jongleur. Its performative function is similar to the final lines of many seventeenth-century plays in which one of the actors concludes the performance by acknowledging the spectators directly in order to ask for their applause. For the sake of readability, I have slightly modified the spelling and punctuation of this explicit. For an excellent idea of how this text appears in the original manuscript of the Poema, see the easily accessible Penguin bilingual edition: el (el) rromanz [E]s leído, datnos del vino; si non tenedes dineros, echad [Al]lá unos peños, que bien vos lo dar(ar)án sobr’e[l]los. (Michael 214)

16. For examples of this oral formula see Díaz Roig 61, 75, 134, 146, 152, 201, 204, 206, 218, 219, 223, and 272. 17. In using the term gaze here, I am fully aware that it carries enormous critical weight for Lacanian theorists. Nevertheless, I do not intend in this present study to suggest any Lacanian implications, although others are certainly free to infer them. Ultimately, gaze is simply the best word to describe the performative interaction between actor and spectator; none of the available synonyms functions nearly as well. 18. Here again, I diverge from Freedman’s Lacanian approach, which is primarily concerned with voyeurism rather than performative reciprocity: Works that both confound the spectator’s look and parade that fact are theatrical, as are paintings and films that expose their observers as voyeurs. Consider, for example, how Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of a perspective painter [. . .] plays out, reverses, and so complicates positions of right and erring spectatorship. Dürer’s multiplication of pictures within this picture creates the theatrical effect of a dramatic interplay of looks. Not only do the windows frame nature much as the artist would frame woman, but we in turn frame the painter as well. The painter as a privileged spectator is himself displaced by being made the object of our look. We no sooner see him as a Peeping Tom than we see ourselves as voyeurs who are similarly caught in the act of looking. The complex relay of looks among painter, model, and spectator not only stages our look,

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Notes to Pages 50–80 but reflects it back to us in a way that we cannot but identify as theatrical (1).

Chapter Two Singers of Tales on Simple Stages 1. For an excellent overview of the scholarship in this area, see Vince 89–129. 2. The 2000 edition of The Singer of Tales includes a CD that contains a rare video clip of Lord’s guslar singer in performance. 3. For more on this, see Bynum 253–54. 4. For more on this, see Vésteinn Ólason 137; Tydeman 28; Surtz, Birth 164. 5. The twenty-minute riot that temporarily shut down the premier performance of Victor Hugo’s Hernani in 1830 is extremely unlikely today. 6. Compare this to McKendrick 193. 7. The medieval fair has largely been transformed into Disneyland, itself a commodity with various sites around the world. 8. In many ways, the minstrels who labored in the service of feudal kings, and who traveled the highways and byways of medieval Europe with their more celebrated chivalric employers, can be seen almost as a hybrid combination of modern USO performers coupled with the functionaries of the US Foreign Service. 9. Lord notes that these kinds of antiphonal performances greatly aided researchers in their attempts to transcribe the actual text of guslar songs prior to the invention of sound recording equipment because the constant repetition allowed transcribers sufficient time to get the line down before the song proceeded to the next. “Sometimes,” he says, “one singer repeats the line exactly and no assistant in the singing is called in, but this is merely a variation of a manner of singing that originally depended on two men” (125). 10. Although the published text indicates the omission of one line here, there should really be two “missing” lines, since not a single line has gone un-echoed in the entire piece. 11. Some of these songs cannot even be considered “semi”-dialogic: Wit and Mirth, for instance, contains a piece entitled “A Country Dialogue” whose entire text is divided between two characters—“He” and “She”—who literally engage in a sung conversation (D’Urfey 1: 3–6). 12. While I would continue to insist that what makes these songs essentially theatrical is the jongleuresque dialogue that necessarily occurs between the performers and their audiences, I am interested nonetheless in their supplemental creation of character dialogue here, a creation that makes them not only radically theatrical, but inherently dramatic as well. 13. The performative roots of the catches and ballads included in this collection of recordings are so close to those of Lord’s guslar songs—so much a part of the popular simple theater—that we should not fail to

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Notes to Pages 86–102 make the connection explicit. As Mary Anne Ballard says in the liner notes to The Art of the Bawdy Song: “The singing of both ballads and catches belongs to a long and venerable tradition in England. The natural habitat of the catch was the tavern, where gentlemen gathered for eating, drinking, conversation, and music-making. The ballad, on the other hand, was known in a wider variety of social settings as well as on the stage” (1). 14. Chambers, for instance, notes that “the scenici are rarely mentioned without a sneer, but their performances and those of the aurigae, or circus-drivers, who have now come to be included under the all-embracing designation of histriones, are carefully regulated” (1: 20). Likewise, Menéndez Pidal devotes the entire first two chapters of Poesía juglaresca y juglares to this sort of definitional survey, carefully distinguishing, for example, between the jongleur and the troubadour by insisting that the former, although he might occasionally be an actual poet himself, was generally limited solely to the recitation of the verses of others, while the latter, who in contrast might occasionally sing in public, did not perform this oral function as a vocation; on the contrary, says Menéndez Pidal, the troubadour remained “el poeta de las clases más cultas” (Poesía juglaresca 16). Nicoll, for his part, displays an initial attention to medieval performative detail that is matched only by his later, minute focus on the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte (233–98).

Chapter Three Picaresque Actors and Their Theater 1. “Al final del texto, ponemos cinco índices. El primero tiene la forma de una lista de fechas en que se celebraron juntas, o «cabildos», de la Cofradía de la Novena, gremio de los representantes. Una de las fuentes más importantes del compilador fue el Archivo de la Cofradía de la Novena, y de allí sacó las fechas en que actores y actrices fueron recibidos como miembros de la Cofradía” (Shergold and Varey 36). 2. This particular component of apprenticeship has metamorphosed for the television age into programs like Inside the Actors Studio, a cable program hosted by James Lipton (Dean Emeritus and founder of The Actors Studio Drama School, currently affiliated with Pace University) in which he interviews prominent actors and directors who spend a portion of the program fielding questions from a live audience of students. 3. For more on the economic conditions of this period of Spanish history, see Cohen 120–35; Elliot 285–300. 4. For more on early modern courtroom histrionics, see Jody Enders, Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama. 5. For more detailed biographies, see González Ollé, Los engañados ix–x; González Ollé and Tusón 9–10; Listerman 21–22; and Moreno Villa vii–xii.

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Notes to Pages 102–40 6. For a more extended biography on Tarlton, see Tarlton’s Jests vii– xlvii. 7. Unless otherwise noted, all Bakhtin citations in this chapter come from Rabelais and His World. 8. Interestingly, green shows themselves have become something of an “oral” tradition. Liz Shipman, who has directed a number of green shows across the United States, including ones for the King’s County Shakespeare Festival in New York, notes that many of the elements incorporated into any particular green show by a director have been acquired through contact with other green shows and by talking informally with other directors. 9. I refer specifically to a collection of bits Gordon calls the “Lazzi of the Sack” (14), in which various characters are tricked into hiding in a sack, only to be beaten or severely embarrassed for doing so. Rueda’s paso, “La carátula,” is greatly informed by the “Lazzo of the Multiple Thief,” and the “Lazzo of the Ghost,” in which one character dresses up as either a devil or a ghost in order to deliberately frighten other characters (see Gordon 52–53). 10. Agustín Boyer examines this same series of juxtaposed episodes, but focuses on what he calls “las diversas maneras en que un receptor puede descodificar equivocadamente las señales codificadas por el enunciador del mensaje” (377). 11. In his new translation of Don Quijote, John Rutherford perceptively renders the final sentence of chapter 25 as follows: “With everyone at the inn in front of the puppet theatre, some of them standing, and with Don Quixote, Sancho, the page and the cousin in the best seats, the announcer began to say what anyone who reads the next chapter or has it read to him will see or hear” (2: 25; 662). Compare this to the appended subject heading of Part 2, chapter 66, whose belated author seems to have understood Cervantes’s earlier authorial intent perfectly, and upon whom Rutherford seems to have based his own translation: “Que trata de lo que verá el que lo leyere, o lo oirá el que lo escuchare leer” (2: 66; 2: 541).

Chapter Four “Corralling” the Jongleuresque 1. Thomas argues that television was an excellent medium for Abbott and Costello, since “their burlesque routines, minicomedies in themselves, were ideally suited to the limited attention span of television viewers” (167). Of course, one could argue that the viewer’s attention span was not the only “limited” element of television; so too the patience of corporate sponsors who wanted to see their product advertised on the screen. Thus, the multiform poetics of vaudeville was ideally suited for a media text in which commercial announcements could easily be woven into the fabric of the performance event. The commercials

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Notes to Pages 147–88 became just one more among many autonomous performances stitched together by the new television medium. (Indeed, commercials have developed into a dynamic subgenre in and of themselves—the advertisements associated with the Superbowl immediately come to mind—again not unlike the early Spanish entremeses.) 2. Connor-Swietlicki’s recent work on cognitive theory and the comedia clearly illustrates the importance of this aspect of performance theory (see “Bridging the Performance Gap”). 3. What is ironic, of course, is that if he were both a working shepherd and a troubadour he could indeed be seen as a cousin to the guslar singers performing on the other side of Europe. 4. With regard to Hollywood, for instance, Musser notes that Porter’s film version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin presents contemporary audiences with “fundamental problems of comprehension” precisely because, at the turn of the century, “the story was part of American folklore” and thus the “narrative was not presented as if the audience was seeing it for the first time, but existed in reference to a story assumed to be already present in the audience’s mind” (243). 5. Antonio Carreño has written an extremely useful study of the continuities that connect the Romancero nuevo to the comedia nueva.

Chapter Five Playwrights and the Actorly Text 1. Huot even notes this technique in the early manuscript tradition in which the performative scribe “makes little asides to his audience, cracking jokes at the expense of his characters or philosophizing about his material” (38). 2. Notice that in place of Huston’s implicit oral contract (“I will watch, says the viewer, as long as you do something that is worth watching. I will do something that is worth watching, says the actor, as long as you watch” [76]), we now have a written document. Once again, the oral becomes the written. 3. Compare Timoneda’s sense of the inherent fluidity of Rueda’s pasos to Scala’s own recognition of this performative quality in his prologue to the reader (“L’autore a’ cortesi lettori”) written for the publication of his commedia scenarios: Mentre io feci questi componimenti, che ora alle mani vi pervengono, non ebbi mai pensiero di palesarli al mondo in altra maniera che con rappresentarli tal volta nelle publiche scene, poiché sono andato affatigandomi in tali cose solo per esercizio della mia professione di comico, e non per altro fine; ma li comandamenti de’ Patroni, l’esortazioni de gli amici e le preghiere di persone curiose mi hanno addotto a far nuova risoluzione, e darli alle stampe. Di ciò mi sono io poi facilmente appagato, conoscendo che in tal maniera sarà levata a

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Notes to Pages 189–96 molti l’occasione di appropriarsi le mie fatiche, poiché so che spesso compariscono di questi soggetti nelle scene, o tutti intieri nella maniera che qui li vedete, o in qualche parte alterati e variati. (4) [When I composed these works which now come into your hands, I did not think of offering them to the world in any form other than the one in which they were presented many times in the public theater. Though they have been put to work for me in this form only in the practice of my profession as actor, and for no other purpose, the demands of patrons, the exhortations of friends, and the pleas of the curious brought me to the decision to have them printed. Afterwards, I felt I would be amply repaid, knowing that in this way there would be many opportunities for anyone to procure my works, as I know that they have often been performed on the stage from these dramatic outlines—either in the manner offered here or in some way altered or varied. (Salerno xxvii)

4. Jonathan Thacker notes a similar ambivalence in Lope de Vega’s own prologues to his published plays: Lope’s enthusiasm for having his plays read comes from a feeling of being misunderstood by ignorant oyentes and betrayed by poor actors and novelty-seeking autores—a similar disaffection (although with its origins in different causes) to that felt by Cervantes a few years earlier. (162)

5. In reading this passage, if it is not already obvious that Bottom is attempting to create character dialogue, the orthographic change between “Thisne” and “Thisby” should make this clear. “Thisne! Thisne!” is meant to represent Pyramus’s vocal inflection as he calls out to his love, while “Ah, Pyramus, my lover dear! thy Thisby dear, and lady dear!” represents her response. 6. While I have cited The Riverside Shakespeare throughout, I have substituted “ballad” here, as it appears in the Cambridge Edition Text (W. Wright 405), for the Riverside “ballet.” Not only is “ballad” a preferable reading for my study, but it also makes much more sense in the context of a “sung” performance. “Ballet” seems to me to be a very unfortunate scribal error. 7. As many of the illustrations from Davidson’s work clearly show (65–78), the ass’s head had been emblematic of the medieval fool for hundreds of years. 8. Page numbers for this and all subsequent citations of the Arte nuevo come from Sánchez Escribano and Porqueras Mayo. 9. In addition to the original literature produced (or at least overseen) by Alfonso X el Sabio, his Escuela de Traductores—in providing

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Notes to Pages 199–213 thirteenth-century Christian Europe with some of the first vernacular translations of Jewish and Islamic works of science and philosophy (including commentaries on Aristotle and other important classical figures)—laid the early groundwork for much of the humanistic thought later espoused by the Academy of Madrid in the early seventeenth century. 10. In his own diatribe against the villainous performers, Hamlet condemns the complicit spectators as “barren” (3.2.41; 1210). 11. For more on this transition, see Ong 78–138. 12. My translation of this passage has been greatly informed by P. José López de Toro’s Spanish translation, which appears in Sánchez Escribano and Porqueras Mayo (136). 13. Hamlet: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so o’oerdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. (3.2.17–24; 1209–10; my emphasis)

Scala: COMICO. Cenciaie? Così chiamate lo specchio della vita umana, eh? FORESTIERO. Così chiamo un’azzione la quale insegna alle giovane oneste il modo di divenir vagabonde, sollieva i giovani a ingannare i padri con l’esempio, per scapestrarsi e scapigliarsi, et avvezza i servitori a mettere in mezzo i padroni, e le serve a far la rufiana. (cxvi) [PLAYER. A worthless rag? That’s what you call the mirror of human life? STRANGER. That’s what I call an action that teaches honest young women how to become tramps; that emboldens young men, through bad example, to deceive their fathers as they make disheveled libertines of themselves; and that accustoms servants to meddle in the affairs of their masters and maids to play the procuress. (My translation)]

14. José Prades, for instance, as she does so often in her reading of the Arte nuevo, simply refuses to believe that Lope means what he says here (240).

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Bibliography Weimann, Robert. Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. Willeford, William. The Fool and His Scepter: A Study in Clowns and Jesters and Their Audience. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern UP, 1969. Worthen, William B. The Idea of the Actor: Drama and the Ethics of Performance. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. ———. Shakespeare and the Authority of Performance. New York: Cambridge UP, 1997. Wright, Roger. “How Old Is the Ballad Genre?” La Corónica: Spanish Medieval Language and Literature Journal and Newsletter 14.2 (1986): 251–57. Wright, William Aldis, ed. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Illus. Rockwell Kent. Pref. Christopher Morley. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1936. Zumthor, Paul. Introduction à la poésie orale. Paris: Seuil, 1983.

246

Index Abbott and Costello [Bud Abbott and Lou Costello], 139– 41, 227–28n1 “Abenámar, Romance de,” 74–75, 191 Abre el ojo (Rojas Zorrilla), 156– 57 Academy of Madrid, 193, 195– 97, 201, 206, 210, 212, 214, 229–30n9 acrobatics, 7, 24, 28, 32, 54, 68, 88, 105, 107, 111, 125, 136, 149, 158, 214, 216, 218, 222n4 (introd.). See also jugglers acting, 4, 6, 9, 26, 30, 37, 40, 46, 68, 91, 93, 95–96, 98, 101, 119, 124, 137–39, 149, 161–62, 165–66, 189, 204, 219 actors. See performers Adam de la Halle, 54–55, 59, 78, 105 Alarcón. See Ruiz de Alarcón, Juan Allegri, Luigi, 53–55, 59, 64, 86 Allen, John J., 3, 26, 143 Alonso, Dámaso, 1, 21, 123, 176 Alter, Jean, 28–31, 33, 35, 55, 123 alternating song, 69, 71–72, 75 Antigone (Sophocles), 38, 151 antiphonal song, 14, 17, 126, 225n9 Apology for Actors, An (Heywood), 204–05 apprenticeship, 90–92, 96, 111, 131, 183, 226n2. See also performers: training Arcipreste de Hita. See Ruiz, Juan Aristotle, 13–14, 16, 26, 32, 148, 172–75, 201, 207, 229– 30n9

Aristotelianism, 8, 37, 140, 142, 145, 148, 172–75, 193– 94, 198, 201–03, 205– 08. See also neoclassicism Art of the Bawdy Song, The, 80, 225–26n13 audiences. See spectators authority, textual, 180, 187–88, 201, 203, 212 Auto de los Reyes Magos, 18, 215 autores de comedias, 94, 101, 161, 168, 194. See also impresarios auto sacramental, 217 “¡Ay!, un galán de esta villa,” 70, 72 Bagby, Benjamin, 69. See also bards; Beowulf; scôps Bakhtin, Mikhail, 7, 10, 40, 53, 64, 85, 90, 103–06, 109– 11, 115, 151, 222n4 (introd.), 227n7 balladry, 6, 9, 20, 23, 35, 42–43, 46, 55, 60, 62, 64–65, 68–70, 73–74, 76–77, 82–83, 89, 102, 111, 118, 120, 122–23, 128– 29, 132, 136, 152, 162– 63, 166, 176–77, 181–82, 188, 191–93, 198, 214, 218, 222n6, 223–24n12, 225–26n13, 228n5, 229n6 Baltimore Consort, 80, 92 bards, 6, 41–42, 57, 86 Bartholomew Fair (Jonson), 185–86 bear baiting, 32, 68, 89, 142. See also trained animals Beowulf, 69, 192 “bien oiréis lo que dirá, ” 46, 121, 123, 128–29

247

Index Blues, 69, 75. See also music Boccaccio, Giovanni, 59–61, 219 Borges, Jorge Luis, 16 Brecht, Bertolt, 2, 17 Breuil, Henri, 39, 47 Broadway. See national theaters: United States Brook, Peter, 2, 7, 27–28, 153 Buber, Martin, 46 buffoons, 64–65, 86, 107, 154– 55, 190, 195, 214, 218 burlador de Sevilla, El (Tirso), 146, 155 burlas, 95–96, 99, 103, 227n9. See also tricks “busca de Averroes, La” (Borges), 16–17 Búscon, El (Quevedo), 94, 96 Bute Psalter, 46, 48–49, 155, 157 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 2, 11, 18, 60, 93, 134, 158, 165 La dama duende, 215 El príncipe constante, 146 La vida es sueño, 30, 149–52, 155, 219 cancioneros, 36, 73, 75–76, 78, 182 cantares de gesta, 87, 121, 123, 136, 216, 221n1, 222n6, 223–24n12 Canterbury Tales, The (Chaucer), 59–60, 81, 117, 219 carnival, 10, 51, 64, 103–05, 109– 11, 115, 136–37, 166 carros, 9, 142 Castillo Solórzano, Alonso de, 94–95 Castro, Guillén de, 175–76 catches. See balladry Celestina (Rojas), 22–23, 133, 178, 222nn4–5 Cervantes, Miguel de, 10–12, 23, 177, 193–94, 213, 229n4

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Don Quijote, 83, 116–19, 130– 31, 133, 153, 178, 194, 227n11 “Adventure of the FortuneTelling Ape,” 121, 124– 26, 183 “Braying Tale,” 119–22, 124–26 El curioso impertinente, 130 Maese Pedro’s puppet show, 10, 115–17, 121– 29, 131, 142, 155–56, 160, 183–84 Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses nuevos, nunca representados, 11–12, 23, 131, 172–80, 188–89, 196, 198, 213 “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” 95–96 Chambers, E. K., 52–55, 58, 64– 65, 71, 87, 90, 107, 226n14 Chanson de Roland, La, 192, 216 character dialogue, 8, 21, 37–38, 43, 45–47, 56, 73, 81, 120–23, 128, 225n12, 229n5 charlatans, 24, 86. See also mountebanks Chaucer, Geoffrey, 59–61, 83, 219 Child’s ballads, 62. See also balladry Chrétien de Troyes, 171, 185–86, 189, 199 church drama. See drama: liturgical City Dionysia, 14, 37–38, 44, 58, 175, 217 clowns, 7, 44, 85, 102, 104, 151, 154–55, 165, 178–79, 189–90, 193, 197, 214. See also fools; graciosos; jesters cofradías. See guilds

Index comediantes, 1, 10, 93–95, 100, 144, 163, 165, 219 commedia dell’arte, 53–55, 102, 110–14, 140, 144–45, 155, 205, 213, 217, 226n14, 228–29n3 (chap. 5) commoditization (of performance), 63, 167, 169, 184, 186, 225n7 complex stage. See stage: complex corrales, 2–3, 9–12, 16, 26, 57, 93, 101, 107, 142–44, 147, 152, 156, 167, 175, 184, 205, 212–14, 221n1. See also national theaters: Spain Crout, Tamara, 75, 79 Dagenais, John, 133–35 Decameron, The (Boccaccio), 59– 60, 63, 67, 81, 120, 219 Defense of Poesy, The (Sidney), 192 devils, 154, 227n9 dialogue. See character dialogue; reciprocity (in performance) directors, 31, 35, 72, 91, 138, 141, 149, 164, 168–70, 173, 211, 219, 226n2, 227n8 dithyramb, 13–14, 37, 41–42, 44, 135, 173, 217 drama and character dialogue, 71–72, 75, 79–81, 83–84, 122– 23, 225n12 and containment of performers, 166–69 and imaginative stagecraft, 146–54. See also imaginative space and jongleuresque performance, 50–52, 54–59, 93, 101–03

liturgical, 8–9, 37, 50–51, 54, 57–59, 80, 87, 89, 126, 216–19. See also Quem quaeritis and multiform theater, 158–59, 161 and neoclassicism, 197–200, 202–03 and performance theory, 26, 28, 31 and reciprocity (in performance), 156–58, 224– 25n18 versus theater, 20–25, 222n3 and theater history, 2–9, 11– 12, 14–24, 215–19, 221n3, 222n1, 226n4 and Thespis myth, 37–38, 42– 45, 49, 171–77, 222n2 dramatists, 72, 126, 131 and anxieties of performance, 177–95, 228–29n3 and a priori scripts, 5, 134–35 and imaginative stagecraft, 147–49, 152–53. See also imaginative space influenced by performance tradition, 134–36, 138– 39, 141–42, 158–59, 161–62, 164–66, 171, 206–09, 212–14, 219 and neoclassicism, 173–77, 198, 202 versus performers, 183–84, 193–95 pícaros as, 95 and reciprocity (in performance), 156–57 in theater history, 1, 11, 18, 38, 101 and Thespis myth, 14, 54 églogas, 23, 83–84, 159–61, 173 “El romanz / es leído, datnos del vino,” 46, 98, 161, 224n15

249

Index Else, Gerald F., 13–15, 41–44, 54, 217 empeños de una casa, Los (Sor Juana), 155, 158, 162, 221n1 empty space, 7, 27–28, 153–54, 221n1. See also Brook, Peter Encina, Juan del, 2, 11, 19–20, 23, 57, 73, 76, 81–84, 153, 159–61, 164, 167, 173 Égloga de carnestollendas, 83–84 Égloga de Mingo, Gil y Pascuala, 159–61 entremeses, 7, 136, 153, 161–63, 172–73, 176, 201–02, 227–28n1. See also Rueda, Lope de epic performance, 6, 8–9, 20, 23, 37, 41–43, 52, 69, 76, 86–88, 120, 130–31, 166, 192, 203, 216, 218, 223–24n12, 224n13 exhibitionism, 46, 115, 136 farce, 52, 54–55, 132, 156, 158, 202 Fernández de Moratín, Leandro, 65 film, 22, 58, 63, 68, 135–41, 144, 165, 170, 228n4 Flamenca, 9, 65, 68, 117, 153, 159, 182 Fo, Dario, 8, 44, 104, 176 folk culture, 1, 4, 6, 51–52, 105, 148, 154, 215, 228n4 Fool Making Face at the Reader, A, 9, 47–49, 128, 155, 157–58 fools, 9, 44, 47–49, 54, 85–86, 88, 104, 128, 154–58, 189, 214. See also clowns; graciosos; jesters

250

footlights (as metaphoric partition between performers and spectators), 10, 104–06, 109–10, 113, 115, 125 formulas (oral), 46, 57, 92, 121, 123, 128–29, 222n6, 224n16 fourth wall, 47, 107, 156 ganado. See performers: as cattle Ganassa, Zan (pseud. for Alberto Naseli), 144 gaze, 15, 27, 43, 45, 47, 49, 101, 115, 125, 155, 158, 224n17 gender, 5, 155–56, 221n2 Genealogía, origen y noticias de los comediantes de España (Shergold and Varey), 93, 95, 116 genius (literary), 2, 133, 219, 221n1 genre. See literature: and genre; performance: genres gesture, 27, 43, 95, 99, 112–13, 139, 157–58, 221n2 graciosos, 150–52, 155, 165, 178–79. See also clowns; fools; jesters Gray, Spalding, 6, 45 green shows, 107–08, 115, 227n8 grimacing fool. See Fool Making Face at the Reader, A guilds, 90–91, 93, 96, 137, 190– 91, 226n1 guslars, 57, 62, 91–92, 140, 225nn2 and 9, 225– 26n13, 228n3 (chap. 4). See also Lord, Albert; singers of tales Gutenberg, Johannes, 188, 194, 213 Haley, George, 116, 122–29 Hardison, O. B., 17–18

Index Harlequin, 104, 111–12 Hespèrion XX, 74–76, 78, 81, 84, 92 Heywood, Thomas, 204–05 histriones, 44, 52, 54–55, 86, 141, 226n14 Hollywood. See national theaters: United States Homer (Homeric tradition), 6, 38, 41–44, 57, 175, 202–03, 217, 224n13 humanism, 141, 158–59, 192, 194, 196, 205, 214–15, 229–30n9 Huot, Sylvia, 130, 181–82, 228n1 (chap. 5) Huston, Hollis, 9, 27–28, 31, 36, 43–46, 50, 54–56, 62, 69, 71, 95, 103, 106, 109, 112, 118, 120, 131, 153–54, 168–69, 176, 204, 221n1, 228n2 (chap. 5) I. G., 205 Iliad (Homer), 38 imaginative space, 27–28, 45, 81, 83, 120, 122, 147–54, 216, 220 impersonation, 9, 42–43, 71–72, 80, 104, 217 impresarios, 23, 94–96, 101, 131, 135, 161, 168, 194. See also autores de comedias improvisation, 14, 54–55, 92, 95, 108–11, 132, 139–41, 154, 169, 179, 181, 184, 187–89, 200, 205, 213– 14, 222n6 inns and taverns, 9, 58, 60, 64–65, 90, 97, 103, 117–18, 121, 125–28, 130–31, 158, 225–26n13, 227n11 interperformativity, 135

intertextuality, 6, 32, 113, 132, 162, 165 jesters, 44, 54, 86, 102, 104, 160. See also clowns; fools; graciosos Jones, Inigo, 146, 151 jongleuresque dialogue. See reciprocity (in performance) jongleuresque performance, 4, 6, 7, 9–12, 25, 35–36, 51, 56, 62, 64–66, 68, 84, 86, 89, 91, 98, 101, 108, 115, 117, 123, 129–30, 136, 142, 146, 153, 155, 167, 171–72, 175–77, 187, 191, 195, 201, 213– 14, 216, 220 jongleuresque tradition, 4, 7–8, 10–12, 20, 25, 44–46, 50, 52, 55, 61, 65, 67, 69, 86, 88–90, 111, 126, 128, 135–36, 144–46, 158–59, 161, 163–64, 171, 176, 182, 186, 188, 191–92, 195–96, 200, 202, 207, 219–220, 222n6, 225n8 jongleurization (of literature), 10, 218 jongleurs, 1, 4, 8–11, 20, 24–25, 35–37, 44–45, 49, 50– 55, 57, 60, 62, 65–67, 83, 85–88, 90, 92–93, 100, 102, 111, 121, 128, 130, 134, 140, 142, 144– 45, 147–48, 155, 160, 163–66, 181, 183, 186, 191–92, 196, 198, 214, 221n3, 225n8 Jonson, Ben, 151, 185, 188, 218– 19 Juana Inés de la Cruz, 11, 155– 56, 158, 162, 221n1

251

Index jugglers, 67–68, 87, 89, 107, 115, 120, 142, 185, 216, 218, 222n4 (introd.). See also acrobatics Kabuki theater. See national theaters: Japan lays, 6, 9, 23, 64, 67, 182 Lazarillo de Tormes, 9, 95–98, 100, 110–12, 114, 116, 125 lazzi, 111–14, 227n9 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 15 Libro de buen amor (Ruiz), 36, 133–34, 176 liminality, 21, 37, 41, 85, 135, 167, 173 literary theory, 4, 148, 171–72, 174, 188, 192–93, 197– 98, 202, 206 literature, 2, 4–5, 17, 21, 24–25, 51–52, 55–56, 59–60, 88, 102–04, 110, 130, 132– 35, 148, 158, 167, 176– 77, 189–90, 192, 207, 212, 218–19, 229–30n9 artifacts and documents, 7, 15, 23, 29, 46, 130, 133–34, 136, 144, 163, 178, 180– 81, 186, 189, 228n2 (chap. 5) canon, 101, 103, 133–34, 199, 213, 218–19 conventions, 8, 12, 15–16, 21, 24, 51, 59, 86, 88, 95, 151, 176, 180, 194–95, 197–201, 204, 208–10, 214, 226n14 criticism, 7, 13, 26, 165, 195 and genre, 6–8, 21, 45, 55, 71, 131, 199 narration, 36, 67, 119, 122. See also performance: and performative narrators

252

and representation, 2, 15–17, 20, 38, 41–42, 49, 59– 60, 64, 76, 98, 102, 126, 128, 130, 157, 159, 163, 173, 179, 207, 216. See also mimesis and text, 2–3, 5, 7–8, 12, 18– 19, 21–25, 28, 30–31, 34–38, 52, 55, 59–60, 67–73, 76, 78, 80–81, 84, 86, 110–11, 119, 121–22, 127–28, 130– 31, 132–35, 158, 161– 64, 172, 175–87, 190, 192, 195, 200, 203, 207– 08, 212, 214, 222nn2 and 6, 222–23n8, 223– 24n12, 225n10 liturgical drama. See drama: liturgical López de Úbeda, Francisco, 94 Lord, Albert, 9, 41, 43–44, 56–58, 60–62, 64, 91–92, 117, 225nn2 and 9, 225– 26n13 mansion staging, 215–16 Marx Brothers, 139–41 masks, 39–41, 43, 47, 125–26, 155 masques, 6, 19, 151, 220 Mass (Catholic), 17, 31, 37, 41, 51, 215 Masters, Edgar Lee, 72 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 24–25, 28, 36, 42, 44, 50, 58, 66, 70, 87, 111, 193, 223–24n12, 226n14 Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino, 1, 193 Merry Companions, 80, 92 mester de juglaría. See jongleuresque tradition Milá y Fontanals, Manuel, 50, 65, 182–83

Index mimes (mimos, mimus), 7, 9, 27, 35, 44, 46, 52, 54, 62, 85–86, 90, 192, 204 mimesis, 14–16, 20, 41, 43–44, 46, 49, 87–88, 97–98, 109, 123–26, 128, 160. See also literature: and representation minstrels. See jongleurs mise-en-scene, 3, 55, 149, 214 mocedades del Cid, Las (Castro), 166 Molina, Tirso de [pseud. for Gabriel Téllez], 18, 146, 155, 165 mountebanks, 10, 89, 100–01, 144. See also charlatans music, 30, 32, 47, 51, 59–60, 62, 68–69, 73, 78, 80–81, 83–85, 107, 136–37, 158, 161, 164–65, 177, 182, 216, 225–26n13 mystery and morality plays, 17, 19, 23, 32, 51, 180, 215. See also drama: liturgical narration. See literature: narration; performance: and performative narrators Naseli, Alberto. See Ganassa, Zan national theaters, 19, 50, 160, 175 England, 4, 7, 19, 26, 51, 64, 68, 91, 93, 102, 133, 145–47, 149, 154, 164, 171, 190, 205, 221n1, 223n11, 225–26n13 France, 4, 7, 19, 29, 90, 93, 102, 145–46, 171, 177, 209–10 Greece, 8, 13, 14–15, 17, 35, 37, 41, 43, 52–54, 57, 101, 159, 174–75, 188– 89, 195–96, 202–03, 208, 210, 217, 224n13 India, 148

Italy, 4, 53–55, 101–02, 110– 14, 132, 140, 144–46, 155, 159, 171, 177, 195– 96, 205, 209–10, 213, 217, 226n14, 228–29n3 (chap. 5). See also commedia dell’arte Japan, 29, 139 Rome, 8, 17, 26, 50, 52–54, 56–57, 85, 90, 101, 141, 145, 159, 172, 192, 195– 96, 205, 208–10, 214, 217 Spain, 1–4, 6–13, 18–20, 26, 36, 84, 91–94, 101, 115, 117, 135–36, 141–44, 146, 149, 152, 155, 158– 59, 161–63, 165, 168, 171, 173, 175, 179, 184, 186–88, 190, 195–96, 198–99, 202, 204–05, 209, 214, 221n1, 221n3, 223–24n12 United States, 4–5, 10–11, 32– 33, 57, 59, 65, 72, 135– 41, 148–49, 152, 164–65, 167–70, 226n2, 227–28n1, 228n4 Vietnam, 58 neoclassicism, 142, 145, 172. See also Aristotelianism Odyssey (Homer), 38, 42 Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), 38, 151, 208 “Old Fumbler, The,” 80–81, 107 Ong, Walter J., 35, 68, 230n11 opera, 30–31, 46, 124, 136 orality, 1, 5–6, 8, 16, 24, 40, 43, 59–60, 119, 130, 134, 139, 148, 166, 178, 181, 186, 188, 192, 196, 207, 214, 222n6, 224n16, 226n14, 228n2 (chap. 5)

253

Index oral tradition, 1, 9, 57, 60, 69, 85, 91, 111, 128, 130, 134, 164, 176, 181, 227n8 Parry, Milman, 192 pasos, 7, 11, 23, 103, 113–15, 176–78, 187–88, 202, 227n9, 228–29n3 (chap. 5) patios. See corrales; national theaters: Spain performance, 3, 8, 33–35, 52, 64, 81, 85–86, 89, 105, 117, 123, 126, 135, 137, 139, 162, 180, 185 aesthetics of, 4, 160, 219 and barbarism, 12, 172, 186, 189, 192–93, 195–96, 198–200, 202, 207, 209, 214. See also performance: and villany as behavior, 28, 106, 167, 169 co-creation in, 106, 115, 118, 131. See also reciprocity (in performance) and containment of performers, 27, 110, 114, 123, 137, 166, 168–70, 215 contingencies of, 5, 35, 143, 153–55, 179, 185, 192 and dialogue. See character dialogue; reciprocity (in performance) discourse of, 23, 125 genres, 6–8, 21, 30–32, 45, 55, 71, 87, 116–17, 131, 135, 139, 141, 199, 223n9, 227–28n1 (chap. 4) as language, 29, 87–89, 217– 18 and mediation, 153, 155, 169, 185 modalities of, 9–10, 41, 55, 57, 69, 87–88, 103, 166, 179, 207, 209, 216

254

and multiform theater, 158, 163 and the notions “semidramatic” and “semitheatrical,” 8, 20–21, 24, 49, 123, 128 and performative contexts, 4, 35, 41, 61, 63, 68, 84, 89, 106, 122, 130, 152, 156, 219, 222n6, 229n6 and performative energy, 47, 140, 214–16, 220 and performative etymologies, 84–89. See also performance: as language and performative markers, 10, 21, 37, 44, 92, 105–06, 115 and performative moments, 3, 5, 7, 10, 36, 45, 60–61, 63, 77, 79, 92, 108–09, 111, 115, 127, 129–31, 135, 149, 151–52, 159, 163, 221n2 and performative narrators, 40, 50, 59, 68, 81, 83, 119– 23, 126, 128, 130–31, 142, 148–49, 151–53, 156, 163, 182, 191–92, 214. See also literature: narration and performative paradigms, 8, 15, 17–18, 21, 37, 40, 44, 88, 135, 138–39, 145, 165, 171, 198, 218, 222n2 and performative practices, 2– 3, 15, 18, 33, 38, 90, 141, 154, 194, 199, 206– 07, 228–29n3 (chap. 5) and performative precursors, 141, 179, 200, 219 and performative structure, 31, 36, 57, 69, 92, 120, 139, 145, 149

Index and performative techniques, 91–92, 183, 189, 228n1 (chap. 5) and performative utterances, 46, 71, 88, 99, 130, 155 poetics of, 4, 6, 8–9, 45–46, 56, 103, 106–07, 110, 113, 115, 121, 124, 126, 129–30, 136–37, 141, 154, 159, 161, 164, 167, 182, 184, 191, 195, 207, 214, 217, 221n3, 227– 28n1 and villany, 189–93 performance events, 18, 29, 31– 36, 47, 62–64, 68, 97, 107–12, 117, 128, 130, 137, 159, 162, 167, 182, 215, 221n2, 223–24n12, 227n1 performance space, 5, 7–8, 11, 15, 21, 26–28, 33–35, 37, 43, 47, 53, 57–58, 62, 81, 103, 106, 108– 10, 112–16, 119–20, 122, 124, 137–38, 141– 48, 152–54, 166–69, 176, 181, 188, 191, 204, 215–16 performance texts, 1, 5–11, 26, 29, 31, 35–36, 45–46, 57, 68–69, 82, 73, 92, 121–23, 128, 130–31, 134–35, 149, 153, 155, 158, 161–64, 166, 176, 178–89, 193, 213–14, 221n2, 222n6, 223– 24n12, 225n9 performance theory, 2, 4, 7–8, 17–18, 20, 25–29, 31– 33, 35, 38, 44, 46, 55, 88, 104, 106, 211, 221n2, 222n3, 223nn9– 10, 228n2 (chap. 4)

performance tradition, 4, 7, 11–12, 20–21, 29, 42–44, 50, 52, 54, 56, 86, 89–90, 93–94, 134–36, 138, 146, 166, 171, 175, 177–78, 185, 187–88, 190–91, 194–95, 209, 218, 220 performativity, 4, 135, 163, 219, 222n6 performers, 1–3, 7–12, 30, 162 and carnival, 64, 103–13 as cattle, 168–70 in dialogue with spectators, 152–58. See also reciprocity (in performance) discussed in Lope de Vega’s Arte nuevo, 193–95, 197–99, 201–05, 207, 209, 211–14 in Don Quijote, 115–17, 119– 25, 127–29, 183–85 versus dramatists, 228–29n3 (chap. 5) and gaze, 49–50, 224n17 itinerant, 173–79 and jongleuresque tradition, 20–21, 24–25, 55–57, 83 in Lazarillo de Tormes, 97–101 and manuscript tradition, 134– 35, 181 and medieval typologies, 52, 85–89, 226n14. See also bards; charlatans; clowns; epic performance; fools; histriones; jesters; jongleurs; mimes; mountebanks; planipes; scôps; troubadours in multiple performance genres, 164–66. See also performance: genres and multiple roles, 72–73

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Index performers (continued) and performance events, 33– 34 and perspective scenography, 146–49 pícaros as, 9–11, 90, 94–96, 100–03, 111, 115–16, 125, 144 and posthumous publication of scripts, 187–91, 229n4 and ritual, 40–46 and simple stage, 27, 228n2 (chap. 5) and Thespis myth, 13–18, 37– 49, 217–19 training, 57, 90–95, 116, 137– 42, 226n2. See also apprenticeship troupes, 33, 52, 58, 91, 95–96, 102–03, 135, 144–45, 167–68, 189, 213. See also guilds performing “I,” 46, 60, 74, 77–79, 88, 106, 130, 157 personification, 75, 77, 81, 124, 147–48 perspective scenography, 145–46. See also imaginative space pícara Justina, La (López de Úbeda), 94–95 picaresque actors. See performers: pícaros as. See also dramatists: pícaros as planipes, 54, 204–05 Poema de mio Cid, 46, 98, 130– 32, 222n6, 224n15 popular culture, 20, 32, 50, 52– 54, 64–65, 78, 87, 89, 113, 118, 135–36, 139– 43, 158, 163, 165, 167, 190, 192, 194, 198, 200, 205, 212, 215–16, 218, 225–26n13 prestidigitation, 24, 28, 87, 89, 114

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props, 27, 33, 108 proscenium arch, 47, 101, 106, 122, 145–46 puppetry, 10, 24, 28, 32, 35, 90, 115–17, 121–27, 183, 227n11. See also Cervantes: Don Quijote: Maese Pedro’s puppet show Quem quaeritis, 17–18, 20, 51, 55, 78, 80, 215–16, 219, 222n2. See also drama: liturgical “¿Qu’es de tí, desconsolado?” 76, 78–79 Quevedo, Francisco de, 94 reading aloud, 10, 23, 130–31 reciprocity (in performance), 8– 10, 21, 26, 28, 45–47, 49, 69, 72, 77–78, 97, 100–01, 106, 109–12, 114–15, 118–19, 121, 125, 127–28, 131, 147– 48, 153, 155–58, 162, 167, 169, 187, 218, 224n17, 224–25n18, 225n12, 228n1 (chap. 5) recitation, 1, 20, 24, 31, 36–38, 42, 51, 78, 204, 214, 226n14 Refutation of the Apology for Actors, A (I. G.), 205 rhapsodes, 8, 35–36, 42–44, 175 ritual, 2, 8, 13, 15–19, 31–35, 37– 42, 44, 49, 53, 58–59, 63, 84–85, 100, 135, 166, 222nn1–2, 223n9 Rojas, Fernando de, 22–23, 133, 178, 222nn4–5 Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de, 156– 57 romances. See balladry

Index Rueda, Lope de, 10–11, 23, 101– 03, 142–43, 167, 191, 228–29n3 (chap. 5) “La carátula,” 227n9 “El convidado,” 113–15 discussed in Cervantes’s Ocho comedias, 173–82, 187– 88 discussed in Lope de Vega’s Arte nuevo, 196, 198– 99, 201–02, 212–14 Registro de Representantes, 187. See also Timoneda, Juan de Ruiz, Juan (Arcipreste de Hita), 36, 133–34, 176 Ruiz de Alarcón, Juan, 11, 152– 53, 155, 204 sainetes, 156, 158, 162 Sanskrit, 58, 88 “sañosa profía, Una” (Encina), 73, 76–78 Scala, Flaminio, 10, 101–03, 108, 142, 167, 213–14, 219, 228–29n3 (chap. 5), 230n13 Il finto marito, 12, 194–95, 197–98, 201, 207, 211 Il teatro delle favole rappresentative, 102, 110, 112–13 scenery, 27, 71, 103, 111, 145–47, 153, 158, 174 Schechner, Richard, 2, 31–35, 43–45, 55, 63, 88, 104, 106, 156, 167, 169, 222n3, 223nn9–10, 224n14 scôps, 52, 58, 69, 90, 192 scripts, 5, 28–31, 47, 55, 71–73, 92, 102–03, 131, 134– 35, 139, 147, 150, 162, 180–83, 187,189–90, 213, 219, 223n9. See

also literature: artifacts and documents; and text selective inattention, 34–35, 223– 24n12. See also Schechner, Richard Serlio, Sebastiano, 145 Shakespeare, William, 11, 17, 26, 32, 45, 60, 93, 102, 132– 33, 142, 146–47, 163– 64, 213–14 As You Like It, 102, 146 Hamlet, 45, 102, 189–91, 193, 195, 197, 199, 207, 211, 218–19, 230n10 Henry V, 147–48, 152–53 King Lear, 218–19 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 93, 102, 190–91, 229n6 Richard II, 29 Richard III, 98 The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 133 The Winter’s Tale, 83 shamanism, 2, 4, 32, 38–39, 41, 44, 47, 58 Sidney, Philip, 192 simple stage. See stage: simple singers of tales, 9–10, 44, 56, 64, 88, 117, 123, 146, 153, 177, 191–92, 217. See also Lord, Albert soliloquies, 30–31, 45, 77, 155, 193 Sophocles, 14, 38, 45, 151, 174– 76, 208 spectators, 12, 50, 84, 92, 103, 142, 176, 223n11, 230n10 in Bartholomew Fair, 185–89 co-creation with performers, 105–08, 110–15, 134 in dialogue with performers, 5–6, 8–10, 29–30, 69, 72–73, 78, 95, 169, 223n10, 224n15,

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Index spectators: in dialogue with performers (continued) 225n12, 228n1 (chap. 4). See also reciprocity (in performance) in Don Quijote, 117, 119–25, 127–30, 183 and gaze, 45–49, 224nn17–18 influence on dramatists, 136– 39, 165–66, 228n4 and jongleuresque tradition, 43–49, 57–58, 191–92, 216, 218–19 in Lazarillo de Tormes, 97–98, 100–01 in Lope de Vega’s Arte nuevo, 195–96, 198–200, 205– 07, 210, 212. See also vulgo (vulgar) and multiform theater, 61–65, 87, 161–63 and performance genres, 223n9. See also performance: genres and performance training, 226n2. See also apprenticeship and perspective scenography, 145–58. See also imaginative space versus readers, 178–79, 181 and selective inattention, 34– 36, 223–24n12 and simple stage, 26–28 and Thespis myth, 20–23 as villains, 230n10 speech-act theory, 2, 99–100, 221n2 Spoon River Anthology (Masters), 72, 85 stage a priori, 21, 26, 31, 43, 113 complex, 6, 9–10, 28, 55–58, 62, 103, 106–07, 113, 126, 142–43, 153, 158,

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161–62, 167, 175, 184. See also Huston, Hollis; stage: simple platform, 62, 103, 113–14 simple, 9, 27–28, 36, 44, 46, 56–57, 59–60, 67–68, 88, 103, 107, 110, 112, 117–20, 142–43, 147– 48, 153, 172, 176, 204, 216, 221n1 thrust, 142 See also Brook, Peter; carros; corrales; empty space; footlights; fourth wall; Huston, Hollis; imaginative space; inns and taverns; performance space; perspective scenography; props; proscenium arch; scenery; Teatro Cervantes storytelling, 4, 10, 30, 40–41, 59– 60, 63, 117–21, 127, 129, 152, 218–19 Surtz, Ronald, 18–20, 43, 153, 160, 222n2, 225n4 Tarlton, Richard, 10, 101–04, 108–14, 142, 167, 185, 205, 227n6 Tarlton’s Jests and News out of Purgatory, 102–03, 110, 227n6 taverns. See inns and taverns Teatro Cervantes, 143–44, 151 Teresa de Manzanares (Castillo Solórzano), 94–95 Thespis, 8–9, 11, 13–15, 17–21, 25, 30–31, 37–39, 41– 42, 44–45, 49, 54, 56, 135, 171–76, 198–99, 203, 215, 217 Thespis myth, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 20–21, 25, 30–31, 37–

Index 39, 42, 54, 56, 135, 171– 73, 175–76, 198, 203, 215, 222n2 Timoneda, Juan de, 11–12, 103, 171, 178–82, 186–89, 207–08, 212, 228–29n3 (chap. 5). See also Rueda, Lope de: Registro de representantes tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, La. See Celestina trained animals, 10, 24, 28, 68, 87, 117, 125, 129. See also bear baiting tricks, 31, 64, 67, 95–96, 107, 112, 114, 125, 146–47, 227n9. See also burlas Trois Frères, cave of Les, 38–41, 47 troubadours (trovadores), 7, 9, 50, 65, 86–88, 160–61, 165, 176, 183, 226n14, 228n3 (chap. 4) Turner, Victor, 2, 84–85, 88

174–77, 184, 192–214, 219, 229n4 Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, 11–12, 166, 192–214, 229n8, 230n14 El bastardo Mudarra, 166 Fuenteovejuna, 151–52 El último godo, 162–63, 166, 208 El villano en su rincón, 180– 81 verdad sospechosa, La (Alarcón), 152, 155, 204 Vicente, Gil, 2, 153, 167, 173 Vico, Giambattista, 192 voicing, 27, 43, 50, 71–72, 74–82, 84, 119, 121–24, 130, 148, 152, 155, 191 voyeurism, 46, 115, 145, 224– 25n18 vulgo (vulgar), 12, 25, 194–95, 198–202, 206–09. See also Vega, Lope de: Arte nuevo de hacer comedias

unities, 142, 172, 202, 208–09. See also Aristotelianism; neoclassicism

Waverly Consort, 73, 75–76, 78, 81, 84, 92 Weimann, Robert, 142, 154 Wit and Mirth: Or, Pills to Purge Melancholy, 73, 80, 225n11

variation. See improvisation Vaudeville. See national theaters: United States Vega, Lope de, 2, 17–18, 20, 26, 93, 103, 126, 132, 134, 146–47, 164–66, 171,

zanni, 53, 155, 213 Zumthor, Paul, 59, 69, 75, 117, 222n6

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About the Author Bruce R. Burningham, Illinois State University, specializes in medieval and early modern Spanish literature, Hispanic drama, and performance theory. His most recent book project, “Tinted Mirrors: Baroque Reflections on Contemporary Culture,” examines the intersection of the Spanish baroque and contemporary Anglo-American culture.

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