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AN UNPERCEIVED POPULAR STORY IN ENCINA'S PLACIDA Y VITORIANO DONALD McGRADY University of Virginia Most of the literary influences upon Juan del Encina's eclogue oí Plácida y Vitoriano are well known: when Vitoriano's friend Suplicio advises him to forget about Plácida by taking a new mistress (lines 364-5170, he repeats counsel from Ovid's Remedies of Love, Book II; Plácida's discourse before taking her life (11. 1216-1311) recalls the analogous speech by Dido in Book II of the Aeneid; the risqué scene between the prostitute Flugencia and the bawd Eritea (11. 649-776) obviously derives from La Celestina; and the parody of prayers for the dead («Vigilia de la enamorada muerta,» 11. 1547-2185) has been traced to Garci Sánchez de Badajoz's Liciones de Job.2 Yet another parallel that seems to have escaped notice is a coincidence with the legend of Pyramus and Thisbe: both in Encina's play and in the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book IV), a lover resolves to commit suicide upon finding, next to a spring or stream, the body of his/her beloved, who has just performed self-murder/ Besides these borrowings from celebrated Classical and Castilian works, Encina appears to have reproduced—in only a few short lines—a somewhat obscure popular story. During her conversation with Flugencia, Eritea (like Celestina) describes the promiscuity of her youth: Hija, cuando yo era moza bien pelaba y repelaba de aquesta gente que esboza, que con el verde* retoza, que pelo no les dejaba. (11. 761-66) Then follows the passage which interests us:¡Mozalbillos! Ya les torno los cuchillos que otro tiempo les tomaba. (11. 766-68) 139 140Bulletin of the Comediantes The allusion at first blush seems quite impenetrable: a lecherees now advanced in age (she refers nostalgically to her girlhood in 1. 761) says that at present she gives back to young men the knives she took from them in her youth. The knives could of course be understood as masculine symbols, but that does nothing to clear up the mystery. A possible explanation could be that Eritea may now employ these knives as enticements to seduce youths who otherwise would disdain such a hag. In other words, Eritea may have required knives as payment for her favors when they were in demand, knowing that someday she would no longer be attractive and that then she could lure boys into her arms with those same knives. Just such a device occurs in a story in Giovan Francesco Straparola's Le piacevoli notti, V. 5, which has been thus summarized: Adulteresss prepares for old age. Charges a pair of shoes to consort with men. When old she pays with shoes the men who will consort with her.5 Straparola's story accounts for Eritea's actions perfectly and it seems beyond doubt that Encina has here reproduced a slightly different version of the same tale. The only disparity is that Straparola's adulteress collects payment in shoes—which are, incidentally, just as common as sexual symbols as knives. ' In both cases, then, young servants of Venus prepare for their old age by collecting from their partners such articles as will attract other lovers when they are no longer physically appealing. Although Straparola's tale is basically the same as Encina's it cannot have been the latter's source, because the Italian noveliere postdates considerably the Spanish dramatist.7 Both writers could have taken the story from a previous novella collection, from Italian oral tradition (Encina spent considerable time in Italy, and apparently composed Plácida y Vitoriano while residing there), or possibly from another oral tradition (perhaps even Spanish*). An additional interesting fact about Encina's use of this tale is that it marks perhaps the first recorded instance in which a Spanish dramatist interpolated a cuentecillo into a play—a technique that was to win great favor with Lope, Calderón and other dramatists of the Golden Age.' NOTES 1.Citations (with modernized spelling and modified punctuation) are from Églogas completas de Juan del Enzina, ed. Humberto López-Morales (Madrid: Escelicer, 1968). 2.See Henry W. Sullivan, Juan del...

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