The Gracioso Takes the Audience into His Confidence

Calderón de la Barca. El alcalde de ZaL·mea . Presented by the Experimental Theater of the Morón (Argentina) Municipal Council .—Spanish Cultural Index, No. 1 1 3 (June 1, 1955), p. 699. Cervantes. La cueva de Salamanca. Performed at the annual festival of the Parií Institute of Hispanic Studies.—Spanish Cultural Index, No. 114 (July 1, 1955), p. 819. Cervantes. La guarda cuidadosa. El retablo de las maravillas. Presented by El Teatro Español Universitario, in the Corral de Comedias, Almagro.—ABC, Mar. 31, 1955. Tirso de Molina. El condenado por desconfiado . Open air performance given in front of the Façade of the Universidad de Alcalá by the Teatro Popular del Departa mento de Cultura de la Delegación de Educaci ón. Directed by Gustavo Pérez Puig, and adapted by José María Rincón.—ABC, July 7, 1955. Vega, Lope de. El acero de Madrid. Performance planned for May 29, 1955, by the Escuela de Arte Dramático, Almagro.—ABC, Mar. 31, 1955. Vicente, Gil. Don Duardos. La Sibila Casandra. Performed by the Spanish Society, King's College, London.—Spantsh Cultural Index, No. 112, (May 1, 1955), p. 575. The Gracioso Takes the Audience into His Confidence Sturgis E. Leavitt, University of North Carolina Back along in the early part of this century Raymond Hitchcock, one of America's popular comedians (King Dodo, 1902, and The Beauty Shop, 1914), had a way of embarassing his fellow actors and delighting the audience by interrupting the play and speaking directly over the footlights. He would say with all seriousness, for example, right in the middle of his part: "You know what I like about this play is that the villains get off so easily." Or, when an automobile horn was heard off stage and a servant announced that the master's car was waiting, Hitchcock might say something like this: "You can't fool me. There isn't any automobile out there. Someone behind the scenes is just blowing a horn." We have no way oí knowing whether the actors of the Golden Age ever interrupted the comedia to make some unexpected remark in the Hitchcock manner, but it seems clear that the author sometimes wrote into the play speeches that were intended to have this effect. One can imagine that in such cases the actor advanced to the front of the stage and delivered the prepared speech which was designed by the author to have the appearance of improvisation. It is impossible to determine who started this practice. Examples appear in plays that appeared at about the same period, and it may have been Guillen de Castro, Alarcón, Tirso, or Lope himself that first endeavored to extract a smile by such an unorthodox procedure . At any rate, an examination of the plays in the BAE, the NBAE, and the Academy edition of Guillen de Castro reveals almost a photo finish with these four dramatists in what appears to be a dead heat. In Tragedia por los celos, if we want to start there, it is not the gracioso who indulges in this manner of speaking, but rather old man Galindez, who listens impatiently to a string of big lies told by the gracioso, Godín, and then says (No one else present) : Señores, está borracho este hombre; por no escuchalle no entraré más en palacio. (Obras III, 291.) In Las canas en el papel y dudoso en la venganza, supposed by Julia Martínez to be "una poco cuidada copia de cómicos, it is the gracioso who exclaims: Señores ¿que diese en mi agora este ramillazo, (Obras, III, 653.) Alarcón seems to have tried out this de27 vice only once, and that in the wild and woolly Tejedor de SegovL·. The situation occurs in Act II, Scene VI, where the Conde is taking the cowardly gracioso Chichón into his confidence. Chichón is quite surprised at this attitude and says first, aside:¿Privado sin merecerlo? and then: Señores, del pie al cabello me tengan por alcahuete. (BAE, 20:403.) Tirso also seems to be very sparing of this type of humor. There is one example of only two...