Medical and Scatological Encounters in Lope de Rueda’s Pasos

Only a few years after the Council of Trent adjourned, Joan Timoneda prepared Lope de Rueda’s works for publication. In doing so, he doubtlessly went through considerable editing to ensure that the enterprise met with general approval. This, José Luis Canet argues, possibly accounts for the absence of certain stock characters as well as the toned-down language used by the riffraff populating Rueda’s works. But no matter how tempered or changed Rueda’s pasos and comedias may be, because they present the spectator-reader with shreds and scraps of daily life as it was during the sixteenth century, they resonate with views and attitudes held by the populace towards many aspects of society. Medical figures were at the time both needed and distrusted. In trying to secure a proper place for themselves in society, serious medical practitioners as well as quacks resorted to different strategies, such as the use of Latin or the display of personable manners. The proliferation of vernacular medical writings brought about a new culture of pathology whereby women played an important role. My essay studies these aspects as shown (1) in two of Lope de Rueda’s pasos, “Cornudo y contento” and “El ensalmo” (or “Paso de Guadalupe y de Mencieta”), which exhibit examples of medical “performances” and the impact that they have on different patients, and (2) in one of the three anonymous pasos included in the Registro de representantes, which deals with the impersonation of a doctor by one of his servants and with the consequences derived from this action. (LA)