-
Notes on Two of Tirso's Plays
- Bulletin of the Comediantes
- Bulletin of the Comediantes
- Volume 12, Number 2, Fall 1960
- pp. 1-6
- 10.1353/boc.1960.0004
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Bulletin Of The Comediantes Vol. XIl Fall, 1960 No. Notes on Two of Tirso's Plays by Gerald Wadk, University of Tennessee I. No le arriendo la ganancia The composition date of Tirso's auto, No le arriendo la ganancia, is given by Doha Blanca de los Ríos (Obras de Tirso, I, Madrid , 1946, p. 496) as not later than August of 161 3.1 Her reasoning is as follows: ?? le arriendo has verbal parallels so close to Cervantes' El licenciado Vidriera that Cervantes must have used Tirso's auto as the basis of his novel. Indeed, so striking are the parallels that "la prosa de El licenciado parece directa paráfrasis de los versos de Téllez." (On her page 70, the Señora had labeled Tomás Rodaja of the Licenciado a "verdadera semblanza satírica de Tirso.") It follows, the Señora argues, that Tirso's auto must have preceded Cervantes' novela in date of composition, and the Señera suggests this date as at any time before September 9, 1613, the date of the "privilegio" for the Licenciado's printing as one of the Novelas ejemplares. This date, Doña Blanca affirms, is established for the auto by a document reproduced by Cristóbal Pérez Pastor in his Nuevos datos (Madrid, 1901, p. 131); the document shows the presence in Madrid of Baltasar Pinedo in February of 1613, and hence he must have had the Tirsian auto in hand at that date. That it was Pinedo who first presented No le arriendo la ganancia is made certain by Tirso's own words in his Deleitar aprovechando'? ". . . no poco aplaudido años ha en esta Corte, representandolo Pinedo, en presencia JeI pacifico Filipo, Tercero de este nombre . . ." Doña Blanca recalls this note on her page 496. It is apparent that the Señora's dating of No le arriendo rests solely on Pérez Pastor 's document, for even if the verbal parallels between the auto and the novela are taken with full value as proof of copying, the question of who copied whom could not be solved by the simple fact of the parallels alone. If there was copying, it could have been done as well by Tirso as by Cervantes.3 In her insistence on Tirso's having been copied by Cervantes, the Señora ignores the belief of Cervantists that the Licenciaao Vidriera was composed between 1604 and 1606, not in 16 13.* This dating of course destroys her thesis, for No le arriendo could not have been composed that early. Again, the Señora ignores the opinions of Cervantists about the model or the inspiration of Cervantes' licenciado-, although her suggestion that Cervantes found his inspiration in Tirso was made as long ago as 1897-1898,a there seems to have been no major scholar who took it seriously, and among Cervantine specialists there appears to be agreement with the opinions expressed by G. Hainsworth that although no specific model of Cervantes' protagonist has been found, his inspiration for the idea of the man of glass could well have come from Italian sources of the late sixteenth century.6 It is evident, then, that unless Señora de los Ríos can base her argument on documentary data, her dating of No L· arriendo la ganancia rests on a very flimsy foundation. The document she adduced (showing Pinedo 's presence in Madrid in February of 1613) is of course authentic, but her con1 BULLETIN OF THE COMEDIANTES Published in the Spring and Fall by the Comediantes, an informal, international group of all those interested in the comedia. Editor Karl-Ludwig Selig University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, N. C. Associate Editor John E. Keller University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, N. C. Subscription: $1 a year elusion from it that this play producer had the manuscript of our auto in hand at that time does not necessarily follow in logic. That it does not follow in fact is made evident from two other documents that enable us to date the auto with considerable precision; documents that were available to the Señora's inspection but of which she was apparently...