Carnival on the Stage: Cefalo y Pocris, a comedia burlesca

CARNIVAL ON THE STAGE: CEFALO Y POCRIS, A COMEDIA BURLESCA Eloy R. González, Washington State University Burlesque literature of the Spanish 17th and 18th centuries has not yet been fully appraised. Excluding the works of some of the major authors Quevedo , Góngora, Lope - almost no attention has been paid to the copious manifestations of the burlesque spirit in these two centuries. The mockheroic poems of writers such as Bernardino de Albornoz, Rodrigo Fernández de Ribera, Cosme de Aldana, Pedro Silvestre, and others, have received little critical attention. The assertion could be made that the literary sub-genre of the mock-heroic in Spanish literature is still an enigma to most scholars. The comedia burlesca is even less understood.(1) In view of such general neglect this study of Cèfaloy Pócris should not be regarded as a final verdict but rather as an invitation to further investigation. Some problems arise when one tries to make a play like C&P fit into one of the species of burlesque that have been defined in other literatures.(2) Initially, one thinks of the play as a theatrical travesty, as it parodies Calder ón's Celos aun del aire matan. However, a second reading of the piay seems to authorize lifting it to the level of the hudibrastic, in which less confined material is made fun of. And we can go further than that: C&P is, in a sense, the parody of a whole class ofliterature, namely, dramatic literature. Compounding this problem, we find that there is no clear distinction between species of the burlesque in Spanish literature. There is no equivalent in Spanish for the term «travesty» (travestir, travestido, exist, but they refer to different ideas), and the concepts of «travesty» and «mock-heroic» are subsumed under the global concept of burlesco. (3) Beyond the problem of terminology, it is difficult to tell what we are laughing at in a burlesque play such as this one. Interestingly enough, the spiritual affiliation between this burlesque play and characters from Ariosto's Orlando that had been ridiculed in romances burlescos is made explicit in the text of C&P: there are references to Rodomonte and Angelica,(4) Medoro Ferraguz (p. 500L). Besides, in Aura's song we find the line «Tinaja es aqueste reino» (p. 492), which could point to Tassoni's Secchia Rapita. But to see C&P simply as the degradation ofthe heroic would be, in my opinion, to see only one aspect of the play. What do we laugh at in C&P? Do we laugh at the demeaning of traditionally elevated figures - whether socially or poetically elevated - or at the antics of obvious clowns who pretend to be actors and actresses in a play? Do we laugh at the ridiculing of the subject-matter, or ofthe form, theater itself? It could be argued that we laugh at both simultaneously , since throughout the play we can establish dear parallels with situations in the serious play of which C&P is a parody. But as we shall see, other parallels can be drawn with elements that are absent in Celos aun del aire matan. Furthermore, much of what happens in the play does not refer or does not refer exclusively - to other literary texts, but to Carnival activities. Although it is not my intention to trace here the evolution of Carnival plays in the Spanish theater, it is clear that they have a long tradition, dating as far back as Juan del Encina.(5) There is not, however, a direct continuity between those early Renaissance plays and a comedia burlesca such as C&P. Gil Vicente, for instance, did not emulate Encina in adopting the Carnival theme. As theatrical literature developed after Lope, the festive spirit of Carnestolendas was confined mainly to the género chico. The attitude towards Carnival that appears in a baroque play such as C&P is markedly different from that of the Renaissance. While Encina treated Carnival as just another occasion for writing plays, the author of C&P used the opportunity to burlesque serious drama, to write (as it were) an antidrama. The Carnival spirit invading the stage results in a consistent parapraxia in the actions and speeches of the characters. This diminishes the parodie intention and gives the play a new dimension, a...