More on El Martir de Madrid and La fianza satisfecha

MORE ON EL MÁRTIR DE MADRID AND LA FIANZA SATISFECHA Vern G. Williamsen, University of Missouri In a recent article, Henry A. Linares and I studied the relationship of Mira de Amescua's El mártir de Madrid to Lope de Vega's La fianza satisfecha . (1) We suggested in that study that even though the priority of Mira's work seemed evident because of structural differences between the plays (Lope's drama moved the theme from a specific, historical level to a more general, philosophical plane), there was no external evidence pointing to a date previous to 1619 for Mira de Amescua's comedia. Recently, two pieces of information have come forward which should aid in completing the chronological puzzle. Both tend to confirm the earlier conjecture. I Newly published data on Mira's versification habits shows that El mártir de Madrid definitely belongs among the guadijeño's early works.(2) and that it was probably written very close to the time period during which he also wrote El arpa de David (1610-1613).(3) El mártir, for example, has 3039 verses of which 43.1% are redondillas, 26.2% quintillas, 17.1% décimas , and 13.2% romances. El arpa de David, a play of 3521 verses, contains 20.0% redondillas, 29.3% quintillas, 17.0% décimas, 19.0% romances, and 1.2% versos sueltos.(A). The nearly equivalent percentages, for the two plays, of quintillas, décimas, and romances, are among the elements which speak for a chronological relationship. The figures for quintillas and romances , in particular, are similar only to those found in Mira's early pieces. In addition, the plays exhibit a concurrent lack of silvas (a form consistently present in the plays written by Mira after his return from Italy in 1616), and a reduced usage of versos sueltos (an omnipresent strophe in the poet's earliest plays). Because Mira left the Spanish court to go to Italy with the Conde de Lemos in 1610, it seems most probable that both El mártir de Madrid and El arpa de Daviddate from that year rather than later. ? A second item of interest is to be found in Tirso de Molina's Historia General de la Orden de Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes (Madrid, 1974). Here, as the earliest event he chronicles for the year 1619, Tirso describes the arrival in Algiers of Fray Vicente Serrano, the first redemptorist who dared venture into the Moorish kingdom after the final expulsion of the moriscos from Spain some ten years earlier. 37 . . . luciósele esta osadía de manera, que faltó poco para añadir vn mártir a nuestra Orden. ... el buen maestro Serrano auía dicho muchos vituperios de Mahoma, amotinando los cau / tiuos por la muerte que aquellos várbaros dieron al sancto joben y cauallero victoriosso don Pedro de Torres y Miranda que, ennobleciendo con su sangre el cielo y nuestra española corte por ser natural de ella, llaman con justo título el Mártir de Madrid, desde aquel día. Murió porque no quiso desdecirse de auer llamado a su propheta falso, torpe y bestial engañador de simples, ministro de el demonio, y precursor de el Anticristo; (II, p. 440, 11. 37-50. The italics are mine). The fact that the year 1619 again brought the epithet «mártir de Madrid» to the attention of the people of the city undoubtedly led to the disinterment and resuscitation of Mira's comedia dealing with the death of Pedro Navarro Elchi in 1580. By this, I suggest that Mira's play was written considerably earlier than 1619, the date of the earliest approval for performance still attached to the existing manuscript, and that it was, in that year, brought forth and refurbished -perhaps even retitled- in order to take advantage both of the topical interest and of the coincidence of names in the news and in the play. This conjecture is further supported by the physical evidence of the manuscript itself which, except for the final pages, is autograph. The nonholographic folios are tipped in on the stubs of autograph originals (Fragments of Mira's...