"El Hortelano del Prado": Tirso or Don Antonio Sigler de Huerta?

dous success of Fracastor's work, the name came to replace previous ap- Í)elations for venereal disease.'. If, folowing the classical allusions in El desd én con el desdén, Carlos is seen as Diana's mythological as well as real counterpart, then he can be said to correspond to the Apollo of Fracastor's poem, and Polilla-Caniqui can be imagined as the blaspheming and afflicted figure. While there is no proof that Moreto ever read Fracastor's work or even that members of his audience did, the great popularity and the number of editions and translations of Syphilus sive Morbus Galliens, especially in the sixteenth century, make possible the conjecture that Fracastor's ideas were "in vogue" as late as 1654, the publication date of El desdén con el desdén, and that Fracastor's writings may have been part of the general cultural backdrop of Moreto's work.10 NOTES ' Polilla means both "moth" and "uneasiness " or "care." Caniqui is the word for a type of thin cotton cloth of the type which might be used for women's undergarments. 2 Bruce W. Wardropper, "Moreto's El desd én con el desdén: The Comedia Secularized ," BHS, 34 (1957), 9. 3 All quotes from El desdén con el desdén are from the Francisco Rico edition published in Madrid by Clásicos Castalia in 1971. This quote is from page 66, lines 40-44. Subsequent quotes from the play will be indicated in the text by line number. 4 Lines 700-701. Rico's footnotes on page 97 . explain the meaning of the wordplays. 5 See the corresponding footnote on page 98 of the Rico edition. 6 The items in quotes come from lines 1203 and 1815 respectively. Although the term "emplasto de ranas" may sound strange, live frogs were indeed used in producing a mercury unguent thought to heal syphilis. See: Theodor Rosebury, Microbes and Morals (New York: Viking Press, 1971), p. 47. 7 Ludwig Pfandl, Cultura y costumbres del pueblo español de los siglos XVI y XVII, 2nd Spanish ed. (Barcelona: Editorial Araluce, 1929), p. 173. 8 There has been much debate over whether America was the origin of venereal disease. The important thing to remember here is that at the time of Moreto's play many people were likely to associate venereal disease with the New World. Great outbreaks of the disease had ravaged Europe shortly after the return of Columbus and his men, and one of the most popular remedies for syphilis was guaiacum, a wood indigenous to the West Indies. For an indication of the importance of guaiacum in the sixteenth century see Bruno M. Damiani's Critical Transcription of Francisco Delicado's "El modo de adoperare el legno de India Occidentale," in RHM, 36 (1970-71), 251-271. 9 Girolamo Fracastor, Syphilis or the French Disease, trans. Heneage Wynne-Finch (London : William Heinemann Medical Books Ltd., 1935), p. 41. 10For mythological aspects of El desdén con el desdén see the introduction in the Rico edition. This same introduction also suggests (page 43) that the date of composition for Moreto's play is quite close to the date of publication. "EL HORTELANO DEL PRADO": TIRSO OR DON ANTONIO SIGLER DE HUERTA? Haeold G. Jones, University of Missouri-Columbia Recently, Ruth Lee Kennedy has suggested that the pseudonym "el Hortelano del Prado" refers to Tirso de Molina.' She then fills in some gaps in Tirso's biography on the basis of the activities attributed to this "Hortelano" in a vejamen. I would propose an alternate interpretation. There are 25 grounds for believing that "el Hortelano del Prado" was Don Antonio Sigler de Huerta, poet and dramatist, who was generally known at the time as Don Antonio de Huerta. No one knows how Tirso reacted to the well-known acuerdo by the Junta de Reformación, which recommended that the dramatist be exiled from Madrid and be forbidden to write plays. Biographical data is scanty, and much that has been claimed is conjecture. Kennedy argues that Tirso's immediate reaction is reflected in a passage in one of Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera's vej ámenes delivered to the...