Puppet Theater in Eighteenth-Century Mexico

Puppet theater was considered a marginal form of entertainment during Mexico’s colonial era. People saw puppet plays on temporary stages outside of churches, at various fairs, and in private homes. The puppet groups were officially overshadowed by the theater performances, especially those at the Coliseum of Comedias, one of the financial channels for the Hospital Real de Naturales. Leasing the coliseum provided one of the major sources of income for this royal charity for indigenous health care. In order to maintain the Coliseum’s profitability and the benefits derived from it, colonial authorities prohibited most theater groups from performing outside of the Coliseum.¹ The lease owner often called for government assistance against puppet troupes, in particular when they threatened attendance at the theater. This resulted in the so-called “League Comedy” (Comedia de la legua), which was a performance given at least five leagues outside of the central theater district of Mexico City, Puebla, and Guadalajara.

Against a backdrop of concern about Coliseum audiences and profits, this essay follows the development of the puppeteers’ trade, especially company directors, often called the author or the playwright of comedies, during the eighteenth century. The puppeteer, also called the cómico de la legua, was an actor who handled the puppet strings on stage. Although it is said that the world is an eternal comedy, in it the puppeteer was only able to play the unfortunate role of an itinerant actor who traveled to different places offering shows with a constant, urgent need to earn an income.

No legislation described the trade of puppeteers in Spain. Nonetheless, in 1247, Giraldo Riquer de Narbona, in his famous Suplicatio al rey de Castela lamented before King Alfonso “the Wise,” that those who juggle or manipulate puppets are called jongleurs. Giraldo’s declaration discussed those who lived vulgar lives such as those who made monkeys, goats or dogs jump and performs and who could not appear at court; those who displayed puppets, imitated birds or performed a little play and sang among the poor for small amounts of money should not be labeled as jongleurs, he argued. As a result, King Alfonso distinguished actors in five classifications in the Ley de Siete Partidas, the code he promulgated in the thirteenth century:

Histriones	(actors, buffoons)
Trovadores	(troubadours)
Joculadores	(acrobats and magicians)
Bribones	(knaves)
Cazurros	(puppeteers)

The king considered most jongleurs to be individuals who “offered their bodies for vile uses, degrading themselves before everyone” for a few coins. He did not place puppeteers and acrobats among this group because they demonstrated skills. On this basis, for centuries some puppeteers had access to the royalty and their palaces.² The puppeteers wanted to present their shows at court to secure a positive welcome in the rest of the country, because if they were successful at court, they would receive a good response from the general public.³ Beginning in the seventeenth century, permanent puppet theaters appeared at court to entertain the princes more so than the kings. Prominent families hired puppeteers for personal performances.⁴

Miguel de Cervantes de Saavedra declared that puppeteers were vagrants who treated divine things indecently because they turned devotion into laughter with their puppets. They also indiscriminately packed together all the figures of the Old and New Testament, and would put their sack on the floor in taverns, where they sat over it to drink. In Don Quijote de la Mancha, Cervantes included the adventure of Maese Pedro’s puppet show, using the alias Ginesillo de Pasamonte, and it was such an ancient performance that even Greeks and Romans knew of it.⁵

A contemporary of Cervantes, the author of La pícara Justina, says in his second chapter:

My grandfather used to perform puppet shows in Sevilla. His puppets were the best . . . and his stage was the best dressed that was ever seen in that town. . . . It was such a pleasure to see him give an impassioned speech with his puppets; the fruit sellers, and those who grilled and sold chestnuts and the other vendors followed him . . . for the enjoyment of hearing him.^6...