Andas esta madrugada
La cabeza desgreñada:
No te llotras de buen rejo?
Copla I.
[416] Velazquez (Orígenes, p. 52) treats Mingo Revulgo as a satire against King John and his court. But it applies much more naturally and truly to the time of Henry IV., and has, indeed, generally been considered as directed against that unhappy monarch. Copla the sixth seems plainly to allude to his passion for Doña Guiomar de Castro.
[417] The Coplas of Mingo Revulgo were very early attributed to John de Mena, the most famous poet of the time (N. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 387); but, unhappily for this conjecture, Mena was of the opposite party in politics. Mariana, who found Revulgo of consequence enough to be mentioned when discussing the troubles of Henry IV., declares (Historia, Lib. XXIII. c. 17, Tom. II. p. 475) the Coplas to have been written by Hernando del Pulgar, the chronicler; but no reason is given for this opinion except the fact that Pulgar wrote a commentary on them, making their allegory more intelligible than it would have been likely to be made by any body not quite familiar with the thoughts and purposes of the author. See the dedication of this commentary to Count Haro, with the Prólogo, and Sarmiento, Poesía Española, Madrid, 1775, 4to, § 872. But whoever wrote Mingo Revulgo, there is no doubt it was an important and a popular poem in its day.
[418] The “Diálogo entre el Amor y un Viejo” was first printed, I believe, in the “Cancionero General” of 1511, but it is found with the Coplas de Manrique, 1588 and 1632. See, also, N. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. pp. 263, 264, for notices of Cota. The fact of this old Dialogue having an effect on the coming drama may be inferred, not only from the obvious resemblance between the two, but from a passage in Juan de la Enzina’s Eclogue beginning “Vamonos, Gil, al aldea,” which plainly alludes to the opening of Cota’s Dialogue, and, indeed, to the whole of it. The passage in Enzina is the concluding Villancico, which begins,—
Ninguno cierre las puertas;
Si Amor viniese a llamar,
Que no le ha aprovechar.