So take care lest they trouble you.
No doubt his comedias were exhibited before only a few persons, who were able to understand the various languages they contained, and found them only the more amusing for this variety.
[482] It is singular, however, that a very severe passage on the Pope and the clergy at Rome, in the “Jacinta,” was not struck out, ed. 1573, f. 256. b;—a proof, among many others, how capriciously and carelessly the Inquisition acted in such matters. In the Index of 1667, (p. 114,) only the “Aquilana” is prohibited.
[483] As the question, whether Naharro’s plays were acted in Italy or not, has been angrily discussed between Lampillas (Ensayo, Madrid, 1789, 4to, Tom. VI. pp. 160-167) and Signorelli (Storia dei Teatri, Napoli, 1813, 8vo, Tom. VI. pp. 171, etc.), in consequence of a rash passage in Nasarre’s Prólogo to the Plays of Cervantes, (Madrid, 1749, 4to,) I will copy the original phrase of Naharro himself, which had escaped all the combatants, and in which he says he used Italian words in his plays, “aviendo respeto al lugar, y á las personas, á quien se recitaron.” Neither of these learned persons knew even that the first edition of the “Propaladia” was probably printed in Italy, and that one early edition was certainly printed there.
[484] “Las mas destas obrillas andavan ya fuera de mi obediencia y voluntad.”
[485] In the opening of the Introyto to the “Trofea.”
[486] I am quite aware, that, in the important passage already cited from Mendez Silva, on the first acting of plays in 1492, we have the words, “Año de 1492 comenzaron en Castilla las compañías á representar publicamente comedias de Juan de la Enzina”; but what the word publicamente was intended to mean is shown by the words that follow: “festejando con ellas á D. Fadrique de Toledo, Enriquez Almirante de Castilla, y á Don Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza segundo Duque del Infantado.” So that the representations in the halls and chapels of these great houses were accounted public representations.
[487] F. Diez, Troubadours, Zwickau, 1826, 8vo, p. 5.
[488] Sismondi, Histoire des Français, Paris, 1821, 8vo, Tom. III. pp. 239, etc.
[489] E. A. Schmidt, Geschichte Aragoniens im Mittelalter, Leipzig, 1828, 8vo, p. 92.