[761] Four persons appear in this loa,—a part of which is sung,—and, at the end, Seville enters and grants them all leave to act in her city. Viage, 1614, ff. 4-8.
[762] Lyra Poética de Vicente Sanchez, Zaragoza, 1688, 4to, p. 47.
[763] Joco-Seria, 1653, ff. 77, 82. In another he parodies some of the familiar old ballads (ff. 43, etc.) in a way that must have been very amusing to the mosqueteros: a practice not uncommon in the lighter dramas of the Spanish stage, most of which are lost. Instances of it are found in the entremes of “Melisandra,” by Lope (Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1609, p. 333); and two burlesque dramas in Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XLV., 1679,—the first entitled “Traycion en Propria Sangre,” being a parody on the ballads of the “Infantes de Lara,” and the other entitled “El Amor mas Verdadero,” a parody on the ballads of “Durandarte” and “Belerma”;—both very extravagant and dull, but showing the tendencies of the popular taste not a whit the less.
[764] These curious loas are found in a rare volume, called “Autos Sacramentales, con Quatro Comedias Nuevas y sus Loas y Entremeses,” Madrid, 1655, 4to.
[765] A loa entitled “El Cuerpo de Guardia,” by Luis Enriquez de Fonseca, and performed by an amateur company at Naples on Easter eve, 1669, in honor of the queen of Spain, is as long as a saynete, and much like one. It is—together with another loa and several curious bayles—part of a play on the subject of Viriatus, entitled “The Spanish Hannibal,” and to be found in a collection of his poems, less in the Italian manner than might be expected from a Spaniard who lived and wrote in Italy. Fonseca published the volume containing them all at Naples, in 1683, 4to, and called it “Ocios de los Estudios”; a volume not worth reading, and yet not wholly to be passed over.
[766] Roxas, Viage, ff. 189-193.
[767] Cigarrales de Toledo, 1624, pp. 104 and 403. Figueroa, Pasagero, 1617, f. 109. b.
[768] Sarmiento, the literary historian and critic, in a letter cited in the “Declamacion contra los Abusos de la Lengua Castellana,” (Madrid, 1793, 4to, p. 149), says: “I never knew what the true Castilian idiom was till I read entremeses.”
[769] The origin of entremeses is distinctly set forth in Lope’s “Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias”; and both the first and third volumes of his collection of plays contain entremeses; besides which, several are to be found in his Obras Sueltas;—almost all of them amusing. The entremeses of Cervantes are at the end of his Comedias, 1615.
[770] Novelas, 1783, Tom. II. p. 441. “Coloquio de los Perros.”