[771] A good many are to be found in the “Joco-Seria” of Quiñones de Benavente. Those by Cancer are in the Autos, etc., 1655, cited in note 44.
[772] “El Castillo de Lindabridis,” end of Act I. There is an entremes called “The Chestnut Girl,” very amusing as far as the spirited dialogue is concerned, but immoral enough in the story, to be found in Chap. 15 of the “Bachiller Trapaza.”
[773] Mad. d’Aulnoy, Tom. I. p. 56.
[774] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 277. The entremeses of Cancer are to be found in his Obras, Madrid, 1761, 4to; those of Deza y Avila, in his “Donayres de Tersicore,” 1663; and those of Benavente, in his “Joco-Seria,” 1653. The volume of Deza y Avila—marked Vol. I., but I think the only one that ever appeared—is almost filled with light, short compositions for the theatre, under the name of bayles, entremeses, saynetes, and mogigangas; the last being a sort of mumming. Some of them are good; all are characteristic of the state of the theatre in the middle of the seventeenth century.
Al fin con un baylezito
Iba la gente contenta.
Roxas, Viage, 1614, f. 48.
[776] The Gaditanæ Puellæ were the most famous; but see, on the whole subject of the old Spanish dances, the notes to Juvenal, by Ruperti, Lipsiæ, 1801, 8vo, Sat. XI. vv. 162-164, and the curious discussion by Salas, “Nueva Idea de la Tragedia Antigua,” 1633, pp. 127, 128. Gifford, in his remarks on the passage in Juvenal, (Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Philadelphia, 1803, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 159), thinks that it refers to “neither more nor less than the fandango, which still forms the delight of all ranks in Spain,” and that in the phrase “testarum crepitus” he hears “the clicking of the castanets, which accompanies the dance.”
[777] Jornada III. Every body danced. The Duke of Lerma was said to be the best dancer of his time, being premier to Philip IV., and afterwards a cardinal. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. VI., 1839, p. 272.