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*Contigo pan y cebolla*: the Spanish version for 'love in a cottage' has many parallels. Cf. for example two such widely different sources as Prov. xv, 17: "Better a dinner of herbs where love is…," and Omar Khayyam's "A book of verses" etc.
*sillas de paja vieja*: 'worn-out cane (or reed) chairs.'
ACTO PRIMERO, ESCENA PRIMERA
*se habrá usted estado leyendo*: 'you must have been reading.' The future of possibility, with the corresponding conditional to express possibility in the past, occurs very frequently in this play.
*Pero hombre, que estás ahí charlando sin saber*: 'but, man alive, there you are' etc. The redundant que as employed by the various characters in the play would make a profitable study in idiomatic Spanish speech.
*Papamoscas de Burgos*: a popular carved figure that forms part of the mechanism of a clock in the famous cathedral at Burgos, Spain. The *papamoscas* comes out at certain hours just as do the figures in a cuckoo clock. The term *papamoscas* is also familiarly used for *papanatas* (gullible person). Since the stories about the *Papamoscas* are, to the sophisticated, pure inventions, to speak of the niece of the *Papamoscas* is from Bruno's point of view, at least, to indicate the highest degree of improbability.
*se indigestan*: 'are hard to digest' (cf. English "are hard to swallow").
*San Juan de Dios*: reference to the clock in the neighboring tower of the monastery of St. John of God. (An excellent book of reference that gives details of the monuments and streets of old Madrid is "El antiguo Madrid," by Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, Madrid, 1861.)