A mi me culpan de que fuí el primero
que Reyes y Deydades di al teatro
de las Comedias traspasando el fuero.
Evidently Cueva did not know that Torres Naharro introduces a king in his Aquilana. A reprint of Cueva's plays is urgently needed: his purely poetic work is of slight value. An edition of El Viage de Sannio, with an admirable Introduction by Professor Fredrik Amadeus Wulff will be found in the Acta Universitatis Lundensis (Lund, 1887-1888), (Philosophi, Språkvetenskap och Historia), vol. xxiii.
[169] Nothing by Adán Vivaldo has survived, apparently. Cervantes assigns this surname to a minor character in Don Quixote (Part I., chap. xiii.).
[170] It would be interesting to know how far this panegyric on Juan Aguayo was justified. I have failed to find any information concerning him or his works.
[171] The dates of the birth and death of the Cordoban poet, Juan Rufo Gutiérrez, are given conjecturally as 1530 and 1600. Cervantes esteemed Rufo's Austriada inordinately: see note 2. In truth the Austriada is a tedious performance, being merely a poor rhythmical arrangement of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's Guerra de Granada. Mendoza's history was not published till 1627, long after the author's death (1575). It was issued at Lisbon by Luis Tribaldos de Toledo who, in the previous year, had brought out a posthumous edition of the poems of Francisco de Figueroa—the Tirsi of the Galatea. Evidently, then, Rufo read the Guerra de Granada in manuscript: see M. Foulché-Delbosc's article in the Revue hispanique (Paris, 1894), vol. i., pp. 137-138, n.
[172] Luis de Góngora y Argote was born in 1561 and died in 1627. His father, Francisco de Argote, was Corregidor of Córdoba, and it has been generally stated that the poet assumed his mother's maiden name. However, the Sra. Doña Blanca de los Ríos y de Lampérez alleges that Góngora's real name was Luis de Argote y Argote: see an article entitled De vuelta de Salamanca in La España moderna (Madrid, June 1897). I do not know precisely upon what ground this statement is made. Despite the perverse affectations into which his culteranismo led him, Góngora is one of the most eminent Spanish poets, and unquestionably among the greatest artists in Spanish literature. A passage in the Viaje del Parnaso (cap. vii.) seems to imply that Cervantes admired Góngora's very obscure work, the Polifemo:—
De llano no le déis, dadle de corte,
Estancias Polifemas, al poeta
Que no os tuviere por su guía y norte.
Inimitables sois, y á la discreta
Gala que descubrís en lo escondido
Toda elegancia puede estar sujeta.
M. Foulché-Delbosc has in preparation a complete edition of Góngora's works.
[173] Barrera conjectures that this Gonzalo Cervantes Saavedra may be the author of a novel entitled Los Pastores del Betis, published at Trani in 1633-4. I do not know this work, which may have been issued posthumously. It seems unlikely that Gonzalo Cervantes Saavedra began novel-writing when over seventy years old: for we may take it that he was over twenty when his namesake praised him, as above, in 1585.
[174] Gonzalo Gómez de Luque wrote the Libro primero de los famosos hechos del príncipe Don Celidon de Iberia (Alcalá de Henares, 1583); but the only works of his with which I am acquainted are the verses in Padilla's Jardín espiritual and López Maldonado's Cancionero: see notes 27 and 23.