[RODRIGO COTA]. A converted Hebrew, who has owed a great deal of his fame to the false attribution to him of the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo and of the Celestina. A meritorious poem of Cota’s is the Diálogo entre el Amor y un Viejo (published by Menéndez y Pelayo in his Antología de poetas líricos castellanos, vol. IV, p. 1). A burlesque ascribed to him may be seen in the Revue hispanique, vol. I.
[COPLAS DE MINGO REVULGO]. This is one of several satires, lyrico-dramatic in form, written during the reign of Enrique IV. of Castile († 1474). It is in the nature of a dialogue in thirty-two stanzas, between two shepherds, Mingo Revulgo, representing the more inferior class, and Gil Arribato, representing the more elevated class, who discuss the moral and social decay of the time and the dissolute behavior of the king. The work has been attributed without warrant to Rodrigo Cota, Juan de Mena and others. For the full text see Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología, III, 5 ff., and cf. Ticknor, I, 232 f., and Pidal in the Cancionero of Baena (ed. 1860, p. c).
[Page 32].—l. 13. Mingo Rebulgo; Mingo = Domingo, and according to early glosses Rebulgo is here an intensitive of vulgo = cosa pública.
l. 21. ¿Non ... rejo? A line of doubtful sense. Menéndez y Pelayo would translate te llotras by te alegras. But llotrarse seems to mean vestirse; hence a possible sense would be, Do you not arm yourself with good courage? (rejo = vigor, strength). Cf. the translation in Ticknor (I, 233): “Pray, are you broken down with care?”
l. 2. en fuerte ... echamos, i.e., we made a very bad cast, we had hard luck.
l. 3. Candaulo, here for the king Enrique IV. Candaulo, or Candaule, was a Lydian king.
l. 12. nin roso nin velloso, nothing at all.
l. 18. tyenen de, i.e., han de. According to the glosses, the three ravenous she-wolves are the three persecutions—hunger, war and pestilence—which Ezekiel promised to the Israelites in punishment for their sins; cf. the three next stanzas.
[ÍÑIGO LÓPEZ DE MENDOZA], MARQUÉS DE SANTILLANA. Perhaps the most impressive literary figure of the fifteenth century. The nephew of López de Ayala, he belongs partly to the Middle Ages, but largely also to the Renaissance. Amador de los Ríos, who has given us the best edition of his works (Madrid, 1852), as well as an excellent account of his life and genius, divides Santillana’s productions into five classes: obras de amores, obras doctrinales é históricas, sonetos fechos al itálico modo, obras devotas, obras de recreación. Of these, two of the most important are represented by our selections, viz., the sonetos and the obras de amores. Santillana is thought to have imported the sonnet into Spain, and this poetical form does not represent his whole debt to Italian literature, for in a great part of his work he stands under the influence preëminently of Dante, but also of Petrarch and Boccaccio. The Dantesque allegory plays a prominent part in his poetical vision (not a drama), the Comedieta de Ponza, in the Coronacion de Mossen Jordi and the Infierno de enamorados. Didactic or doctrinal in bent are the Diálogo de Bias contra Fortuna, the Proverbios, and the Doctrinal de privados, the last-named containing a bitter arraignment of his unfortunate enemy Álvaro de Luna. The most original and most interesting element of all his work is that represented by the obras de amores, that is to say, the serranillas (mountain-girl songs) or vaqueiras (cowherd songs, a Galician word), such as the famous one on [p. 35], the villancicos (a popular form with an estribillo or refrain), etc. A Provençal-Galician influence is, of course, discernible in these songs. Santillana was deeply imbued with an admiration for classic letters. In his prose Carta al Condestable de Portugal he is the first real historian of Spanish literature. Cf. Menéndez y Pelayo, Antología, V, pp. lxxviii ff. and Ticknor, I, 331 ff.
[Page 34].—l. 19. In tone this sonnet is paralleled by that of Quevedo on [p. 164] and of Núñez de Arce on [p. 324].