The Errant Fortunes of ‘La gitanilla’ and Cervantes's Performing Gypsies

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Notes

 [1] The most persuasive, and tenacious representative of this call for a return to historical context in recent times is Anthony Close (2000), who provides a feistily eloquent, strikingly erudite, and always historically grounded account of Cervantes's approach to comic fiction.

 [2] Maureen Ihrie admits a certain reluctance to parcel Cervantes up, but nevertheless ventures a classification of the author as a ‘mitigated Pyrrhonist-Fideist’ (1982, p.116). The conflictive intimacy of the mix marks him out as a man of his time, and, as Paul Julian Smith has suggested (1988, p. 177), is distorted by attempts to re-schedule its terms along an axis of progression from one to the other.

 [3] I refer the reader here to Anthony Close's excellent discussion of the vigorous resurgence after 1600 of the ‘coarse, Aristophanic strain endemic to Spanish [comic] tradition’ (2000, p.13).

 [4] Anti-Cartesian positions have of course also been influentially adopted in the modern period by Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard and others. But other, non-Cartesian configurations of subjectivity can also be traced back much earlier than this. Indeed, they can be identified, as Andrew Bowie has shown (1996, pp. 105–106), even in the eighteenth century with the work of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, this despite Heidegger's contention that no such alternative models were to be found in the Western metaphysical tradition.

 [5] If one takes as a basis the old Gypsy woman's claim that Preciosa, now 15, was stolen as a baby in 1595 (see Cervantes 1982, I, p. 149), the tale would date to 1610. Gutierre de Cetina's request for an aprobación from the Trinitarian Fr. Juan Bautista (Cervantes 1982, I, p. 54) is dated 2 July 1612, so it seems not unreasonable to assume that the tale was finished sometime between that date and a terminus ante quem of 1610.

 [6] Paul Julian Smith has expressed similar reservations about Forcione's ‘immensely detailed’ analysis of ‘El licenciado Vidriera’, noting that ‘at times the story itself seems to disappear under the weight of the critic's erudition’ (1988, p. 188).

 [7] Ricapito rejects Forcione's view principally because of the radical change in intellectual climate which had come about in Spain by the time the tale was written (1996, p. 7). Erasmianism had enjoyed its heyday in Spain during the reign of Charles V some eight decades earlier. As Close has argued, its subsequent suppression by the Inquisition, and the fact that Erasmus's more controversial texts were difficult to obtain in Spain after about 1650, suggest the need for a rather cautious approach to the question of direct Erasmian influences in Cervantes (2000, p. 34).

 [8] I mention only briefly here the murky question of Cervantes's own family connections. For the tangled tale of Cervantes's cousin Martina, the result of an amorous liaison between the illegitimate, half-Gypsy Archdeacon, Martín de Mendoza (known as el gitano), and María de Cervantes, daughter of Juan, the author's grandfather, the reader is referred to Jean Canavaggio (2003, p. 52) and Bernard Leblon (2001, p. 20).

 [9] Fraser cites the welcome accorded by the Constable of Castile, Count Miguel Lucas de Iranzo, to the ‘Counts Thomas and Martin of Little Egypt’ at Jaén in November 1462 (1995, p. 97), some four decades after the Gypsies' first arrival in northern Spain. Juan de la Plata has more recently quoted (without documenting his source) an edict of l4 June 1438 which demanded that ‘todos los gitanos vagabundos’ abandon Jerez and its rural environs (2001, p. 8). One should add that such edicts tended to be honoured more in the breach than in the observance, not least because of the difficulty of enforcing them.

[10] The social historian Antonio Domínguez Ortiz cites a fascinating letter written from Porcuna in the province of Jaén by one Manuel Montillo, who describes himself as both priest and lawyer. It was quoted in a consulta of the Council of Castile on 8 May 1674, though it covers a period stretching back to the 1630s. In it, the writer notes the ubiquitous presence in villages and countryside of Gypsies who have come there from other parts of Spain, and he complains that in 40 years of residence there he has hardly seen one of them hanged or sent to the galleys, despite the fact that the law by then required that all Gypsies found wandering Spain be condemned to the latter fate (Domínguez 1978, pp. 323–324).

[11] Montillo's letter also notes that ‘muchos lugares de corta vecindad los temen, y están acobardados por cuadrillas de cincuenta y cien gitanos que se ayudan unos a otros, y muchos tienen sus caballos con frenos y espuelas, carabinas dobles y arcabuces como soldados, de que usan así para sus robos como para librarse de sus riesgos’ (Domínguez 1978, p. 324). Similar accusations were common long before 1674, appearing time and again in the long series of royal ordinances against Gypsies dating back to 1499. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Cervantes could have encountered Gypsies in some such rural connection, or even perhaps when, accused of financial irregularities, he spent about seven months between 1597 and 1598 incarcerated in Seville's notorious Cárcel Real, a place that had certainly seen a Gypsy or two pass through its doors. The lack of direct evidence ensures, however, that one is condemned to conjecture in the matter.

[12] The persistent presence of Gypsies in Madrid is evidenced by the authorities' frequently repeated demands that they leave the city. On 13 August 1609, for example, an auto issued in response to a petition by the alcaldes de corte of the previous day ordered all Gypsies to leave Madrid and devote themselves instead to work on the land (AHN, Consejo de Castilla, Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte 1609, fol. 425).

[13] The same can be said of most other writing of the period, although Vicente Espinel's pen portrait of a group of Gypsies travelling west through the foothills of the Serranía de Ronda in the Vida del escudero Marcos de Obregón may be felt to be something of an exception. Salted with the usual mix of fear and hostility, and, no doubt, a touch or two of pure fiction, as was his way, Espinel's description nevertheless has a ring of authenticity about it. It is worth citing for comparative purposes: ‘di con una transmigración de gitanos en un arroyo que llaman de las doncellas, que me hiciera volver atrás si no me hubieran visto, porque se me representó luego las muertes que sucedían entonces por los caminos, hechas por gitanos y moriscos… Las gitanas iban de dos en dos, en unas yeguas y cuartagos muy flacos; los muchachos, de tres en tres y de cuatro en cuatro, en unos jumentillos cojos y mancos. Los bellacones de los gitanos a pie, sueltos como un viento, y entonces me parecieron muy altos y membrudos, que el temor hace las cosas mayores de lo que son… Iban unos gitanillos desnudos; otros, con un coleto acuchillado, o con un sayo roto sobre la carne; otro, ensayándose en el juego de la corregüela. Las gitanas, una muy bien vestida, con muchas patenas y ajorcas de plata, y las otras a medio vestidas y desnudas, y cortadas las faldas por vergonzoso lugar; llevaban una docena de jumentillos cojos y ciegos, pero ligeros y agudos como el viento, que los hacían caminar más que podían’ (2000 [1618], pp. 276–280). One might also cite as unusual in this respect the description of Gypsy mortuary rites in another work which post-dates Cervantes, Jerónimo de Alcalá's picaresque novel Alonso de muchos amos o el donado hablador (1980 [1626], pp. 197–198). It contains some references to Gypsies that suggest a certain sympathy for their plight, as, for example, here: ‘pero estos nuestros gitanos, que en su vida vieron la mar, sino cuando los echan a galeras, que si las cumplen y no pagan con el pellejo (que es lo más ordinario), vuelven tales, que más están para un hospital de incurables, que para quedarse de noche al sereno’ (1980, p. 202). In a similar vein, Lope de Vega has the following exchange in El arenal de Sevilla . Fajardo, himself significantly a galley captain, asks Lucinda, who is pretending to be a Gypsy, about her husband (my italics):

Fajardo¿Dónde tienes tu marido?

LucindaDale a Dios, bien cerca está.

FajardoEn las galeras irá

Preso, y jamás ofendido. (1977 [1618], p. 125)

[14] Cervantes offers a tribute to Lope de Rueda in the prologue to his Ocho comedias y entremeses (1966, p. 101). Other examples of dramatists who had portrayed Gypsies include Gil Vicente in the Farça das ciganas , staged in Évora in 1521 (1953), and Juan de Timoneda in the Comedia llamada Aurelia (1936; publ. 1565). Cervantes mentions Timoneda, though not this particular work, in the Viaje del Parnaso (1973, p. 161). The demonizing notion that Gypsies routinely stole children was common currency both in Spain and elsewhere. Just two years after Cervantes's death, for example, Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, the arbitrista Canon-confessor at Toledo cathedral, advised that the Gypsies be expelled from Spain like the Moriscos before them, maliciously spicing his argument by asserting of them that ‘son sin número los niños chiquitos que han llevado a vender a Berbería’ (1618, p. 6).

[15] ‘Que aunque no tuvieran otro defecto sino ser manifiestos y notorios vagamundos, merecían por leyes del Reyno, servir a Su Magestad en las galeras… Verdad sea que açotes poco valen para quien tiene en las espaldas callos hechos … los açotes que la sobredicha ley manda dar, son sesenta solamente, que son en su reputación sesenta guindas o confites… ¿Quándo jamás se vio pedir alguno dellos al Pontífice Romano dispensación para contraer matrimonio en grados prohibidos por derecho? ¿Cuándo se oyó en Parrochia alguna publicación o amonestación para sus casamientos? … Dexo aparte el no saber entre ellos officio alguno, ni tener rentas ni recurso a la agricultura, por lo qual necessariamente han de ser todos ladrones. Y si acaso se inclinan a exercitar algún offiçuelo, es hacer varrenas, por ser especie de ganzúa: … No son monazillos, sacristanes, clérigos ni religiosos. No son alcaldes regidores ni alguaziles. No son pregoneros ni guardas de los montes. Antes quando entran en los pueblos, tienen tanto que guardar los vezinos sus haciendas, que aun no osan acudir a las del campo. No pagan tributo al Rey, ni diezmos ni primicias a la Yglesia. No dan ofrenda en vida, ni añal en muerte. Pues en lo que toca a los Sacramentos, Dios lo remedie. Miren los libros y memoriales de las Yglesias en lo que toca al Santo Baptismo, y verán lo que passa. Dexo aparte el Sacramento de la Confirmación y Santísimo Oleo, que jamás entró por sus puertas: … Y es que trocaron las mugeres, y que por ser la una de un poco mejor parecer que la otra, le avía vuelto cierta quantiad de moneda. Y para hazer este trueque y cambio, digo yo que tendría algún buleto del Gran Turco, o de su Pontífice Caliphe de Baldaco, o de Sofi en pago de algún baile que hubiessen hecho, o algunas vueltas peligrosas en el aire. Y aun creo que vían del mesmo bulero facultad para entre ellos poderse enterrar en el campo y en tierra virgen (como Moros Africanos) comiendo carne en Viernes encima de la sepultura del mal logrado… No son de provecho alguno, y son de daño manifiesto. Y con todo esso, con no trabajar ellos ni ellas hilar ni hazer telas, andan mejor vestidos que los demás plebeyos: Pues de ordinario traen las ropas guarnecidas, que a la triste desposada robaron… Y lo que no es poco de llorar, es que como no tienen bienes que confiscar, quedan sus atrocísimos delitos sin castigo' (Fray Melchor de Huélamo, 1607, fols 1–2).

[16] For other examples, albeit of slightly later date, of recycled demonizations of Gypsies, the reader is referred to the bibliography for full details of Salazar de Mendoza's Memorial de el hecho de los gitanos (1618), the eighth discourse of Sancho de Moncada's Restauración política de España (1974 [1619]), and Juan de Quiñones's violent and vitriolic Discurso contra los gitanos (1999 [1631]).

[17] The biblical source of this traditional offering of first fruits is to be found in Nehemiah 10:35. Popular hopes for its efficacy were doubtless sharpened in early modern Spain by the repeated failures of the harvest there. Famine had, for example, wrought havoc in La Mancha in 1585, Valencia in 1592 and Galicia in 1608 (Casey 1999, pp. 36, 124).

[18] Observing that ‘the backbone of a novel has to be a story’, Forster added, ‘Qua story, it can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next. These are the only two criticisms that can be made on the story that is a story. It is the lowest and simplest of literary organisms. Yet it is the highest factor common to all the very complicated organisms known as novels’ (1974, p. 35).

[19] One might well add that the structure of Pedro de Urdemalas, a play that is ‘typically linear’ in the way its episodes are arranged (McKendrick, 2002, p. 148), strays in precisely the opposite direction.

[20] Gypsy women claiming various kinds of secret knowledge and the ability through potions, spells or other arcane procedures to influence events, especially in matters of love, were often investigated by the Inquisition, usually, at least in the first instance, on charges of witchcraft. On the whole, though, the inquisitors seem to have been alive to the vanity and gullibility of the victims of such ‘scams’, and penalties tended in consequence to be relatively light.

[21] The tradition of the blind ballad singer who would perform in village squares and then sell his verses as pliegos sueltos survived in some parts of Spain well into the twentieth century. As to the Gypsies, there is also a long tradition in southern Spain of flamenco-style performance of ballads or romances, sometimes also known there as corridas. This tradition was mentioned by Serafín Estébanez Calderón in 1847 in his Escenas andaluzas , in which he described a dance in Triana at which versions of the romances of Conde Sol and Gerineldos were sung (1985, p. 248). The tradition survives to the present day (Carrillo Alonso, 1988) and a number of recordings have been made, including a copla based on the Romance de Gerineldos sung by the Gypsy José de los Reyes ‘el Negro del Puerto’ in the collection of field recordings released in 1969 as the Archivo del cante flamenco (Discos Vergara, Barcelona).

[22] María Inés Chamarro's Tesoro de villanos: diccionario de germanía gives ‘prostituta’ for ‘paloma’, ‘prostituta joven’ for ‘corderilla’, and ‘prostituta de rufián’ for ‘leona’ (2002, pp. 628, 269, 534), Preciosa's use of the last of these clearly representing an additional sideswipe at the teniente himself.

[23] In a consulta of 1644, the Council of Castile was eventually to recommend legislation to ensure ‘que no se cantasen jácaras, ni sátiras, ni seguidillas, ni otro ningún cantar ni baile antiguo ni moderno, ni nuevamente inventado que tuviere indecencia, desgarro ni acción poco modesta’ (Cotarelo y Mori 1997, p. 165a). The representation of Gypsies on stage had already been banned by Philip IV in a royal ordinance of 8 May 1633 which ordered that ‘ni en danças, ni en otro acto alguno se permita acción, ni representación, trage, ni nombre de Gitanos, pena de dos años de destierro, y de cincuenta mil maravedís para la nuestra Cámara’. These penalties were to be doubled for a second offence (Pragmática que su Magestad manda se promulgue en razón de los gitanos que andan por el Reino, 1633).

[24] Calderón's El médico de su honra (1976 [1637]) and La vida es sueño (1994 [1635]) provide two notable examples of such ‘wooden’ and in these cases, I suspect, designedly unconvincing endings.

[25] The suggestions of corruption contrast notably with Preciosa's defence of her virginity, which she sets firmly outside the circle of exchange: ‘Una sola joya tengo, que la estimo en más que a la vida, que es la de mi entereza y virginidad, y no la tengo de vender a precio de promesas ni dádivas, porque, en fin, será vendida, y si puede ser comprada, será de muy poca estima’ (Cervantes 1982, I, p. 99).

[26] One wonders whether Cervantes intended with this surname to play metathetically on ‘carcoma’ or ‘carcomido’ (both words appear in Covarrubias). The suspicion intensifies when one takes account of the fact that Juan (Andrés) first introduces himself as ‘hijo de Fulano’ (1982, I, p. 97), for which Covarrubias gives ‘gente ruin, de la qual se haze poco caso’ (1998 [1611], p. 615a). The handy-dandy irony is then compounded when, on becoming a ‘Gypsy’, it is agreed that he will assume the surname ‘Caballero’, ‘porque también había gitanos entre ellos de este apellido’ (1982, I, p. 105).

[27] The phrase may have been a common one. It had, for example, been used previously by Lope de Rueda in scene VI of the Comedia llamada Medora, in which the lackey Gargullo, a non-Gypsy, says ‘todos tenemos hoy el diablo en el cuerpo’ (2001 [1567], p. 251).

[28] ‘Rinconete y Cortadillo' springs to mind as an example of a similar approach to satire, as indeed does the dog Berganza's previously mentioned condemnation of the Gypsies in ‘Coloquio de los perros’.

[29] The Gypsies are known to have originated in the Indian sub-continent, which they left en masse probably in the tenth century. The reason for their exodus has not been established. That many Spaniards assumed them to be of Egyptian origin was due to the announcement by the first arrivals in Spain in the mid-1420s that they were from ‘Little Egypt’, actually a part of the Peloponnese, where many had settled for an extended period on their long journey west from the sub-continent.

[30] Spain was not the only country where such suspicions were voiced. As Aydelotte pointed out long ago in his pioneering study, in England ‘the life led by the wandering vagabonds was similar in many respects to that of the gipsies, and there is much evidence that they were closely associated in the popular mind. Almost every statute against rogues and vagabonds includes “Egyptians” as well. There are several statutes against English vagabonds disguising themselves as gipsies or wandering in company with them, which indicates that there were some relations between the two races’ (1913, p. 18). More recently, A. L. Beier has noted that in England ‘some vagrants may have taken on the speech and apparel of gypsies’, adding that ‘the statute of 1562 referred to persons who dressed up as gypsies and imitated their speech and manner’ (1985, p. 62).

[31] The Cortes of Madrid of 13 February 1609 had recommended in respect of the Gypsies ‘que no puedan tratar en cabalgaduras ellos ni sus mujeres ni por interpósitas personas, ni andar en ellas, y si lo hicieren, se las tomen por hurtadas a ellos a las que se las compraren o vendieran, y caigan en la pena del hurto, porque por ser gente que ni las crían ni compran, traen a las ferias mucha cantidad de cabalgaduras mayores y menores hurtadas’ (Actas de las Cortes de Castilla 1902, vol. XXV, pp. 68–69). The Cortes of Madrid of 8 November 1610 noted the serious damage being inflicted on agriculture and the breeding of livestock by the theft by Gypsies of animals like mules used to work the land: ‘tiene perdida gran parte de la labranza y crianza de estos reinos, porque como sus hurtos son cabalgaduras, y roban tantas, los miserables labradores al primero que les hacen quedan perdidos, sin sustancia ni hacienda para poder comprar otras, obligándolos a encerrarlas de noche y no poderlas dejar en los pastos, y no tienen con qué sustentarlas en sus casas, y así se les mueren de hambre’ (Actas de las Cortes de Castilla 1902, vol. XXV, pp. 163–165). The old Gypsy in ‘La gitanilla’ of course remarks that ‘para nosotros se crían las bestias de carga en los campos’ (Cervantes 1982, vol. I, p. 119).