Carnivalization in Iberian Baroque Theatre

ABSTRACT

This article derives from the research which resulted in the doctoral thesis Antonio Jose da Silva: a dramaturgy made of conventions.¹ It discusses the principle of carnivalization in Iberian theatre from different theoretical perspectives, including that of Mikhail Bakhtin. Through an analysis of the stock character of the gracioso, the carnivalized servant figure originally introduced by the dramatists of the Spanish Golden Age, the intention is to problematize the class tensions and discursive artifices of the tragicomic narrative. This analysis is based on the theory for studying Iberian baroque texts developed in Spain at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, and which is particularly present in Hermenegildo (1995). This article therefore examines the ways in which this stock character, either in its traditional male version or as its female counterpart - the maid -, participates in the development of dramatic intrigue, amplifying the impact of the central issues of a given play’s main plot. To demonstrate the aforementioned theory, this article will examine the play Precipício de Faetonte by 18th-century Portuguese playwright Antonio José da Silva. In this work the actions of these low-status characters can be seen to be interwoven with the development of the central intrigue, a fact which, from a Bakhtinian perspective, can be interpreted as a form of carnivalization explored by the Iberian theatre of the period.

KEYWORDS:
Carnivalization; Character; Theater; Tragicomedy; Dramatic Literature

RESUMO

Este artigo é oriundo da pesquisa resultante na tese de doutorado Antônio José da Silva: uma dramaturgia de convenções¹. No presente texto, discute-se o princípio de carnavalização no teatro ibérico a partir de diferentes perspectivas teóricas, dentre as quais a de Mikhail Bakhtin. Nesse sentido, a partir da descrição da personagem-tipo do gracioso, o criado carnavalizado originalmente inserido no teatro pelos autores do Século de Ouro espanhol, pretende-se problematizar embates de classe e artifícios discursivos da narrativa tragicômica. Tal análise é embasada pela teoria de análise de textos barrocos ibéricos desenvolvidas em Espanha, nos estertores do século XX e no início do XXI, especialmente em Hermenegildo (1995). Desse modo, analisa-se como a personagem-tipo, seja em sua formulação tradicional masculina ou na feminina, como criada, participa das intrigas, de modo a tornar mais contundentes as questões centrais do enredo disparador. Como exemplificação da teoria trabalhada, trazemos a obra do autor português setecentista Antônio José da Silva, Precipício de Faetonte. Nela, é possível perceber a participação dessas personagens baixas entremeando a intriga principal: o que pode ser lido, em nossa perspectiva, como uma forma de carnavalização do teatro ibérico de tal período, dentro da perspectiva bakhtiniana.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Carnavalização; Personagem; Teatro; Tragicomédia; Literatura Dramática

Introduction

In order to discuss carnivalization in Iberian baroque theatre, we must first establish two preliminary premises. Firstly, we must point out that this article takes its lead from a critical study of the Spanish Golden Age developed some decades ago by Spanish researchers, but which has not yet received due attention in Brazil. Secondly, it is important to acknowledge the great debt that theatre produced in Portugal from the seventeenth century until the first half of the eighteenth century owes to Spanish theatrical conventions.

The latter of these two premises contextualizes the reading of Antonio José da Silva’s work undertaken in this article. A Portuguese author of the first half of the eighteenth century, Silva’s works are part of the Spanish tragicomic tradition, formally structured and developed by Lope de Vega and his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (1609).

The first premise, however, leads us to Javier Huerta Calvo, Alfredo Hermenegildo, María Luisa Lobato, and a group of Spanish researchers who have been studying Spanish Golden Age authors in the light of the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin concerning carnivalization, in particular those described in Rabelais and his World.² This research group’s studies focus on the comic genres and subgenres of Golden Age theatre (16th and 17th centuries) known as brief drama, such as mogigangas, jácaras and loas, as well as on the comicality present in cross-genre texts such as tragicomedies and cloak-and-sword comedies. Thus, some characteristics of Bakhtinian laughter will not be properly explored here, in part due to the limits imposed by this article’s length, but also in accordance with the theories defined as its basis,³ which relegate said characteristics to a secondary plain of analysis.

The reading of Bakhtin’s texts undertaken by the Spanish scholars can be seen in the following statement made by Huerta Calvo (1983, pp.47-48, [emphasis added by author]):

Apart from Rabelais, a whole series of minor genres - farces, dialogues… - invoke this vision of the world, which finds in carnival its most perfect paradigm. In Spanish Renaissance literature, pasos and entremeses lend themselves in an unsurpassable way to such analysis. And, in spite of Bakhtin’s reluctance to introduce the theatrical genres of folk cultural discourse (folk discourse) - food, drink, sex, scatology, death deprived of a transcendent meaning etc. - they are fulfilled in the comic genres: picaresque prose, Don Quixote, burlesque poetry, jokes, refrains, entremeses.⁴,⁵

Even if Bakhtin does not speak directly about dramatic textual forms, the Spanish scholars consider the presence of folk culture in theatre as a possible entry point for an analysis of Golden Age texts based on his theories. However, folk culture’s position within texts is not random or incidental: there is a comic space in dialogue with the dramatic space, in which textual and theatrical play can take the form of anything from simple mirroring to sharp irony.⁶

It is therefore necessary to highlight some points of Bakhtin’s theory which help to better understand the composition of the gracioso, an iconic stock character in the dramatic tradition of the Spanish Golden Age. First and foremost, the most important question is one which is emphasized repeatedly in Bakhtin’s study, from the Introduction onward, which is to say the question of contextualized reading. This dictates that when reader and author do not belong to the same context, the former must make an effort to comprehend the latter’s locus of enunciation:

Rabelais is the most difficult classical author of world literature. To be understood he requires an essential reconstruction of our entire artistic and ideological perception, the renunciation of many deeply rooted demands of literary taste, and the revision of many concepts. Above all, he requires an exploration in depth of a sphere as yet little and superficially studied, the tradition of folk humor (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.3).⁷,⁸

This, to a certain extent, also expresses what Bakhtin already points out: that the folk comicality of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is ambivalent, “it is gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding. It asserts and denies, it buries and revives” (BAKHTIN, 1984, pp.11-12).⁹ When laughter, functions as a complementary element to tears, it does not disqualify them as a valid emotion for an artistic work, for the theatrical play and for life.¹⁰ “Comedy, tragedy, drama and other genre are different facets of the same art” (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.175).¹¹ However, there is a general sense of lowering in the folk comic, which is associated with the material and bodily lowness inherent to the discourse and actions of lower characters, a kind of modus operandi of the ancillary world being presented on stage.

Thus, the dialogic mechanism between low and high worldviews creates comicality through the “expectation gap” of the listener, reader, or the audience. Tragicomedy, the predominant genre in Iberian Baroque theatre, is a “play with both tragic and comic elements” (PAVIS, 1999, p.418).¹² For instance, in the works of the eighteenth-century Portuguese dramatist Antonio José da Silva, one expects the mythical protagonist - the representative of tragedy in the text - to be elevated, but this figure is also lowered by the literal, mundane and everyday understanding of the low characters:

The defining characteristic of grotesque realism is the “lowering” of everything that is elevated and spiritual, ideal and abstract, to a material and bodily level, which is highlighted as low (drinking, eating, digesting, defecating, urinating, sweating, having intercourse). Praising the belly, high and low, the vulgar belly and the biological activities that constitute the basis of the very renewal mechanism of the human being and the world, is perceived by the dominant discourse as “lowering” (HERMENEGILDO, 1995, p.14; emphasis added by author). ^13,14

As stated by Hermenegildo in the excerpt above, which summarizes Bakhtin’s thinking, lowering is a defining trace of grotesque realism, which, in turn, establishes a connection between the seigniorial world and the ancillary world, as the worlds of high and low characters, respectively, since both worlds, to a certain extent, touch, copy, comment and interact with each other. Grotesque realism is the system of images of folk comic culture; its simplest expressions are laughter, food, virility, back-handed compliments, sexual obscenities, scatology, double entendre, cursing, rudeness, namely, everything which in a certain way turns to the lower belly, to the primordial necessities of life (cf. Bakhtin, 1984, pp.108-109 and others).¹⁵

In addition, it is grotesque realism that establishes the verisimilitude necessary for the understanding of comic conventions on the stage by the audience. However, comic resources set a different logic which, in turn, creates a new sense of the verisimilar - that is, the verisimilar ceases to be that which is recognizable and becomes the scenically believable.

In theatre, therefore, the world against which the stage must be deemed recognizable is the real world, but in its “upside-down” version, where it is ruled by the conventions of comical inversion which parody and desacralize feelings and actions,¹⁶ a mechanism which is described by Hermenegildo in the excerpt cited above. It is important to remember, however, that this inversion does not aim to deride the elevated environment, but to display the topographic element present in the interplay that exists between the high and the low as an element of renewal, since:

The carnival spirit with its freedom, its utopian character oriented toward the future, was gradually transformed into a mere holiday mood. The feast ceased almost entirely to be the people’s second life, their temporary renascence and renewal. We have stressed the word almost because the popular-festive carnival principle is indestructible. Though narrowed and weakened, it still continues to fertilize various areas of life and culture.

A special aspect of this process seems important. The literature of these later centuries was not directly subject to the popular-festive culture and remained almost impervious to its influence. The carnival spirit and grotesque imagery continued to live and was transmitted as a now purely literary tradition, especially as a tradition of the Renaissance (BAKHTIN, 1984, pp.33-34).¹⁷

We also believe that, as a continuation of carnival in literature, the vision of an upside-down world represented by the servants’ actions is a fundamental key for reading the Iberian dramatic texts of the period.

Thus, the comic aspect of a tragicomedy does not intend to deride the seigniorial environment, but to establish a topographical difference between the social estates.

However, mockery of the higher strata of society, even when it is not primarily meant as criticism, may not be well received by those who are in a social position with the means to punish jokers. For this reason, a guilt-free environment and form are created, establishing a space where virtually anything is possible (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.177).¹⁸

To the convergence of these elements - ambivalence, the material bodily lower stratum, an upside-down world, grotesque realism and topography -, Bakhtin attributes the name carnivalization, which could be defined as the concept that defines the presence of the comic in folk cultural manifestations, and in literature, the presence of this folk comic culture:

Carnival (and we repeat that we use this word in its broadest sense) did liberate human consciousness and permit a new outlook, but at the same time it implied no nihilism; it had a positive character because it disclosed the abundant material principle, change and becoming, the irresistible triumph of the new immortal people. This was indeed a powerful support for storming the stronghold of the gothic age; it prepared the way for a new, free, and sober seriousness (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.274).¹⁹

1 The Gracioso: The Carnivalized Servant

In speaking about the low characters of a dramatic text, we move away from the scope of the individual in order to discuss typified stock characters. According to Bakhtin, in the seventeenth century, which for him represents the end of the Renaissance, laughter and the comic lose their universality moving to address questions of the individual, diminishing laughter, and transforming it into derision and satire as the term is currently. This process of character individualization constructs Baroque characters as stock characters: typifications that present something of the individual, but at the same time, still hold a generic aspect.

Comic characters are, therefore, those that represent a general aspect of some part of society, as some “type” of individual. For comic vice, that structure which gives rise to laughter, is external to the individual and, when it settles down, extracts from him all his individuality, simplifying him (BERGSON, 2002).²⁰ Such simplification ultimately leads the character from the state of an individual to animalization and subsequent reification (HERMENEGILDO, 1995), as according to Bergson, “we laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing” (2014, p.58).²¹

Spanish critics and scholars currently studying the dramaturgical production of the Golden Age, have developed a reading of comic texts - or of the comic parts of texts - from the perspective of laughter based on the medieval folk comic, as explained above. As Madroñal (1999, p.74) states, “carnival would be to life what the interlude is to the long-form play, a brief time of joy, in which almost everything is possible, followed by a return to the problems presented.”²² In tragicomedy, this brief time is represented by the servants’ interventions in the tragicomic structure - small interventions when compared to the space and time dedicated to the main plot.

Within this same line of studies, Hermenegildo (1995) devised a method for analyzing dramatic texts, a method which we will now begin to follow in order to analyze the gracioso character, as well as the aspects that distinguish the gracioso from other stock characters of the period. In Hermenegildo’s theory, the study of characters’ lines in the dramatic text, called speeches, works to better and more accurately identify the characters’ main functions in the development of the main dramatic intrigue. Each line of each character may execute any one of eight functions in the plot.²³

These functions are:

Propositional: lines that corroborate with the hero’s worldview.

Oppositional: an unfavorable attitude or line that puts the hero’s interests at risk.

Carnivalesque: a burlesque view of the hero’s world.

Imperative: the enunciation of an order.

Executional: the manifestation of the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of an order.

Conjunctive: lines that establish connections between the scenes. In terms of their instrumental role in the text, these lines do not carry great dramatic interest and are generally simply used in order to move the action forward.

Informative: lines aiming to convey news or information to other characters and the audience.

Metaliterary: lines aiming to provoke a reflection on the nature of theatre, or lines that participate in the interplay of watcher and watched present in the device of the play within a play.

According to Hermenegildo’s theories, each line must be attributed at least one of these eight functions. However, each line may have more than one function in relation to the plot: these lines are called varia, meaning varied. The length of a line does not influence the calculation of the function of a character’s speech. Dividing a play’s lines into different functions is a schematic approach that does not consider the organic nature of the dramatic text, nor the complexity these lines may attain when spoken by skilled actors. It is, however, a useful tool for developing textual analysis.

As the protagonists of Spanish Golden Age plays are predominantly male and, specifically, representatives of the galán stock character, the functions of speech are always defined in relation to the desires and interests of the play’s galán-protagonist (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.191).²⁴

Finally, it is worth highlighting that through this theory the concept of carnivalization obtains a new meaning, as one of the functions established by Hermenegildo is the carnivalesque. Until now, we have contemplated carnivalization in a general and broad sense, as it applies to the entirety of a dramatic text. In contrast, the carnivalesque function will be attributed to specific lines, which identify a character as a gracioso, or a graciosa in the case of a female character. The overriding logic of the upside-down world states that high and low should be brought together on stage as they are complementary and provide feedback to one another. Thus, the union of high and low, made possible through the plot, allows for this upside-down world to happen.

We will now examine in more detail the two relevant functions for the analysis of ancillary characters: the informative and the carnivalesque.

The informative function operates in the same way as exposition as described by David Ball: “Exposition is the revelation of information needed by audience to understand the play’s action. […] At its best, such exposition involves the use of information by one character to propel another into action” (1983, p.43; emphasis added by author).²⁵ Speeches that are imbued with the informative function are those that conveys the news on stage. The function can be mingled in with dialogue with another character, or executed through conventional theatrical mechanisms, such as soliloquies, monologues and asides. Soliloquies and monologues are those lines in which the character communicates something to himself aloud. Asides may communicate information in two directions: to a specific character or directly to the audience. As a resource established through theatrical play, asides allow the author to share information regarding the intrigues being staged with the public - since, even when one character addresses another, he is also indirectly communicating the information to the public -, in order to move the plot forward and sustain the viewer’s expectations and interest.

When discussing characters in a dramatic text, other than the protagonists, galán and dama, one must bear in mind that they serve primarily as instruments for driving the development of the plot. Therefore, thinking about a kind of “dramatic unity” in the depiction of these characters, requiring defining traits as individuals, is a secondary consideration within the analysis of theatre prior to the Romantic period. [...] Thus, the ancillary universe, represented by the figures of the fool, the simpleton and the servant, as well as their female counterparts and partners, aside from participating in their constitution as stock characters, as described by Prades (1963), also contains structural functions necessary for the development and progress of the plot - functions which, according to Hermenegildo (1995), are above the character’s own personality (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, pp.196-197).²⁶

In this way, the servant’s main function, as a representative of the ancillary world, is the informative. The main reason for making this affirmation is that the servant, as the galán’s helper in the fulfilment of his romantic intentions, also tends to think about plans and strategies for making encounters happen or even about the final plan - which brings all the play’s misunderstandings to a head and resolves the dramatic conflict -, just as the protagonist does.

The carnivalesque function is represented by those lines which display a burlesque vision of the hero’s world. Along with the propositional and oppositional functions, the carnivalesque relates directly to the main plot, since it is only through comparison with the protagonists’ “official” universe that the burlesque inversion takes place. If the significant presence of the informative function in the lines of a character indicates to a reader that he may belong to the servant stock character type, the carnivalized relationship between a character’s lines and the protagonists’ universe in a dramatic text reveals to us that possibly that we are dealing with a gracioso. Evidently, this does not mean that the gracioso’s discourse must be exclusively made up of carnivalesque lines, but the presence of such lines should be significant both in terms of number and relevance for the development of the plot.

As stated above, the gracioso is, on a diachronic evolution line, the continuation of the comic character in Iberian theatre, thus, maintaining a very close connection with the jester and the fool of popular medieval festivities. As the character is related positively to the galán’s interests, the propositional function must also be present in the composition of the gracioso’s lines. Within the Golden Age category of ancillary characters, the gracioso can be seen as a sort of “specialized servant.” Therefore, as a servant, the gracioso is characterized by the informative function of his lines, and consequently, by linguistic proximity with the popular audience of the theatre and their carnivalized worldview.

In this manner, we deal with two aspects of the carnivalesque. A broader one, already discussed above, which is related to the entire dramatic text and identifies it as a comic, carnivalized text, representative of the “upside-down world” of folk culture in relation to official culture. The other aspect, which we now take as a definition which differentiates the gracioso character from other ancillary characters on the comedia nueva’s list of types, must be considered in its specificities, in the characters’ speeches and in its relationship to the central intrigue.

A complementary question to the analysis parameters thus far pointed out in our definition of the gracioso, is what we could call the stock character’s “intentionality” regarding the implicit comicality in his role, which is to say:

in comedy, the comic figure of the “gracioso” should not be confused with the “simpleton” figure, who is connected to laughter, not in a voluntary manner appropriate to the ingenious “donaire figure,” but unconsciously and despite himself (GÓMEZ, 2002, p.240).²⁷

A priori, the intentionality of the gracioso’s comic gesture, which reveals a certain awareness in relation to the act of representation being undertaken by the character, would appear to come into conflict with issues that, until now, Bergson attributed to comicality, namely the involuntary gesture that causes laughter. Bergson (2014) ²⁸ states that tragic vices, which are present in a serious character’s constitution, are internal and profound, being part of that imaginary being’s “personality.” Comic vices, on the other hand, define and set the limits of a character “from the outside,” making him less complex than a human being, surrendered to systems that reduce his “personality” to simplifying schemes imprinted over him. However, although the comic character is limited by such schemes, he has no awareness of it, believing himself to be as tragic as a serious character.

In this perspective, the comic condition of the gracioso can be seen as uniquely complex. First of all, we will see that some graciosos assume their less noble characteristics. As described by Prades (1963, p.251), the gracioso is “gracious and full of wit, a willing seeker of generous presents and unruly life (greedy, gluttonous and fond of sleeping), careful in dangerous situations to the point of cowardice, loveless.”²⁹ The graciosos created by Antonio José da Silva, for example, are certainly all of these things, they admit as much and, on many occasions, even take pride in having such characteristics.

Just as the gracioso is conscious of his own comicality, he is also fully aware of the possibilities of producing the comic from the situations in which the protagonists find themselves. Imbued with a carnivalesque spirit, graciosos always find a witty comment or a sharp observation to direct to the audience when they witness their masters, or any other character, in an unusual situation (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.201).³⁰

Such a sharp³¹ understanding of his own actions, as well as those of other characters, confers to the gracioso the status of commentator of the plot, a position that is related to the informative function. As this perspective implies that he is conscious of the theatrical universe in which he is inserted, observing and commenting on his own actions and the actions of other characters, while also being in direct contact with the audience through asides and triangulation, the gracioso finds himself halfway between the audience and the characters on stage. For this reason, he is conscious, albeit dissolute, and yet, laughable - even if sardonically.

2 The Female Ancillary World: The Carnivalizing Maid

The maid stock character belongs to the same ancillary universe as the male servant and is, in some aspects, its female counterpart. In Spanish theatre, her presence is intermittent, being used only when her dramatic function is required by the plot.⁶³ However, as Hermenegildo (2008, p.36) affirms, “female ancillary characters [...] are varied signs, restricted to different functions and endowed with a multiplicity of tasks worthy of consideration.”⁶⁴ Just like the servant, they are secondary characters that do not attract as much attention from critics as protagonists (galanes and damas), or representatives of high social status (kings, parents, etc.).

The character’s construction, based on the functions she must execute for the continuation of the dramatic plot - a consideration which on most occasions overrides clear character construction -, is irregular and, for this reason, difficult to track with a single, defined concept of “maid”: “As a perennial inhabitant of the ancillary space, the maid normally appears as secondary agent, whose actions constitute only simple mechanical processes established by the dramatic code of the period” (HERMENEGILDO, 2008, p.38).⁶⁵

When considered in terms of her dramatic function, as in the case of the gracioso previously analyzed, the maid is associated with the figure of the dama, as pointed out by Reina Ruiz (2008, p.124):

In turn, relations of dependency do not only establish themselves between lady and maid in function of their social categories, but also between comedy and character through the latter’s dramatic function. The maid is subordinated to the lady whom she serves in order to exist as a character, but comedy also needs the character to fulfil the plot, to take part in misunderstandings and, on some occasions, to move the action forward.⁶⁶

Thus, the maid acquires an independent life in the drama in which she participates, because, as a dramatic resource for ensuring the unfolding of the plot, she may be required to perform other functions that distance her from her lady’s actions.

If creating a definition for the term gracioso, in the sense of determining a specific stock character within Spanish Golden Age Theatre, is a difficult task, creating a definition for the maid seems to be an almost impossible task. As a character, the maid can be a faithful advisor, a confidante and friend who supports all of the (more or less honest) actions of the lady she serves. She can also voice moralizations about the frivolous actions of the high-status characters, or, on the contrary, be the personification of carnal love in the plot. She can be impertinent and arrogant or helpful in her ancillary domestic duties. The maid may present the most varied contexts, however, can easily be identified as maid (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.204).⁶⁷

Such variability is accepted because the representations of characters are developed from types. Her malleability is a sign of her secondary nature as a figure that has been ontologically constructed to advance the action of the drama and entertain the audience in collaboration with the gracioso.

However, it is not because they are minor characters, with fewer appearances in scenes or a smaller number of lines, that maids are superfluous characters in the plays where they are present. If (and when) they do appear, they bring with them movements which are essential to the progression of the plot and the development of the dramatic action. Moreover, while the galán protagonist is the centre of the main action of the play, the maid functions as the axis of that action which is independent in relation to the main plot - while the gracioso orbits as a secondary character who lowers of both.

First presented as an entremés inserted in the main plot, the relationships of ancillary characters are given greater importance in plots with a double love intrigue. Elaborated from the mirroring of the main action, particularly of the romance between the protagonists, these subplots can become reasonably autonomous plays in themselves, which are then interweaved with the main action. The final stage of this progression is when the autonomous secondary intrigue interferes with the main intrigue through the maid, causing an inversion which is carnivalizing and, just like Carnival itself, transitory in the world of the main intrigue.

3 The Secondary Intrigue and One More Function

If, as suggested above, the maid is the central axis of the secondary dramatic action, we must first deduce that this kind of action can only exist in plays that have this stock character in their dramatis personae. Although this is not a truth in practice, let us take as a paradigm for the understanding of the theory the works of Antonio José da Silva who, having written his oeuvre in the 1730s, could be seen as the last bastion of the genre and the aesthetic movement to which the theory presented above is dedicated. In his plays, all secondary plots feature the romantic pairing of gracioso-maid as the main characters.

Marín (1958, pp.19-20) defines the secondary plot as “a subordinate plot, but developed with relative independence from the main plot,”⁶⁸ and establishes two prerogatives for action to be considered as dramatic action: “a) it must display complete dramatic development and be relatively independent from the main action; b) it must not be organically necessary to the development of the main action.”⁶⁹

Therefore, to be characterized as such, the secondary intrigue must be more than a single intervention in an isolated episode and, at the same time, must not be essential to the main action’s development. Thus, secondary intrigues are plots that are justified by the way in which they contribute to the unity of interest. Namely, the texts of the Portuguese and Spanish Golden Age closely follow Aristotle’s premise of the division between tragedy and comedy, even continuing to maintain this division within a single work. When it comes to episodes disconnected from the main plot, the texts of Spanish authors generally distance themselves from Aristotle, with their episodes operating almost in the manner of entremeses.⁷⁰

However, throughout Antonio José’s works, written in the eighteenth century, we see the expansion of this Spanish concept into a dramatic plot with the same importance as the main intrigue, where both cross in a single moment, generally close to the play’s climax. In accordance with the tastes of the period, the Portuguese playwright therefore increases the complexity of the way in which the main and the secondary intrigue are intertwined (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, pp.209-210).⁷¹

What we have, therefore, is a sort of secondary intrigue that is related to the main intrigue, but does not provide the spectator with a key with which to read it. If connected through mechanical linkage, both intrigues may evolve separately throughout the play, until, as predicted by Marín (1958), their destiny is connected, or, in other words, feature an action which interferes in the development of both intrigues, since “the fortune of the aforementioned subordinated intrigue is linked to the main intrigue’s fortune.”⁷² Such actions, in the works of Antonio José da Silva, start in the lower conflict and initiate the denouement of the central conflict, as will be seen in our chosen object of study in this article, the play Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton].

We therefore find ourselves facing a conceptual question that problematizes Hermenegildo’s theory: how do we classify lines related to the secondary intrigue, seeing as it does not refer to the main intrigue? For this purpose, we must highlight a few important elements of Antonio José da Silva’s writings and theories.

Hermenegildo (1995) defines eight functions that each line of each character must execute in the plot. However, the theorist only analyzes texts and authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Far from diminishing the importance of the works of Lope de Vega or Calderón de La Barca, we understand Antonio José da Silva’s writing as the last bastion of their theatrical precepts.

The works of Antonio José da Silva, aka the Jew, appeared in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, after an entire seventeenth century of great playwrights, but just like these dramatists, he was still writing for a commercial theatre which values novelty and amazement in order to cater to the public taste to which it displays a certain servility. Thus, if on the one hand the necessity to attract and grab the attention of the public encouraged, to a certain extent, a certain banality in the writing of the period (ROCHA, 1969), on the other hand, it nourished the inspiration of skillful writers, such as the Jew (PICCHIO, 1969).

The fertile field for the creation and recreation of situations and typified, stereotyped characters provided by Spanish Golden Age theatre in Antonio José da Silva’s dramaturgy favors experimentation with different configurations of the constitutive elements of these dramatic precepts. This kind of final “chemistry” is, however, practically non-existent on the Castilian scene, although considering the sheer breadth of the prolific Spanish production of the period, perhaps it is more accurate to say that, if present, it is of little relevance.

Thus, when one encounters a theory such as that of Hermenegildo (1995), which proposes tools for the analysis of the comic figures in the intrigues of Spanish Golden Age plays, it may seem at first to be especially useful for the analysis of an eighteenth-century Portuguese dramaturgy that dialogues directly with Spanish models. However, when we start to conduct a more profound and detailed analysis of these Portuguese texts, we find that, due to the additions and variations that they make to the seventeenth-century model, we are faced with some dramatic situations that are not considered by Hermenegildo’s theory, such as highly elaborate secondary intrigues, which are related to the main plot through the mechanical linkage described by Marín.

Therefore, in addition to the functions discussed by Hermenegildo outlined in the first part of this text, we will add one more function, which will be called detached to the main plot.

“Detached” because the lines attributed to this function in the works of Antonio José da Silva are not related to the main intrigue on any level, either to corroborate, oppose, or make jokes about it; in other words, they are not propositional, oppositional, or carnivalesque. Nor do they serve to expose any dramaturgic mechanism, as is the case of the metaliterary, informative and conjunctive functions, or relate to a direct, hierarchal relationship between the characters, as in the imperative and executional functions. As these lines have as their main focus the development of a well-constructed secondary plot, we call them “detached” because they distance themselves from the main intrigue (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.213).⁷³

However, if Antonio José’s works are noteworthy for the way in which they intrinsically intertwine the main and secondary intrigues in their plots, how is one to understand this fabular distancing?

At this point, we are faced with two different but complementary observation perspectives: one that perceives the dramatic text in its totality, as a single movement, and another that analyzes each scene or action in detail.

From a global perspective, Antonio José creates a relation of interdependency between the seigniorial and ancillary intrigues (mechanical linkage), making them both relevant in the development of the action (unity of interest). However, in so much as it has its own dramatic line and intrigue, the ancillary environment created by Antonio José separates itself from the seigniorial environment with its own intrigues, only linking back to the protagonist’s intrigue in fundamental moments.

In general, the secondary intrigue operates as a background to the speeches of the characters involved. The main objective of the scenes in which they feature, is still, in accordance with the dramatic precepts of the period, to comment on, elucidate or expand the main plot, for the audience’s benefit and enjoyment (unity of interest). Thus, the secondary intrigue follows the main plot in parallel, sharing the same speeches, without being influenced by it.

Analyzing Antonio José’s texts from the point of view of carnivalization, however, we come to realize that underlying each action or participation of the servants in the main intrigue is an element of the carnivalesque, a power emanating from life itself. In contrast, when the secondary intrigue (non-official world) rises to the main level and turns the seigniorial environment (official world) upside-down, carnivalization occurs, as after order is reestablished in the world, it is no longer as it was, but returns transformed.⁷⁴

Bakhtin himself understands that this possibility for renewal is already present in Shakespearean drama, as seen in the following excerpt:

The analysis we have applied to Rabelais would also help us to discover the essential carnival element in the organization of Shakespeare’s drama. This does not merely concern the secondary, clownish motives of his plays. The logic of crownings and uncrownings, in direct or in indirect form, organizes the serious elements also. And first of all this “belief in the possibility of a complete exit from the present order of this life” determines Shakespeare’s fearless, sober (yet not cynical) realism and absence of dogmatism. This pathos of radical changes and renewals is the essence of Shakespeare’s world consciousness. It made him see the great epoch-making changes taking place around him and yet recognize their limitations (1984, p.275).⁷⁵

Which is to say that, even if the power of alternation and renewal presented by the ancillary environment is, in the context of Iberian Baroque theatre, only exercised in eighteenth-century texts, it is already a possibility of the theatrical world - and, in so much as this is elementary to the theatrical sphere, was probably already carried out through representation.

4 Comic Intrusion in The Tragic Plot

Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton] was first staged in Teatro do Bairro Alto in 1738, when Antonio José da Silva, the Jew, was already imprisoned in the Palace of Estaus, from where, accused of “Judaizing,” he would only leave to meet his death in the fires of the Inquisition. In its structure and style, the play presents some aspects that suggest a poetics which distances itself from, or at least reinterprets, the precepts of the Golden Age. Composed of three acts, or parts, and ten scenes, the play is based on the myth of Phaeton,⁷⁶ the young demi-god who wanted to drive the Sun’s carriage and ended up causing a cataclysm on both Earth and Olympus.

Along with Antonio José’s previous play, As variedades de Proteu [The Metamorphosis of Proteus], Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton] deals with Greco-Roman myths little disseminated as narrative in both Classical Antiquity and the Renaissance. However, Phaeton, along with Icarus, figures in the construction of the Renaissance imagination as a symbol of one who seeks the unattainable, and is therefore much cited in the courtly discourse of the period as an element of erudition.

In this play, the ancient myth is taken only as a theme, seeing as the entirety of the intrigue created by Antonio José focuses its attention on the romantic tribulations of Phaeton. For this reason - the base myth being lesser known and less developed and the playwright leading the play’s intrigue down divergent paths to those traced by this myth -, the servants’ presence in the piece is necessary to help guide the audience through the dramatic action unfolding on stage (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.407).⁷⁷

As a narrative summary of Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton], we present the “Argument” that accompanied the play’s first publication:

Tagus, brother of Tyrrhen, king of Italy, usurps this kingdom, which belongs to Egeria, nymph of Eridanus and daughter of Tyrrhen. Phaeton, son of the Sun and reputed to be the son of a shepherd from Thessaly, seeing Egeria’s (sic, [Ismene]) portrait, proclaims his love for her; and, in order to know Egeria (sic, [Ismene]), leaves Thessaly and, in Italy, sets about trying to please this nymph. Following Phaeton, the wizard Phython leaves Thessaly, to keep him away from this love, as at that time, Phaeton did not know who his real father was, and for that reason, Phython feared Phaeton’s ruin. Phaeton was established in Egeria’s affections, and she, to restore the kingdom through the actions of her suitors, promised her hand in marriage to Maecenas and Phaeton, which is where the majority of this story’s intrigue lies. - Alban, prince of Liguria, intends to marry Ismene, daughter of Tagus. When Phaeton declares himself the son of the Sun, Tagus intends to marry him to Ismene, and Alban to Egeria, who pretend to be lovers when wounded by jealousy. Apollo appears and declares that Phaeton is his son. Phaeton, then, requests to ride the Sun’s carriage. Apollo refuses; though when Phaeton insists he concedes. And later, as Egeria watches him, he falls in the Eridanus. - The rest will be seen in the context of the story (SILVA, 1958, p.93).^78,79

The absence of any reference to the ancillary intrigue and characters in the “Argument” demonstrates their “secondary” nature. Dealing with the servants’ participation in the play’s formal and narrative structure, we must note that in the very first scene, Antonio José da Silva overthrows the basic functions of each stock character and, as a result, its form of contact with the audience.

The play starts in media res, with a dialogue between the galán protagonist, Phaeton [Faetonte] and the first dama, Egeria. Not only do Phaeton and Egeria represent the development of the dialogue’s internal action, but their lies are also confided to the audience by the characters themselves, in the arias and asides that appear throughout the dialogue - even if these only give indications, rather than full explanations.

According to the list of “Interlocutors,” Chichisbéu and Chirinola are “Phaeton’s servant” and “Egeria’s maid.” As characters that represent the ancillary world, they are, as a rule, subservient to the protagonists, then we have a strong indication that Phaeton and Egeria are the galán and the dama. In the works of Antonio José, however, it is not always the case that the protagonists should end up together: recalling Os encantos de Medeia (Medea’s Charm, 1733), for example, it is easy to see that the romantic logic which rules in the Jew’s texts is different.

Gontijo Rosa (2016) argues that, as Phaeton is a “maladjusted” hero in terms of the distinctive conditions of the Golden Age galán, so Chichisbéu, as a reflection of his lord, may also become “maladjusted” in the sense that he could fail in being “faithful servant of his lord” (PRADES, 1963, p.251).^{80 81} As a “lowered” reflection of Phaeton, Chichisbéu suffers the same “fall of love” that strikes the protagonist, though in a carnivalized register:

This downward movement is also inherent in all forms of popular-festive merriment and grotesque realism. Down, inside out, vice versa, upside down, such is the direction of all these movements. All of them thrust down, turn over, push headfirst, transfer top to bottom, and bottom to top, both in the literal sense of space, and in the metaphorical meaning of the image (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.370).⁸²

Chichisbéu figures in nine out of ten of the play’s scenes, and while Chirinola’s participation is more sporadic, she too is present in nine out of ten scenes. The difference in the level of each character’s participation can be measured by the sum of functions present in each of their lines: while Chichisbéu has 300 functions in his responses, Chirinola only has 155, almost half of the lines her male partner has.

In Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton], two clearly differentiated environments are presented. The main intrigue takes up most of the scene, being interwoven with some scenes featuring the ancillary romantic couple.

Six small scenes⁸³ feature the servant couple as protagonists. They show the romantic trajectory of Chichisbéu and Chirinola, from their very first encounter (scene 2, Part I). The narrative of the couple’s romantic misfortunes happens because Chirinola is in love with Chichisbéu, but does not yield to his gallantry because she is afraid of the gracioso’s “magical arts” - we must remember that Chichisbéu is mistaken for the nigromancer Phython [Fíton] by an error that accompanies his first appearance on stage. As the plot detailing the servant couple’s romantic misadventures evolves, the real identity of the gracioso is revealed - low, subservient, ancillary - and they can finally engage in a relationship. At the end of the tragicomedy, the servants reconcile, expanding the happy ending to all social strata of the plot.

In general, the secondary intrigue works as a background to the lines and motivations of the characters involved, such as Chichisbéu and Chirinola. In accordance with the dramatic precepts of the time, the main objective of scenes with servants as protagonists is to comment, elucidate and amplify the main intrigue for greater benefit and enjoyment of the audience.⁸⁴ Sharing the same lines as the main intrigue, the secondary intrigue follows it in parallel, but both intrigues also influence each other mutually, as in scene 2 of Part III, in which Chichisbéu tells Chirinola Phaeton’s secret:

Chirinola: Don’t you want to open your mouth to speak? Then close your eyes to never see me again.

[...]

Chichisbéu: I’m not Phython, Chirinola! I’m a demi-servant to he who wants to become a demi-god. I’m no magician, woman; as I have never divined more than your thoughts.

[...]

Chirinola: And who is this Phaeton?

Chichisbéu: He is a shepherd, son of a man whom I have never heard named and of a woman who lives among Diana’s beasts (SILVA, 1958, p.180).⁸⁵

As can be seen in the excerpt above, by trying to solve the problem of the secondary intrigue, Chichisbéu betrays Phaeton’s plan - the dramatic situation becomes more serious if we know that Maecenas and Ismene are listening to the dialogue in the wings. In accordance with the functions - and the ancillary worldview - described by Hermenegildo (1995), the servants’ scenes comment on actions or generalities of the main intrigue.

We move on, therefore, to the first entrance of the gracioso Chichisbéu. His first line presents the character (informative function) and retells Phaeton’s journey from the gracioso, burlesque perspective (carnivalesque function). Already on this line, we can see general characteristics of the gracioso stock character, at the same time as the specificities of this gracioso, Chichisbéu, are revealed to us within the list of Antonio José da Silva’s gracioso characters: his extreme fidelity to his lord, represented by his actions and extended to his characteristic construction.

From the outset, Chichisbéu’s first appearance on stage involves him attributing derisive adjectives to Phaeton and himself:

Chichisbéu: I’m such an ass! But I’m not ashamed to admit it! For I came walking from Thessaly after a fool or a Phaeton, it’s all the same! And worst of all, I have lost him and have not yet found him! What can poor Chichisbéu do, in the middle of Italy, not knowing where the lodgings are, and, what is more, without a penny? If being Chichisbéu is all my worth, then I will have a free pass in all houses (SILVA, 1958, pp.103-104).⁸⁶

In addition to the initial exposition, which localizes the character in the plot - until now apprehended from the conversations between Phaeton and Egeria, and between the hero and Phython - there is in this line an onomastic game with Chichisbéu’s name, which originates from a noun meaning “gallant” - or more than this, as it indicates someone who becomes inconvenient and insistent with his gallantry.

In the second part of this soliloquy, Chichisbéu finds Phython’s book and “robe.” In this scene, we see the transmutation of Chichisbéu into Phython - all the Italian characters (Maecenas, King, soldiers, etc.) will see Chichisbéu as Phython from now on. However, it is only rarely in the play that we may say there is a metatheatrality involved in Chichisbéu’s transfiguration into the nigromancer, as the gracioso stays gracioso throughout the dialogues. The act does not represent a play within a play (teatro en el teatro) to the other characters; on the contrary, the gracioso is always trying to return to his own identity - as far as this does not disturb Phaeton’s interests.

Chichisbéu’s relationship with the other high status characters is very particular, for he seems to be especially comfortable in the seigniorial environment - in which he will participate most of the time. His language and metaphors are not as low as those of the first gracioso characters written by Antonio José da Silva, his word games are more sophisticated and even his gallantry with Chirinola reaches levels of complexity not achieved by other graciosos created by the Jew (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.418). ⁸⁷

We believe that dressing Chichisbéu up as Phython modifies his character, making the “jests,” with which he reflects and comments on the elevated action of the play, a little subtler. Thus, Chichisbéu represents very well the issues of transvestism.⁸⁸

The first encounter between Chichisbéu and his beloved Chirinola takes place at the end of scene 2 in Part I. Right from the start, the maid presents the curious and gossipy character which will define her actions, and the impulse of which will trigger the “fall of Phaeton”:

Chirinola: I come slowly to see this wizard, who has stirred this whole palace, and is something I have never seen in my life (SILVA, 1958, p.120).⁸⁹

Chichisbéu: And what for?

Chirinola: Just to see what the face of a sorcerer is like (SILVA, 1958, p.120).⁹⁰

Barely does Chichisbéu, the gallant, see Chirinola before he is courting her. However, as his discursive characteristics are a little more refined than the other graciosos created by Antonio José, his gallant lines end up being a little courtlier:

Chichisbéu: [...] Lucky you if a wizard like this would love you! Then you would see... I won’t say a thing!

Chirinola: God forbid! (SILVA, 1958, p.121).⁹¹

Generally, comic characters are practical in how they face life and relationships, and reflect a certain objectivity in their comprehension of the world. Indirect and fragmented discourse that leaves a lot of implied information in its speech is characteristic of elevated characters. Chirinola’s response to Chichisbéu’s charm - and to all of his argumentation - is made in this practical register.

Continuing the romantic game, we come to the most important moment of this scene, which will have repercussions throughout the secondary intrigue, and will even change the play’s main intrigue.

Chirinola: There is only one way for me to surrender.

Chichisbéu: How?

Chirinola: Renouncing the pact and abandoning sorcery (SILVA, 1958, p.121).⁹²

In this passage the conflict of the secondary intrigue of the Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton] is established: Chirinola’s firm rejection of the idea of having a relationship with a sorcerer is opposed to Chichisbéu’s need to maintain the disguise as ordered by Phaeton. However, it is not for this reason that Chichisbéu is rejected by Chirinola in this scene. Initially they both agree. However, another characteristic of Chichisbéu is that he talks more than is necessary. He talks too much and this ends up costing him Phaeton’s secret. Moreover, having seen the scenes in which Chichisbéu is arrested and now the next scene, we may state that this character does not have fortune in his favour:

Chirinola: [...] Now I’ll catch him. (Aside) You, tell me what my name is?

Chichisbéu: As I’m not a sorcerer, how can I divine your name? Such a gallant chirinola!

Chirinola: The deal is off. Go away, as you’re still the same person as before.

Chichisbéu: Why?

Chirinola: I asked you to divine my name and you spit it in my face.

Chichisbéu: Did I? Your name?! How so?

Chirinola: Didn’t you say Chirinola? What else could you say?

Chichisbéu: Is Chirinola your name?!

Chirinola: Yes, sir; Don’t pretend to be surprised.

Chichisbéu: Oh Chirinola, I want to become a chirinola, if I knew that your name was Chirinola.

Chirinola: So you admit you said Chirinola?

Chichisbéu: Have you never heard of a lapsus nominis? If I was to say charamela, I said chirinola (SILVA, 1958, pp.121-122).⁹³

The onomastic game reaches another level in this scene. In the dialogue above, it is the theme of the situation in which the characters find themselves. “Chirinola” is a noun that means, among other thing, “trap,” and it is used by Chichisbéu in the beginning of the excerpt to suggest that Chirinola s setting a trap for him - which indeed she was.

Even after this onomastic “coincidence,” Chirinola forgives Chichisbéu (“Well, I accept the excuse, but do not let it happen again”, p.122),⁹⁴ and they reconcile. Again, as is common in the theatre of the time, Chichisbéu utters an affected, courtly discourse - in the same non-carnivalized and metaphoric register mentioned before - and, immediately afterwards, another disastrous incident occurs:

Chirinola: Careful of what you say; look at me!

Chichisbéu: That is it.

Chichisbéu’s nose grows immediately, with deformity (SILVA, 1958, p.122).⁹⁵

Nevertheless, this time Chirinola does not accept Chichisbéu’s lie and rejects him at once, all arguments attempted by the gracioso proving to be useless:

Chirinola: How do you want me to believe you, if at the same time as you tell me you are not a wizard, you grow a nose as big as today and tomorrow?

[...]

If you want to adore me,

abandon sorcery;

if you want to despise me,

you will do as you please,

as you are the best master

of you own life.

You know I do not enjoy

enchantments,

which are foolish jokes,

happening quite fast,

and risking it all, at last. (She leaves) (SILVA, 1958, pp.123-124).⁹⁶

The aria sung by Chirinola is of crucial importance to the secondary intrigue. In this aria, we see a strategy of using a more rigid structure of rhymes and rhythms to outline relevant information that needs to be apprehended and memorized by the public. Surely the first scene between the low characters, with its characteristic rhythm and movement, also helps the audience understand the objectives of each character. However, the aria resource helps the public to differentiate the circumstantial from what is essential to the plot, in the case of a text, which has as its final purpose, to be represented on stage.

We can state, from a general perspective on the intrigues in Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton], that this scene is completely inserted in the detached function which we have added to the functions described by Hermenegildo, as these functions do not consider this sort of situation, in which the scene - or lines - do not relate at all to the main intrigue.

In this scene, at no moment are Phaeton’s intrigue, Egeria’s lies or any other subject not directly linked to the relationship between Chichisbéu and Chirinola recollected. Even when the greatest conflict is the consequence of an order from Phaeton - that Chichisbéu should pretend to be Phython, the magician - the galán himself is not recalled. The secondary intrigue will remain this way throughout the remainder of the play, until it is mobilized by the playwright in order to interfere in the main intrigue, only in Part III.

Thus, we move ahead to scene 2 of Part III of the play. Until now, except for short lines and the occasional revelation of the existence of a secret, the servants have not even mentioned the theme of the main intrigue, with almost all of the scenes where they feature as main characters able to be classified as belonging to the detached function. Furthermore, its scenes are not complete situations, but an entremés-like jokes which contemplate the tragicomic form and the temporal resources concerning verisimilitude.

In the third and last Part of Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton], scene 2 is the most important moment for the servants in the plot. In this scene the secondary intrigue is solved, as the conflict was based on the secret which Chichisbéu needed to hide but is no longer able to do. Moreover, this is the very moment that the secondary intrigue crosses over with the main intrigue, diverting the narrative’s path towards a tragic ending: “What actually matters, however, is not the formal renewal of each individual swab” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.372).^{97 98}

At this point, plot twists are still happening within the logic of the play and the deus ex machina is kept for later in order to achieve a happy ending. However, with the last plays by Antonio José, the idea of plot expands to the ancillary environment, which starts to influence the plot’s progression.

Chirinola arrives on stage itching to know Phython’s secret. When Chichisbéu enters, he gives a good summary of the advantages Phaeton received at the cost of favours from Chirinola that he himself had to give up:

Chichisbéu: That's a good one! Phaeton, by my love, is enthroned, enjoying Ismene’s affections. And I, by his love, have a broken wing and no favour from Chirinola! Such a disgrace it is, not being able to fly my expectations to the sphere of her acceptance! (SILVA, 1958, p.175).⁹⁹

The tension is palpable - for, even in comic situations, there is tension, reflected in different ways in lines and actions. In this new attempt by Chichisbéu, Chirinola, now with the clear objective of discovering the secret, is more reticent in the face of the servant’s gallantry.

When Maecenas and Ismene, separately, place themselves in the wings, listening to the servants’ conversation, which takes place centre stage, the subject of discussion returns once more to Chichisbéu’s magic, which leads to the secret that cannot be revealed:

Chirinola: If you are not a magician, how did you decipher so many enigmas?

Chichisbéu: That is the enigma of my misfortune.

Chirinola: Reveal yourself.

Chichisbéu: I cannot.

Chirinola: Why?

Chichisbéu: Because it is a secret, and I fear… (SILVA, 1958, p.178).¹⁰⁰

As he is no longer able to contain himself, Chichisbéu finally reveals the secret he kept so will during the entire play. Knowing that not being able to keep secrets is part of the servant stock character’s nature, - as many of the servants created by Antonio José, and by Golden Age theatre more widely, even though they do not really mean to betray their master -, this characteristic constitutes the servant’s paradox: he cannot avoid telling the secret, but he also does not intend to do so. In Chichisbéu’s case, he only means to reveal his secret to Chirinola. The maid does not avoid using artifices that have already been used by Chichisbéu and rejected by her, namely, alluding to the carnal relationship that could exist between them:

Chirinola: Then tell me, Phython, for I promise to surrender myself and embrace your love.

Chichisbéu: Who would not be delighted with such an embrace! Farewell, secret! Have a good journey, as I grow sick in the waves of favour, I vomit up my innards. Very well, Chichisbéu! Spit it out, and let suffer whoever must suffer, as saving your love comes before Phaeton’s good fortune: In aequali periculo debet quis sibi prius consulere (SILVA, 1958, p.179).¹⁰¹

Chichisbéu, servant and reflection of Phaeton, places his desires above his master’s desires, just as Phaeton place his desire above the truth. As stated above, Phaeton is not an exemplary galán - and nor is it expected of Chichisbéu to be a perfect gracioso. Chichisbéu uses a Latin maxim that can be applied to the case: “when faced with such a risk, one should attend to himself first.”

Chichisbéu presents the entire truth to Chirinola - and indirectly to Maecenas and Ismene: he is not a wizard, he lied to the king, Phaeton does not love Egeria and, finally, Phaeton “is a shepherd, son of a man whom I have never heard named and of a woman who lives among Diana’s beasts” (SILVA, 1985, p.180).¹⁰²

There are so many lies that Chirinola refuses to believe him and it is necessary for Chichisbéu to sing an aria in duet in order for her to believe him. In this scene, Chichisbéu, who until now has seconded d his master’s actions, operates predominantly in line with the detached and oppositional functions, as, in order to reap the benefits of the secondary intrigue, he has to act against the interests of the protagonist.

The gay aspect of the feast presented this happier future of a general material affluence, equality, and freedom, just as the Roman Saturnalia announced the return of the Golden Age. Thus, the medieval feast had, as it were, the two faces of Janus. Its official, ecclesiastical face was turned to the past and sanctioned the existing order, but the face of the people of the marketplace looked into the future and laughed, attending the funeral of the past and present. The marketplace feast opposed the protective, timeless stability, the unchanging established order and ideology, and stressed the element of change and renewal (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.81).¹⁰³

Chirinola, however, who wishes to learn the secret only out of curiosity and not at the request of another character, is completely centred in the secondary intrigue and represents, in this way, the detached function that we have developed. Her interests, her lines and the narrative progression followed by her have practically no connection with the main intrigue, except for the fact that Chichisbéu lies about being a wizard as part of Phaeton’s plan.

Therefore, if due to the amount of carnivalesque interventions he makes when subverting the main intrigue, Chichisbéu marks his position as a carnivalized figure; Chirinola, through an effective action, based on her own will, which makes the ancillary environment interfere decisively in the main intrigue, will carnivalize not only a situation, but the entire dramatic universe constituted by the plot.

After the aria, Chichisbéu leaves the stage and it is at this moment, when interviewed by Ismene, that Chirinola - and the story Chichisbéu told - will be of crucial importance to the development of the main intrigue. With Alban in the wings as well, and Maecenas moving to centre stage, Ismene asks Chirinola about what she has just heard. Although Ismene affirms that she heard the whole conversation, it is Chirinola who repeats what Chichisbéu revealed, informing Alban:

Chirinola: Tell me, Lady: is not Phaeton the descendant of the Sun?

Alban: What I am hearing! Take a deep breath, for happiness is no longer a difficult task.

Ismene: That is what I heard, there are no doubts (SILVA, 1958, p.181).¹⁰⁴

Chirinola’s concerns are limited to Chichisbéu, and she is relieved when Ismene confirms that she will protect Chichisbéu before the King.

In this scene, it is possible to infer from Chirinola’s lines, that maids are incapable of keeping secrets, as, differently from Chichisbéu, who spoke many times about the secret without revealing it, Chirinola reveals it at the first opportunity. Here Alban enters the stage offering his favors to Ismene. Meanwhile, the princess instructs Chirinola to go and inform the King - the secret is no longer a secret, as predicted by Chichisbéu in scene 4 of Part II:

Chichisbéu: I cannot tell you, as only myself and a certain person, know about it. And if you know it as well, it is no longer a secret; because if more than two people know, the secret is over (SILVA, 1958, p.154).¹⁰⁵

Leaving, Chirinola exclaims: “Oh, curiosity, you put me in such agony!” (SILVA, 1958, p.182),¹⁰⁶ supporting the idea that the dramatic situations, from now on, will derive from this “flaw” in her character.

As it is a long scene, scene 2 of Part III also features the participation of Chirinola alongside the King, Maecenas, Ismene and Alban, with Phaeton hiding in the wings, to tell them the secret revealed by Chichisbéu.

Therefore, ultimately, it is not Chichisbéu who reveals Phaeton’s lies, but Chirinola, moved by the necessity to obey the high-status characters and by the desire to save Chichisbéu from being punished.

In addition to being clearly oppositional, being as they are diametrically opposed to Phaeton’s will, Chirinola’s lines are also carnivalesque, for, in addition to presenting a joke about the secret that will be revealed, they also present the shepherd story in a burlesque manner. As we have heard the story twice throughout the play, it is repeated one more time with the aim of creating a comic effect through Chirinola’s confusion of terms. Nonetheless, the question of Chichisbéu’s guilt is still unresolved and he may yet suffer the consequences of his lies. For this reason, Chirinola insists:

Chirinola: [...] And, for me to tell you, you have to promise one thing.

King: What is it?

Chirinola: that no harm should come to Chichisbéu, because these disputes are not his fault, as your Highness knows.

King: Such great fault should not be forgiven; both will face my ire.

Chirinola: Milady, please; you have to make good on the word you gave me.

Ismene: My Lord, I have promised Chichisbéu’s life to Chirinola if she confesses; and so...

King: Enough, princess; I forgive him, as you protect him (SILVA, 1958, p.187).¹⁰⁷

Just as usual in the ancillary environment, the servants’ dramatic situation is solved in a straightforward manner, without great conflict of interests. What happens to the low characters is only of interest to the high characters when, just as in this play, it carries the essential conditions for the development of the main conflict. From the moment in which the subject rises into the elevated environment, the low characters go back to managing their own interests.

Chirinola uses the same practical rationale characteristic of the maid stock character, which is usually applied to execute an action that her lady cannot undertake for reasons of morality or honour. Directing her abilities towards the benefit of her own objectives, the maid attempts to free Chichisbéu from being considered guilty (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.440).¹⁰⁸

Therefore, all lines aiming to achieve Chichisbéu’s forgiveness refer to the detached function, as they are related to the secondary intrigue, and this includes Ismene’s line above.

In scene 3 of Part III, the last scene of the play, the main conflict will develop even further before the denouement and the characteristic happy ending of the tragicomedy. When Chichisbéu enters the stage, Phython has already withdrawn to the wings. The gracioso therefore delivers a false soliloquy, in which Chichisbéu complains that Phaeton disappeared, “leaving an appetizer of Chichisbéu as an amusing meal for the King’s ire” (SILVA, 1958, pp.193-194).¹⁰⁹ Nevertheless, as he still seconds Phaeton’s actions and remains faithful to him, the gracioso regrets what he has done.

Chirinola enters the stage and we see that the situation has been inverted, as now it is Chichisbéu who rejects the maid, for she has betrayed his trust. In this scene, the dialogue between the servants is connected to the actions of the main intrigue, as the current relationship between the characters is a result of the success of this intrigue. Thus, the “order” of the elements in the intrigue returns to its initial position, only now it has been transformed by the carnivalizing intervention of the maid. Chichisbéu’s irritation is therefore quickly allayed, when Chirinola is able to inform him about his acquittal.

The play’s conclusion is schematic and obeys the tragicomic model, which demands a happy ending. However, if the denouement of the elevated characters requires divine intervention in order for the rearrangement of the romantic pairs to occur, this is not the case for the ancillary couple. As the secondary plot is engendered in such a way that it may find its resolution within the natural development of the play, it is, to a certain extent, better “constructed” (GONTIJO ROSA, 2017, p.444).¹¹⁰

Bakhtin understands the Baroque as a continuation and a part of the way of thinking that he designates as Renaissance. As seen above, the critic sees the deterioration of folk culture’s presence in Art and in everyday life at the end of this period:

Having lost its living tie with folk culture and having become a literary genre, the grotesque underwent certain changes. There was a formalization of carnival-grotesque images, which permitted them to be used in many different ways and for various purposes. This formalization was not only exterior; the contents of the carnival-grotesque element, its artistic, heuristic, and unifying forces were preserved in all essential manifestations during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries […] In all these writings, in spite of their differences in character and tendency, the carnival-grotesque form exercises the same function: to consecrate inventive freedom, to permit the combination of a variety of different elements and their rapprochement, to liberate from the prevailing point of view of the world, from conventions and established truths, from clichés, from all that is humdrum and universally accepted. This carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.34).¹¹¹

And so, as Antonio José da Silva is still an author that, in this case, follows a tradition “of the past” - when the whole of Europe is generally already moving towards the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century - we recognize that Carnival is present in his production. In this sense, the maid becomes even more relevant as an object of analysis, as she represents, in the works of Antonio José, the last remaining resource for maintaining Carnival in theatrical practice.

As this is the last play by Antonio José da Silva, it is not our place here to predict or speculate what path would have been taken by his dramaturgy after this point. We cannot know whether he would have sought to perfect greater aesthetic sophistication, or to maintain the temporal resources and local colour that pleased the public of the period, but which do not imbue a piece of art with a universal character. Dwelling on any of these hypotheses is senseless, as is regretting the author’s short life - except maybe, on a human level, as a life taken by religious intolerance.

• Translated by Robin Driver - [e-mail]
• 1
  Article derived from the doctoral thesis Antonio Jose da Silva: a dramaturgy made of conventions [Antônio José da Silva: uma dramaturgia de convenções], defended in 2017 as part of the Postgraduate Programme in Portuguese Literature at the Department of Classical and Vernacular Languages, School of Philosophy, Literature and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo, with FAPESP and CAPES funding, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Flavia Maria Corradin. The research presented in this article was carried out during an internship period at the Madrid Theatre Institute, Philology Faculty, Complutense University of Madrid, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Javier Huerta Calvo, also director of the aforementioned Institute, with FAPESP funding through the Internship Programme for Research Abroad (BEPE/FAPESP).
• 2
  BAKHTIN, M. Rabelais and his World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
• 3
  Seeing as this Spanish research group’s studies do not follow a Bakhtinian line of thinking, but rather find in Bakhtin a support for developing their own theory regarding low-status figures in Golden Age theatre, they can be improved upon in at least two important aspects related to Bakhtin’s theory: a) their studies do not contemplate the totality of this theory, as they do not consider central aspects of a more profound study in this field; and b) their studies do not touch on the production context of the works in question, being restricted to an internal analysis, and, consequently, to the refraction and reflection of the environments inhabited by the characters. However, we also believe that it is important to take into account how Bakhtin has been read and interpreted in Spain. For this reason, we have based our argumentation on the theories of these authors, as it was thanks to their work that we were made aware of the possibility of applying a Bakhtinian reading to the literature of this period.
• 4
  TN. All excerpts from works not published in English have been translated by the author and are accompanied by a footnote showing the original Spanish or Portuguese citation.
• 5
  Original text: “Aparte de Rabelais, toda una serie de géneros de escasa entidad - farsas, diálogos...- se acogerían a esta visión de mundo, que tiene en el Carnaval su paradigma más ajustado. En la literatura española del Renacimiento los pasos y entremeses se prestan de modo inmejorable a dicho análisis. Y ello, a pesar de la reticencia bajtiniana a introducir los géneros teatrales del discurso de la cultura popular (discurso popular) - comida, bebida, sexo, escatología, muerte despojada de sentido trascendente, etc.- se cumplen en los llamados géneros de risa: prosa picaresca, Quijote, poesía burlesca, chistes, refranes, entremeses.”
• 6
  “El propio mundo carnavalesco, toda esa cultura popular, marginal y subversiva de que habla Bajtín, encontró en el arte dramático un terreno abonado para liberar sus instintos al amparo de la máscara, el fingimiento y el desdoblamiento de personalidad, infiltrándose en casi todos los géneros teatrales.” (URZÁIZ TORTAJADA, 1999, p.158)
• 7
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 8
  A view which is shared by the Spanish scholars: “Hemos de reconocer primero que nuestra sensibilidad de hombres del siglo XX recarga de tintes negros unas representaciones que no fueron tan venenosas como imaginamos. Los hombres de los siglos XVI y XVII, más duros que nosotros, se reían sin malicia de unas burlas que en nuestra opinión muy poca gracia tienen. Se ha insistido sobre el aspecto despiadado de las burlas que sufren los aldeanos en el teatro lopesco y prelopesco. Pero tal crueldad es fenómeno de civilización y fenómeno general” (CHEVALIER, 1982, p.129).
• 9
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 10
  If “tears, as the major physical consequence of the tragedy upon the beholder, provide very strong supporting evidence in favor of a stubbornly literal interpretation of the kathartic theory”; the symptoms of laughter “become involuntary and compulsive when real laughter is present” (GIRARD, 1972, pp.813-814). GIRARD, R. Perilous balance: a comic hypothesis. MLN, Comparative Literature, v. 87, n. 7, pp.811-826, 1972.
• 11
  Original text: “Comédia, tragédia, drama e outros são facetas de uma mesma arte.”
• 12
  PAVIS, P. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
• 13
  Original text: “El rasgo determinante del realismo grotesco es el ‘rebajamiento’ de todo lo que es elevado y espiritual, ideal y abstracto, a un nivel material y corporal, subrayado como bajo (beber, comer, digerir, defecar, orinar, sudar, tener relaciones sexuales). La exaltación del vientre, alto y bajo, del vientre grosero y de las actividades biológicas que constituyen la base misma del mecanismo propio de la renovación del ser humano y del mundo, es percibida por el discurso dominante como ‘rebajamiento.’”
• 14
  Hermenegildo’s excerpt rereads Bakhtin’s thinking regarding carnivalization, with official Golden Age literature in mind. The Spanish critic’s view echoes the Bakhtinian vision of the body (and its subsequent actions and manifestations), synthesized in the excerpt extracted from Rabelais and his world: “This is why the essential role belongs to those parts of the grotesque body in which it outgrows its own self, transgressing its own body, in which it conceives a new, second body: the bowels and the phallus. These two areas play the leading role in the grotesque image, and it is precisely for this reason that they are predominantly subject to positive exaggeration, to hyperbolization; they can even detach themselves from the body and lead an independent life, for they hide the rest of the body, as something secondary (The nose can also in a way detach itself from the body). Next to the bowels and the genital organs is the mouth, through which enters the world to be swallowed up. And next is the anus. All the convexities and orifices have a common characteristic; it is within them that the confines between bodies and between the body and the world are overcome: there is an interchange and an interorientation. This is why the main events in the life of the grotesque body, the acts of the bodily drama, take place in this sphere. Eating, drinking, defecation and other elimination (sweating, blowing of the nose, sneezing), as well as copulation, pregnancy, dismemberment, swallowing up by another - all these acts are performed on the confines of the body and the outer world, or on the confines of the old and new body. In all these events the beginning and the end of life are closely linked and interwoven (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.317). For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 15
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 16
  “All these characteristic examples of how even distant analogies and connotations were sought in order to travesty the serious and make it ring with laughter. In everything, in meaning and image, in the sound of sacred words, parody discovered the Achilles heel that was open to derision, some trait which permitted linkage to the bodily lower stratum” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.87). For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 17
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 18
  Original text: “Contudo, as zombarias feitas aos estratos mais elevados da sociedade, embora não visem primeiramente a sua crítica, podem ser mal recebidas por aqueles que possuem, na sociedade corrente, meios para punir os folgazões. Assim, cria-se um ambiente e uma forma isentos de culpa em que, virtualmente, tudo é possível.”
• 19
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 20
  BERGSON, H. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Translated by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books, 2014.
• 21
  For reference, see ^{footnote 20}.
• 22
  Original texts: “el Carnaval sería a la vida lo que el entremés a la representación larga, un tiempo breve de regocijo en el que vale casi todo para volver luego a los problemas planteados.”
• 23
  “Nuestra propuesta metodológica trata de aislar, analizar y catalogar los diversos parlamentos de una obra dramática o aquellos atribuidos a un personaje, con el fin de determinar de modo empírico, verificable, la importancia relativa de cada figura y, dentro de los parlamentos de un carácter preciso, las distintas clases de funciones y cometidos que le han sido confiados. La consideración de los parlamentos como actos de lenguaje, o de habla, como formas de actuar en el universo social que es la comedia, nos permite determinar de qué modo influye el personaje sobre los comportamientos propios y ajenos mediante sus diversas y variadas intervenciones (peticiones, órdenes, preguntas, consejos, etc...) y cómo construye su trayectoria y su realización dramáticas” (HERMENEGILDO, 1995, p.18).
• 24
  Original text: “Uma vez que, salvo raras exceções, os protagonistas das peças do Século de Ouro espanhol são representantes do sexo masculino e, mais especificamente, representantes da personagem-tipo do galán, as funções dos parlamentos são definidas sempre em sua relação com as vontades e interesses do galán-protagonista da peça.”
• 25
  BALL, D. Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays. Carbondale; Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.
• 26
  Original text: “Para pensar as demais personagens que figuram no texto dramático, para além dos protagonistas galán e dama, deve-se sempre ter em mente que eles são principalmente encarados como instrumentos para o desenvolvimento da trama. Portanto, pensar numa “unidade dramática” para a caracterização destas personagens, com traços definidores enquanto indivíduos, é secundário na análise do teatro anterior ao Romantismo. [...] Assim que o universo ancilar, representado pelas figuras do bobo, simples, criado, seus desdobramentos e suas parceiras femininas, além de sua constituição de caráter enquanto personagem-tipo descrito por Prades (1963), também carrega funções estruturais para desenvolvimento do enredo e seguimento da trama - funções que, de acordo com Hermenegildo (1995), estão acima do próprio caráter da personagem.”
• 27
  Original text: “dentro de la comedia, no hay que confundir tampoco la figura cómica del “gracioso” con la del “simple”, que está igualmente vinculado a la risa pero no de manera voluntaria como es propio de la ingeniosa “figura del donaire”, sino de manera inconsciente y a pesar suyo.”
• 28
  For reference, see ^{footnote 20}.
• 29
  Original text: “(pleno de gracias y donaires, solícito buscador de dádivas generosas y de la vida regalona (codicioso, glotón y dormilón), cauto en los peligros hasta la cobardía, desamorado.”
• 30
  Original text: “Da mesma forma que o gracioso judeíno é consciente de sua própria comicidade, ele também é plenamente consciente da possibilidade de produção do cômico a partir das situações dos protagonistas. Imbuído do espírito carnavalesco, os graciosos sempre encontram um comentário chistoso ou alguma observação aguda para dirigir ao público, quando presenciam uma situação inusitada de seus patrões ou demais das personagens.”
• 31
  “Sharp” in both senses of the word: “cutting,” “pointed,” as the gracioso’s lines and commentaries frequently work as a cut in the imbroglios and situations that the high characters go through. Another meaning refers to the idea of “keen discernment or intellectual perception especially of subtle distinctions.” Also, in Portuguese the word “agudo” used in the original, directly refers to the quality of making a joke. Considering these different meanings, they build the “rhetoric sharpness” in the gracioso’s speech, especially in those directed to the public.
• 32
  If she is not present in all Golden Age works, nor is she of great relevance in all of those in which she does appear, in many instances only coming to the stage once or twice.
• 33
  Original text: “los personajes ancilares femeninos [...] son signos variopintos, adscritos a funciones diversas y dotadas de una multiplicidad de cometidos digna de tomarse en cuenta.”
• 34
  Original text: “La criada, por ser habitante perene del espacio ancilar, suele aparecer como agente secundario, cuyas acciones no constituyen sino simples presencias mecánicas previstas en el código dramático de la época.”
• 35
  Original text: “A su vez, las relaciones de dependencia, no solo se establecen entre señora y criada en su categoría social, sino entre comedia y personaje en su función dramática. La criada está subordinada a la dama a quien sirve para su existencia como personaje, pero a la vez, la comedia necesita al personaje para llevar a cabo un enredo, para que participe de los equívocos y mueva en algunos momentos los hilos de la acción.”
• 36
  Original text: “Se elaborar uma definição do termo gracioso, no sentido de determinar uma personagem-tipo específica do teatro do Século de Ouro espanhol, é tarefa difícil, para uma definição de criada a tarefa se mostra quase impossível. Enquanto personagem, a criada pode ser fiel, conselheira, amiga confidente e secundária de todas as ações (mais ou menos honestas) da dama a quem serve, assim como pode carregar em si a própria moralização das ações levianas das personagens elevadas ou, ao contrário, ser a personificação do amor carnal no enredo da peça. Ela pode ser respondona e presunçosa ou prestativa nos afazeres domésticos ancilares. A criada pode apresentar os mais variados contextos, embora seja facilmente identificada enquanto criada.”
• 37
  Original text: “una acción subordinada, pero desarrollada con relativa independencia de la principal.”
• 38
  Original text: “a) que tenga un desarrollo dramático completo y relativamente independiente de la acción principal; b) que no sea orgánicamente necesaria al desarrollo de la principal.”
• 39
  This statement is based on Marín (1958, p.21), who claims that there is “más goce estético en llegar a la unidad y al orden a través de la multiplicidad y del aparente desorden que por medio de la simplicidad y claridad de las obras clásicas.”
• 40
  Original text: “Todavia, ao longo da escrita de Antônio José, já no século XVIII, veremos a ampliação deste conceito espanhol para um enredo dramático com o mesmo peso da intriga principal, em que elas se cruzam em um único momento, geralmente próximo ao clímax da peça. O dramaturgo português amplia a complexidade do imbricamento das intrigas principal e secundária, de acordo com o gosto do público da época.”
• 41
  Original text: “la suerte de dicha intriga subordinada va ligada a la de la principal.”
• 42
  Original text: “‘Alheia’ porque as falas atribuídas a esta função, nos textos de Antônio José da Silva, não estabelecem relação com a intriga principal em nenhum nível, seja de corroboração, seja de oposição, seja de burla, em outras palavras, não são propositoras, opositoras ou carnavalescas. Tampouco se referem à explicitação de algum mecanismo dramatúrgico, como é o caso das funções metaliterárias, informantes e conjuntivas, ou dizem respeito a uma relação hierárquica e direta entre as personagens, como o são as funções imperativas e executoras. Uma vez que as referidas falas têm como foco principal o desenvolvimento de uma bem construída trama secundária, as chamamos “alheias” por se distanciarem da intriga principal.”
• 43
  “The grotesque image reflects a phenomenon in transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growth and becoming. The relation to time is one determining trait of the grotesque image. The other indispensable trait is ambivalence. For in this image we find both poles of transformation, the old and the new, the dying and the procreating, the beginning and the end of the metamorphosis” (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.24). For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 44
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 45
  TN. We choose to use the characters’ translated names because, as mythological figures, they already mean something for English readers, just as the Portuguese names translated from Greek mean something for Portuguese-speaking readers.
• 46
  Original text: “Nesta peça, o mito antigo é tomado apenas como mote, sendo que toda a trama urdida por Antônio José centraliza sua atenção nos desencontros amorosos de Faetonte. Para tanto, por se tratar de um mito menos conhecido e menos desenvolvido e pelo fato de o dramaturgo conduzir sua intriga por outras sendas que não aquelas traçadas pelo mito, a presença dos criados se faz necessária enquanto condutor do espectador pela ação dramática desenrolada em cena.”
• 47
  TN. In the translation of all excerpts of the play, we were as literal as possible, prioritizing the content over form in order to ensure comprehension of the plot.
• 48
  Original text: “Tages, irmão de Tirreno, rei de Itália, usurpa este reino, o qual pertence a Egéria, ninfa do Erídano e filha de Tirreno. Faetonte, filho do Sol e reputado por filho de um pastor de Tessália, vendo o retrato de Egéria (sic, [Ismene]), rendido lhe tributa o seu amor; e, para melhor o dar a conhecer a Egéria (sic, [Ismene]), sai de Tessália e se ocupa na Itália em acções do agrado desta ninfa; por cuja causa sai de Tessália o mágico Fíton em seguimento de Faetonte, para o desviar deste amor, porquanto ainda neste tempo ignorava Faetonte o seu verdadeiro pai, e Fíton lhe receava a ruína, quando o chegasse a conhecer. Estabelecido Faetonte nos agrados de Egéria, esta, para restaurar o reino pelas acções daqueles que a pretendiam, para este fim usa ocultamente prometer a mão de esposa a Mecenas e a Faetonte, em que consistem os maiores lances desta história. - Albano, príncipe de Ligúria, pretende ser esposo de Ismene, filha de Tages. Este, quando Faetonte se declara filho do Sol, o pretende para esposo de Ismene e para o de Egéria a Albano, os quais fingidamente se declaram amantes com a ferida dos zelos. Aparece Apolo e declara a Faetonte por seu filho. Este lhe pede faculdade para girar na carroça do Sol. Resiste Apolo; porém, instando Faetonte, lho concede, e este, depois, à vista de Egéria, se vê precipitado no Erídano. - O mais se verá no contexto da história.”
• 49
  Original text: “fiel servidor de seu senhor.”
• 50
  “By supporting all of Phaeton’s initiatives, to Chichisbéu is given the right to exchange the unconditional fidelity to his master for his love for Chirinola. ‘Basta que el galán sienta inclinación por una dama para que el servidor se sienta obligado a imitarlo’ (MONTESINOS apud PRADES, 1963, p.48). Although the servant is, to some extent, going against the precepts of his stock character, in the case of Chichisbéu, we may accept a certain flexibility of such rules, in order for the servant to follow the same initiative taken by Phaeton in the play” (GONTIJO ROSA, 2016, p.314). Original text: “A Chichisbéu, ao secundar todas as iniciativas de Faetonte, é dado o direito de trocar a fidelidade incondicional ao seu senhor pelos arroubos amorosos por Chirinola. ‘Basta que el galán sienta inclinación por una dama para que el servidor se sienta obligado a imitarlo’ (MONTESINOS apud PRADES, 1963, p.48). Por mais que o criado vá, de certa forma, contra os preceitos de sua personagem-tipo, no caso particular de Chichisbéu, podemos aceitar uma flexibilização desta regra, para que o criado siga a mesma iniciativa que Faetonte toma na peça.”
• 51
  “We must stress, however, that the carnival is far distant from the negative and formal parody of modern times. Folk humor denies, but it revives and renews at the same time. Bare negation is completely alien to folk culture. (BAKHTIN, 1984, p.11). For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 52
  In the first edition of Theatro Comico Portuguez [Portuguese Comic Theatre], and in subsequent editions, the scenes are divided by mutações or changes in scenario. However, if we divide the text up in accordance with the entrances and exits of characters (a more familiar method to the contemporary reader), we would have, in Precipício de Faetonte [Fall of Phaeton], 46 scenes, six of which feature the couple of gracioso-maid as protagonists.
• 53
  Another perspective on Antonio José da Silva’s text can highlight the actions of low characters as an aspect of object renewal through carnivalization, as explained by Bakhtin (1984, pp.373-374): “In this dense atmosphere of the material bodily lower stratum, the formal renewal of half-effaced images takes place. Objects are reborn in the light of the use made of them. They reappear before our eyes; the softness of silk, the “beshitten jewelry” emerge in all their concrete, tangible form. As we have said, they are renewed in the sphere of their debasement.” For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 54
  Original text: “Chirinola: Não quer abrir a boca para falar? Pois feche os olhos, para nunca mais me ver. [...] / Chichisbéu: Eu não sou Fíton, Chirinola! Sou semicriado daquele que se quer fazer semideus. Não sou mágico, filha; porque nunca adevinhei mais que os teus pensamentos. [...] / Chirinola: E quem é esse Faetonte? / Chichisbéu: É um pastor assim chamado, filho de um homem que nunca ouvi nomear e de uma mulher que habita entre as feras de Diana.”
• 55
  Original text: “Chichisbéu: Ora sou bem asno! Mas não tenho vergonha de o dizer! Que venha eu palmilhando, desde Tessália até aqui, atrás de um louco ou de um Faetonte, que tudo é o mesmo! E o pior é que me desencontrei dele e ando perdido pelo moço! Que há-de fazer o pobre Chichisbéu, posto no centro de Itália, sem saber aqui aonde são as casas locandas e, o que mais é, sem quatrim? O que me val é ser eu Chichisbéu, que terei entrada franca em toda a casa.”
• 56
  Original text: “A relação de Chichisbéu com as personagens elevadas é muito particular, pois se mostra especialmente à vontade no ambiente senhorial - do qual fará parte a maior parte do tempo. Sua linguagem e suas metáforas não são tão baixas quanto as dos primeiros graciosos de Antônio José da Silva, seus jogos de palavras são mais sofisticados e mesmo os galanteios a Chirinola estão em níveis de elaboração não alcançados pelos outros graciosos judeínos.”
• 57
  As can also be seen in Madroñal (1999, p.74): “Porque el Carnaval es de alguna manera también teatro o parateatro, en cuanto supone una representación popular donde los actores improvisados adquieren una serie de roles, tal y como sucedía encima de las tablas a los actores profesionales. Como éstos, también disfrazan su personalidad, fundamentalmente con máscaras y vestimentas, y lanzan un mensaje a los que les están contemplando.”
• 58
  Original text: “Chirinola: Venho pé antepé a ver este mágico, que tem alvoraçado todo este palácio, e é cousa que nunca vi em minha vida.”
• 59
  Original text: “Chichisbéu: E para quê? / Chirinola: Só por ver como é a cara de um feiticeiro.”
• 60
  Original text: “Chichisbéu: [...] Tomaras tu que um mágico desses te amasse! Então verias... Não digo nada! / Chirinola: Deus me livre!”
• 61
  Original text: “Chirinola: Só de uma sorte me poderá render. / Chichisbéu: Como? / Chirinola: Renunciando o pacto e depondo a mágica.”
• 62
  Original text: “Chirinola: [...] Agora o apurarei. (À parte) Ora dize: como me chamo eu? / Chichisbéu: Se eu já não sou feiticeiro, como posso adevinhar o teu nome? Está galante a Chirinola! / Chirinola: Não temos nada feito. Vá-se daí, que ainda é quem dantes era. / Chichisbéu: Porquê? / Chirinola: Disse-lhe que me adevinhasse o nome, e mo escarrou na bochecha. / Chichisbéu: Eu, o teu nome?! De que sorte? Chirinola: Não disse Chirinola? Que mais havia de dizer? / Chichisbéu: Pois tu te chamas Chirinola?! Chirinola: Sim, Senhor; faça-se de novas. / Chichisbéu: Ó Chirinola, em chirinola me torne eu, se eu sabia que tu te chamavas Chirinola. / Chirinola: Pois apara que disse Chirinola? / Chichisbéu: Nunca se viu um lapsus nominis? Se havia de dizer charamela, disse chirinola.”
• 63
  Original text: “Ora admito a desculpa, mas não lhe suceda outra.”
• 64
  Original text: “Chirinola: Veja lá o que diz; olhe bem para mim! / Chichisbéu: Tenho dito. / Imediatamente lhe cresce o nariz a Chichisbéu, com desformidade.”
• 65
  Original text: “Chirinola: Como queres que creia, se ao mesmo tempo que dizes não hás-de ser mágico, sacas por um nariz tamanho como hoje e amanhã? [...] Se quer adorar-me, / da mágica fuja; / se quer desprezar-me, / fará o que quiser, / que é melhor senhor / do senhor seu nariz. / Bem sabe não gosto de feitiçarias, / que são rapazias, / que estalam num trás, / e estão por um triz.”
• 66
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 67
  Editor’s Note: In the Portuguese translation of Rabelais and his World, we find an additional sentence after the one quoted, not found in the English translation: “ela é apenas o aspecto abstrato da renovação rica de sentido, ligada ao ‘baixo’ material e corporal ambivalente” [it is only an abstract aspect of the meaningful renewal, connected with the ambivalent material and bodily “lower stratum” (my translation)].
• 68
  Original text: “Chichisbéu: É boa esta! Está Faetonte, por amor de mim, entronizado, logrando de assento os agrados de Ismene, e eu por amor dele estou de asa caída nos favores de Chirinola! É desgraça não poder voar a minha esperança à esfera de sua aceitação!”
• 69
  Original text: “Chirinola: Se não é mágico, como decifrou tanto enigma? / Chichisbéu: Aí é que está enigmática a minha desventura. / Chirinola: Declare-se. / Chichisbéu: Não posso. / Chirinola: Porquê? / Chichisbéu: Porque é segredo, e temo...”
• 70
  Original text: “Chirinola: Pois dize, meu rico Fíton, que eu te prometo dar um bom refresco e segurar o teu amor com as amarras de meus braços. / Chichisbéu: Quem não dará à costa no mar daqueles braços! Adeus, segredo! Boa viagem, que, enjoado nas ondas dos favores, vomito as tripas. Pois alto, Chichisbéu! Desembucha, e padeça quem padecer, que primeiro está o salvamento do teu amor, do que o bom sucesso de Faetonte: In aequali periculo debet quis sibi prius consulere.”
• 71
  Original text: “é um pastor assim chamado, filho de um homem que nunca ouvi nomear e de uma mulher que habita entre as feras de Diana.”
• 72
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.
• 73
  Original text: “Chirinola: Ora diga-me, Senhora: e que Faetonte não era filho do Sol? / Albano: Que ouço! Alma, respira, que já não é dificultosa a tua felicidade./ Ismene: Também ouvi isso, não há dúvida.”
• 74
  Original text: “Chichisbéu: Não to posso dizer, pois só eu o sei, e mais certa pessoa; e, se tu o souberes, já não é segredo; porque, passando de dous, acabou-se o segredo.”
• 75
  Original text: “Oh, curiosidade, em que aflições me meteste!”
• 76
  Original text: “Chirinola: [...] e, para que o não diga, há-de-me prometer uma cousa. / Rei: Que é? / Chirinola: que não há-de fazer mal a Chichisbéu, porque ele não teve culpa nestas arengas, como sabe sua Alteza. / Rei: Não merece perdão tão grande culpa; ambos padecerão o rigor de minhas iras. / Chirinola: Senhora, lá se avenha; há-de-me fazer boa a palavra que me deu. / Ismene: Senhor, eu prometi a Chirinola a vida de Chichisbéu, se ela confessasse; e assim... / Rei: Basta, princesa; eu lhe perdoo, pois tu o apadrinhas.”
• 77
  Original text: “Chirinola lança mão do mesmo pensamento prático característico da personagem-tipo da criada, o qual, geralmente, emprega para executar alguma ação que sua dama não poderia por limites morais ou de honor. A criada direciona suas habilidades em prol de seus próprios objetivos, no caso, a absolvição de Chichisbéu.”
• 78
  Original text: “deixando o perrixil de Chichisbéu para pratinho do desenfado das iras de El-Rei.”
• 79
  Original text: “O final da peça é esquemático e obedece ao modelo tragicômico, que demanda um final feliz. Entretanto, se o desenlace das personagens elevadas precisa da intervenção divina para que o rearranjo dos pares amorosos ocorra, o mesmo não se passa com o casal ancilar. A trama secundária é engendrada de forma que ela encontre, no caminho natural do desenrolar da peça, a sua resolução, sendo, portanto, em certo sentido, mais ‘bem construída.’”
• 80
  For reference, see ^{footnote 2}.

REFERÊNCIAS

• BAKHTIN, M. A cultura popular na Idade Média e no Renascimento: o contexto de François Rabelais. 7. ed. Trad. Yara Frateschi Vieira. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2010. [1940]
• BALL, D. Para trás e para frente: um guia para leitura de peças teatrais. Trad. Leila Coury. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2008. [1983]
• BERGSON, H. O riso: ensaio sobre a significação do cômico. 2.ed. Trad. Nathanael C. Caixeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara, 1987. [1899]
• CHEVALIER, M. El aldeano cómico en la comedia lopesca. In: CHEVALIER, M. Tipos cómicos y folklore (siglos XVI-XVII) Madrid: EDI, 1982, p.126-141.
• GIRARD, R. Um equilíbrio periclitante: ensaio de interpretação do cômico. Trad. Sephi Alter. O arquivo de Renato Suttana Disponível em: http://arquivors.com/girard2.htm Acesso em: 12/04/2018. [Publicado originalmente em La voix méconnue du réel Paris: Grasset, 2002].
  » http://arquivors.com/girard2.htm
• GÓMEZ, J. Precisiones terminológicas sobre ‘figura del donaire’ y ‘gracioso’ (siglos XVI-XVII). Boletín de la Real Academia Española, tomo 82, cuaderno 286, p.233-259, jul-dic/2002.
• GONTIJO ROSA, C. O precipício de Chichisbéu: o ‘gracioso’ feito à sombra do ‘galán’ em O precipício de Faetonte, de Antônio José da Silva. Acta Scientiarum Language and Culture, Maringá, PR, v. 38, n. 3, p.311-319, jul-set/2016.
• GONTIJO ROSA, C. Antônio José da Silva: uma dramaturgia de convenções. 2017. 491 f. Tese (Doutorado em Letras - Literatura Portuguesa). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo. São Paulo.
• HERMENEGILDO, A. “¡Ayuda aquí, Julieta!”: funciones del personaje ancilar femenino en el teatro del siglo XVI. In: GARCÍA LORENZO, L (ed.) La criada en el teatro español del Siglo de Oro Madri: Fundamentos, 2008. p.35-56.
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• MADROÑAL, A. Carnaval y entremés en la primera mitad del siglo XVII. Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, n. 12, p.73-88, 1999.
• MARÍN, D. La intriga secundaria en el teatro de Lope de Vega Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958.
• PAVIS, P. Dicionário de teatro Trad. Jacó Guinsburg e M. Lúcia Pereira. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2008.
• PICCHIO, L. História do teatro português Trad. Manuel de Lucena. Lisboa: Portugália, 1969.
• PRADES, J. Teoria sobre los personajes de La comedia nueva. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1963.
• ROCHA, A. Anfitrião e outros estudos de teatro Coimbra: Livraria Almedina, 1969.
• RUIZ, R. La criada en la comedia del Siglo de Oro: ejemplos, variaciones y denominadores comunes. In: GARCÍA LORENZO, L. (ed.). La criada en el teatro español del Siglo de Oro Madri: Fundamentos, 2008. p.113-124.
• SILVA, A. Precipício de Faetonte. In: SILVA, A. Obras completas Prefácio de José Pereira Tavares. Lisboa: Sá da Costa, 1958.
• URZÁIZ TORTAJADA, H. “Amor se disfraza”: el Carnaval en la comedia barroca. Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, n. 12, p.157-182, 1999.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 Aug 2019
• Date of issue
  Jul-Sep 2019

History

• Received
  12 July 2018
• Accepted
  11 May 2019