The "Gracioso:" Toward a Functional Re-Evaluation

Abstract

D URING the past ten years there has been a veritabl boom in c itical studies of the Spanish Golden Age comedia. Literary histories, critical methodological statements, facsimile editions and complete works projects are all providing a new presentation, in English particularly, of the comedia's scope and depth.' Such a new presentation also allows for a concurrent re-evaluation of this genre's component parts.2 Since the full flowering of our target genre occurred in the early 17th century, it is perhaps understandable that most in-depth studies have focused on that time frame. But as further analytical scrutiny is generated and appropriate origins and precursors are again noted, it will be evident that the sixteenth century is especially in need of studies which go beyond the purely historical or chronological. To this adjacent formative period of the comedia which is the late sixteenth century should be applied the critical improvements derived from study of the seventeenth century Spanish theater. The present study seeks to add balance to our awareness of both centuries of the Golden Age by concentrating on one of the comedia's most notably developed characters and, consequently, one of its most significant building-blocks: the gracioso. The sixteenth century is important not so much for the number of plays produced as for the wide experimentation which permitted a later blending of the various components in the seventeenth century comedia. One of these components is the gracioso, or pre-gracioso, as he should more properly be designated. Criticism has defined the gracioso type in terms of his classical background, his humorous disposition and his influence on subsequent comic stage types. Without denying the validity of those early definitions, I would suggest that the importance of the pastor, bobo or introiter goes significantly beyond them. The recent work of D. Gustafson regarding the roles of the shepherd in the theater of Diego Sanchez de Badajoz'3 points in this new direction. If the gracioso and galdn later make that pareja ideal that Montesinos wrote of in 1925,4 it would seem that more attention should have subsequently fallen on the gracioso type as a vital structural component. It is the purpose here to suggest that, in our continuing effort to refine techniques of comedia criticism, the contribution of functional or structural analysis be reaffirmed. Specifically, I wish to comment on the relationship of the gracioso to the medieval feast of fools tradition. The a-social or unprincipled nature of the gracioso figure and the dramatist-as-actor are important corollary considerations.