Metatheatre, Laugh and Melancholy in La venta by Francisco de Quevedo

Abstract

The Baroque Hispanic theatre, like other texts of the Seiscientos, registers the social concern for melancholy and its complement, madness, both of which are often related to dramas feautring royal or noble characters and their exercise of power, such as El príncipe melancólico by Lope de Vega and El melancólico by Tirso de Molina. In this work we are interested in investigating how this thematization is linked with the theatrical perception of the world and of life, and with the most significant rhetorical procedures through which these passions are conveyed in an unusual textuality to analyze Hispanic melancholy: short theatre. In this way, we will show how a minor and laughable piece like the entremés La venta of Francisco de Quevedo becomes a metatheatrical device that refracts representations of a strongly melancholic worldview, although disfigured in its parodic variant; as a result, the depth of religious, moral or existential questions is displaced to comic and satirical settings. In the chosen entremés, the dramatic action is focused on an inn or venta, a significant topic of seventeenth century literature in general, since it constitutes the folk locus of misery and deception where one is sold a pig in a poke.