Internal Propaganda and Killings around the Court

Regarding public executions in early modern England, J. A. Sharpe has written, “[t]he men and women whose executions we have noted were, for the most part, doing more than just accepting their fates. They were the willing central participants in a theatre of punishment ”. These offered not merely a spectacle, but also a reinforcement of certain values, theater in the service of the state. In early Modern Spain, participants may have been willing to die in this service, but were spectators equally willing to trust the state's ability to enforce the law? We have seen in previous chapters that spectacles of force, on and off the stage, do not necessarily inspire the audience's confidence, nor in themselves maintain order. The audience may not despair over an entire law-enforcement regime, but may have misgivings about how it is managed by certain individuals. In terms of the Criminal Baroque, theatricalized criminals may seem like Sharpe's “willing central participants”, but initial appearances are deceptive. They can often behave in ways that exaggerate, instead of attenuate, the state's corruption and shortcomings. In early modern Spain, the original power of “la justicia que manda hacer el Rey Nuestro Señor”, referred to in the previous chapter, is never in question. At the same time, the use and abuse of this power amongst officialdom is often open to criticism. Any spectator with a basic understanding of monarchy was aware that practical power often emanated from the king's closest ministers, his validos and privados, whose legitimacy could be called into question. Despite being as practically powerful as the king himself, those placed highest in the social and political hierarchy were not beyond reproach. Their behavior could adversely influence public opinion of how a monarchy operated, if not the bedrock institution itself. In Chapter 4, we saw the counterproductive confusion between theatricality and criminality at a municipal level. When things go horribly wrong for the elite, and the “willing central participant” in the state's theatre of punishment is of the highest political level, confusion can just as easily reign.

Antecedents to the Comedia Nueva and the Popularization of Theatrical Criminal Violence

The previous chapter cited common occurrences of comedia protagonists who behaved criminally and were subsequently pursued by law enforcement. The epitome of such characters is the theatrical valentón, a literary creation born of real-life social circumstances. In the seventeenth century, these circumstances often involved a military setting in which the valentón could fully realize his love for brawling and his expression of personal identity through violence. His behavior could achieve a heroic dimension in the service of Spain and the suppression of her enemies, but it also emphasized the military's dependence on criminal recruits and undermined the virtue of any imperial project. Before arriving at a careful examination of this counterproductive heroism, we shall examine antecedents that helped make a place for brawlers in fictionalized accounts on stage. As shown in our previous analysis of the jácara, there is long-standing tradition of romances celebrating criminal exploits, but at approximately the same time as Rodrigo de Reinosa was composing his proto-jácara, another author's work was making the most substantial contribution to the popularization of criminal violence in literature, especially in theater. This was Fernando de Rojas's masterpiece, La Celestina, which defies generic classification, but has a dialog-based format that makes it theatrical in two ways. Firstly, key information about the characters’ thoughts, actions, and background are conveyed almost entirely through speech. Secondly, the book was read aloud in a group, resembling, in early modern terms, a theater production, or at least some sort of rehearsal. Regarding characters and criminal behavior, the obvious examples are Sempronio and his protegée Pármeno. They end up killing Celestina for money and are subsequently killed themselves by the authorities, with their throats slit by an executioner in the town square. Less prominently featured in Rojas's original are Centurio and the briefly mentioned Traso el Cojo, and yet subesquent modifications and editions of Celestina feature entire additional acts named after these characters. Over time, there was an increasing demand for criminal types in the story.

Criminals are fascinating, as any sampling of the latest news headlines will tell you. This fascination extends to fictionalized accounts as well, and the current proliferation of crime dramas on television can rival that of real-life crime reports in the news. This is a book about criminals both real and fictional in contexts that have been relatively ignored. In comparison to the overwhelming emphasis placed by Golden Age scholars on picaresque prose fiction, what has received far less attention are theatrical productions and public spectacles. These can range from humorous musical sketches to solemn executions, in which crime and punishment were used to entertain and instruct mass audiences. Criminality as as theme for performances matched its pervasiveness in society as a whole. Much can be learned about public opinion concerning lawbreaking and peacekeeping by studying how criminals were theatricalized on and off the stage.

Before proceeding to examine the spectacles in question, it is necessary to give a basic definition of the term “criminality” and how it will be used in this study. My methods in this respect are similar to some that I have used before. In a previous book, I defined “humor” in a broad sense without focusing on a single theory or outlining any taxonomies from the start. Only later did the study bring up relevant classifications and theories to illuminate explanations related to specific works. Over the length of that book, the analyses of separate genres and humorous situations therein created a more generalized picture. In this study, I will begin by broadly defining “criminality” as “severe lawbreaking”, with “law” referring to a written statute mostly found in the continually updated Nueva recopilación de las leyes destos reinos, and subsequent “cuadernos” and “pragmáticas”. With some exceptions – such as begging, price-gouging, or defying authority, all cited in Chapter 4 – a lawbreaking act is hereby defined as severe if it leads to grievous bodily harm or the deprivation of property.

Critical Reconsiderations of Kingship

In the introduction to this study, the term “Criminal Baroque” was invoked as a corrective for a false dichotomy that misleadingly separated early modern Spanish citizens into criminal and non-criminal camps on the basis of class distinctions. Examples of gangsters, corrupt law-enforcement officials, lawbreaking soldiers, murderous noblemen, and the multiple crimes of Don Rodrigo Calderón and his political partners, all combine to show the pervasiveness of criminality. Breaking the law cannot be reduced to the lower classes, nor kept within any arbitrarily drawn “margins” on the map of early modern Spanish society. In the previous chapter, we saw how high-ranking criminalized noblemen were punished by “la justicia, que manda hacer el Rey Nuestro Señor” [“the justice that the King Our Lord orders done”]. This study has moved up the social hierarchy and thus ends by investigating the highest echelon of power and standing. How could the king's justice operate when the king himself violated the law? Could the king be perceived as a criminal, at least on stage? The legal discussions born from these types of question are many and they mainly focus on the subject of tyranny. Comparatively, the portrayal of the king as a theatrical criminal has received little attention. If explicit verdicts are not rendered against monarchs in the comedia, a royal figure can still be judged as violating the law. Such a judgment can be made based on the monarch's similarity to blatantly criminal character types, even while he works towards the best interests of his subjects. As seen in previous chapters, many criminals that appeared on stage received ambivalent treatment from the playwrights. Jovial jaques entertained audiences as they threatened to smash in the faces those who opposed them. Heroic valentones had no scruples about killing members of la justicia if these ministers stood in the way of taking righteous action. In recent decades, historians and scholars of early modern Spanish literature have discovered that the figure of the king enjoyed an ambivalent treatment as well.

The General Inefficacy of Low-Level Law Enforcement

While the previous chapter looked at the blending of criminality and disorder on and off the stage, we shall now look into the confusion of art and life in terms of law enforcement, starting with real-life alguaciles and eventually moving to their representation on stage. The higher echelons of government, such as the Council of Castile, needed “boots on the ground” effectively to enforce their decrees. Alguaciles’ duties often made them professionally and personally involved in the theatrical world. Some alguaciles had an artistic involvement with public spectacles as well. Before examining these intertwining relationships, it seems useful to provide a general outline of the law-enforcement structures in place in early modern Madrid, the undisputed theater capital of Spain. As Ángel Alloza tells us, from 1561 until the middle of the eighteenth century maintenance of public order was split between two institutions, the “Sala de alcaldes” and the corregidor. The Sala was responsible for policing the area within approximately thirty kilometers of the royal residence, and all ordinary criminal cases were prosecuted through this institution. The alcaldes were magistrates who issued their own sentences with the exception of the death penalty, which required confirmation from the king. Those who enjoyed special protections (the military, nobility, clergy, etc.) were supposedly exempt from the Sala's jurisdiction, but conflicts or “competencias” often arose concerning who could prosecute whom. The actual enforcement of the law at street level was carried out by the corregidores, who organized the alguaciles, generally headed by an alcalde, into a ronda that “watched the streets and squares, taverns, gaming houses and brothels at night, and during the day, plays, playhouses and other public places”. The corregidores and their subordinate alguaciles were also in charge of the city jail. During their rounds, both alcaldes and alguaciles were accompanied by at least one escribano, or scribe, who recorded the “truth” of cases that arose in the streets during the night watch, as well as arrests in general, incidents in prison, or other relevant occurrences.

A Note about Theatricality and Historical Background on the Pervasiveness of Violent Criminal Behavior

The title of this book is The Criminal Baroque: Lawbreaking, Peacekeeping and Theatricality in Early Modern Spain. The word “theatricality” is used instead of “theater” because it offers a wider range of venues in which real and fictional crimes and punishments can take place. The next two chapters will mostly refer to spectacles outside the corral. The examples within these chapters will mainly focus on deliberate attempts to harness spectacle for social control and how these attempts could backfire. Efforts to manipulate public opinion can lead to indifference, social disturbances or, in the worst case, violent crime. In an early modern Spanish context, the term “social control” may seem to imply a situation in which the upper classes seek to quash rebellion by those below. But, as argued in the three previous chapters, those whom José Antonio Maravall would call “deviants” cannot be reduced to a single stratum of society. As we continue to move up the social hierarchy, we shall witness powerful people who employ spectacle to influence others, choosing targets among their peers and not necessarily from the masses.

Thus far, the theatrical portrayals of criminality in our study have pertained mostly to the lower classes in a fictionalized context. These have been mainly represented by the jaque protagonists of the jácara ballads and the non-noble or occasionally low-ranking gentlemen who are social climbing valentones de comedia. These portrayals may lead to the misconception that criminal behavior and efforts to prevent or channel it mainly occurred at the margins of society. The powerful image of the hampa, a seething underbelly of killing, thievery, gaming, and prostitution, may seem threatening and completely separate from the higher echelons of the nobility and a nascent middle class. As seen earlier, one feature of the Criminal Baroque is the use of confusion and combination of disparate elements as part of the aestheticization of criminal behavior and of law enforcement, found in the examples of dancing pimps, singing prostitutes, constables dressed as peacocks, et cetera.

During a single “tarde de comedia” [“afternoon at the playhouse”], justifiable criminal activity on stage can take the form of fictionalized singing and dancing pimps and prostitutes, as cited in Chapter 1. On another occasion, the ineffectiveness of controlling “desórdenes públicos” is not attenuated, but rather reinforced, by alguaciles who have time to dress as peacocks and march in a parade, but perhaps not the time to attend to their appointed rounds, according to the environment described in Chapter 2. Criminality as entertainment on stage varies and offers many surprises, as in the case from Chapter 3, when a valentón de comedia's sister abets killing an alguacil and stabbing a corregidor in the name of family honor. The confusion of the Criminal Baroque continues at all levels of society, as expressed in Chapter 4, by which real-life allegorical carts for Corpus Christi are powered by pícaros and contested by city officials who threaten each other with imprisonment and whose conflicts nearly turn deadly later on. Spectacular crime and punishment in a theatricalized world is exemplified in Chapter 5 by a longhaired and soberly dressed Don Rodrigo broadcasting his contrition from the scaffold, turning the fictional spectacles of comedia criminals and spiritually “condemned” preachers alike into a sobering reality. Our final example of King Don Pedro provides us with the pinnacle of Criminal Baroque representation. Studying the figure reveals the tension and heavy overlap between two seemingly irreconcilable characters, the street brawler as habitual lawbreaker and the king as the law unto himself, leaving opinions and social actions in conflict, but the public happily entertained. In early modern Spain, criminals were not necessarily marginalized individuals who stood apart from society. When they appeared on stage in fictional form they represented a heightened version of reality (with more action, more violence, added wordplay) whose verisimilitude the audiences readily accepted. They did so because in cities like Madrid and Seville they were surrounded by lawbreakers as well as corrupt law-enforcement officials, inside the playhouse and on the streets outside. A perusal of the ten-year period leading up to the publication of Josoceria reveals a substantial number of cases in the Inventario de causas criminales that refer to alguaciles and escribanos alone.

A Brief Introduction to the Jácara Genre

A jácara is a specialized form of romance, an octosyllabic ballad that relates the violent exploits of common criminals. These are usually pimps, prostitutes, thieves, or all-around thugs or killers for hire. Most modern readers will associate the ballads with Francisco de Quevedo, whose jácaras are placed in the “festive” section of his repertoire, but the genre did not start with him and its popularity continued long after his death. The tradition of songs about outlaws and criminals stretches far back in time, while a specific focus on the hampa [criminal underworld] and germanía [thieves’ cant] begins with Rodrigo de Reinosa in the early sixteenth century. Almost nothing is known about the life of this poet, but his prolific output of pliegos sueltos has given modern scholars much to study. He has especially been noted as a “pioneer” of incorporating dialect in poetic and theatrical works, with germanía among his varied innovations. Reinosa's pliego suelto featuring two pimps is the prototype for the jácaras that follow and is titled “Comienza un razonamiento por coplas en que se contrahace la germanía y fieros de los rufianes y las mujeres del partido: de un rufián llamado Cortaviento: y ella Catalina Torres Altas” [“Here begins a discussion in couplets in which is imitated the criminal jargon and furious threats of pimps and common strumpets: of a pimp called Cortaviento (‘Windslasher’) and a woman called Catalina Torres Altas [‘Catherine Hightower’”]. Reinosa used couplets as a vehicle for his subject matter, but different poets employed different verse forms during the hundred years leading up to Quevedo's highly influential jácaras. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, romances became the preferred form and had carved out a sub-genre within the broad romancero tradition. In 1609 Juan Hidalgo called his collection Romances de germanía [Thieves’ cant ballads], a label that marked the form's dominance. Yet this would be replaced by the term “jácara” among future authors and editors. The compilation also enshrined germanía as one of the jácara's main attractions and defining characteristics. The narratives in the ballads inevitably feature criminal violence.