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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2018
An unprecedented shift in the portrayal of Cupid took place in the Spanish mythological zarzuela during the years surrounding the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). For the first time ever, Cupid was depicted not as a god of chaste or erotic love, but as a god at war with other deities. And in every work, a female actor-singer, not a male performer, played the fiery but mournful character. In this article I first explore the cultural understanding of Cupid in early eighteenth-century Spain as articulated by Spanish mythographers of the era, and as seen in the earliest representations of Cupid in Spanish theatre. I then investigate the intersection of myth, allegory, war and music theatre in a case study – the zarzuela Las nuevas armas de amor (Love's New Weapons, 1711) – suggesting that in this work Cupid functioned as an allegorical representation of the Spanish king, and that the deity's struggles for power mirrored the monarch's plight during a time of great political instability. Moreover, I argue that the pre-existing local theatrical practice of cross-dressing allowed for the portrayal of a defeated and sobbing Cupid in the zarzuela.
Earlier versions of this article were presented in 2017 at the meetings of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society in Seattle, the Canadian University Music Association in Toronto and the American Musicological Society, in Rochester, New York. I thank Caryl Clark, Gregory Butler and Massimo Ossi for their comments on various earlier drafts of this article. I am very grateful to this journal's anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and valuable suggestions.
1 de Vega, Félix Lope, ‘El premio de la hermosura’, in Decimasexta parte de las Comedias de Lope de Vega Carpio, procurador fiscal de la camara apostolica (Madrid: por la viuda de Alonso Martin, 1621), fol. 6rGoogle Scholar. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. As Sebastian Neumeister has shown, Lope's play – a tragicomedia – was the first to introduce pagan deities in the royal theatre. See Neumeister, Mito clásico y ostentación: los dramas mitológicos de Calderón (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2000), 32.
2 For example, literary scholars Kazimierz Sabik and Danièle Becker believe that seventeenth-century zarzuelas, in particular those produced during the last third of the century, may be divided into two categories: plays with philosophical and moral themes, and shallow plays intended solely for entertainment. The latter group encompasses plays written by dramatists such as Melchor Fernández de León that Sabik describes as ‘superficial and inconsequential mythological theatre intended simply to amuse the public’. Sabik implicitly includes zarzuelas on the subject of Cupid such as Fernández de León's Venir el amor al mundo (Love Comes to the World). Becker, by contrast, is explicit in her assessment of zarzuelas on the subject of Cupid, which she views as short works (‘zarzuelas cortas’) characterized by ‘inconsequential plots which revolve around the exploits of Cupid’. See Sabik, Kazimierz, ‘El teatro mitológico en la corte de Carlos II (Texto y escenografía)’, Diálogos hispánicos de Amsterdam 8/3: El teatro español a fines del siglo XVII: Historia, cultura y teatro en la España de Carlos II: Representaciones y fiestas, ed. Calvo, Javier Huerta, Boer, Harm den and Martínez, Fermín Sierra (Amsterdam: Editorial Rodopi, 1989), 789 Google Scholar; and Danièle Becker, ‘El teatro lírico en tiempos de Carlos II: comedia de música y zarzuela’, in Diálogos hispánicos de Amsterdam 8/2: El teatro español a fines del siglo XVII: Historia, cultura y teatro en la España de Carlos II: Dramaturgos y géneros de las postrimerías, 428.
3 For example, Antonio Martín Moreno considers that Sebastián Durón and José de Cañizares's zarzuela on the subject of Cupid, Salir el amor del mundo (1696), is a ‘celebratory play for the court with an inconsequential plot . . . [that] reflects an unreal world far removed from the decadent Spain of the late seventeenth century’ (‘una Fiesta palaciega de argumento intrascendente a la vez que atractivo . . . [y que] refleja un mundo irreal muy alejado de la España decadente de finales del siglo XVII’). Moreno, Antonio Martín, ‘La zarzuela Salir el amor del mundo ’, in Durón, Sebastián, Salir el amor del mundo (Málaga: Sociedad española de musicología, 1979), 85 Google Scholar. Martín Moreno's assessment is echoed in Fernández San Emeterio's review of the first recording of this zarzuela: ‘The plots [of Venir el amor del mundo and Salir el amor del mundo] are parallel, seemingly responding to the dictates of the Court, which at the time was interested in mythological, escapist entertainments, with little ethical or doctrinal content’. Gerardo Fernández San Emeterio, review of Salir el Amor del mundo, Ensemble ‘El Mundo’ directed by Richard Savino (Dorian Recordings, DSL-92107, 2010), www.zarzuela.net/cd/cdmag/cdmag115.htm (16 December 2016).
4 Aercke, Kristiaan P., Gods of Play: Baroque Festive Performances as Rhetorical Discourse (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994), 37 Google Scholar.
5 Cowart, Georgia J., The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XVI & the Politics of Spectacle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 144–150Google Scholar. Olivia Bloechl's monograph on French opera discusses the use of allegory in connection with the characters of Apollo and Pluto in Lully and Quinault's Cadmus et Hermione and Ballet de Psyché. See Bloechl, Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France (University of Chicago Press, 2018), chapters 1 and 6. I would like to thank the author for sharing with me sections of her unpublished manuscript.
6 Stein, Louise K., Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), chapter 5, especially 216 and 226–227Google Scholar.
7 Walking, Andrew R., ‘Political Allegory in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas ’, Music & Letters 76/4 (1995), 540–571 Google Scholar; ‘Performance and Political Allegory in Restoration England: What to Interpret and When’, in Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, ed. Michael Burden (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 163–179; and ‘Politics, Occasions and Culture’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell, ed. Rebecca Herissone (London: Routledge, 2016), 201–267.
8 Winkler, Amanda Eubanks, ‘Dangerous Performance: Cupid in Early Modern Pedagogical Masques’, in Gender and Song in Early Modern England, ed. Dunn, Leslie C. and Larson, Katherine R. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 82 Google Scholar and 86. For Cupid's considerable range of identities in early modern England see Kingsley-Smith, Jane, Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 McGeary, Thomas, The Politics of Opera in Handel's Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 5 Google Scholar. For an allegorical reading of one of Handel's London operas, on the other hand, see Aspden's, Suzanne ‘Ariadne's Clew: Politics, Allegory, and Opera in London (1734)’, The Musical Quarterly 85/4 (2001), 735–770 Google Scholar.
10 The literature on allegory in Spanish baroque theatre is extensive. See, for example, Parker, Alexander A., The Allegorical Drama of Calderón: An Introduction to the Autos Sacramentales (Oxford: Dolphin, 1943)Google Scholar; Fothergill-Payne, Louise, La alegoría de los autos y farsas anteriores a Calderón (London: Tamesis, 1977)Google Scholar; Kurtz, Barbara E., The Play of Allegory in the Autos Sacramentales of Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Rupp, Stephen, Allegories of Kingship: Calderón and the Anti-Machiavellian Tradition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Greer, Margaret Rich, The Play of Power: Mythological Court Dramas of Calderón de la Barca (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Neumeister, Mito clásico y ostentación. Allegories traditionally served one or more of three purposes in Spanish staged dramas of the period: to provide instruction, to glorify a ruler or his family or to reflect socio-political events. The present study focuses on the latter purpose.
11 Horozco, Sebastián de Covarrubias. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1611), fol. 41vGoogle Scholar.
12 For a discussion of the use of allegory in this play, and for the full quotation, see Kurtz, The Play of Allegory, 52–53.
13 de la Barca, Pedro Calderón, El verdadero Dios Pan, ed. Antonucci, Fausta (Pamplona: Universidad de Navarra and Kassel: Reichenberger, 2005), 17 Google Scholar.
14 Juan Pérez de Moya provides a definition of allegory and an explanation of the different meanings that can be derived from myths or ‘fables’ (fabulas) in Philosophia secreta. Donde debaxo de historias fabulosas, se contiene mucha doctrina provechosa a todos estudios. Con el origen de los Idolos, o Dioses de la Gentilidad. Es materia muy necesaria para entender poetas y historiadores (Zaragoza: Miguel Fortuno Sanchez, 1599), chapter 2. Baltasar de Victoria briefly states the benefits of portraying myths in the theatre in his prologue (‘Prologo al lector’) to Primera parte del Teatro de los Dioses de la gentilidad (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1676).
15 Greer, Margaret Rich, ‘The Play of Power: Calderón's Fieras afemina amor and La estatua de Prometeo ’, Hispanic Review 56/3 (1991), 327 Google Scholar.
16 Moir, Duncan W., ‘Prólogo’, in Theatro de los Theatros de los passados y presentes siglos, ed. Moir, Duncan W. (London: Tamesis, 1970), xxx–xxxiiGoogle Scholar, and Arellano, Ignacio, ‘La imagen del poder en el teatro de Bances Candamo, poeta áulico de Carlos II’, Rilce 26/1 (2010), 23–36 Google Scholar. Arellano's essay also summarizes scholarly studies and debates on political meaning in Bances Candamo's dramatic works.
17 Pérez de Moya, Philosophia secreta, fols 166v and 170r.
18 Only one of the two faces of love/Cupid – its destructive aspect – is represented in Pérez de Moya's accounts. This particular notion of love persisted in Spain throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries alongside the other, neoplatonic face of love formulated in Renaissance writings and later articulated by Baltasar de Victoria and Juan Bautista Aguilar. Baldassare Castiglione's influential Libro del Cortegiano (1528), translated into Spanish in 1534, contributed to the spread of the neoplatonic notion of love in Spain.
19 de Victoria, Baltasar, Segunda parte del Teatro de los Dioses de la gentilidad (Barcelona: Marti, 1702), 400 Google Scholar.
20 In his introduction, Aguilar explains that he dedicated an entire chapter to Cupid because Victoria did not say much about him (‘el R.P. Fray Balthasar de Vitoria. . . calló del Amor mucho’). See Aguilar, ‘Breve introduccion, a esta nueva, tercera parte, del teatro de los dioses, de la gentilidad’, Tercera parte del Teatro de los Dioses de la gentilidad (Barcelona: Marti, 1702), unpaginated. In fact, Victoria discusses Cupid under a subheading in a chapter on another deity.
21 Cupid falls in love with Sirena in Act 3 of Vega's, Lope de El amor enamorado, comedia famosa (Madrid: en la Imprenta del Reyno, 1637), fols 198r–219vGoogle Scholar. Cupid is also in love in two dramas based on the myth of Cupid and Psyche: Antonio de Solis’ Triunfos de amor y fortuna (comedia, 1658) and Calderón de la Barca's Ni amor se libra de amor (comedia, 1662). See Louise K. Stein, Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods, 284 and 516, and Flórez, María Asunción, Música teatral en el Madrid de los Austrias durante el Siglo de Oro (Madrid: ICCMU, 2006), 244 Google Scholar. Other representations of Cupid may be found in de la Barca, Pedro Calderón, ‘El laurel de Apolo’, in Comedias de Calderón de la Barca. Parte VI, ed. Cruickshank, D. W. (Madrid: Castro, 2007), 915–995 Google Scholar; de la Barca, Pedro Calderón, Fieras afemina amor, ed. Wilson, Edward M. (Kassel: Reincherberger, 1984)Google Scholar; de Guevara, Juan Vélez, Los celos hacen estrellas, representación en dos jornadas (Österreichishe Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 13217 Han.)Google Scholar; de León, Melchor Fernández, ‘Endemión y Diana’, in Parte Quarenta y Dos de Comedias Nuevas, nunca impressas, escogidas de los mejores ingenios de España (Madrid: Roque Rico de Miranda, 1675)Google Scholar.
22 For a comprehensive study on this subject see Kamen, Henry, The War of Succession in Spain 1700–15 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969)Google Scholar.
23 The zarzuela Salir el amor del mundo survives in a music manuscript and a libretto, both housed in the Biblioteca Nacional de España (Sala Barbieri, M/2298 and Sala Cervantes, Mss/17203 respectively). It has been published as Durón, Sebastián, Salir el amor del mundo (1696), Zarzuela en dos jornadas, ed. Moreno, Antonio Martín (Malaga: Sociedad Española de Musicología, 1979)Google Scholar. There are no surviving exemplars of the libretto of Apolo y Dafne, and the only known source for the music is housed in the Biblioteca Nacional de España (Sala Barbieri, M/2208). The first modern edition of the zarzuela is Apolo y Dafne, ed. Raúl Angulo Díaz (Santo Domingo de la Calzada: Fundación Gustavo Bueno, 2014). El imposible mayor en amor le vence amor survives in a libretto housed in the Biblioteca Nacional de España (Sala Cervantes, Mss/14879) and in a music manuscript located in Biblioteca Pública de Évora, Portugal (CLI/2–3). It has been published as Durón, Sebastián, El imposible mayor en amor le vence amor, zarzuela en dos jornadas, ed. Moreno, Antonio Martín (Madrid: Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales, 2005)Google Scholar. Las nuevas armas de amor, which remains unpublished, survives in several sources: two music manuscripts (Biblioteca Nacional de España, Sala Barbieri, M/2276; and Biblioteca Pública de Évora, Portugal, CLI/2–6 n.o 1), four manuscript exemplars of the libretto in Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional, Mss/15079 and Mss/17448/9; Biblioteca Histórica Municipal, Tea 1–51–13; and Fundación March, T–18–Cañ) and one manuscript of Jupiter's Act 2 tonada ‘Amor, aunque quieras’ (Biblioteca de Catalunya, M. 737/41). Digital copies of Durón's score of Las nuevas armas de amor (M/2276) and of two exemplars of Cañizares’ libretto (Mss/17448/9 and 10579) are available online through the website of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. The Madrid music manuscript, along with the first three librettos, has been studied and edited in Gordon Hart, ‘A Study and Edition of the Zarzuela Las nuevas armas de amor, Libretto by José de Cañizares, Music by Sebastián Durón’ (MA thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1974). See also Hart, ‘Una zarzuela recuperada: Las nuevas armas de amor de Sebastián Durón (1660–1716)’, in Sebastián Durón (1660–1716) y la música de su época, ed. Paulino Capdepón and Juan José Pastor Comín (Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo, 2013), 87–98. Hart's edition was used in the modern premiere of this zarzuela by the Orchestra of New Spain, directed by Grover Wilkins (Dallas, February 2013). A selection of arias by Durón, including Cupid's recitative and aria discussed in this article, has been recorded by El Parnaso Español, directed by Fernando Aguilá: Delio Ardiente: Las zarzuelas de Sebastián Durón (1660–1716) (Hispacodex 001, 2016).
24 As on the Italian peninsula, castrato singers performed liturgical music in Spain, since women were not allowed to sing in the church. But they were not allowed to perform on the theatrical stage until the 1730s. It appears that while castratos were accepted in ecclesiastical circles, they were viewed with distrust by the popular audience, which may help explain their prohibition from the theatre. For a discussion of castratos in Spain see Medina, Ángel, Los atributos del capón: imagen histórica de los cantores castrados en España (Madrid: ICCMU, 2001)Google Scholar.
25 Margaret Reynolds provides a list of operatic travesty roles from Handel to Strauss, Richard in ‘Ruggiero's Deceptions, Cherubino's Distractions’, in En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera, ed. Blackmer, Corinne E. and Smith, Patricia Juliana (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 134 Google Scholar.
26 Spanish historian Carmen Sanz Ayán suggests that the association between Cupid and the monarch most likely persisted during the reign of Philip IV's son, Charles II. In her discussion of Calderón's Fieras afemina amor (c1672), Sanz Ayán notes a link between young princes and the youthful deity of love. She concludes that in this play the young Charles II ‘would have been represented by the god of love [Amor]’. Ayán, Carmen Sanz, Pedagogía de Reyes: El teatro palaciego en el reinado de Carlos II: discurso leído el día 26 de febrero de 2006 en la recepción pública de la Exca. Sra. Doña Carmen Sanz Ayán y contestación por el Excmo. Sr. Don José Alcalá-Zamora y Queipo de Llano (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2006), 36 Google Scholar. While Sanz Ayán establishes a connection between the monarch and Cupid based on age (both are boyish or youthful figures), Margaret Rich Greer finds a connection between Cupid and Philip IV at a time when the monarch would have been in his late 40s, noting that Calderón modifies the original myth by having the character of Jupiter momentarily appear disguised as Cupid. If, as Greer suggests, Philip IV's theatrical debut in 1614 was ‘still common knowledge among many courtly theatre goers, [this alteration to the story] could explain the use of the Cupid disguise in this play and the fact that Calderón has him revert to this attire for his final celestial appearance’. Greer, The Play of Power, 98. I share Greer's view that the link between monarch and deity may well have transcended age limits.
27 In Act 2, for example, Diana appears on a cloud that is raised up from under the stage (‘va subiendo por debajo del tablado un solio de nubes con una luna grande, en que vendra sentada en medio Diana’). See José de Cañizares, Las nuevas armas de amor (Biblioteca Histórica de Madrid, Tea 1-51-13), 10.
28 It is possible that Las nuevas armas was premiered at court before Durón was sent into exile in 1706 for siding, rather unexpectedly, with the Habsburg contender to the Spanish crown, the Archduke Charles. Using the information from an early eighteenth-century manuscript that contains over one hundred solo songs (tonos) and poems (E-Mn M/2478), Angulo Díaz claims that Las nuevas armas de amor was written in, or before, 1706. See his ‘El problema de la autoría musical de la zarzuela El imposible mayor en amor, le vence Amor. ¿Sebastián Durón o José de Torres?, Sinfonía virtual 30 (2016), www.sinfoniavirtual.com. I do not think that the evidence provided in this important manuscript, whose contents still need to be studied more throroughly, can be viewed as conclusive. I would suggest that, to date, there is no solid evidence to support this assertion. Records of this production appear in the Teatro del Príncipe's Libro de producto y gastos (1710–12) (Archivo de la Villa (Madrid), 1-379-1), and are transcribed in Varey, J. E. and Davis, Charles, Los libros de cuentas de los corrales de comedias de Madrid: 1706–1719 (London: Tamesis, 1992), 191–193 Google Scholar.
29 The first Spanish musical treatise to discuss rhetorical figures is Pedro de Ulloa's Música universal o principios universales de la música (Madrid: Peralta, 1717). The principal musico-rhetorical figures that Ulloa cites (pages 96–97) are: pausa, repetitio, gradatio, complexio, causa finalis, contrapositio, ascensio, descensio, circulatio, fuga, assimilatio and abruptio repentino.
30 According to Stein, the melodic descent around a circle of fifths ‘seems to have been associated with the perfection of celestial or universal harmony, the ever-present “consonant”, but never audible musica mundana’. Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods, 240. In a lament, the descending-fifths sequence – with its perfect intervals and outlining of a natural order of keys – may be interpreted as a vehicle for communication with divine entities. The lamenting character is capable of being in tune with the surrounding universe and addressing the elements by using his or her own perfect and consonant language. By the same token, he or she can move and arouse pity in the invoked deities or elements.
31 See Aercke, Gods of Play, particularly 39–40.
32 Hart, ‘Una zarzuela recuperada: Las nuevas armas de amor’, 91–92.
33 Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain 1700–15, 4–9.
34 Lynn, John A., The Wars of Louis XIV: 1667–1714 (New York: Routledge, 1999), 342 Google Scholar.
35 For more on cross-dressing in the comedia see McKendrick, Malveena’s seminal book Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.
36 Prest, Julia, Theatre under Louis XIV: Cross-Casting and the Performance of Gender in Drama, Ballet and Opera (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)Google Scholar. See chapter 3 for male-to-female cross-dressing in court ballet, and chapter 5 for cross-dressing in opera.
37 Reynolds, ‘Ruggiero's Deceptions, Cherubino's Distractions’, 133.
38 For more on Italian disguise roles see Heller, Wendy, Emblems of Eloquence: Opera and Women's Voices in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar, chapter 6, and Treadwell, Nina, ‘Female Operatic Cross-Dressing: Bernardo Saddumene's Libretto for Leonardo Vinci's “Li zite ’n galera” (1722)’, Cambridge Opera Journal 10/2 (1998), 131–156 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Sidney Donnell discusses late sixteenth-century Spanish practices in relation to issues of gender in Feminizing the Enemy: Imperial Spain, Transvestite Drama, and the Crisis of Masculinity (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2003), especially 43–44 and 67. This fear of ‘effeminization’, which is articulated in most treatises on Spanish theatre of the period (see note 40 below), also appears to have prevailed in England, where ‘the theatrical practice of cross-gender casting served to provide homoerotic pleasure to audiences that lusted after boys wearing women's apparel’. Lublin, Robert I., Costuming the Shakespearean Stage: Visual Codes of Representation in Early Modern Theatre and Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 20 Google Scholar.
40 I have examined the following treatises: de Mariana, Padre Juan, Tratado contra los juegos públicos (1609), in Margall, Francisco Pí y, ed., Biblioteca de autores españoles desde la formación del lenguaje hasta nuestros días: obras del Padre Mariana, volume 2 (Madrid: Atlas, 1950)Google Scholar; ‘Aprobación de Fray Manuel de Guerra y Ribera’, in Sexta parte del célebre poeta español don Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Madrid: Juan Sanz, 1715); El buen zelo, o examen de un papel con nombre de el reverendissimo P.M. Fr. Manuel de Guerra y Ribera (Valencia: en casa de Sebastián de Cormellas, 1683); de Camargo, Ignacio, Discurso teológico sobres los teatros y comedias de este siglo (Lisbon: Miguel Manescal, 1690)Google Scholar; and Candamo, Francisco Bances, Theatro de los theatros de los passados y presente siglo, ed. Moit, Duncan W. (London: Tamesis, 1970)Google Scholar.
41 Elizabeth Rhodes offers a valuable commentary on cultural constructs of gender in early modern Spain in ‘Gender and the Monstrous in El burlador de Sevilla’, Modern Language Notes 117/2 (2002), 273.
42 Rhodes, ‘Gender and the Monstrous’, 272–273. Rhodes quotes two pertinent passages from late sixteenth-century treatises that express these views.
43 Mariana, ‘Tratado contra los juegos públicos’, 428.
44 Camargo, Discurso teológico, 114–115.
45 Camargo, Discurso teológico, 115.
46 Virility was traditionally associated with honour, and the literature on this topic is extensive.
47 In fact, two distinct types of lamenting male characters appear during this period: sobbing Cupids and lovesick males. Spanish lamenting practices form the subject of my article ‘Sobbing Cupids, Lamenting Lovers, and Weeping Nymphs in the Spanish Zarzuela: A Comparative Analysis of Calderón de la Barca's El laurel de Apolo (1657) and Apolo y Dafne (ca. 1700)’, Bulletin of the Comediantes 69/2 (2017), 67–93.
48 Ferris, Leslie, ‘Introduction: Current Crossings’, in Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross-dressing, ed. Ferris, Leslie (London: Routledge, 1993), 8 Google Scholar.
49 Heller, Emblems of Eloquence, 86. Heller refers to laments sung by female performers playing straight-cast roles.
50 Aercke, Gods of Play, 21. Regarding this illusion, Reynolds notes that ‘the eighteenth-century audience was one skilled in the suspension of disbelief, but quick to perceive the wit that might lie in a disjuncture between the real and the apparent and willing to play the game of cross-dressing trompe l'oeil’. Reynolds, ‘Ruggiero's Deceptions, Cherubino's Distractions’, 138.
51 Bances Candamo, Theatro de los theatros de los passados y presentes siglos, 57. My italics.
