41
Quevedo, Obras (Prosa), p. 846.
42
Fabio Franchi, Essequie poetiche [...] (Venice, 1636), p. 87.
43
A la Majestad Católica de Carlos II..., no imprint, no date [1681]. Transcribed in full by E. Cotarelo y Mori, Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la licitud del teatro (Madrid, 1904), pp. 41-45.
44
C. Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos acerca del histrionismo español en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1901), p. 226.
45
Diferentes XXV (Zaragoza, 1632), fol. 146v. Our only information about performances at court relates to one given by Bartolomé Romero on 17 October 1637 (payment 10 December 1637).
46
Para todos, fol. 120r. This passage became celebrated enough for Gracián to quote it as a model of «la agudeza por semejanza»
in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Huesca, 1649), pp. 57-58. The opening lines were parodied again by Jerónimo Cáncer in a «Relación del Nacimiento, y Bautismo de la Serenissima Infanta Doña Ana Maria Antonia de Austria» (his Obras varias [Lisbon, 1657], p. 38) : «Viste la concha del mar, / la perla que el Alua cria; / viste el luzero del dia, / viste el jazmin, y azaar? / pues no es Doña Ines Maria.»
47
For the notions behind this pearl-and-shell imagery (examples of which, in Golden Age verse, are legion), see Pliny, Natural History, Bk. 9, Ch. 54. Villaizán may have used it before Montalbán, if not in Montalbán's language; in Act III of his undated Más valiera callarlo que no decirlo the heroine says that only one love can grow, like a pearl, in the shell of her heart: «El nácar en seno breve / blanca perla en si tesora / del sudor que el alba llora [...]»
And we must conclude that it had come to be specially associated with this name, when in Act I of A gran daño gran remedio he makes the gracioso remark, after agreeing not to embark on a eulogy of one Margarita: «[...] aunque dijeron, viendo encarecerla, / que me vuelvo a mi concha, y a mi perla.»
Lope de Vega often used such imagery, but also on occasion mocked it, as in Act I of La noche de San Juan, written -interestingly enough- in June 1631.
48
Montalbán, Primero tomo de las comedias (Madrid, 1635), fol. 43.
49
J. H. Parker, Chronology, 190. He found support in Ruth Lee Kennedy's discovery of an apparent allusion to the play in La gala del nadar, which she believed was written before 1628 («La gala del nadar, Date and Authorship», MLN, LIV [1939], 514-517). But even if her arguments about that play were conclusive, there would be no need to see any such allusion in the passage therein to which she referred.
50
Shergold & Varey, Documentos, 71.