A loa is a short theatrical piece, a prologue, written to introduce plays of the Spanish Golden Age or Siglo de Oro during the 16th and 17th centuries. These plays included comedias (secular plays) and autos sacramentales (sacred/religious plays). The main purposes for the loa included initially capturing the interest of the audience, pleading for their attention throughout the play, and setting the mood for the rest of the performance. This Spanish prologue is specifically characterized by praise and laudatory language for various people and places, often the royal court for example, to introduce the full-length play. The loa was also popular with Latin American or "New World" playwrights during the 17th and 18th centuries through Spanish colonization.[1][2][3]
During the 16th century, public performances of comedias in Madrid, Spain would begin at 2pm in courtyards and later corrales. Audiences would arrive early and vendors would sell food. Soon these audiences would become impatient and start loudly hissing, whistling and shouting. One hour before the performance, musicians came onto the stage to sing a ballad (seguidilla) and immediately after, an actor or member of the company came on stage to "echar la loa" or "throw out praise" by reciting a loa. Most comedia playwrights (autors) also wrote loas asking the audience for silence to enjoy the afternoon of theatre.[2][4]
Loas sometimes did, but often didn't have any relation to the full-length play being presented. Loas appeared in two distinct forms. The first was in a monologue form and the second was in the form of a short dramatic scene.[2]
In order to gain the audience's attention and appreciation, one could commend the story or the author; reprimand negative critics or thank those that were positive, and the audiences present that day; discuss and argue about the play that was to be presented. The third method was not often used because audiences would be told the outcome of the play before they were able to hear it. In turn, the Spanish loa was created as a mixture of all of these methods of achieving audience appreciation before the full-length play began.[2]
Spanish writer, literary theorist, and critic, Armando Cotarelo Valledor (1879-1950) classified Spanish loas into these five categories:
Loas sacramentals were used before autos sacramentales, or allegorical religious plays.
Loas a Jesucristo, la Virgen y los Santos (Loas for Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints), because of their themes, were considered strictly religious used to open religious festivals and for Christmas.
Loas cortesanas (Royal Court loas) were used in theatre festivals, sometimes represented Kings, and were used in comedias.
Loas para casa particulares (Loas for a private house) were used to celebrate familial festivities such as weddings and baptisms and were similar to the previous categorization, but themes focused on dukes, counts, and other dignities of the time instead of Kings.
Loas de presentación de compañias (Loas for presentations from companies) were, for example, a dialogue between with actors in the play and the playwright. These often introduced the actors and the characters they played in comedias.[3]
History of the Loa
Bartolomé de Torres Naharro (1485-1530), Spanish dramatist, is the earliest known writer of Spanish comedias and of the introductory monologue. In Naharro's volume of plays, Propaladia (published in 1517 in Naples), he uses what is called an introito as a prologue spoken by a comic shepherd. Furthermore, traces of the beginnings of the introitos are seen in medieval mystery plays of the 15th Century in Spain in the eclogues, short poems, (églogas) of Juan del Encina using a similar comic shepherd character within a Christmas play. Introitos and argumentos, another similar form of prologue used by Naharro, are both early forms of the loa that provide a summary or explanation of the comedia that follows it.[2][5][6]
Loas in Spain: Comedias
"The Comedias of the famous poet Lope de Vega, Carpio. Compiled by Bernardo Grassa. Addressed to the illustrious Señor Don Grabiel Blasco de Alagon Conde de Sastago, Señor de las Beronias de Espesy Escuer, Camarlengo del Rey nuestro Señor. The contents of this Libro (book) are at the turn of the page. Year 1604 With permission from the Superiors. In Çaragoça. By Angelo Tauanno"
Comedias of the Spanish Golden Age were secular plays and had secular loas, introductory prologues, attached to them. It is important to note, to be considered a Spanish comedia, a Spanish play must only be in verse and in three acts (jornadas). The content can be comedic or tragic.[2]
Lope de Vega is said to have "perfected" the Spanish comedia, but also wrote autos. The drama of the Spanish Golden Age is often characterized by his work, so that pre-Lope de Vega drama of the 16th century is said to have used the introito which was soon replaced by the loa. His loas tend to have little evident relation to the play that follows and are characterized by their playful, humorous, trivial and positive ending appeal to the audience for the rest of the performance. Lope de Vega's loas vary from 100 to 400 lines, and he is thought to have written many, but nearly all have been lost.[2][5]
"El viaje entretenido" by Agustín de Rojas Villandrando
Agustín de Rojas Villandrano published and became well known for his loas in Entertaining Journey (El viaje entrentenido). His loas included monologues and short sketch scenes that the whole company of actors participated in. His most famous loa is the Loa en Alabanza de la Comedia.
The subjects of praise in his loas varied from praising a city, the company of actors performing, thieves, the day Tuesday, teeth and pigs.[2]
A translation of the end of the swine praising loa:
And if long have been my praises Of an animal so lovely, May he who should be one pardon Me, and therefore not feel shameful.
Published in 1604, Rojas' novel, El viaje entrentendio depicts the life of 16th century Spanish actors. It starts with characters leaving the city of Seville. Rojas writes a loa that praises Seville, which is meant to be spoken to the people of that city.[7] In the same body of work, Rojas Villandrando also praises Lope de Rueda for his writing of the Spanish drama and of the dramatic prologue.[5]
Lope de Rueda was a professional actor-manager who toured different town squares, setting up a stage to perform. He specifically wrote and performed an introductory prologue called Introito que hace el Autor (An Introito that the Playwright performs) and also wrote introitos or argumentos for his later plays, Colloquio de Camila and Colloquio de Timbria.[6][4]
Quiñones de Benavente (1581-1651)
Quiñones de Benavente wrote loas that were dramatic sketches in which several actors and sometimes the entire company would participate in. These loas could be used to preface any comedia and were mostly unrelated to the loa. In two of his loas, he introduces the members of the company to the audience as a plea for a positive reception of the play. His loas were first published in 1645 as Joco Seria, Burlas Veras in Madrid.[2]
Loas in Spain: Autos Sacramentales
Autos or autos sacramentales were sacred plays, as opposed to the secular comedias of the time. These plays continued from medieval Christian morality and mystery plays.[4]
Calderón wrote loas specifically for plays that had been previously written and for his own plays that were autos sacramentales. His loas were used specifically to understand the particular play that followed. An example is in his loa to Los tres mayores Prodigos (The three biggest Prodigals). In addition to allegorical autos such as for the mystery of the Eucharist, Calderón de la Barca also wrote secular plays for the royal court that included his Loa for Andrómeda y Perseo (Andromeda and Perseus), which used scenery drawings and machinery effects created by the stage architect Baccio del Bianco.[2][8]
Loas in Latin America
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz- 18th Century Painting
A 1551 Peninsular Corpus Christi play shows the earliest recorded use of the word loa, as we know, regarding a dramatic prologue in Latin America. Until 1581, the loa was used in religious drama. Loas gained popularity in the "New World" by the 17th century because playwrights attached to the viceregal courts from Spain were aiming to flatter these patrons as well as the monarchs of Spain. Later 18th century "New World" loas contained some of the first references to problems in the Americas navigating class structures with the emergence of a hierarchy based on race that included Criollo, Indios, Mestizos, and more. Monologues appeared in laudatory prologues or introductions as loas in the plays of Hispanic America and are called elogios dramaticos in Brazil.[9][1]
Sor Juana is said to have written hundreds of loas or autos (sacred) and for comedias (secular) in Peru and New Spain but only 18 remain. She is the most prolific writer of loas in Spanish America, having written 18 of the 36 extant loas.[10] Of the loas we have, 12 are secular, celebrating birthdays of the royal family and praising the royal court of Spain. Two more of the loas similarly celebrate secular special events, and the last four are sacred loas that promote Christian practices among the indigenous people of Latin America. The most notable of these sacred loas is Loa para el Auto de el Divino Narciso. The allegorical characters of El Occidente and La América represent the indigenous people, while the characters La Religion and El Zelo symbolize the Spanish Christians.[1]
Fernán González de Eslava (1651-1695)
Loas by a Mexican playwright, Fernán González de Eslava were used for eight of his plays which mirrored the first laudatory style loas from Spain. González de Eslava’s loas are all in the same monologue style, opening with praise for a Viceroy in Latin America, a saint, or a sacrament. They then give a summary of the play, and always end with the request for the audience to pay attention and be silent.[1]
Peruvian playwright, Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo, wrote four known loas for royal festivals in Peru and became well known by the 18th century. The sometimes criticism of artificial praise that comes from the form of the loa is especially evident with these royal feast performances. In particular, de Peralta Barnuevo’s loa for his play Triunfos de amor y poder(Triumphs of love and power) which was commissioned by Don Diego Ladrón de Guevara, the Bishop of Quito and Viceroy of Peru uses characters of Apollo, Neptune, the winds, muses, nymphs, land, air, and sea to praise the Spanish King Philip V and Guevara himself.[1]
See also
Siglo de Oro: Learn more about the Spanish Golden Age. (In Spanish)
Quińones de Benavente: Learn more about Quińones de Benavente and his plays from the Spanish Golden Age. (In Spanish)
Fernán González de Eslava: Learn more about Fernán González de Eslava, a Mexican playwright of the 17th century. (In Spanish)
La Loa: Spanish Wikipedia article on the loa. (In Spanish)
Armando Cotarelo Valledor: Learn more about this 19th and 20th century Spanish writer, theorist, and critic. (In Spanish)
Related Research Articles
Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño was a Spanish dramatist, poet, writer and knight of the Order of Santiago. He is known as one of the most distinguished Baroque writers of the Spanish Golden Age, especially for his plays.
Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Age of Baroque literature. His reputation in the world of Spanish literature is second only to that of Miguel de Cervantes, while the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature. He was nicknamed "The Phoenix of Wits" and "Monster of Nature" by Cervantes because of his prolific nature.
The Spanish Golden Age is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise of the Spanish Empire under the Catholic Monarchs of Spain and the Spanish Habsburgs. The greatest patron of Spanish art and culture during this period was King Philip II (1556–1598), whose royal palace, El Escorial, invited the attention of some of Europe's greatest architects and painters such as El Greco, who infused Spanish art with foreign styles and helped create a uniquely Spanish style of painting. It is associated with the reigns of Isabella I, Ferdinand II, Charles V, Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV, when Spain was the most powerful country in the world.
Lope de Rueda (c.1505<1510–1565) was a Spanish dramatist and author, regarded by some as the best of his era. A versatile writer, he also wrote comedies, farces, and pasos. He was the precursor to what is considered the golden age of Spanish literature.
This article concerns poetry in Spain.
Antonio Mira de Amescua, Spanish dramatist, was born at Guadix (Granada) about 1578. He is said, but doubtfully, to have been the illegitimate son of one Juana Perez. He took orders, obtained a canonry at Guadix, and settled at Madrid early in the 17th century. He is mentioned as a prominent dramatist in Rojas Villandrandos Loa (1603), which was written several years before it was published. In 1610, being then arch-dean of Guadix, he accompanied the count de Lemos to Naples, and on his return to Spain was appointed (1619) chaplain to the Cardinale-Infante Ferdinand of Austria; he is referred to as still alive in Montalbán's Para todos (1632), and he collaborated with Montalbán and Calderón in Polifemo y Circe, printed in 1634. The date of his death is not known.
Entremés, is a short, comic theatrical performance of one act, usually played during the interlude of a performance of a long dramatic work, in the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain. Later it became the sainete.
Autos sacramentales are a form of dramatic literature which is unique to Spain and Hispanic America, though in some respects similar in character to the old Morality plays of England.
Fuenteovejuna is a play by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. First published in Madrid in 1619, as part of Docena Parte de las Comedias de Lope de Vega Carpio, the play is believed to have been written between 1612 and 1614. The play is based upon a historical incident that took place in the village of Fuenteovejuna in Castile, in 1476. While under the command of the Order of Calatrava, a commander, Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, mistreated the villagers, who banded together and killed him. When a magistrate sent by King Ferdinand II of Aragon arrived at the village to investigate, the villagers, even under the pain of torture, responded only by saying "Fuenteovejuna did it."
José de Cañizares y Suárez was a Spanish playwright. Cavalry officer, public official, and author of around one hundred works, he was one of the most important dramatists of the early 18th century.
Spanish Baroque literature is the literature written in Spain during the Baroque, which occurred during the 17th century in which prose writers such as Baltasar Gracián and Francisco de Quevedo, playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Calderón de la Barca and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, or the poetic production of the aforementioned Francisco de Quevedo, Lope de Vega and Luis de Góngora reached their zenith. Spanish Baroque literature is a period of writing which begins approximately with the first works of Luis de Góngora and Lope de Vega, in the 1580s, and continues into the late 17th century.
The Widow from Valencia is a play written by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. It was written circa 1600 as a result of Lope's visit to the city with his new patron, the future Count of Lemos. They were there for the marriage of the King Philip III with Margaret of Austria. However, the play was not published until 1620 in the fifteenth part of his Comedias, where it is dedicated to Marcia Leonarda, that is to say, to Lope’s beloved Marta de Nevares.
Fenisa's Hook is a play written by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. It was first published in 1617 in the eighth part of Lope de Vega's Comedias. Based on the tenth tale of the eighth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron, it has been called a picaresque play, works that exhibit an uncharacteristic moral freedom. It focuses on merchants, the circulation of bodies and merchandise, and the seductive power of art. Boccaccio's tale is about a trickster who is tricked Lope uses Boccaccio's story for the main plot of his play, where Fenisa, a courtesan in Palermo attempts to woo the rich merchant Lucindo in order to gain his riches. A secondary plot includes Dinarda who is dressed as a man and has come to Palermo in search of the man who seduced her and left her behind. Fenisa ends up falling for this Dinarda who is disguised as don Juan de Lara. While Fenisa is able to trick Lucindo the first time around, he comes back to Sicily a second time and this time he tricks her. In the end, Dinarda finds and marries her Albano, while Fenisa is left without a spouse and without money.
Spanish Golden Age theatre refers to theatre in Spain roughly between 1590 and 1681. Spain emerged as a European power after it was unified by the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 and then claimed for Christianity at the Siege of Granada in 1492. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a monumental increase in the production of live theatre as well as in the importance of the arts within Spanish society.
Corral de comedias, literally a "theatrical courtyard", is a type of open-air theatre specific to Spain. In Spanish all secular plays were called comedias, which embraced three genres: tragedy, drama, and comedy itself. During the Spanish Golden Age, corrals became popular sites for theatrical presentations in the early 16th century when the theatre took on a special importance in the country. The performance was held in the afternoon and lasted two to three hours, there being no intermission, and few breaks. The entertainment was continuous, including complete shows with parts sung and danced. All spectators were placed according to their sex and social status.
The Steel of Madrid is a 1608 play by the Spanish writer Lope de Vega, considered part of the Spanish Golden Age of literature.
Ana Caro de Mallén is a poet and playwright of the Spanish Golden Age.
Feliciana Enríquez de Guzmán was a Spanish playwright of the Spanish Golden Age and one of the first women to write a play in Spanish. She is known for a two part play Los jardines y campos sabeos with several comic interludes. Its second print edition includes theoretical texts in which she asserts her position within the world of theatre.
References
1 2 3 4 5 Pasquariello, Anthony M. (1970). "The Evolution of the Loa in Spanish America". Latin American Theatre Review. 3 (2).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Rennert, Hugo Albert (1963). The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de Vega. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. pp.274–286.
1 2 Huerta Calvo, Javier (2001). El teatro breve en la Edad de Oro. Madrid, Spain: Colección Arcadia de las Letras. pp.50–66. ISBN84-87482-94-5.
1 2 3 Delgado, Maria M.; Gies, David T. (2012). A History of Theatre in Spain. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. pp.36–56. ISBN978-0-521-11769-2.
1 2 3 Meredith, Joseph A. (1928). Introito and Loa in the Spanish Drama of the Sixteenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
1 2 Shergold, N.D. (1967). A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval Times until the end of the Seventeenth Century. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. pp.143–176.
↑ Shergold, N.D. (1967). A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval Times until the end of the Seventeenth Century. Great Britain: Oxford University Press. p.508.
↑ Delgado, Maria M.; Gies, David T. (2012). A History in Theatre of Spain. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. pp.97–99. ISBN978-0-521-11769-2.
↑ Rhoades, Duane (1985). The Independent Monologue in Latin American Theater. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN978-0313250804.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
