The Entremes in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America
The extremes figured conspicuously in the drama of the sixteenth-century New World because of the great preoccupation of the church with the religious, political, and social evolution then in progress. The zealous fathers matched the impressive drama at the altar with more popular elements, using realistic incident and farcical episode for the amusement and edification of the uncritical audience of the day. Faced with the trying task of winning for their God the faith of the indigenous masses, the missionary fathers were often willing to permit anything short of irreverence to relieve the tedium of lengthy, involved and abstruse, mystical dramatic pieces. These farcical episodes were intercalated in religious spectacles viewed at the church altars and in monastery schools and convents established for the Indians. Although they often conveyed a spiritual message, reshaping the material with an eye to human and spectacular values, there were some interludes which had no other object but amusement or satire. On more than one occasion the buffoonery was directed satirically at the civil authorities, whose growing influence in New World affairs was viewed with concern by the clergy. Functioning in a primitive way as the voice of the people, these brief sketches contained the germ of a critical attitude toward social and political inconsistencies. Consequently, it is not surprising to discover that some of the earliest performances of entremeses in America precipitated conflicts between the civil and church authorities. One such clash stirred the entire populace of Mexico City in December, 1574, when Viceroy Martin Henriquez de Almansa charged Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras with willfully and deliberately permitting performances of libelous and subversive entremeses in the cathedral during the festivities of his consecration. Fernan Gonzalez de Eslava (1534-