POSSIBILITIES FOR GREATER DRAMATIC INTERACTION

El reloj y los genios de la venta is an entremés that maintains a somewhat processional atmosphere, making it similar to many mojigangas, while its setting and characters also resemble those used by Spain’s famous satirist Francisco de Quevedo. Rodríguez and Tordera, along with Lobato, have observed how Genios resembles Quevedo’s interlude La venta, and thus provides the opportunity to demonstrate the flexibility of the teatro breve in treating the same theme. Calderón’s El reloj y los genios de la venta opens with the stage directions: ‘Sale Pedro, mozo de mulas, muy guapo.’ Pedro has come to meet his lover Juana, and he hears her singing from within. The young couple exchanges fanciful songs mocking inns, and they trade some witticisms about caring for the mules. Most commonly, entremés couples (married or not) are antagonistic pairings whose sniping and manipulation are a cause for laughter. The teasing between these two, apparently both friends and lovers, is of a strictly playful nature:

The epithet ‘mentecata’ carries very little derision, as he scolds Juana for no other reason than to ‘set up’ a pun that satirises the well-known sluggishness of Spain’s rented mules. If anything were the target in this exchange, it would have to be the ‘bestias’. The joking serves to demonstrate the togetherness of the lovers instead of signalling irreconcilable differences that are found in many other male–female relationships in the entremés. At the end of Francisco de Quevedo’s Entremés de la venta, there is a similar brief scene featuring a ‘moza de la venta’, Grajal, and a ‘mozo de mulas’. Grajal and the ‘mozo’ exchange witticisms. The basis of the exchange is Grajal’s cynical response to the ‘mozo’s advances, which begin with ‘¡Qué lindo torbellino de mozona!’ and are followed by trite comparisons that today could only be called ‘pick-up lines’. Grajal dismisses the earthy ‘mozo’ and offers a veiled threat that the innkeeper may cut him up and offer him to guests for dinner. Yet this is only a small scene at the end of the piece.