THE JÁCARA’s ROLE IN A SEQUENCE OF JOKES

In chapter 3, we encountered two sung jácaras embedded within larger works, namely Celos, aun del aire matan and its rough parody, Céfalo y Pocris. In Celos, an opera, Clarín sings a jácara, expressing his tough and streetwise demeanour in a musical way. The action takes place in a mythical place at a mythical time, and the jaunty tono of his song style (with its contemporary urban connotations) may seem out of place, but Clarín’s occasional taste for blood, generally disruptive behaviour and good humour give him dramatic licence to sing this type of song that fits his personality. In Céfalo y Pocris, the entire notion of jácara as a theatrical form is made into a joke, from beginning to end. First, Céfalo comments that somebody must want one of the actresses to come out and sing a jácara because they all shout ‘échala fuera’ from inside the castle. Suddenly, Aura steps forth and makes Céfalo’s joke into a reality by singing a jácara. Unfortunately, she has an identity crisis onstage, and cannot remember whether she is the mythical Aura or the mundane ‘María, hija de Luis López’, asked by the audience to sing for them. Finally the Capitán comes along, reprimanding everyone for ‘making a neighbourhood disturbance’, and he takes all of them prisoner, as though he were la justicia in an actual jácara. Both of these examples demonstrate the creative freedom enjoyed by a playwright when including the popular subgenre in the comedia. The inclusion of the jácara could be played for a joke, or it could be used to bolster the violent image of a particular character, or it could be used for both. Either way, when the jácara appears in a comedia, inevitably violence, criminality and humour, in various measures, are part of the setting.

Calderón de la Barca’s El alcaide de sí mismo is set nowhere near an urban environment, yet it should not surprise us completely that the play contains a ‘jacarilla’, after witnessing the seemingly incongruous appearances of jácaras in the two comedias previously mentioned.