The entremes, or passo, for the words were early synonymous, is a short dramatic composition, burlesque or farcical in character, used as a passing-scene for purposes of comic relief. In considering these scenes, especially in the early years of their development before they can be looked upon as forming a well-established literary genre, one of the most important considerations is their essentially parasitic character. Scenes that are in every wise entremeses may be found frequently in Spanish plays of the first half of the sixteenth century. What must first and above all determine whether a given passage is or is not entremes in character, is its intercalation as essentially independent of the plot of the play. Other than this, the delimitations of these scenes are by no means fixed and definite. It must be understood, moreover, that the early writers did not in all probability look upon them as actual entremeses. The earliest known uses of the word with reference to a dramatic composition are found in a composition by Horozco frequently cited, and in the prologue to the Comedia de Sepúlveda where the author seems to show a very excellent understanding of their function: “No os puede dar gusto el sujeto ansi desnudo de aquella gracia con que el proceso dél suelen ornar los recitantes y otros muchos entremeses que intervienen por ornamento de la comedia, que no tienen cuerpo en el sujeto della.” Nevertheless, whether looked upon as such or not, these detached scenes contain in germ the future entremes, and cannot be ignored in a consideration of its origin and development.
Of All the decadents in the Spanish drama as it fell away from the glory of the golden age at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, there are three who most merit the name of disciples of the great Calderón: Bances Cándamo, Vázquez de Zamora, and Cañizares. Taken together, they form a sort of trinity in their support of the Calderonian theory of the drama. But while all wrote, as well as they might, after the manner of their illustrious predecessor and master, it is to Bances Cándamo that one must turn as to the spokesman of a dramatic theory and technique more or less common to his time, a system whose repercussions are to be found not only in the works of the three writers just mentioned, but as well in those of a number of wholly inferior dramatists who, together with the three, form the background of the Spanish stage as it existed from the death of Calderón until, or perhaps slightly beyond the third decade of the eighteenth century; until, indeed, it found opposition and eventual overthrow at the hands of the afrancesados, led, as is generally thought, by Luzán, whose Poética (1737) was for decades the text-book and vade mecum of the neo- or rather pseudoclassicists.
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