El Corral de Comedias

Corral de comedias

Notes

  • Las tablas or el tablado

    Shergold (p. 401 of A History of the Spanish Stage), writes of the Corral del Príncipe and of the Corral de la Cruz in Madrid, that both were equipped with huge apron stages with spectators in front, and with other spectators sitting along the stage sides (see our picture, where benches have been included for the audience seated on the platform). The stage was approximately 28 feet wide and 23 feet deep; a semicircular projection to the front of the stage (not shown in our sketch), could add about another 5 feet at its centre. The stage is raised above shoulder height of the men standing in front of it. Repair documents (the principal source of information on details such as measurements) confirm that there were trap-doors, that allowed actors and apariencias to appear from or disappear to below stage. The cellarage below the stage provided dressing-room space.

  • El vestuario

    The inner stage, shown here curtained off, though it could also have had doors.It was about eight feet deep. Its origins will have been in the dressing-room of an earlier stage design, but it is used in the corral de comedias as a discovery space. The characteristic stage-direction indicating the use of the vestuario is Descúbrese... It was used for creating tableau effects, for revealing something unexpected, and frames the action that takes place on the inner stage, separating it from the action on the tablas beyond it.

  • Lo alto del teatro

    This is the technical term used to describe the first-floor gallery that runs at the rear of the stage and which provides further acting space. It is shown curtained off. It was possible to join the upper stage with the stage proper by means of portable stairs, a ladder or the like. It is used to represent the walls of a town, a hill-top (el monte), a window, a balcony. The use of lo alto del teatro in La vida es sueño is particularly interesting.

  • Lo alto del teatro - second level

    At second-loor level another gallery ran across the fachada at the stage end of the theatre. There are as you see a total therefore of nine spaces on the fachada that function as acting spaces, including the entrance/exit spaces on each side of the vestuario.

    The corridors were divided by partitions into the three sections.

    The balustrades were probably easy to remove when stage machinery so required.

    The galleries and desván were reached by a staircase.

  • La tertulia

    This gallery at the rear and top of the auditorium, one of the sections of aposentos in the "desvanes" of the theatre, was where priests and members of religious orders were seated.

  • Cazuela alta

    Some doubt has been expressed over the existence of la cazuela alta. Nevertheless, there is not any doubt that at least until 1675 there were two cazuelas in the Corral del Príncipe, the lower or main (la cazuela baja, o principal) and the higher (la cazuela alta). The tertulia took the place of the cazuela alta.

    In both cazuelas there were urinals but there are reports of urine and other objects coming down from the cazuela onto the heads of those below. To minimise risk, small roofs were built projecting out from the cazuelas.

  • La cazuela

    This is the section of the theatre which accommodated women.(Segregation by sex was class determined, since noble men and women occupied the aposentos when accompanied by family) There were gradas, i.e. benches formed from the raked floor. Strict ordinances forbad women to enter through the men's door, and likewise men were forbidden entry. There are references to a cazuela alta.

    la cazuela - the stew pan

    Separation of the sexes was an early preoccupation in the development of the corral.There were strong prohibitions against men entering the parts of the theatre reserved for women. To separate the womenfolk from the start, a long corridor was built in 1640 which led to a side street entrance, so that women and men would not mix at the front-street entrances.

    There were actors who were skilled at addressing and rousing the merriment etc of the women

  • Aposentos

    On three walls of the theatre, that is on the lateral walls and the fachada that faced the stage and belonged to the street-front elevation of the theatre, there were aposentos. These had developed from rooms inside the properties that surrounded the patio in which the theatre had been built. These on the second floor had balconies, which could project from the room and formed part of the seating space; those on the floor below had rejas. They were hired, by individuals or by corporate bodies like the Ayuntamiento or the Consejo de Castilla, for entertaining visitors and dignitaries. In the Corral de la Cruz, FelipeIV's aposento is documented (R&A, 125).

  • Las Gradas

    On the lateral walls of the theatre there were gradas - raised seating-space - reached from the floor-level of the patio by a small wooden stair. In front of the gradas ran a narrow corridor, with railings and balustrade. Next to the small staircase was seated a ticket collector who charged the additional price, a supplement, for a seat in the gradas. So the spectator paid twice; once to get into the gradas, and then the supplement charged for a place on a bench.The raked structure rose up until it met the lateral wall (late-comers were known to jump into the gradas from the ventanas behind them). Benches were allocated to each level.

    The space underneath the gradas was used to store benches etc.

  • The space in front of the stage was divided into three sections. At the rear there were two serveries, called alojeros, from which refreshments were served. In front of them were tarimones and then two strips of railing separating those spectators who sat on the tarimones from the mosqueteros in front of them.

    Immediately in front of the stage, there was another special space with a row of stools (taburetes). You can put the height of the stage above the ground at about six feet, or 1'68 metres. Benches with a back-rest replaced the stools in 1652. A bar ran behind the stools separating them from the mosqueteros.

  • El Desvan de los tornos

    This desván crowned the wooden structure that constituted the "fachada" of the theatre. Light will have come through a window in the wall at the very rear of the theatre. The floor was of wood in which there were trapdoors - "escotillones" - "tres escotillones que cerró, los dos en el vesturario y otro en el teatro y otro en las bovedillas de arriba" are referred to in a doc of 1661. The traps in the desván will have been located directly above those in the corredores and the vestuario floor so that ropes with their counterweights could pass through, down into the cellarage space below the stage. Pulleys, beams and other machinery needed to move the tramoyas were housed up here.