El Corral de Comedias

Notes

• This is the roof that extends over the platform stage. Just visible, under it is the second-floor gallery. Under the roof was the desván de los tornos, the pulley attic, in which was housed the machinery to operate tramoyas The pulleys and winches (tornos) used for lowering and raising the tramoyas, for vuelos and apariencias, had counterweights which would descend through special traps in the alto corridors and tablas to under the stage.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• You see the mosqueteros, the groundlings, who made up the part of the audience standing in front of the apron stage, notorious for their rowdiness when the entertainment did not please them. They were not unique in this respect; the women in the cazuela, and indeed members of the audience in the gradas at the side of the theatre, were known to vent their displeasure (special constables were appointed to keep order in the corrales). The term mosquetero suggests their aggression, shown in their readiness to whistle at the play on stage. See Shergold, page 536 et sequenter.