Out of the Wings

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La cueva de Salamanca (1610-1615), Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Titles
English title: The Cave of Salamanca
Date written: sometime between 1610 and 1615
First publication date: 1615
Keywords: morality > vice-virtue, identity > sexuality, ideology > honour, love > lust, family > marriage, power > inter-personal/game play
Genre and type: entremés
Pitch

While the cat’s away, the mice shall play; another of Cervantes’ bored housewives gets up to some mischief while her husband goes away on business. However her plans go awry when he returns unexpectedly early, and a travelling student invents a ruse to save the day.

Synopsis

Leonarda cries when her husband, Pancracio, gets ready to go on a business trip, and as he’s leaving, she faints. But as soon as he is gone, she reveals it has all been for show; she an... (Read more...)

Sources

There is a mediaeval legend about a magic cave in Salamanca in which ‘the devil himself gave lessons in astrology, magic and the occult sciences to seven students for seven years’ (Smi... (Read more...)

Critical response

The sexual game-playing and trickery in this play is similar to that in El viejo celoso, but here the introduction of the student character with connections to witchcraft and sorcery ad... (Read more...)

Editions
  • Cervantes, Miguel de. 1995. ‘Entremés de la cueva de Salamanca’. In Entremeses, ed. Nicholas Spadaccini, pp. 237-56. Madrid, Cátedra.

  • Cervantes, Miguel de. 1998. ‘La cueva de Salamanca... (Read more...)

Useful readings and websites
  • Casalduero, Joaquín. 1966. Sentido y forma del teatro de Cervantes. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

  • Cervantes, Miguel de. 1996. ‘The Magic Cave of Salamanca’. In Eight Interludes, trans. Dawn Smith, pp. 111-25. London, Everyman

  • Fichter, William L. 1960. ‘La cueva de Salamanca y un cuento de Bandello’. In Studia Philologica: Homenaje ofrecido a Dámaso Alonso, vol. I, pp. 525-8. Madrid, Gredos (in Spanish)

  • García Blanco, Miguel. 1951. ‘El tema de la cueva de Salamanca y el entremés cervantino de este título’, Anales cervantinos, 1, 73-109 (in Spanish)

  • McKendrick, Melveena. 2002. ‘Writings for the Stage’. In The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, ed. Anthony J. Cascardi, pp. 131-59. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

  • Recoules, Henri. 1972. ‘Cervantes y Timoneda y los entremeses del siglo XVII’, Boletín de la Biblioteca Menéndez y Pelayo, 48, 231-91 (in Spanish)

  • Spadaccini, Nicholas and Jenaro Talens. 1993. Through the Shattering Glass: Cervantes and the Self-Made World. Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press

  • Spadaccini, Nicholas. 1986. ‘Writing for Reading: Cervantes’s Aesthetics of Reception in the Entremeses’. In Critical Essays on Cervantes, ed. Ruth El Saffar, pp. 162-75. Boston, G. K. Hall

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Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 25 February 2011.

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