NOTES

Acto I, Stage Direction. la de San Martín: Sanz has associated the Iglesia de San Martín with the Plazuela de San Martín. The square in front of the Iglesia de San Martín was in reality the Plazuela de las Descalzas. The present Plaza de Antón Martín, at the intersection of the Calle del León and the Calle de Atocha, is in quite another part of the city.

The church of San Martín was built in the seventeenth century. Its richness attracted the attention of the French soldiers in 1809, when it was sacked and destroyed by them.

52. mejoreo: another jibe at Mendaña, cf. l. 32. The suffix -eo is generally used to form nouns only from verbs in -ear.

ACTO II, STAGE DIRECTION. el palacio del Buen Retiro: built by Olivares to flatter the whims of Philip IV. It stood beyond what were then the eastern limits of Madrid. Work on it was begun in 1621, and in 1632 Olivares presented the keys of the new palace to his sovereign amidst great rejoicing. During the French occupation of Madrid after 1808 it was used as a fortress by the troops of Napoleon. The palace and buildings were destroyed later by the French. What were the palace grounds now form the nucleus of the Parque del Retiro.

928. al buen entendedor: the whole proverb is "Al buen entendedor, pocas palabras," or "A buen entendedor, breve hablador." The English equivalent is "A word to the wise is sufficient."

1553. Islas Terceras: the name given to the central group of the Azores; it may apply as well to the entire archipelago. Portuguese territory until 1582, it passed with Portugal to the control of Spain and was not restored to Portugal until the mother country regained her independence.

1554. el Ducado de Borgoña: an error; the duchy of Burgundy, west of the river Saône, had not been a Spanish possession. It was the county of Burgundy, east of the Saône, better known in English as Franche-Comté, that came to the Spanish crown from the house of Austria. It was largely occupied by the French about 1643, though it was restored to Spain at the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648 and did not become permanently a part of France till thirty years later.

1556. Ormuz: a Portuguese trading station on the East India route until 1622, when it was captured and destroyed by the Persians and English. It was on the strait of the same name, which connects the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.—Pernambuco: a Brazilian state whose colonization dates from the second decade of the sixteenth century. The Dutch seized it in 1630 and held it till 1654.—Hoa: for Goa, a Portuguese trading station in India.

1559. Braganza: the house of Braganza was founded by John I of Portugal in the person of his illegitimate son Alfonso. The dukes of Braganza played important rôles in the history of Portugal during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Tedosio II served Philip II faithfully as long as Portugal was a Spanish dependency. In 1630 his son John II succeeded him, and in 1640 was proclaimed king of Portugal as John IV.

1838. This name originally was applied to a German dancing mania. Sanz uses it in its modern sense of a disease whose most conspicuous symptom is interference with the control of the muscles.

1979. Palermo, a city on the north coast of Sicily, formerly the capital of the kingdom of Sicily and now the capital of the province of Palermo.

2256-2257. Cf. Historical Introduction.

The King's Letter, last line: if Quevedo had not made pauses in reading in order to hold his hearers in suspense, there would have been a punctuation mark after brazos but not after rey.

3009. mi villa: la Villa de la Torre de Juan Abad, in the Campo de Montiel, about one hundred miles from Madrid.