Note 778 — Chapter XXVI
Reading edition
“Danzas habladas” is the singular phrase applied to a pantomime with singing and dancing in Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 20. The bayles of Fonseca, referred to in a preceding note, are a fair specimen of the singing and dancing on the Spanish stage in the middle of the seventeenth century. One of them is an allegorical contest between Love and Fortune; another, a discussion on Jealousy; and the third, a wooing by Peter Crane, a peasant, carried on by shaking a purse before the damsel he would win;—all three in the ballad measure, and none of them extending beyond a hundred and twenty lines, or possessing any merit but a few jests.