Editorial note — Chapter VII

The translation given by Wickham (ut supra, p. 349), is as follows: “What finds entrance through the ear stirs the mind less actively than what is submitted to the eyes, which we cannot doubt.”

“They are very fond of seeing theatrical pieces. They make some translations from our dramas, and they make a piece out of anything although it is destitute of the rules of art. They are especially fond of very long comedies, that last a month or more, with many hours of representation daily. These are drawn from histories or from stories, and they stage them. In Tondo there was played, for instance, Matilde, ó las Cruzadas [i.e., “Matilda, or the Crusades”]. The Celestina was probably the origin of this taste. Filipino poets have written several dramas of this kind, as well as some epic, religious, and love poems. But in the epoch previous to the arrival of the Spaniards, it appears that there existed only a few love songs, of whose merits I cannot judge, as I know the language so slightly.

“They have verses of as many as twelve syllables, which are the ones generally used in their poems. They are divided into quatrains, whose four verses rhyme among themselves. The Filipino rhyme, however, consists in the last letter being a vowel or a consonant.... They read all their verses in a singing tone, and the quatrains of the twelve-syllable verse are read with the motif of the comintan, which is their national song. The custom of singing when reading poetry is a practice of China, and of all the Asiatic peoples whom I have visited. The kind of versification which I have just cited is evidently anterior to our conquest, as is also the above-mentioned air, which is adjusted to it. This air is melancholy and does not resemble at all any Chinese or Indian music that I have heard. There are several comintans, just as there are different boleros, Polish dances, or Tyrolian dances. Some of them have a great resemblance to the music of Arabia. On the slopes of Camachin [which is a mountain in southern Mindanao], I heard a song which is exactly and purely of that sort....” (Mas, pp. 115, 116.)

The Celestina mentioned by Mas is a noted dramatic story—probably written about 1480, and by Rodrigo Cota, of Toledo, and others—which has exercised a very strong influence on the Spanish national drama. It has great literary merit, admirable style, and well-drawn pictures of human nature; and it attained so extensive and continual popularity that even the Inquisition did not place Celestina in the Index until 1793, notwithstanding its grossness of thought and language. (Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature, i, pp. 262–272.)