Page 205 - sfogliabile 49

A baroque vision of the conquest of Tunis in 1535 471

There are several editions of Carlos V, sobre Tunez. The one we have
used is the edition published by the printing house Santa Cruz de
Salamanca, sometime in the eighteenth century according to the
bibliographic description proffered by the National Library of Spain .
5
According to Jerónimo Herrera the work was printed under
Cañizares’s name in 1749, although the musician Inachi signed
various receipts related to it dated 20 November 1730 , in other words,
6
prior to the occupation of Oran and before Philip V’s North African
foreign policy achieved its first success. It should be noted that the
work, at least at that time, required music and that it was not
published until almost forty years after its first performances in 1711,
which means it had obviously been written before that date. The play
was performed on the 29 , 30 and 31 of January 1711 and between
st
th
th
the 1 and 5 of February in the Corral del Príncipe, eight perfor-
st
th
mances in all with an average daily attendance of 439 spectators .
7
Varey and Davis believe that the first of those performances was the
play’s premiere, and that the theatre company that managed all the
performances was the one belonging to José Garcés . These days,
8
there seems to be no doubt that the year the play premiered was
1711 . It was performed again in October 1713, four times in the
9
Corral del Príncipe by José de Prado’s Company, with an average
attendance of 653 spectators per performance . There were further
10
performances on the 25 , 26 and 27th of September 1717 in the
th
th
Corral de la Cruz by Juan Alvarez’s Company, with an average
attendance of 635 spectators per performance . According to Andioc
11
and Coulon it was shown once more in several theatres in Madrid – in
El Príncipe, in the theatre De La Santa Cruz, and that of Caños del

5 Biblioteca Nacional de España, T/15061(8). This volume comprises the printed
editions of several plays of the eighteenth century written by different authors. In the
quotations that appear in this article both grammar and punctuation have been
modernised. After each fragment we indicate inside brackets the page in the edition
used. It is also worth noting that another edition was printed by the publisher Francisco
Suriá, from Barcelona, in 1770. As we shall see, the play was performed on several
occasions in that city. In fact, that edition was paid for by a theatre company which
suggests that it must have been the same company who performed it. This is mentioned
in the last page of the Catalan edition of the work which can be consulted in the Fondo
Antiguo de la Biblioteca de Cataluña.
6 J. Herrera Navarro, Catálogo cit., p. 78. This author refers to the play discussed
here as a work written by Cañizares.
7 J.E. Varey, C. Davis, Los libros de cuentas de los corrales de comedias de Madrid,
Tamesis Books Limited, Madrid-London, 1992, p. 62.
8 Ivi, p. 403 on the premier and 177 identification of the theatre company; J. Huerta
Calvo (ed.), Historia del Teatro Español, Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 2003, p. II, 3021.
9 J. Huerta Calvo (ed.), Historia cit., vol. II, p. 3021.
10 J.E. Varey, C. Davis, Los libros cit., pp. 230, 385.
11 Ivi, pp. 316, 385.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)