Pedro Munoz Seca died on a day like today 1936. The writer and playwright from Cádiz, belonging to the 14 Generation o Novecentismo and creator of his own literary genre known as astrakhan, he is remembered mainly for Don Mendo's Revenge. These are some selected fragments of one of the Most popular and funny comedies of the Spanish theater.
Don Mendo's Revenge
There are few comedies better known and represented than this one, which surely we have all seen at least in its many adaptations in film and television. It was released in the Madrid Comedy Theater in 1918 and its success was so great that it is the fourth most represented work of all time along with Don Juan Tenorio, Fuenteovejuna y The life is dream. These are some selected fragments.
Maximum exponent of astrakhan, comic genre created by Muñoz Seca and that only pretends to make you laugh anyway. The plot, the situations, the characters, and even the props or the montage, always look for the joke, which is usually in the form of a pun or comic deformation of the language.
Don Mendo's Revenge is divided into 4 acts, full of puns and humorous strokes that border on the absurd. Unrivaled parody of the historical drama, combines anachronisms with that easy humor but that works. And it continues to do so through the years.
Fragments
Don Mendo to Magdalena
And I cancel and I get troubled
and my horror I do not hide,
because although the name amazes you,
who works like this has a name,
and that name is ... pimp.
(Day I)
***
Don Nuño to Magdalena
Your dowry is colossal, like my fortune,
and your cradle is so high,
It is our lineage from such a high branch,
that I recorded this in my tower in Porcuna:
«The cradle of the Manso de Jarama,
by dint of being tall, like none,
more than a cradle, say that it is a bed ».
(Day I)
***
Don mendo
May thirteenth now!… Who would have thought!
I've been in this prison for a month and a day
without anyone knowing what happens ...
And today is Tuesday, great God! ... Tuesday thirteen! ...
Why does terror invade my soul?
Why does it inspire me with extraordinary fear
that figure, alas, from the calendar?
Ah, no, fatal figure!… You will not humiliate
the value of Don Mendo; you will not be able to;
all the same for me you will be ...
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and sixteen!
(Day II)
***
Magdalena
Is it that I express myself so badly,
maiden, who did not understand me?
Didn't you look at me? Didn't you hear me?
Did you show me so unkind
that you just saw me and hated me?
Don Mendo (to Renato)
I listened to it and contemplated it;
vila, lady and hear her;
but the more I looked at her
and the more I listened to it
less, ma'am, I got it.
(Day III)
***
Don Mendo (to Renato)
...
All for me like a rag,
and with the same pretense ...
Alas, unhappy man
who is born, like me, so handsome!
(Day IV)
***
Azofaifa to Don Mendo
Drive your steel into my flesh! ...
Satiate your revenge on me
If you don't have to love me now!
Hurt, Mendo, by Allah!
Don mendo
What by Allah: over here!
(Day IV)
***
Don mendo
Know what menda ... is Don Mendo
and Don Mendo ... killed menda.
(Day IV)
***
And I end the famous dialogue about the game at 7:XNUMX.
Don Mendo and Magdalena:
… We talk… What do you do?
Boring me ... And Vedia's
He said: You will not be bored;
I propose, if you want,
play at half past seven.
Magdalena:
And why did that hour mark
so weird? It could be later ...
Mendo:
Is that your innocence ignores
that more than an hour, lady,
Half past seven is a game.
Magdalena:
A game?
Mendo:
And a vile game
that you don't have to play it blind,
Well, you play a hundred times, a thousand,
and of the thousand, you see feverish
that either you pass or you do not arrive.
And not arriving gives pain,
it indicates that bad rates
and you are from the other debtor.
But woe to you if you go over there!
If you go, it's worse!