See Avellaneda's prologue, pp. 7-8, and 14. (N. from the A.)

The phrase «cacareado y agresor de sus lectores» (p. 7) applies to Cervantes's prologue in particular, but Avellaneda clearly goes on to ascribe polemical spite to the other aspects of Don Quijote Part I mentioned in the text. (N. from the A.)

J. B. Avalle-Arce documents this pretentiousness, as far as El peregrino en su patria (1604) is concerned, in the introduction to Lope de Vega's Byzantine romance in Clásicos Castalia (Madrid, 1973). (N. from the A.)

Comedias y entremeses, i, 9. (N. from the A.)

Two passages of the prologue are significant in this respect: «Tuve otras cosas en que ocuparme, dejé la pluma y las comedias, y entró luego el monstruo de naturaleza, el gran Lope de Vega, y alzóse con la monarquía cómica», and: «Algunos años ha que volví a mi antigua ociosidad, y, pensando que aún duraban los siglos donde corrían mis alabanzas, volví a componer algunas comedias; pero no hallé pájaros en los nidos de antaño; quiero decir que no hallé autor que me las pidiese, puesto que sabían que las tenía». (pp. 7-8). Granted that the prologue is solely concerned with Cervantes's activities as a playwright, nonetheless, the way in which the two statements link writing with dramatic composition is significant. From our perspective, Cervantes's vocation for poetry, including the theatre, appears to rank a poor second to his commitment to prose-fiction; thus, there has been a natural tendency amongst cervantistas, notably of a former generation (Astrana Marín, González Amezúa), to credit him with a burning vocation for fiction from an early stage, and to assume that his suitcases bulged with unpublished material, chiefly novelas, during the period of his Andalusian employment from 1587 to 1595. In my view, the spate of works, chiefly fiction, published by Cervantes from 1605 onwards is the fruit of a period of literary creativity which began around, and not much before, 1600. The statement «dejé la pluma y las comedias» does not merely mean that in or around 1587 he stopped writing for the stage. My suggestion of a prolonged period of literary inactivity is further supported by the inference «where there's smoke, there's fire»: what we know to have been written by Cervantes in the period 1587-1600 is a meagre handful of poems (chiefly, the two Armada odes, the famous burlesque sonnets of 1596 and 1598, the romance de los celos, the «Canción desesperada»). Had there been more activity, there would be more signs of it. His own perspective upon his literary vocation, particularly in the period 1580-1600, would have been the reverse of our natural image of him. As author of a libro de poesía (La Galatea) and, by his own testimony in the prologue to the Ocho comedias, of some twenty to thirty successful plays, he would have seen himself primarily as a poet, and assumed naturally, on his return to writing in the mid-to-late 1590's, that he could pick up the former threads. Given the theatre's prestige and money-spinning potential in the mid-1590's, and his established reputation as playwright, this must have seemed the obvious, attractive outlet. According to Jean Canavaggio's computation of the dates of composition of the Ocho comedias, at least two of them (La casa de los celos and El laberinto de amor), belong to the late sixteenth century. Thus, we may assume that, restored to a life of leisure, Cervantes turned to the theatre, got a frosty rebuff from the autores, and experienced this as a nasty check to his primary aspirations as a writer. See Canavaggio, Cervantès dramaturge: un théâtre à naître (Presses Universitaires de France, 1977), 11-25. (N. from the A.)

The priest's comments on La Galatea include the thought that perhaps with the publication of the second part of the pastoral romance, anticipated in the preliminaries of the Ocho comedias (1615), Don Quijote Part II (1615), and the Persiles (1617), «alcanzará del todo la misericordia que ahora se le niega». So the quip seems a rueful comment on the relative lack of popularity of La Galatea, re-printed only twice in Cervantes's lifetime, on both occasions, outside Spain (Lisbon, 1590; Paris, 1611). However, Cervantes's poetry, including La Galatea, enjoyed some esteem in Spain, certainly among fellow-writers. Lope de Vega, so often Cervantes's rival, is an unimpeachable witness: he includes La Galatea amongst some select reading matter in Nise's library in La dama boba (1613), Act III, Scene iii; in La Dorotea (1632), IV, ii, Cervantes is cited as one of the leading poets of the age of Lope's youth; Cervantes's elegant and sonorous verse is praised in Silva viii of Laurel de Apolo (1621); his portrait hangs in the Palace of Poetry in Lope's Arcadia (1598) Book V. All this tribute goes well beyond perfunctory politeness, and is in no sense confined to praise of Cervantes's satiric and popular verse, justly renowned in its day. For further examples of this esteem see A. Bonilla, Cervantes y su obra (Madrid, 1916), 168-69 and the aprobación to Don Quijote Part II by licentiate Márquez Torres. (N. from the A.)

The most famous of them is: «Yo, que siempre trabajo y me desvelo / por parecer que tengo de poeta / la gracia que no quiso darme el cielo...». (Viaje del Parnaso, Chapter 1, lines 25 ff.). I also refer to the numerous contexts where Cervantine characters acknowledge, with apparent ruefulness, their lack of outstanding flair for poetry (see Don Quijote II, 18; ii, 170; El licenciado Vidriera and La gitanilla, in the edition of the Novelas ejemplares by R. Schevill and A. Bonilla, 3 vols. (Madrid, 1922-25), ii, 92 and i, 63) or, like the poetasters ridiculed in El licenciado Vidriera (see above) and El coloquio de los perros (Novelas ejemplares, iii, 234 and 242), show an inflated estimate of their abilities. (N. from the A.)

All these comments are motivated by spite, which largely deprives them of value as critical judgements and is shown by the indiscriminate lumping together of Cervantes's poetry with his other writings. Lope de Vega's remark, previously mentioned (n. 9), is triggered by Cervantes's hostility to his theatre: «De poetas, no digo: buen siglo es éste; pero ninguno hay tan malo como Cervantes ni tan necio que alabe el Quijote». (See A. G. de Amezúa y Mayo, Lope de Vega en sus cartas, 4 vols. [Madrid, 1935-43], iii, 4.) According to Elias Rivers, Esteban Manuel Villegas may well have made his jibe at Cervantes, in his Eróticas o amatorias (1618), out of resentment at being omitted from the army of good poets in Viaje del Parnaso: «Irás del Helicón a la conquista / mejor que el mal poeta de Cervantes, / donde no le valdrá ser quijotista». See Rivers, «Viaje del Parnaso y poesías sueltas», in Suma Cervantina, 121. Suárez de Figueroa, who vents his bile upon all and sundry in El pasajero (1617), ridicules those who keep writing comedies after failing to get them performed (Cervantes?), compose verse in their dotage (Cervantes, as author of Viaje del Parnaso?), write prologues on the point of death (Cervantes, in Persiles), turn their life's experiences into fiction (Cervantes, in the story of the captive captain in Don Quijote Part I). See J. P Wickersham Crawford, The Life and Works of Christóbal Suárez de Figueroa (Philadelphia, 1907), 68-69. (N. from the A.)

For references to this debate, see the essay by Rivers on «Viaje del Parnaso y poesías sueltas» cited in n. 2. Examples of the longevity of the prejudice are legion. See, for example, the edition of Viaje del Parnaso by F. Rodríguez Marín (Madrid, 1935), xxiii ff.; Vicente Gaos, Cervantes. Novelista, dramaturgo, poeta (Barcelona, 1979), 159-79; Daniel Eisenberg, A Study of «Don Quixote» (Newark, Delaware, 1987), 55-56. Rivers's judgement is pertinent: «Sabía [Cervantes] que él no era ningún Garcilaso, pero también sabía que entre los muchos poetas y poetastros contemporáneos suyos era él de los más serios y mejores. Su irónica modestia y las apasionadas críticas de Lope y de Villegas han creado una especie de leyenda negra que, desde Quintana, ha venido aplicándose rutinariamente a toda la poesía de Cervantes» (120). (N. from the A.)

This is the sense of the well-known passages about poetry in La gitanilla, El licenciado Vidriera, and Don Quijote Part II, 16, cited in n. 3. (N. from the A.)