Pedro de Urdemalas

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Este libro ha sido convertido a formato digital por una comunidad de voluntarios. Puedes encontrarlo gratis en Internet. Comprar la edición Kindle incluye la entrega inalámbrica.

129 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1615

About the author

Miguel de Cervantes y Cortinas, later Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His novel Don Quixote is often considered his magnum opus, as well as the first modern novel.

It is assumed that Miguel de Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares. His father was Rodrigo de Cervantes, a surgeon of cordoban descent. Little is known of his mother Leonor de Cortinas, except that she was a native of Arganda del Rey.

In 1569, Cervantes moved to Italy, where he served as a valet to Giulio Acquaviva, a wealthy priest who was elevated to cardinal the next year. By then, Cervantes had enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment and continued his military life until 1575, when he was captured by Algerian corsairs. He was then released on ransom from his captors by his parents and the Trinitarians, a Catholic religious order.

He subsequently returned to his family in Madrid.
In Esquivias (Province of Toledo), on 12 December 1584, he married the much younger Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (Toledo, Esquivias –, 31 October 1626), daughter of Fernando de Salazar y Vozmediano and Catalina de Palacios. Her uncle Alonso de Quesada y Salazar is said to have inspired the character of Don Quixote. During the next 20 years Cervantes led a nomadic existence, working as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada and as a tax collector. He suffered a bankruptcy and was imprisoned at least twice (1597 and 1602) for irregularities in his accounts. Between 1596 and 1600, he lived primarily in Seville. In 1606, Cervantes settled in Madrid, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Cervantes died in Madrid on April 23, 1616.
-Copied from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Carlota Esteban · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me ha costado muchísimo… He tenido la sensación de que los enredos se atropellaban. Hay una boda en la página 28 (!!!) de mi edición, a ver… El protagonista es un pícaro y el metateatro del final está bien, pero la he sufrido, qué rabia

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pedro de Urdemalas is delightfully, wonderfully, and quite surprisingly different from the majority of plays that have become central to what we think of the canon of the Siglo de Oro. This is a play about a simple trickster. He tricks alcaldes into letting their daughters marry the men they want to marry. He tricks old miserly women into giving away their fortune to those in need. And he manipulates things so that poor Gypsy girls who long to be princesses get discovered by the King of Spain and find out that maybe they are indeed princesses.

This play is, in the first place, a great deal better than any other of the Cervantes plays I've read in English translation. And, in the second place, I think this is because the stakes are just so much lower than the usual plays that are lauded from this period. It's refreshing to read one that is just here for good jokes and fun times. Even the King is a figure of fun in Pedro the Great Pretender.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Cervantes’ play, in which he takes a Spanish folk anti-hero (Pedro) and reinvents him for a picaresque-inspired comedia, is a bit disappointing. I thought his less-than-memorable treatment didn’t do justice to either the folk legend or to the picaresque model. And it certainly didn’t reflect the skill Cervantes shows in his prose work. Even the subplot of the gypsy girl’s rise was done in a much more clever fashion in his Exemplary Stories. Despite the claim in the final monologue that Pedro’s troupe would be performing dramas that resisted clichéd archetypes, Cervantes’ own use of the “theater as a mirror of court life” and “con man as actor” tropes were pretty unoriginal, even if meant to be ironic.

[Pablo López]

Mi asesora me dijo que tampoco le entendió, así que no me da pena decir que no tengo ni idea de qué pasa en esta obra.