Theatre
The Güegüence
El Güegüense
Anonymous · 1883
Synopsis
Governor Tastuanes complains of the poverty of his cabildo and orders his alguazil to bring him the Güegüense, an old merchant who travels without a licence with his two sons and his mules. The old man pretends to be deaf and turns every word addressed to him into a similar-sounding one: he hears a maidservant when the alguazil calls himself the governor's servant, and “quesos” when he is spoken to of “pesos”. Before the governor, he boasts of riches he does not have; his elder son, Don Forcico, agrees with him in everything, while the younger, Don Ambrosio, denounces each of his lies.
Context
The play was transmitted through oral tradition and through actors' manuscripts: the German physician Carl Hermann Berendt merged two of them in Masaya in 1874, and the American Daniel G. Brinton published the text in Philadelphia in 1883, with an English translation. Its date remains disputed: UNESCO places the first texts at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the historian Jorge Eduardo Arellano, judging by the age of the vocabulary, places a written fixation much later in that century. Written in Spanish mixed with Nahuatl, it is still performed in Diriamba during the feast of Saint Sebastian, with masks, dances and violins.
Who it is for
A short play, in a language where Nahuatl is mixed with Castilian, best read in an annotated edition; it is made to be danced and performed in the street.
Prizes and reception
Proclaimed a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage by UNESCO in 2005, it is regarded as the founding text of Nicaraguan literature.
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