Contigo Pan y Cebolla eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about Contigo Pan y Cebolla.

Contigo Pan y Cebolla eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 123 pages of information about Contigo Pan y Cebolla.

TELON

NOTES

TITLE

Contigo pan y cebolla:  the Spanish version for ‘love in a cottage’ has many parallels.  Cf. for example two such widely different sources as Prov. xv, 17:  “Better a dinner of herbs where love is...,” and Omar Khayyam’s “A book of verses” etc.

sillas de paja vieja:  ‘worn-out cane (or reed) chairs.’

ACTO PRIMERO, ESCENA PRIMERA

se habra usted estado leyendo:  ‘you must have been reading.’  The future of possibility, with the corresponding conditional to express possibility in the past, occurs very frequently in this play.

Pero hombre, que estas ahi charlando sin saber:  ’but, man alive, there you are’ etc.  The redundant que as employed by the various characters in the play would make a profitable study in idiomatic Spanish speech.

Papamoscas de Burgos:  a popular carved figure that forms part of the mechanism of a clock in the famous cathedral at Burgos, Spain.  The papamoscas comes out at certain hours just as do the figures in a cuckoo clock.  The term papamoscas is also familiarly used for papanatas (gullible person).  Since the stories about the Papamoscas are, to the sophisticated, pure inventions, to speak of the niece of the Papamoscas is from Bruno’s point of view, at least, to indicate the highest degree of improbability.

se indigestan:  ‘are hard to digest’ (cf.  English “are hard to swallow").

San Juan de Dios:  reference to the clock in the neighboring tower of the monastery of St. John of God. (An excellent book of reference that gives details of the monuments and streets of old Madrid is “El antiguo Madrid,” by Ramon de Mesonero Romanos, Madrid, 1861.)

ESCENA SEGUNDA

se vuelve agua de borrajas:  the correct expression is agua de cerrajas ‘nothing at all,’ ‘shucks’ (cerraja meaning the common sow-thistle).  As the flower of the borage is used to induce perspiration, Bruno is misled by the similarity of sound between cerraja and borraja.

ESCENA CUARTA

como un tronco de dormido:  ‘sleeping like a log.’

Malibran:  Marie Felicite Malibran (1808-1836), singer, of Spanish blood, born in Paris; by Spanish maiden name Maria Felicia Garcia.

ESCENA QUINTA

Mande usted:  stock reply of servants, children, etc. when called by their superiors in station or age.  Cf. other stock expressions used in the play on other occasions, as Matilde’s beso a V. la mano and don Pedro’s a la disposicion de V.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Contigo Pan y Cebolla from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.