Master and Servant, Servant and Master: Social-Class Colonialism and its Effect in the Duties of the “Sidekick” in the Spanish Golden Age Theatre
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Authors
Daley, Clare
Date of Issue
2024
Type
Presentation
Language
en_US
Subject Keywords
Other Titles
Abstract
In Don Quijote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza tackle imaginary evils. However, both characters represent real struggles through their dynamic of servant and master. As in Don Quijote, other hispanic art—especially theatre from El Siglo de Oro español (“the Spanish Golden Age”)— explores this connection between social classes. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra, by Tirso de Molina, is where the infamous Don Juan first appears along with Catalinón, who’s warnings are not heeded; Valor, agravio, y muger, by Ana Caro de Mallén, has disguised Leonor seeking justice with trusty Ribete; and lastly La vida es sueño, by Pedro Calderon de la Barca, involves King Basillo locking his son away and when the people seek their heir, servant Clarín is mixed up in it all. In his The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancière states “[a]rtistic practices are ‘ways of doing and making’ that intervene in the general distribution of ways of doing and making as well as in the relationships they maintain to modes of being and forms of visibility.” Taking this idea into consideration, what do the sidekicks’ modes of being and forms of visibility symbolize in Hispanic theatre, and how do class stereotypes reveal the social dynamics between a servant and a master? I argue that the role of the “sidekick” is an analogy for people who are underestimated due to their social class, and who are the subjects of a regime of “social-class colonialism”, which is the oppression from outside forces such as colonizers with the particular bias against monetary privilege and favors the upper classes.