A Note about Theatricality and Historical Background on the Pervasiveness of Violent Criminal Behavior

The title of this book is The Criminal Baroque: Lawbreaking, Peacekeeping and Theatricality in Early Modern Spain. The word “theatricality” is used instead of “theater” because it offers a wider range of venues in which real and fictional crimes and punishments can take place. The next two chapters will mostly refer to spectacles outside the corral. The examples within these chapters will mainly focus on deliberate attempts to harness spectacle for social control and how these attempts could backfire. Efforts to manipulate public opinion can lead to indifference, social disturbances or, in the worst case, violent crime. In an early modern Spanish context, the term “social control” may seem to imply a situation in which the upper classes seek to quash rebellion by those below. But, as argued in the three previous chapters, those whom José Antonio Maravall would call “deviants” cannot be reduced to a single stratum of society. As we continue to move up the social hierarchy, we shall witness powerful people who employ spectacle to influence others, choosing targets among their peers and not necessarily from the masses.

Thus far, the theatrical portrayals of criminality in our study have pertained mostly to the lower classes in a fictionalized context. These have been mainly represented by the jaque protagonists of the jácara ballads and the non-noble or occasionally low-ranking gentlemen who are social climbing valentones de comedia. These portrayals may lead to the misconception that criminal behavior and efforts to prevent or channel it mainly occurred at the margins of society. The powerful image of the hampa, a seething underbelly of killing, thievery, gaming, and prostitution, may seem threatening and completely separate from the higher echelons of the nobility and a nascent middle class. As seen earlier, one feature of the Criminal Baroque is the use of confusion and combination of disparate elements as part of the aestheticization of criminal behavior and of law enforcement, found in the examples of dancing pimps, singing prostitutes, constables dressed as peacocks, et cetera.