Carajicomedia appears at the end of an anthology of poems called the Cancionero de obras de burlas prouocātes a risa that was printed by Juan Viñao on 22 February 1519, in Valencia. The source of most of its poems is the Cancionero general of Hernando del Castillo (Valencia: Cristóbal Koffman, 1511, etc.; General Songbook), which is divided into distinct parts containing (1) religious and moral poetry, (2) poems by individual authors, (3) songs, (4) inventions and jousting poems, (5) mottos and glosses, (6) “villancicos,” (7) questions and answers, (8) minor works, and (9) “burlas” (mocking poetry). The Cancionero de obras de burlas prouocātes a risa is a separate edition of the last section of the Cancionero general with the addition of the only known printing of Carajicomedia. However, because the Cancionero general was republished in 1514 and 1517 with some additions and deletions, it is likely that whoever edited the Cancionero de obras de burlas also had access to the 1514 edition, which substitutes the “Aposentamiento en Juvera” (The Accommodations in Juvera) with “El Pleyto del manto” as its first poem. Both the “Aposentamiento” and the “Pleyto,” however, appear in the Cancionero de obras de burlas.

Only one copy of the Cancionero de obras de burlas survives (British Library HMNTS C.20.b.22). It is a quarto volume in Gothic type that saw its first modern edition anonymously in 1841 and was reprinted again under the name of Usoz de los Ríos in 1843. Since then, the 1519 text has been reproduced by Soler in facsimile (Valencia, 1951) and edited by Jauralde Pou/Bellón Cazabán (1974) and by Domínguez (1978). Carajicomedia has also been published by itself by Carlos Varo (1981, with facsimile), by Álvaro Alonso (1995), and has recently become part of modern anthologies of erotic poetry, as well as having inspired a modern novel.

The Text

The following paleographic edition of Carajicomedia is based on the British Library copy of the Cancionero de obras de burlas (C.20.b.22). It preserves the 1519 text's orthography and punctuation, duly notes its few typographical errors, and expands all contractions, but it always indicates the added text with italics (for example, que). However, once the reader is aware of the work's orthographical conventions, the sixteenth-century imprint reads with little problem.