Adenda a Zurdo, gracioso despiadado de la comedia claramontesca Púsoseme el sol, saliome la luna 1

Abstract: This essay ponders and contextualizes one of the most problematic comic characters found in the Spanish comedia de santos or comedia hagiográfica : Zurdo , the gracioso in Andrés de Claramonte’s Púsoseme el sol, saliome la luna . Claramonte’s drama adds new sexual intrigue to the already salacious elements found in the legend of Saint Theodora of Alexandria, a saint and martyr from the fifth century. Claramonte’s Zurdo displays such stock elements of the gracioso as witty, satirical asides; comic pratfalls; and gluttony. But the dramaturg adds some unsettling and unusual embellishments to this characterization, invoking tropes of left-handedness as a marker of moral deviance, intensifying the left-handed imagery with allusions to theological notions of Evil, and building the action to a dramatic sequence in which Zurdo commits a rape.