?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(MEXICAN MANUSCRIPTS.) A pair of comedic and religious skits in Nahuatl. 3; 6 manuscript pages, about 8 1/2 x 6 inches, on loose folding sheets; some underlining in red ink and a few later notes, moderate wear with slight loss of text. [Hejotzingo, Puebla?], circa 1650-1750
The first item in this lot is a short manuscript farce featuring "ce ilamaton" (a little old lady) and her incompetent grandson Petol, likely a Nahuatlized version of the Spanish name Pedro, whom she insults and disparages. The old lady is hungry for some honey that she bought, although she never gets the chance to have any of it, since Petol ends up eating it. This prompts her to angrily denounce him at the end of the skit, furiously declaring him to be "xolopitli ylhuiztlacal xixicuin," an "idiotic, good-for-nothing glutton." Its comedic content and the absence of religious references are unusual for a piece of Nahuatl theater. It gives insight into the kind of everyday, intimate, colloquial Nahuatl that only rarely appears in extant Nahuatl writing; Petol, for example, frequently refers to his grandmother as çiçi, clearly a tender, affectionate form of the more formal noci(h)tzin, which one would be more likely to find in a typical text. The other play is a religious skit, possibly part of a larger Christian passion play, for three actors playing the roles of Herod, his calpixqui or majordomo, and his messenger or titlantli. The name don Juan Miguel appears on the back, possibly referring to its authorship. The upper margin of one of the folios contains notes appearing to be from the hand of the historian Francisco del Paso y Troncoso (see lot 304). Both plays have "Guijot." written on the front, probably an abbreviated alternate spelling of Huejotzingo, Puebla, where they may have been written. The first item features the use of the reflexive -mo- in the first person, a feature of Nahuatl from Tlaxcala-Puebla area.
