See Astrana Marín, III: 142-48: «O sugerido por él o por su favorecedor, surgió un asunto en que su conocimiento y experiencia, traidos de las costas africanas, podían ponerse al servicio de Su Majestad». Cervantes was right in approaching Mateo Vázquez, according to Martínez Millán: «... personaje que resultaba imprescindible para obtener cualquier gracia o favor real en aquella época» («Filosofía cortesana» 462). Emilio Sola and José F. de la Peña argue that Cervantes, acting as a correo extraordinario, was at the time one of a number of individuals «coordinados por los servicios secretos españoles» (177).

Astrana Marín speculates that Eraso wanted to distance himself from the situation, and «le remitió [a Cervantes] a conferenciar en Madrid con el secretario Valmaseda» (VI: 516). But Valmaseda was in charge of a group of escribanos «que no cobraban salarios, sino sólo derechos, y, aunque permanentes, no eran oficialmente empleados del Consejo de Indias» (Astrana Marín, VI: 520).

It is tempting to think that the «hilo» mentioned here echoes Barros's comments about the «casas de trabajo» to which he refers at the beginning of his work: «En las casas del Trabajo no se debe parar, porque en las pretensiones no ha de haber punto de descanso, so pena de quebrar el hilo a los frutos que de él resultan» (fol. 14r). Cervantes and Barros seemed to have shared a sustained relationship over a number of years. Cervantes wrote another dedicatory poem to Barros's Proverbios morales eleven years later (Madrid, 1598): «Todos jugamos un juego, / Y un mismo desasosiego / Padecemos sin reposo; / Pues no tengo por dichoso / Al que el vulgo se lo llama, / Ni por verdadera fama / La voz de solos amigos, / ...» (cited by Martínez Millán, «Filosofía cortesana», 462, n. 5).

In another treatise (still unedited), Alonso de Barros talks of patronage based on the concept of usefulness, «porque, como siempre, los mayores tienen mayores necesidades y las del Príncipe no se pueden remediar sin el ayuda de muchos y no le es lícito tratar sino con pocos; todas las veces que hallan en algunos de sus criados talento para que por su medio sus criados tengan alivio y su voluntad execución, estímanlos más que a los otros». This text, from the Discurso y definición de privado hecho por Alonso de Barros, is quoted by Martínez Millán, «Las élites de poder...» (163).

A brief reminder: his great-grandfather was a «cloth manufacturer» (Canavaggio 20), his grandfather, a lawyer who rose «to the bar at the end of a circuitous career» (20), and his deaf father, an itinerant «surgeon» (22).

See the Libro de gobierno of Cardinal Diego de Espinosa (1512?-1572), transcribed by Martínez Millán, which contains a list of «los que pretenden officios de assiento» (330). There are more than 500 petitioners.

Martínez Millán, «Las élites de poder...», refers to Archbishop Tavera who «escogía a Gerónimo Suárez como su servidor (aún residente en el colegio de San Bartolomé), nombrándole provisor del obispado de Ciudad Rodrigo» (162). While the best positions went to the graduates of colegios mayores of major universities, Richard Kagan points out that those graduates in «high office made sure that the king appointed only the advanced and supposedly competent students from the swelling crowd of university graduates. And, consequently, as men with these qualifications reached positions with a say in the distribution of office, they made certain that new recruits were of backgrounds similar to their own» (91). There was such a glut of university graduates by the end of the sixteenth century that mainly only those with advanced degrees or some special talent could hope to find suitable employment. Other qualifications, among them limpieza de sangre, also became paramount to thin out potential candidates: «Though individuals of questionable lineage, or those who had managed to hide the fact, still received appointments from time to time, by the end of the century such officials were few and regarded with suspicion and distrust» (Kagan 90-1).

I have already referred to the relationship between the Count of Lemos and the Duke Of Lerma. Antonio Feros (Gobierno de corte...) identifies Pedro de Tapia, who was appointed to the Consejo de Castilla in 1599, as part of the «grupo lermista» at the beginning of the century. His name and that of his son, Rodrigo de Tapia, to whom Cervantes dedicated the Viaje al Parnaso, appear on the title page. See also J.-M. Pelorson (291).

Vélez de Guevara refers to his lack of patronage in the reign of Philip in precisely these terms. He petitions the Count-Duke of Olivares for an ayuda de costa to accompany the king on a royal visit to Zaragoza in 1626: «Luis Vélez, al fin, Señor, / que en ese casero Argel / está de Vos que ha de estar / por siempre jamás, amén, / pues de pasar adelante / ninguna esperanza ve, / porque del rescate suyo / se ha olvidado la merced» (F. Rodríguez Marín, ed., «Cinco poesías», 73).

The beginnings of a serious rethinking of Maese Pedro's Retablo came about in the course of preparing to meet with Ruth El Saffar's last Cervantes seminar in Chicago in 1994. I am grateful to Ruth for pressing me to return to the episode (which then seemed an unlikely assignment for me) in a serious way, and to Doris Schnabel, whose invitation to deliver the 1997 Fordham Cervantes Lecture brought about writing of the first version of this study.