Brinton presents what he believed to be the only surviving native American comedy, a dance-play from Nicaragua composed in a mixed jargon of colonial Spanish and Nahuatl. Its hero, the sly old trader Güegüence, runs rings around the Spanish governor, boasting of chests of gold, smuggled cloth and golden shoes. The edition gives the text, an English translation, notes and a vocabulary.
A rare piece of indigenous colonial theatre, still performed in Nicaragua and studied by folklorists and linguists. Download the free EPUB.