NAHUA THEATRE

The plays became accepted and welcomed early on in the Spanish empire. However, the primary sources that have survived are somewhat skewed from a Eurocentric approach and express that this is why the plays seemed so widely accepted. Missionaries from Iberia kept many journals and notes during this time and some tried to include a balanced approach of events and what they experienced with the Nahua people. However, one can never fully know if the Nahuas gave their colonizers a masked impression to keep peace. All one can do is analyze and assess the sources, finding inconsistencies as well as patterns to gives some sense of credence to these claims.  Looking from a Spanish perspective, specifically a monk who documented what he saw in the new plays and Christian practices being taught.  His reaction was quite positive when he accounted that, 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

The plays are still in the process of being researched and translated today. In Nahuatl Theater: Volume 1, editors Louise Burkhart and Larry Sell share how, “The sheer bulk of the extant Nahuatl crops is impressive but largely unknown to the general public.”[2] Sells goes on to contend that, “It often seems that nothing that originated in the Spanish-speaking world remained completely unchanged once the Nahuas made it there own. The art of writing Nahuatl with the Roman characters of the Spanish alphabet is no exception.”[3]

 

 

           The plays were adapted and constructed to help fit into Nahua culture with the use of descriptions of a person of status or revered deity. In a play titled, “The Three Kings”, one sees Melchior describing the baby Jesus Christ as “O master, O ruler, you have in your keeping the sky and the earth, nobility and rulership. And it is really true that you are God, O lord of the near, O lord of the close, O giver of life.”[4] Nezahualcoyotl, a well known Nahuatl poet, explains similarly about a deity writing, “With flowers You paint, O Giver of Life! With songs You give color, with songs You shade those who will live on earth.”[5] The Christian plays were befitted with respectful and colorful language to give the Nahua people a sense of relate-ability to the content and assisted in making it less foreign to them.