Dancing in the Theaters of Seventeenth Century Spain 75
that dances portray a burlesque inversion of the topics and conventions
presented by the long plays. The big themes of the serious plays (honor, love,
family, virtue, religion, heroism, patriotism) become in the short ones just a
joke. Dances made fun of the content but also the form of long plays. Many
dances are meta-thea