Mira de Amescua’s Voces del Cielo Speak, Vélez de Guevara’s Sing Dramatic Ballads—Critical Notes

One hundred years have passed since C. E. Anibal called attention to Mira de Amescua’s use of “heaven’s voices” as a device to enrich dramatic situations with multiple levels of ironic meaning by means of divination, or cledonomancy. These critical notes propose to show how Luis Vélez de Guevara used “heaven’s voices” in a different way, not as a cognitive operation, but rather, as an affective one, with songs that expressed what was visually manifest onstage. Like a movie soundtrack, Vélez’s voices from heaven enhanced the audience’s awareness of the spectacle that it was viewing, heightening the theatrical impact of the moment and accentuating its lyrical qualities.