The source of Alemán's story (Guzmán de Alfarache, II, i, 4) was pointed out by John C. Dunlop, The History of Fiction, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne, 1816), II, 395.

Although this has been known at least since Adolf Schaeffer's Geschichte des spanischen Nationaldramas, I (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1890), 88, the matter has still not been exhaustively studied; I shall do this in the near future.

Don Quijote, ed. Francisco Rodríguez Marín, 10 vols. (Madrid: Atlas, 1947-49), I, 419-21. All citations refer to this edition (I make occasional modifications of punctuation and spelling).

For Boccaccio and Bandello in Italy, see Letterio di Francia, Novellistica, 2 vols. (Milano: Vallardi, 1924-25), chaps. 2 and 7. Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo correctly observed that «De todos los novelistas italianos Mateo Bandello fue el más leído y estimado por los españoles después de Boccaccio y el que mayor número de argumentos proporcionó a nuestros dramáticos» (Orígenes de la novela, 4 vols. [Santander: Aldus, 1943], III, 34). To cite a single example, Lope is known to have taken parts of some 23 plays from Bandello, but only nine from Boccaccio; see my «Lope de Vega's El mejor alcalde, el rey: Its Italian Novella Sources and Its influence upon Manzoni's I promessi sposi», MLR, 80 (1985), 610. But Menéndez y Pelayo shared the general belief that «Cervantes... nunca imita a Boccaccio directamente...» (loc. cit., p. 27).

Neither Boccaccio nor Bandello seem to be bothered by the circumstances that noble and beautiful ladies do not usually employ ugly and slovenly maids, and that chaste women are not likely to induce their maids to engage in casual sex. Still, such occurrences are not beyond the realm of possibility, and moreover, are totally necessary for the evolution of the tales. -Lope had introduced a variant of this Italian novella in La bella malmaridada (1596).

Decameron, in Tutte le opere, IV, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1976), p. 694, §§21-22. «This lady had a maidservant who was not too young, but she had the ugliest and most misshapen face that was ever seen: for her nose was very flat and her mouth twisted and her lips thick and her teeth ill-placed and large, and she suffered from being one-eyed, neither was she free from eye disease, with a greenish and yellowish color that made it seem that she hadn't spent the summer at Fiesole, but at Sinagaglia [an area known for its malaria], and in addition to all this she was lame and a little halting on the right side, and her name was Ciuta, and because her face was so greenish-yellow [also cur-like], everyone called her Ciutazza; and although she was deformed in her body, still she was somewhat tricky» (my translation, as elsewhere).

Novelle, ed. Giuseppe Guido Ferrero (Turin: Unione Tipografico Editrice Torinese, 1974), pp. 634, 636. «They had in their home an old lady named Togna, who was near sixty years old and in the kitchen washed dishes and pots and tended to some pigs and the chickens, and she was always greasy and filthy and stank all over like sulphur matches. Her nails were... so covered with grease and so unclean underneath that she could have furnished enough grease for a kettle of cabbage. She was blind in one eye, with mange on her head, and her other eye continuously dripped, and her mouth always slobbered, and she had uncommonly fetid breath... Her chest and breasts were long and large and... her hands were rough and short and swollen...»

See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York: Harper, 1963), p. 182, n. 37, and Edmond Faral, Les Arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 1923), pp. 76-77. In «The Several Faces of Ugliness in Medieval Castilian Literature», La Corónica, 7 (1978-79), 80-92, Harriet Goldberg shows that there were no universal characteristics of unloveliness. Nonetheless, the texts that she reproduces tend to repeat certain traits: hairiness, darkness, coarse skin (particularly on the stomach!), ugly teeth, and either excessive size (especially in the breasts) or great thinness. It will be appreciated that Maritornes does not conform to these Castilian tendencies, but stands closer to the grotesqueness of Ciutazza and Togna. Maritornes' shortness is not paralleled in either of these maids, but it does occur in another of Boccaccio's unglamorous servants, who is «grassa e grossa e piccola e mal fatta...» (VI, 10, §21 [«fleshy (also lewd) and fat and short and ill-formed...»]).

«in lui faceva l'imaginazione il caso: in lui l'immaginazione creava il fatto, egli credeva a quello che immaginava» (note of G. Ferrero).

«It can be truly said that his imagination made him believe what he wanted to believe: Togna had two thick lips like those of a [Negro] slave and her breath stank mightily; nevertheless it seemed to the enamored Simpliciano the daintiest mouth and the sweetest lips and the most exquisite breath that could be found...»