As Bramarbas is called a type figure of the drama. Bramarbas is a figure who likes to boast of her deeds and abilities, but in reality does nothing to justify this bragging. Consequently, it is a braggart and a mule, which usually appears in the rank of an officer in a play. The figure is clearly and for the first time named in the anonymous poem Cartell of B. to Don Quixote, which is found in the appendix of Johann Burckhardt Menckes’s essay, Vermischte Gedichte (1710). The figure type, however, is much older.
The term probably goes back to the Spanish verb bramar, which can be translated with screaming. This derivation would also give some clues as to what Bramarbas is, in the literature, a loud-bored Prahlhans, who sings the dear, long day, thus loudly, boastfully and verbatim of something if he is not stopped or interrupted.
Our literary landscape is richly populated with such types of figures. In literary science, such a type means a figure which is provided with fixed characteristics, which usually occurs in comedies (cf. play). One knows, for example, the funny or comical person, such as Hanswurst and the Harlequin, or the villain, as well as the lonely thinker, who retreats to ponder into the ivory tower. Consequently, there are different types whose properties are clear in advance.
Bramarbas emerged, especially at the beginning of the eighteenth century. However, the figure type of the bragging, loud cutting-up is already many literaturepokes before. For example, Miles Gloriosus (Latin: glorious soldier) is comparable to Bramarbas and appears in various ancient works such as General Lamachos in Aristophanes’ The Acharner (425 BC) and in the person Pyrgopolynices in Miles Gloriosus (c. 206 BC) of Plautus. Cpt. Horribilicribrifax and Capitain Daradiridatumtarides in Andreas Gryphius’ Horribilicribrifax Teutsch (1663). There is also a corresponding counterpart in the Italian Commedia dell’arte: il Capitano.