at on the score of language or style is to be found in Vols.
III., IV., V., of Navarrete, Coleccion, etc., published by the
government, Madrid, 1829-37, but unhappily not continued since,
so as to contain the accounts of the discovery and conquest of
Mexico, Peru, etc.
* * * * *
_Romantic Chronicles._--It only remains now to speak of one other
class of the old chronicles; a class hardly represented in this period
by more than a single specimen, but that a very curious one, and one
which, by its date and character, brings us to the end of our present
inquiries, and marks the transition to those that are to follow. The
Chronicle referred to is that called “The Chronicle of Don Roderic,
with the Destruction of Spain,” and is an account, chiefly fabulous,
of the reign of King Roderic, the conquest of the country by the
Moors, and the first attempts to recover it in the beginning of the
eighth century. An edition is cited as early as 1511, and six in all
may be enumerated, including the last, which is of 1587; thus showing
a good degree of popularity, if we consider the number of readers in
Spain in the sixteenth century.[343] Its author is quite unknown.
According to the fashion of the times, it professes to have been
written by Eliastras, one of the personages who figures in it; but he
is killed in battle just before we reach the end of the book; and the
remainder, which looks as if it might really be an addition by another
hand, is in the same way ascribed to Carestes, a knight of Alfonso the
Catholic.[344]
[343] My copy is of the edition of Alcalá de Henares, 1587, and
has the characteristic title, “Crónica del Rey Don Rodrigo, con
la Destruycion de España, y como los Moros la ganaron. Nuevamente
corregida. Contiene, demas de la Historia, muchas vivas Razones
y Avisos muy provechosos.” It is in folio, in double columns,
closely printed, and fills 225 leaves or 450 pages.
[344] From Parte II. c. 237 to the end, containing the account
of the fabulous and loathsome penance of Don Roderic, with his
death. Nearly the whole of it is translated as a note to the
twenty-fifth canto of Southey’s “Roderic, the Last of the Goths.”
Most of the names throughout the work are as imaginary as those of its
pretended authors; and the circumstances related are, generally, as
much invented as the dialogue between its personages, which is given
with a heavy minuteness of detail, alike uninteresting in itself, and
false to the times it represents. In truth, it is hardly more than
a romance of chivalry, founded on the materials for the history of
Roderic and Pelayo, as they still exist in the “General Chronicle of
Spain” and in the old ballads; so that, though we often meet what
is familiar to us about Count Julian, La Cava, and Orpas, the false
Archbishop of Seville, we find ourselves still oftener in the midst of
impossible tournaments[345] and incredible adventures of chivalry.[346]
Kings travel about like knights-errant,[347] and ladies in distress
wander from country to country,[348] as they do in “Palmerin of
England,” while, on all sides, we encounter fantastic personages, who
were never heard of anywhere but in this apocryphal Chronicle.[349]
[345] See the grand _Torneo_ when Roderic is crowned, Parte I.
c. 27; the tournament of twenty thousand knights in Cap. 40;
that in Cap. 49, etc.;--all just as such things are given in
the books of chivalry, and eminently absurd here, because the
events of the Chronicle are laid in the beginning of the eighth
century, and tournaments were unknown till above two centuries
later. (A. P. Budik, Ursprung, Ausbildung, Abnahme, und Verfall
des Turniers, Wien, 1837, 8vo.) He places the first tournament
in 936. Clemencin thinks they were not known in Spain till after
1131. Note to Don Quixote, Tom. IV. p. 315.
[346] See the duels described, Parte II. c. 80 etc., 84 etc., 93.
[347] The King of Poland is one of the kings that comes to the
court of Roderic “like a wandering knight so fair” (Parte I. c.
39). One might be curious to know who was King of Poland about A.
D. 700.
[348] Thus, the Duchess of Loraine comes to Roderic (Parte I.
c. 37) with much the same sort of a case that the Princess
Micomicona brings to Don Quixote.
[349] Parte I. c. 234, 235, etc.
The principle of such a work is, of course, nearly the same with that
of the modern historical romance. What, at the time it was written,
was deemed history was taken as its basis from the old chronicles, and
mingled with what was then the most advanced form of romantic fiction,
just as it has been since in the series of works of genius beginning
with Defoe’s “Memoirs of a Cavalier.” The difference is in the general
representation of manners, and in the execution, both of which are
now immeasurably advanced. Indeed, though Southey has founded much
of his beautiful poem of “Roderic, the Last of the Goths,” on this
old Chronicle, it is, after all, hardly a book that can be read. It
is written in a heavy, verbose style, and has a suspiciously monkish
prologue and conclusion, which look as if the whole were originally
intended to encourage the Romish doctrine of penance, or, at least,
were finally arranged to subserve that devout purpose.[350]
[350] To learn through what curious transformations the same
ideas can be made to pass, it may be worth while to compare, in
the “Crónica General,” 1604, (Parte III. f. 6,) the original
account of the famous battle of Covadonga, where the Archbishop
Orpas is represented picturesquely coming upon his mule to the
cave in which Pelayo and his people lay, with the tame and
elaborate account evidently taken from it in this Chronicle of
Roderic (Parte II. c. 196); then with the account in Mariana,
(Historia, Lib. VII. c. 2,) where it is polished down into a sort
of dramatized history; and, finally, with Southey’s “Roderic, the
Last of the Goths,” (Canto XXIII.,) where it is again wrought
up to poetry and romance. It is an admirable scene both for
chronicling narrative and for poetical fiction to deal with; but
Alfonso the Wise and Southey have much the best of it, while a
comparison of the four will at once give the poor “Chronicle of
Roderic or the Destruction of Spain” its true place.
Another work, something like this Chronicle, but still more
worthless, was published, in two parts, in 1592-1600, and seven
or eight times afterwards; thus giving proof that it long enjoyed
a degree of favor to which it was little entitled. It was written
by Miguel de Luna, in 1589, as appears by a note to the first
part, and is called “Verdadera Historia del Rey Rodrigo, con
la Perdida de España, y Vida del Rey Jacob Almanzor, traduzida
de Lengua Arábiga,” etc., my copy being printed at Valencia,
1606, 4to. Southey, in his notes to his “Roderic,” (Canto IV.,)
is disposed to regard this work as an authentic history of the
invasion and conquest of Spain, coming down to the year of Christ
761, and written in the original Arabic only two years later.
But this is a mistake. It is a bold and scandalous forgery, with
even less merit in its style than the elder Chronicle on the same
subject, and without any of the really romantic adventures that
sometimes give an interest to that singular work, half monkish,
half chivalrous. How Miguel de Luna, who, though a Christian, was
of an old Moorish family in Granada, and an interpreter of Philip
II., should have shown a great ignorance of the Arabic language
and history of Spain, or, showing it, should yet have succeeded
in passing off his miserable stories as authentic, is certainly
a singular circumstance. That such, however, is the fact, Conde,
in his “Historia de la Dominacion de los Arabes,” (Preface, p.
x.,) and Gayangos, in his “Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain,” (Vol.
I. p. viii.,) leave no doubt,--the latter citing it as a proof
of the utter contempt and neglect into which the study of Arabic
literature had fallen in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
This is the last, and, in many respects, the worst, of the chronicles
of the fifteenth century, and marks but an ungraceful transition to
the romantic fictions of chivalry that were already beginning to
inundate Spain. But as we close it up, we should not forget, that
the whole series, extending over full two hundred and fifty years,
from the time of Alfonso the Wise to the accession of Charles the
Fifth, and covering the New World as well as the Old, is unrivalled
in richness, in variety, and in picturesque and poetical elements.
In truth, the chronicles of no other nation can, on such points, be
compared to them; not even the Portuguese, which approach the nearest
in original and early materials; nor the French, which, in Joinville
and Froissart, make the highest claims in another direction. For these
old Spanish chronicles, whether they have their foundations in truth
or in fable, always strike farther down than those of any other nation
into the deep soil of the popular feeling and character. The old
Spanish loyalty, the old Spanish religious faith, as both were formed
and nourished in the long periods of national trial and suffering,
are constantly coming out; hardly less in Columbus and his followers,
or even amidst the atrocities of the conquests in the New World, than
in the half-miraculous accounts of the battles of Hazinas and Tolosa,
or in the grand and glorious drama of the fall of Granada. Indeed,
wherever we go under their leading, whether to the court of Tamerlane,
or to that of Saint Ferdinand, we find the heroic elements of the
national genius gathered around us; and thus, in this vast, rich mass
of chronicles, containing such a body of antiquities, traditions,
and fables as has been offered to no other people, we are constantly
discovering, not only the materials from which were drawn a multitude
of the old Spanish ballads, plays, and romances, but a mine which has
been unceasingly wrought by the rest of Europe for similar purposes,
and still remains unexhausted.[351]
[351] Two Spanish translations of chronicles should be here
remembered; one for its style and author, and the other for its
subject.
The first is the “Universal Chronicle” of Felipe Foresto, a
modest monk of Bergamo, who refused the higher honors of his
Church, in order to be able to devote his life to letters,
and who died in 1520, at the age of eighty-six. He published,
in 1486, his large Latin Chronicle, entitled “Supplementum
Chronicarum”;--meaning rather a chronicle intended to supply all
needful historical knowledge, than one that should be regarded
as a supplement to other similar works. It was so much esteemed
at the time, that its author saw it pass through ten editions;
and it is said to be still of some value for facts stated nowhere
so well as on his personal authority. At the request of Luis
Carroz and Pedro Boyl, it was translated into Spanish by Narcis
Viñoles, the Valencian poet, known in the old Cancioneros for
his compositions both in his native dialect and in Castilian. An
earlier version of it into Italian, published in 1491, may also
have been the work of Viñoles, since he intimates that he had
made one; but his Castilian version was printed at Valencia, in
1510, with a license from Ferdinand the Catholic, acting for his
daughter Joan. It is a large book, of nearly nine hundred pages,
in folio, entitled, “Suma de todas las Crónicas del Mundo,” and
though Viñoles hints it was a rash thing in him to write in
Castilian, his style is good and sometimes gives an interest
to his otherwise dry annals. Ximeno, Bib. Val., Tom. I. p. 61.
Fuster, Tom. I. p. 54. Diana Enam. de Polo, ed. 1802, p. 304.
Biographie Universelle, art. _Foresto_.
The other Chronicle referred to is that of St. Louis, by
his faithful follower Joinville; the most picturesque of
the monuments for the French language and literature of the
thirteenth century. It was translated into Spanish by Jacques
Ledel, one of the suite of the French Princess Isabel de Bourbon,
when she went to Spain to become the wife of Philip II. Regarded
as the work of a foreigner, the version is respectable; and
though it was not printed till 1567, yet its whole tone prevents
it from finding an appropriate place anywhere except in the
period of the old Castilian chronicles. Crónica de San Luis,
etc., traducida por Jacques Ledel, Madrid, 1794, folio.
CHAPTER XI.
THIRD CLASS.--ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.--ARTHUR.--CHARLEMAGNE.--AMADIS DE
GAULA.--ITS DATE, AUTHOR, TRANSLATION INTO CASTILIAN, SUCCESS, AND
CHARACTER.--ESPLANDIAN.--FLORISANDO.--LISUARTE DE GRECIA.--AMADIS
DE GRECIA.--FLORISEL DE NIQUEA.--ANAXARTES.--SILVES DE LA
SELVA.--FRENCH CONTINUATION.--INFLUENCE OF THE FICTION.--PALMERIN DE
OLIVA.--PRIMALEON.--PLATIR.--PALMERIN DE INGLATERRA.
ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.--The ballads of Spain belonged originally to
the whole nation, but especially to its less cultivated portions.
The chronicles, on the contrary, belonged to the proud and knightly
classes, who sought in such picturesque records, not only the glorious
history of their forefathers, but an appropriate stimulus to their
own virtues and those of their children. As, however, security was
gradually extended through the land, and the tendency to refinement
grew stronger, other wants began to be felt. Books were demanded, that
would furnish amusement less popular than that afforded by the ballads,
and excitement less grave than that of the chronicles. What was asked
for was obtained, and probably without difficulty; for the spirit of
poetical invention, which had been already thoroughly awakened in the
country, needed only to be turned to the old traditions and fables of
the early national chronicles, in order to produce fictions allied to
both of them, yet more attractive than either. There is, in fact, as we
can easily see, but a single step between large portions of several of
the old chronicles, especially that of Don Roderic, and proper romances
of chivalry.[352]
[352] An edition of the “Chronicle of Don Roderic” is cited as
early as 1511; none of “Amadis de Gaula” earlier than 1510,
and this one uncertain. But “Tirant lo Blanch” was printed in
1490, in the Valencian dialect, and the Amadis appeared perhaps
soon afterwards, in the Castilian; so that it is not improbable
the “Chronicle of Don Roderic” may mark, by the time of its
appearance, as well as by its contents and spirit, the change, of
which it is certainly a very curious monument.
Such fictions, under ruder or more settled forms, had already existed
in Normandy, and perhaps in the centre of France, above two centuries
before they were known in the Spanish peninsula. The story of Arthur
and the Knights of his Round Table had come thither from Brittany
through Geoffrey of Monmouth, as early as the beginning of the twelfth
century.[353] The story of Charlemagne and his Peers, as it is found in
the Chronicle of the fabulous Turpin, had followed from the South of
France soon afterwards.[354] Both were, at first, in Latin, but both
were almost immediately transferred to the French, then spoken at the
courts of Normandy and England, and at once gained a wide popularity.
Robert Wace, born in the island of Jersey, gave in 1158 a metrical
history founded on the work of Geoffrey, which, besides the story of
Arthur, contains a series of traditions concerning the Breton kings,
tracing them up to a fabulous Brutus, the grandson of Æneas.[355] A
century later, or about 1270-1280, after less successful attempts by
others, the same service was rendered to the story of Charlemagne
by Adenés in his metrical romance of “Ogier le Danois,” the chief
scenes of which are laid either in Spain or in Fairy Land.[356]
These, and similar poetical inventions, constructed out of them by the
Trouveurs of the North, became, in the next age, materials for the
famous romances of chivalry in prose, which, during three centuries,
constituted no mean part of the vernacular literature of France, and,
down to our own times, have been the great mine of wild fables for
Ariosto, Spenser, Wieland, and the other poets of chivalry, whose
fictions are connected either with the stories of Arthur and his Round
Table, or with those of Charlemagne and his Peers.[357]
[353] Warton’s Hist. of English Poetry, first Dissertation, with
the notes of Price, London, 1824, 4 vols. 8vo. Ellis’s Specimens
of Early English Metrical Romance, London, 1811, 8vo, Vol. I.
Turner’s Vindication of Ancient British Poems, London, 1803, 8vo.
[354] Turpin, J., De Vitâ Caroli Magni et Rolandi, ed. S. Ciampi,
Florentiæ, 1822, 8vo.
[355] Preface to the “Roman de Rou,” by Robert Wace, ed. F.
Pluquet, Paris, 1827, 8vo, Vol. I.
[356] Letter to M. de Monmerqué, by Paulin Paris, prefixed to “Li
Romans de Berte aux Grans Piés,” Paris, 1836, 8vo.
[357] See, on the whole subject, the Essays of F. W. Valentine
Schmidt; Jahrbücher der Literatur, Vienna, 1824-26, Bände XXVI.
p. 20, XXIX. p. 71, XXXI. p. 99, and XXXIII. p. 16. I shall have
occasion to use the last of these discussions, when speaking of
the Spanish romances belonging to the family of Amadis.
At the period, however, to which we have alluded, and which ends about
the middle of the fourteenth century, there is no reasonable pretence
that any such form of fiction existed in Spain. There, the national
heroes continued to fill the imaginations of men and satisfy their
patriotism. Arthur was not heard of at all, and Charlemagne, when he
appears in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, comes only as that
imaginary invader of Spain who sustained an inglorious defeat in the
gorges of the Pyrenees. But in the next century things are entirely
changed. The romances of France, it is plain, have penetrated into
the Peninsula, and their effects are visible. They were not, indeed,
at first, translated or versified; but they were imitated, and a new
series of fictions was invented, which was soon spread through the
world, and became more famous than either of its predecessors.
This extraordinary family of romances, whose descendants, as Cervantes
says, were innumerable,[358] is the family of which Amadis is the
poetical head and type. Our first notice of it in Spain is from a grave
statesman, Ayala, the Chronicler and Chancellor of Castile, who, as we
have already seen, died in 1407.[359] But the Amadis is of an earlier
date than this fact necessarily implies, though not perhaps earlier
known in Spain. Gomez Eannes de Zurara, Keeper of the Archives of
Portugal in 1454, who wrote three striking chronicles relating to the
affairs of his own country, leaves no substantial doubt that the author
of the Amadis of Gaul was Vasco de Lobeira, a Portuguese gentleman who
was attached to the court of John the First of Portugal, was armed as a
knight by that monarch just before the battle of Aljubarrota, in 1385,
and died in 1403.[360] The words of the honest and careful annalist
are quite distinct on this point. He says he is unwilling to have his
true and faithful book, the “Chronicle of Count Pedro de Meneses,”
confounded with such stories as “the book of Amadis, which was made
entirely at the pleasure of one man, called Vasco de Lobeira, in the
time of the King Don Ferdinand; all the things in the said book being
invented by its author.”[361]
[358] Don Quixote, in his conversation with the curate, (Parte
II. c. 1,) says, that, to defeat any army of two hundred thousand
men, it would only be necessary to have living “alguno de los
del inumerable linage de Amadis de Gaula,”--“any one of the
numberless descendants of Amadis de Gaul.”
[359] Ayala, in his “Rimado de Palacio,” already cited, says:--
Plegomi otrosi oir muchas vegadas
Libros de devaneos e mentiras probadas,
Amadis e Lanzarote, e burlas a sacadas,
En que perdi mi tiempo á mui malas jornadas.
[360] Barbosa, Bib. Lusitana, Lisboa, 1752, fol., Tom. III.
p. 775, and the many authorities there cited, none of which,
perhaps, is of much consequence except that of João de Barros,
who, being a careful historian, born in 1496, and citing an older
author than himself, adds something to the testimony in favor of
Lobeira.
[361] Gomez de Zurara, in the outset of his “Chronicle of the
Conde Don Pedro de Meneses,” says that he wishes to write an
account only of “the things that happened in his own times, or of
those which happened so near to his own times that he could have
true knowledge of them.” This strengthens what he says concerning
Lobeira, in the passage cited in the text from the opening of
Chap. 63 of the Chronicle. The Ferdinand to whom Zurara there
refers was the father of John I. and died in 1383. The Chronicle
of Zurara is published by the Academy of Lisbon, in their
“Colecção de Libros Ineditos de Historia Portuguesa,” Lisboa,
1792, fol., Tom. II. I have a curious manuscript “Dissertation
on the Authorship of the Amadis de Gaula,” by Father Sarmiento,
who wrote the valuable fragment of a History of Spanish Poetry
to which I have often referred. This learned Galician is much
confused and vexed by the question;--first denying that there is
any authority at all for saying Lobeira wrote the Amadis; then
asserting, that, _if_ Lobeira wrote it, he was a Galician; then
successively suggesting that it may have been written by Vasco
Perez de Camões, by the Chancellor Ayala, by Montalvo, or by the
Bishop of Cartagena;--all absurd conjectures, much connected with
his prevailing passion to refer the origin of all Spanish poetry
to Galicia. He does not seem to have been aware of the passage in
Gomez de Zurara.
Whether Lobeira had any older popular tradition or fancies about
Amadis, to quicken his imagination and marshal him the way he should
go, we cannot now tell. He certainly had a knowledge of some of
the old French romances, such as that of the Saint Graal, or Holy
Cup,--the crowning fiction of the Knights of the Round Table,[362]--and
distinctly acknowledges himself to have been indebted to the Infante
Alfonso, who was born in 1370, for an alteration made in the character
of Amadis.[363] But that he was aided, as has been suggested, in any
considerable degree, by fictions known to have been in Picardy in
the eighteenth century, and claimed, without the slightest proof, to
have been there in the twelfth, is an assumption made on too slight
grounds to be seriously considered.[364] We must therefore conclude,
from the few, but plain, facts known in the case, that the Amadis was
originally a Portuguese fiction produced before the year 1400, and that
Vasco de Lobeira was its author.
[362] The Saint Graal, or the Holy Cup which the Saviour used
for the wine of the Last Supper, and which, in the story of
Arthur, is supposed to have been brought to England by Joseph of
Arimathea, is alluded to in Amadis de Gaula (Lib. IV. c. 48).
Arthur himself--“El muy virtuoso rey Artur”--is spoken of in Lib.
I. c. 1, and in Lib. IV. c. 49, where “the Book of Don Tristan
and Launcelot” is also mentioned. Other passages might be cited,
but there can be no doubt the author of Amadis knew some of the
French fictions.
[363] See the end of Chap. 40, Book I., in which he says, “The
Infante Don Alfonso of Portugal, having pity on the fair damsel,
[the Lady Briolana,] ordered it to be otherwise set down, and in
this was done what was his good pleasure.”
[364] Ginguené, Hist. Litt. d’Italie, Paris, 1812, 8vo, Tom. V.
p. 62, note (4), answering the Preface of the Conte de Tressan to
his too free abridgment of the Amadis de Gaula, Œuvres, Paris,
1787, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xxii.
But the Portuguese original can no longer be found. At the end of the
sixteenth century, we are assured, it was extant in manuscript in the
archives of the Dukes of Arveiro at Lisbon; and the same assertion
is renewed, on good authority, about the year 1750. From this time,
however, we lose all trace of it; and the most careful inquiries render
it probable that this curious manuscript, about which there has been so
much discussion, perished in the terrible earthquake and conflagration
of 1755, when the palace occupied by the ducal family of Arveiro was
destroyed with all its precious contents.[365]
[365] The fact that it was in the Arveiro collection is stated in
Ferreira, “Poemas Lusitanas,” (Lisboa, 1598, 4to,) where is the
sonnet, No. 33, by Ferreira in honor of Vasco de Lobeira, which
Southey, in his Preface to his “Amadis of Gaul,” (London, 1803,
12mo, Vol. I. p. vii.,) erroneously attributes to the Infante
Antonio of Portugal, and thus would make it of consequence in the
present discussion. Nic. Antonio, who leaves no doubt as to the
authorship of the sonnet in question, refers to the same note in
Ferreira to prove the deposit of the manuscript of the Amadis;
so that the two constitute only _one_ authority, and not _two_
authorities, as Southey supposes. (Bib. Vetus, Lib. VIII. cap.
vii. sect. 291.) Barbosa is more distinct. (Bib. Lusitana, Tom.
III. p. 775.) But there is a careful summing up of the matter
in Clemencin’s notes to Don Quixote, (Tom. I. pp. 105, 106,)
beyond which it is not likely we shall advance in our knowledge
concerning the fate of the Portuguese original.
The Spanish version, therefore, stands for us in place of the
Portuguese original. It was made between 1492 and 1504, by Garcia
Ordoñez de Montalvo, governor of the city of Medina del Campo, and it
is possible that it was printed for the first time during the same
interval.[366] But no copy of such an edition is known to exist,
nor any one of an edition sometimes cited as having been printed at
Salamanca in 1510;[367] the earliest now accessible to us dating from
1519. Twelve more followed in the course of half a century, so that
the Amadis succeeded, at once, in placing the fortunes of its family
on the sure foundations of popular favor in Spain. It was translated
into Italian in 1546, and was again successful; six editions of it
appearing in that language in less than thirty years.[368] In France,
beginning with the first attempt in 1540, it became such a favorite,
that its reputation there has not yet wholly faded away;[369] while,
elsewhere in Europe, a multitude of translations and imitations have
followed, that seem to stretch out the line of the family, as Don
Quixote declares, from the age immediately after the introduction of
Christianity down almost to that in which he himself lived.[370]
[366] In his Prólogo, Montalvo alludes to the conquest of Granada
in 1492, and to _both_ the Catholic sovereigns as still alive,
one of whom, Isabella, died in 1504.
[367] I doubt whether the _Salamanca_ edition of 1510, mentioned
by Barbosa, (article _Vasco de Lobeira_,) is not, after all, the
edition of 1519 mentioned in Brunet as printed by _Antonio de
Salamanca_. The error in printing, or copying, would be small,
and nobody but Barbosa seems to have heard of the one he notices.
When the first edition appeared is quite uncertain.
[368] Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi degli antichi Romanzi di
Cavalleria, (Milano, 1829, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 242,) and Brunet’s
Manuel; to all which should be added the “Amadigi” of Bernardo
Tasso, 1560, constructed almost entirely from the Spanish
romance; a poem which, though no longer popular, had much
reputation in its time, and is still much praised by Ginguené.
[369] For the old French version, see Brunet’s “Manuel du
Libraire”; but Count Tressan’s _rifacimento_, first printed in
1779, has kept it familiar to French readers down to our own
times. In German it was known from 1583, and in English from
1619; but the abridgment of it by Southey (London, 1803, 4 vols.
12mo) is the only form of it in English that can now be read.
It was also translated into Dutch; and Castro, somewhere in his
“Biblioteca,” speaks of a Hebrew translation of it.
[370] “Casi que _en nuestros dias_ vimos y comunicamos y oimos
al invencible y valeroso caballero D. Belianis de Grecia,” says
the mad knight, when he gets to be maddest, and follows out the
consequence of making Amadis live above two hundred years and
have descendants innumerable. Parte I. c. 13.
The translation of Montalvo does not seem to have been very literal.
It was, as he intimates, much better than the Portuguese in its style
and phraseology; and the last part especially appears to have been more
altered than either of the others.[371] But the structure and tone of
the whole fiction are original, and much more free than those of the
French romances that had preceded it. The story of Arthur and the Holy
Cup is essentially religious; the story of Charlemagne is essentially
military; and both are involved in a series of adventures previously
ascribed to their respective heroes by chronicles and traditions,
which, whether true or false, were so far recognized as to prescribe
limits to the invention of all who subsequently adopted them. But the
Amadis is of imagination all compact. No period of time is assigned
to its events, except that they begin to occur soon after the very
commencement of the Christian era; and its geography is generally as
unsettled and uncertain as the age when its hero lived. It has no
purpose, indeed, but to set forth the character of a perfect knight,
and to illustrate the virtues of courage and chastity as the only
proper foundations of such a character.
[371] Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. 107, note.
Amadis, in fulfilment of this idea, is the son of a merely imaginary
king of the imaginary kingdom of Gaula. His birth is illegitimate,
and his mother, Elisena, a British princess, ashamed of her child,
exposes him on the sea, where he is found by a Scottish knight, and
carried, first to England, and afterwards to Scotland. In Scotland
he falls in love with Oriana, the true and peerless lady, daughter
of an imaginary Lisuarte, King of England. Meantime, Perion, King
of Gaula, which has sometimes been conjectured to be a part of
Wales, has married the mother of Amadis, who has by him a second
son, named Galaor. The adventures of these two knights, partly in
England, France, Germany, and Turkey, and partly in unknown regions
and amidst enchantments,--sometimes under the favor of their ladies,
and sometimes, as in the hermitage of the Firm Island, under their
frowns,--fill up the book, which, after the broad journeyings of the
principal knights, and an incredible number of combats between them and
other knights, magicians, and giants, ends, at last, in the marriage of
Amadis and Oriana, and the overthrow of all the enchantments that had
so long opposed their love.
The Amadis is admitted, by general consent, to be the best of all the
old romances of chivalry. One reason of this is, that it is more true
to the manners and spirit of the age of knighthood; but the principal
reason is, no doubt, that it is written with a more free invention, and
takes a greater variety in its tones than is found in other similar
works. It even contains, sometimes,--what we should hardly expect
in this class of wild fictions,--passages of natural tenderness and
beauty, such as the following description of the young loves of Amadis
and Oriana.
“Now Lisuarte brought with him to Scotland Brisena, his wife, and a
daughter that he had by her when he dwelt in Denmark, named Oriana,
about ten years old, and the fairest creature that ever was seen; so
fair, that she was called ‘Without Peer,’ since in her time there
was none equal to her. And because she suffered much from the sea,
he consented to leave her there, asking the King, Languines, and his
Queen, that they would have care of her. And they were made very glad
therewith, and the Queen said, ‘Trust me that I will have such a care
of her as her mother would.’ And Lisuarte, entering into his ships,
made haste back into Great Britain, and found there some who had made
disturbances, such as are wont to be in such cases. And for this cause,
he remembered him not of his daughter, for some space of time. But at
last, with much toil that he took, he obtained his kingdom, and he was
the best king that ever was before his time, nor did any afterwards
better maintain knighthood in its rights, till King Arthur reigned, who
surpassed all the kings before him in goodness, though the number that
reigned between these two was great.
“And now the author leaves Lisuarte reigning in peace and quietness in
Great Britain, and turns to the Child of the Sea, [Amadis,] who was
twelve years old, but in size and limbs seemed to be fifteen. He served
before the Queen, and was much loved of her, as he was of all ladies
and damsels. But as soon as Oriana, the daughter of King Lisuarte, came
there, she gave to her the Child of the Sea, that he should serve her,
saying, ‘This is a child who shall serve you.’ And she answered, that
it pleased her. And the child kept this word in his heart, in such wise
that it never afterwards left it; and, as this history truly says, he
was never, in all the days of his life, wearied with serving her. And
this their love lasted as long as they lasted; but the Child of the
Sea, who knew not at all how she loved him, held himself to be very
bold, in that he had placed his thoughts on her, considering both her
greatness and her beauty, and never so much as dared to speak any word
to her concerning it. And she, though she loved him in her heart, took
heed that she should not speak with him more than with another; but her
eyes took great solace in showing to her heart what thing in the world
she most loved.
“Thus lived they silently together, neither saying aught to the other
of their estate. Then came, at last, the time when the Child of the
Sea, as I now tell you, understood within himself that he might take
arms, if any there were that would make him a knight. And this he
desired, because he considered that he should thus become such a man
and should do such things, as that either he should perish in them,
or, if he lived, then his lady should deal gently with him. And with
this desire he went to the King, who was in his garden, and, kneeling
before him, said, ‘Sire, if it please you, it is now time that I
should be made a knight.’ And the king said, ‘How, Child of the Sea,
do you already adventure to maintain knighthood? Know that it is a
light matter to come by it, but a weighty thing to maintain it. And
whoso seeks to get this name of knighthood and maintain it in its
honor, he hath to do so many and such grievous things, that often his
heart is wearied out; and if he should be such a knight, that, from
faint-heartedness or cowardice, he should fail to do what is beseeming,
then it would be better for him to die than to live in his shame.
Therefore I hold it good that you wait yet a little.’ But the Child of
the Sea said to him, ‘Neither for all this will I fail to be a knight;
for, if I had not already thought to fulfil this that you have said, my
heart would not so have striven to be a knight.’”[372]
[372] Amadis de Gaula, Lib. I. c. 4.
Other passages of quite a different character are no less striking,
as, for instance, that in which the fairy Urganda comes in her
fire-galleys,[373] and that in which the venerable Nasciano visits
Oriana;[374] but the most characteristic are those that illustrate the
spirit of chivalry, and inculcate the duties of princes and knights.
In these portions of the work, there is sometimes a lofty tone that
rises to eloquence,[375] and sometimes a sad one full of earnestness
and truth.[376] The general story, too, is more simple and effective
than the stories of the old French romances of chivalry. Instead
of distracting our attention by the adventures of a great number
of knights, whose claims are nearly equal, it is kept fastened on
two, whose characters are well preserved;--Amadis, the model of all
chivalrous virtues, and his brother, Don Galaor, hardly less perfect as
a knight in the field, but by no means so faithful in his loves;--and,
in this way, it has a more epic proportion in its several parts, and
keeps up our interest to the end more successfully than any of its
followers or rivals.
[373] Lib. II. c. 17.
[374] Lib. IV. c. 32.
[375] See Lib. II. c. 13, Lib. IV. c. 14, and in many other
places, exhortations to knightly and princely virtues.
[376] See the mourning about his own time, as a period of great
suffering (Lib. IV. c. 53). This could not have been a just
description of any part of the reign of the Catholic kings in
Spain; and must therefore, I suppose, have been in the original
work of Lobeira, and have referred to troubles in Portugal.
The great objection to the Amadis is one that must be made to all of
its class. We are wearied by its length, and by the constant recurrence
of similar adventures and dangers, in which, as we foresee, the hero is
certain to come off victorious. But this length and these repetitions
seemed no fault when it first appeared, or for a long time afterwards.
For romantic fiction, the only form of elegant literature which modern
times have added to the marvellous inventions of Greek genius, was then
recent and fresh; and the few who read for amusement rejoiced even in
the least graceful of its creations, as vastly nearer to the hearts and
thoughts of men educated in the institutions of knighthood than any
glimpses they had thus far caught of the severe glories of antiquity.
The Amadis, therefore,--as we may easily learn by the notices of it
from the time when the great Chancellor of Castile mourned that he had
wasted his leisure over its idle fancies, down to the time when the
whole sect disappeared before the avenging satire of Cervantes,--was a
work of extraordinary popularity in Spain; and one which, during the
two centuries of its greatest favor, was more read than any other book
in the language.
Nor should it be forgotten that Cervantes himself was not insensible
to its merits. The first book that, as he tells us, was taken from
the shelves of Don Quixote, when the curate, the barber, and the
housekeeper began the expurgation of his library, was the Amadis
de Gaula. “‘There is something mysterious about this matter,’ said
the curate; ‘for, as I have heard, this was the first book of
knight-errantry that was printed in Spain, and all the others have
had their origin and source here, so that, as the arch-heretic of so
mischievous a sect, I think he should, without a hearing, be condemned
to the fire.’ ‘No, Sir,’ said the barber, ‘for I, too, have heard that
it is the best of all the books of its kind that have been written,
and therefore, for its singularity, it ought to be forgiven.’ ‘That
is the truth,’ answered the curate, ‘and so let us spare it for the
present’”;--a decision which, on the whole, has been confirmed by
posterity, and precisely for the reason Cervantes has assigned.[377]
[377] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6. Cervantes, however, is mistaken
in his bibliography, when he says that the Amadis was the _first_
book of chivalry printed in Spain. It has often been noted that
this distinction belongs to “Tirant lo Blanch,” 1490; though
Southey (Omniana, London, 1812, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 219) thinks
“there is a total want of the spirit of chivalry” in it; and it
should further be noted now, as curious facts, that “Tirant lo
Blanch,” though it appeared in Valencian in 1490, in Castilian
in 1511, and in Italian in 1538, was yet, like the Amadis,
originally written in Portuguese, to please a Portuguese prince,
and that this Portuguese original is now lost;--all remarkable
coincidences. See note on Chap. XVII. of this Period. On the
point of the general merits of the Amadis, two opinions are worth
citing. The first, on its style, is by the severe anonymous
author of the “Diálogo de las Lenguas,” temp. Charles V., who,
after discussing the general character of the book, adds, “It
should be read by those who wish to learn our language.” (Mayans
y Siscar, Orígenes, Madrid, 1737, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 163.) The
other, on its invention and story, is by Torquato Tasso, who
says of the Amadis, “In the opinion of many, and particularly
in my own opinion, it is the most beautiful, and perhaps the
most profitable, story of its kind that can be read, because, in
its sentiment and tone, it leaves all others behind it, and, in
the variety of its incidents, yields to none written before or
since.” Apologia della Gerusalemme, Opere, Pisa, 1824, 8vo, Tom.
X. p. 7.
But before Montalvo published his translation of the Amadis, and
perhaps before he had made it, he had written a continuation, which
he announced in the Preface to the Amadis as its fifth book. It is an
original work, about one third part as long as the Amadis, and contains
the story of the son of that hero and Oriana, named Esplandian, whose
birth and education had already been given in the story of his father’s
adventures, and constitute one of its pleasantest episodes. But, as the
curate says, when he comes to this romance in Don Quixote’s library,
“the merits of the father must not be imputed to the son.” The story of
Esplandian has neither freshness, spirit, nor dignity in it. It opens
at the point where he is left in the original fiction, just armed as
a knight, and is filled with his adventures as he wanders about the
world, and with the supernumerary achievements of his father Amadis,
who survives to the end of the whole, and sees his son made Emperor
of Constantinople; he himself having long before become King of Great
Britain by the death of Lisuarte.[378]
[378] I possess of “Esplandian” the curious edition printed at
Burgos, in folio, double columns, 1587, by Simon de Aguaya. It
fills 136 leaves, and is divided into 184 chapters. As in the
other editions I have seen mentioned or have noticed in public
libraries, it is called “_Las Sergas_ del muy Esforçado Cavallero
Esplandian,” in order to give it the learned appearance of having
really been translated, as it pretends to be, from the Greek of
Master Elisabad;--“Sergas” being evidently an awkward corruption
of the Greek Ἔργα, _works_ or _achievements_. Allusions are made
to it, as to a continuation, in the Amadis, Lib. IV.; besides
which, in Lib. III. cap. 4, we have the birth and baptism
of Esplandian; in Lib. III. c. 8, his marvellous growth and
progress; and so on, till, in the last chapter of the romance, he
is armed as a knight. So that the Esplandian is, in the strictest
manner, a continuation of the Amadis. Southey (Omniana, Vol. I.
p. 145) thinks there is some error about the authorship of the
Esplandian. If there is, I think it is merely typographical.
But, from the beginning, we find two mistakes committed, which run
through the whole work. Amadis, represented as still alive, fills a
large part of the canvas; while, at the same time, Esplandian is
made to perform achievements intended to be more brilliant than his
father’s, but which, in fact, are only more extravagant. From this
sort of emulation, the work becomes a succession of absurd and frigid
impossibilities. Many of the characters of the Amadis are preserved in
it, like Lisuarte, who is rescued out of a mysterious imprisonment by
Esplandian as his first adventure; Urganda, who, from a graceful fairy,
becomes a savage enchantress; and “the great master Elisabad,” a man of
learning and a priest, whom we first knew as the leech of Amadis, and
who is now the pretended biographer of his son, writing, as he says, in
Greek. But none of them, and none of the characters invented for the
occasion, are managed with skill.
The scene of the whole work is laid chiefly in the East, amidst battles
with Turks and Mohammedans; thus showing to what quarter the minds
of men were turned when it was written, and what were the dangers
apprehended to the peace of Europe, even in its westernmost borders,
during the century after the fall of Constantinople. But all reference
to real history or real geography was apparently thought inappropriate,
as may be inferred from the circumstances, that a certain Calafria,
queen of the island of California, is made a formidable enemy of
Christendom through a large part of the story; and that Constantinople
is said at one time to have been besieged by three millions of heathen.
Nor is the style better than the story. The eloquence which is found in
many passages of the Amadis is not found at all in Esplandian. On the
contrary, large portions of it are written in a low and meagre style,
and the rhymed arguments prefixed to many of the chapters are any thing
but poetry, and quite inferior to the few passages of verse scattered
through the Amadis.[379]
[379] There are two _Canciones_ in Amadis, (Lib. II. c. 8 and c.
11,) which, notwithstanding something of the conceits of their
time, in the Provençal manner, are quite charming, and ought to
be placed among the similar _Canciones_ in the “Floresta” of Bohl
de Faber. The last begins,--
Leonoreta, fin roseta,
Blanca sobre toda flor;
Fin roseta, no me meta
En tal cuyta vuestro amor.
The oldest edition of the Esplandian now known to exist was printed in
1526, and five others appeared before the end of the century; so that
it seems to have enjoyed its full share of popular favor. At any rate,
the example it set was quickly followed. Its principal personages were
made to figure again in a series of connected romances, each having
a hero descended from Amadis, who passes through adventures more
incredible than any of his predecessors, and then gives place, we know
not why, to a son still more extravagant, and, if the phrase may be
used, still more impossible, than his father. Thus, in the same year
1526, we have the sixth book of Amadis de Gaula, called “The History of
Florisando,” his nephew, which is followed by the still more wonderful
“Lisuarte of Greece, Son of Esplandian,” and the most wonderful “Amadis
of Greece,” making respectively the seventh and eighth books. To these
succeeded “Don Florisel de Niquea,” and “Anaxartes, Son of Lisuarte,”
whose history, with that of the children of the last, fills three
books; and finally we have the twelfth book, or “The Great Deeds in
Arms of that Bold Knight, Don Silves de la Selva,” which was printed in
1549; thus giving proof how extraordinary was the success of the whole
series, since its date allows hardly half a century for the production
in Spanish of all these vast romances, most of which, during the same
period, appeared in several, and some of them in many editions.
Nor did the effects of the passion thus awakened stop here. Other
romances appeared, belonging to the same family, though not coming
into the regular line of succession, such as a duplicate of the
seventh book on Lisuarte, by the Canon Diaz, in 1526, and “Leandro the
Fair,” in 1563, by Pedro de Luxan, which has sometimes been called
the thirteenth; while in France, where they were all translated
successively, as they appeared in Spain, and became instantly famous,
the proper series of the Amadis romances was stretched out into
twenty-four books; after all which, a certain Sieur Duverdier, grieved
that many of them came to no regular catastrophe, collected the
scattered and broken threads of their multitudinous stories and brought
them all to an orderly sequence of conclusions, in seven large volumes,
under the comprehensive and appropriate name of the “Roman des Romans.”
And so ends the history of the Portuguese type of Amadis of Gaul, as
it was originally presented to the world in the Spanish romances of
chivalry; a fiction which, considering the passionate admiration it so
long excited, and the influence it has, with little merit of its own,
exercised on the poetry and romance of modern Europe ever since, is a
phenomenon that has no parallel in literary history.[380]
[380] The whole subject of these twelve books of Amadis in
Spanish and the twenty-four in French belongs rather to
bibliography than to literary history, and is among the most
obscure points in both. The twelve Spanish books are said by
Brunet never to have been all seen by any one bibliographer. I
have seen, I believe, seven or eight of them, and own the only
two for which any real value has ever been claimed,--the Amadis
de Gaula, in the rare and well-printed edition of Venice, 1533,
folio, and the Esplandian in the more rare, but very coarse,
edition already referred to. When the earliest edition of either
of them, or of most of the others, was printed cannot, I presume,
be determined. One of Esplandian, of 1510, is mentioned by N.
Antonio, but by nobody else in the century and a half that have
since elapsed; and he is so inaccurate in such matters, that his
authority is not sufficient. In the same way, he is the only
authority for an edition in 1525 of the seventh book,--“Lisuarte
of Greece.” But, as the twelfth book was certainly printed in
1549, the only fact of much importance is settled; viz., that the
whole twelve were published in Spain in the course of about half
a century. For all the curious learning on the subject, however,
see an article by Salvá, in the Repertorio Americano, Lóndres,
Agosto de 1827, pp. 29-39; F. A. Ebert, Lexicon, Leipzig, 1821,
4to, Nos. 479-489; Brunet, article _Amadis_; and, especially, the
remarkable discussion, already referred to, by F. W. V. Schmidt,
in the Wiener Jahrbücher, Band XXXIII. 1826.
The state of manners and opinion in Spain, however, which produced
this extraordinary series of romances, could hardly fail to be fertile
in other fictitious heroes, less brilliant, perhaps, in their fame
than was Amadis, but with the same general qualities and attributes.
And such, indeed, was the case. Many romances of chivalry appeared in
Spain, soon after the success of this their great leader; and others
followed a little later. The first of all of them in consequence, if
not in date, is “Palmerin de Oliva”; a personage the more important,
because he had a train of descendants that place him, beyond all doubt,
next in dignity to Amadis.
The Palmerin has often, perhaps generally, been regarded as Portuguese
in its origin, and as the work of a lady; though the proof of each of
these allegations is somewhat imperfect. If, however, the facts be
really as they have been stated, not the least curious circumstance in
relation to them is, that, as in the case of the Amadis, the Portuguese
original of the Palmerin is lost, and the first and only knowledge we
have of its story is from the Spanish version. Even in this version,
we can trace it up no higher than to the edition printed at Seville in
1525, which was certainly not the first.
But whenever it may have been first published, it was successful.
Several editions were soon printed in Spanish, and translations
followed in Italian and French. A continuation, too, appeared,
called, in form, “The Second Book of Palmerin,” which treats of the
achievements of his sons, Primaleon and Polendos, and of which we
have an edition in Spanish, dated in 1524. The external appearances of
the Palmerin, therefore, announce at once an imitation of the Amadis.
The internal are no less decisive. Its hero, we are told, was grandson
to a Greek emperor in Constantinople, but, being illegitimate, was
exposed by his mother, immediately after his birth, on a mountain,
where he was found, in an osier cradle among olive and palm trees, by
a rich cultivator of bees, who carried him home and named him Palmerin
de Oliva, from the place where he was discovered. He soon gives token
of his high birth; and, making himself famous by numberless exploits,
in Germany, England, and the East, against heathen and enchanters, he
at last reaches Constantinople, where he is recognized by his mother,
marries the daughter of the Emperor of Germany, who is the heroine
of the story, and inherits the crown of Byzantium. The adventures of
Primaleon and Polendos, which seem to be by the same unknown author,
are in the same vein, and were succeeded by those of Platir, grandson
of Palmerin, which were printed as early as 1533. All, taken together,
therefore, leave no doubt that the Amadis was their model, however much
they may have fallen short of its merits.[381]
[381] Like whatever relates to the series of the Amadis, the
account of the Palmerins is very obscure. Materials for it are
to be found in N. Antonio, Bibliotheca Nova, Tom. II. p. 393;
in Salvá, Repertorio Americano, Tom. IV. pp. 39, etc.; Brunet,
article _Palmerin_; Ferrario, Romanzi di Cavalleria, Tom. IV. pp.
256, etc.: and Clemencin, notes to Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. 124,
125.
The next in the series, “Palmerin of England,” son of Don Duarde,
or Edward, King of England, and Flerida, a daughter of Palmerin de
Oliva, is a more formidable rival to the Amadis than either of its
predecessors. For a long time it was supposed to have been first
written in Portuguese, and was generally attributed to Francisco
Moraes, who certainly published it in that language at Evora, in 1567,
and whose allegation that he had translated it from the French, though
now known to be true, was supposed to be only a modest concealment of
his own merits. But a copy of the Spanish original, printed at Toledo,
in two parts, in 1547 and 1548, has been discovered, and at the end of
its dedication are a few verses addressed by the author to the reader,
announcing it, in an acrostic, to be the work of Luis Hurtado, known to
have been, at that time, a poet in Toledo.[382]
[382] The fate of Palmerin of England has been a very strange
one. Until a few years since, the only question was, whether it
were originally French or Portuguese; for the oldest forms in
which it was then known to exist were, 1. the French by Jacques
Vicent, 1553, and the Italian by Mambrino Roseo, 1555, both of
which claimed to be translations from the Spanish; and, 2. the
Portuguese by Moraes, 1567, which claimed to be translated from
the French. In general, it was supposed to be the work of Moraes,
who, having long lived in France, was thought to have furnished
his manuscript to the French translator, (Barbosa, Bib. Lus.,
Tom. II. p. 209,) and, under this persuasion, it was published as
his, in Portuguese, at Lisbon, in three handsome volumes, small
4to, 1786, and in English, by Southey, London, 1807, 4 vols.
12mo. Even Clemencin, (ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. 125, 126,)
if he did not think it to be the work of Moraes, had no doubt
that it was originally Portuguese. At last, however, Salvá found
a copy of the lost Spanish original, which settles the question,
and places the date of the work in 1547-48, Toledo, 3 tom. folio.
(Repertorio Americano, Tom. IV. pp. 42-46.) The little we know of
its author, Luis Hurtado, is to be found in Antonio, Bib. Nov.,
Tom. II. p. 44, where one of his works, “Cortes del Casto Amor
y de la Muerte,” is said to have been printed in 1557. He also
translated the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid.
Regarded as a work of art, Palmerin of England is second only to
the Amadis of Gaul, among the romances of chivalry. Like that
great prototype of the whole class, it has among its actors two
brothers,--Palmerin, the faithful knight, and Florian, the free
gallant,--and, like that, it has its great magician, Deliante, and its
perilous isle, where occur not a few of the most agreeable adventures
of its heroes. In some respects, it may be favorably distinguished
from its model. There is more sensibility to the beauties of natural
scenery in it, and often an easier dialogue, with quite as good a
drawing of individual characters. But it has greater faults; for its
movement is less natural and spirited, and it is crowded with an
unreasonable number of knights, and an interminable series of duels,
battles, and exploits, all of which claim to be founded on authentic
English chronicles and to be true history, thus affording new proof
of the connection between the old chronicles and the oldest romances.
Cervantes admired it excessively. “Let this Palm of England,” says his
curate, “be cared for and preserved, as a thing singular in its kind,
and let a casket be made for it, like that which Alexander found among
the spoils of Darius, and destined to keep in it the works of the poet
Homer”; praise, no doubt, much stronger than can now seem reasonable,
but marking, at least, the sort of estimation in which the romance
itself must have been generally held, when the Don Quixote appeared.
But the family of Palmerin had no further success in Spain. A third
and fourth part, indeed, containing “The Adventures of Duardos the
Second,” appeared in Portuguese, written by Diogo Fernandez, in 1587;
and a fifth and sixth are said to have been written by Alvarez do
Oriente, a contemporary poet of no mean reputation. But the last two do
not seem to have been printed, and none of them were much known beyond
the limits of their native country.[383] The Palmerins, therefore,
notwithstanding the merits of one of them, failed to obtain a fame or a
succession that could enter into competition with those of Amadis and
his descendants.
[383] Barbosa, Bib. Lusit., Tom. I. p. 652, Tom. II. p. 17.
* * * * *
The “Bibliotheca Hispana” has already been referred to more than
once in this chapter, and must so often be relied on as an authority
hereafter that some notice of its claims should be given before we
proceed farther. Its author, Nicolas Antonio, was born at Seville, in
1617. He was educated, first by the care of Francisco Jimenez, a blind
teacher, of singular merit, attached to the College of St. Thomas in
that city; and afterwards at Salamanca, where he devoted himself with
success to the study of history and canon law. When he had completed an
honorable career at the University, he returned home, and lived chiefly
in the Convent of the Benedictines, where he had been bred, and where
an abundant and curious library furnished him with means for study,
which he used with eagerness and assiduity.
He was not, however, in haste to be known. He published nothing till
1659, when, at the age of forty-two, he printed a Latin treatise on
the Punishment of Exile, and, the same year, was appointed to the
honorable and important post of General Agent of Philip IV. at Rome.
But from this time to the end of his life he was in the public service,
and filled places of no little responsibility. In Rome he lived twenty
years, collecting about him a library said to have been second in
importance only to that of the Vatican, and devoting all his leisure to
the studies he loved. At the end of that period, he returned to Madrid,
and continued there in honorable employments till his death, which
occurred in 1684. He left behind him several works in manuscript, of
which his “Censura de Historias Fabulosas”--an examination and exposure
of several forged chronicles which had appeared in the preceding
century--was first published by Mayans y Siscar, and must be noticed
hereafter.
But his great labor--the labor of his life and of his fondest
preference--was his literary history of his own country. He began it
in his youth, while he was still living with the Benedictines,--an
order in the Romish Church honorably distinguished by its zeal in the
history of letters,--and he continued it, employing on his task all the
resources which his own large library and the libraries of the capitals
of Spain and of the Christian world could furnish him, down to the
moment of his death. He divided it into two parts. The first, beginning
with the age of Augustus, and coming down to the year 1500, was found,
after his death, digested into the form of a regular history; but as
his pecuniary means, during his lifetime, had been entirely devoted to
the purchase of books, it was published by his friend Cardinal Aguirre,
at Rome, in 1696. The second part, which had been already printed
there, in 1672, is thrown into the form of a dictionary, whose separate
articles are arranged, like those in most other Spanish works of the
same sort, under the baptismal names of their subjects,--an honor shown
to the saints, which renders the use of such dictionaries somewhat
inconvenient, even when, as in the case of Antonio’s, full indexes are
added, which facilitate a reference to the respective articles by the
more common arrangement, according to the surnames.
Of both parts an excellent edition was published in the original Latin,
at Madrid, in 1787 and 1788, in four volumes, folio, commonly known as
the “Bibliotheca Vetus et Nova of Nicolas Antonio”; the first being
enriched with notes by Perez Bayer, a learned Valencian, long the
head of the Royal Library at Madrid; and the last receiving additions
from Antonio’s own manuscripts that bring down his notices of Spanish
writers to the time of his death in 1684. In the earlier portion,
embracing the names of about thirteen hundred authors, little remains
to be desired, so far as the Roman or the ecclesiastical literary
history of Spain is concerned; but for the Arabic we must go to Casiri
and Gayangos, and for the Jewish to Castro and Amador de los Rios;
while, for the proper Spanish literature that existed before the reign
of Charles V., manuscripts discovered since the careful labors of Bayer
furnish important additions. In the latter portion, which contains
notices of nearly eight thousand writers of the best period of Spanish
literature, we have--notwithstanding the occasional inaccuracies and
oversights inevitable in a work so vast and so various--a monument of
industry, fairness, and fidelity, for which those who most use it will
always be most grateful. The two, taken together, constitute their
author, beyond all reasonable question, the father and founder of the
literary history of his country.
See the lives of Antonio prefixed by Mayans to the “Historias
Fabulosas,” (Valencia, 1742, fol.,) and by Bayer to the “Bibliotheca
Vetus,” in 1787.
CHAPTER XII.
OTHER ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.--LEPOLEMO.--TRANSLATIONS FROM THE
FRENCH.--RELIGIOUS ROMANCES.--CAVALLERÍA CELESTIAL.--PERIOD DURING
WHICH ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY PREVAILED.--THEIR NUMBER.--THEIR FOUNDATION
IN THE STATE OF SOCIETY.--THE PASSION FOR THEM.--THEIR FATE.
Although the Palmerins failed as rivals of the great family of Amadis,
they were not without their influence and consideration. Like the
other works of their class, and more than most of them, they helped
to increase the passion for fictions of chivalry in general, which,
overbearing every other in the Peninsula, was now busily at work
producing romances, both original and translated, that astonish us
alike by their number, their length, and their absurdities. Of those
originally Spanish, it would not be difficult, after setting aside the
two series belonging to the families of Amadis and Palmerin, to collect
the names of about forty; all produced in the course of the sixteenth
century. Some of them are still more or less familiar to us, by their
names at least, such as “Belianis of Greece” and “Olivante de Laura,”
which are found in Don Quixote’s library, and “Felixmarte of Hircania,”
which was once, we are told, the summer reading of Dr. Johnson.[384]
But, in general, like “The Renowned Knight Cifar” and “The Bold
Knight Claribalte,” their very titles sound strangely to our ears, and
excite no interest when we hear them repeated. Most of them, it may be
added,--perhaps all,--deserve the oblivion into which they have fallen;
though some have merits which, in the days of their popularity, placed
them near the best of those already noticed.
[384] Bishop Percy says that Dr. Johnson read “Felixmarte of
Hircania” quite through, when at his parsonage-house, one summer.
It may be doubted whether the book has been read through since by
any Englishman. Boswell’s Life, ed. Croker, London, 1831, 8vo,
Vol. I. p. 24.
Among the latter is “The Invincible Knight Lepolemo, called the Knight
of the Cross and Son of the Emperor of Germany”; a romance, which was
published as early as 1525, and, besides drawing a continuation after
it, was reprinted thrice in the course of the century, and translated
into French and Italian.[385] It is a striking book among those of
its class, not only from the variety of fortunes through which the
hero passes, but, in some degree, from its general tone and purpose.
In his infancy Lepolemo is stolen from the shelter of the throne to
which he is heir, and completely lost for a long period. During this
time he lives among the heathen; at first in slavery, and afterwards
as an honorable knight-adventurer at the court of the Soldan. By his
courage and merit he rises to great distinction, and, while on a
journey through France, is recognized by his own family, who happen to
be there. Of course he is restored, amidst a general jubilee, to his
imperial estate.
[385] Ebert cites the first edition known as of 1525; Bowle, in
the list of his authorities, gives one of 1534; Clemencin says
there is one of 1543 in the Royal Library at Madrid; and Pellicer
used one of 1562. Which of these I have I do not know, as the
colophon is gone and there is no date on the title-page; but its
type and paper seem to indicate an edition from Antwerp, while
all the preceding were printed in Spain.
In all this, and especially in the wearisome series of its knightly
adventures, the Lepolemo has a sufficient resemblance to the other
romances of chivalry. But in two points it differs from them. In the
first place, it pretends to be translated by Pedro de Luxan, its real
author, from the Arabic of a wise magician attached to the person
of the Sultan; and yet it represents its hero throughout as a most
Christian knight, and his father and mother, the Emperor and Empress,
as giving the force of their example to encourage pilgrimages to the
Holy Sepulchre; making the whole story subserve the projects of the
Church, in the same way, if not to the same degree, that Turpin’s
Chronicle had done. And in the next place, it attracts our attention,
from time to time, by a picturesque air and touches of the national
manners, as, for instance, in the love passages between the Knight of
the Cross and the Infanta of France, in one of which he talks to her
at her grated balcony in the night, as if he were a cavalier of one of
Calderon’s comedies.[386] Except in these points, however, the Lepolemo
is much like its predecessors and followers, and quite as tedious.
[386] See Parte I. c. 112, 144.
Spain, however, not only gave romances of chivalry to the rest of
Europe in large numbers, but received also from abroad in some good
proportion to what she gave. From the first, the early French fictions
were known in Spain, as we have seen by the allusions to them in the
“Amadis de Gaula”; a circumstance that may have been owing either to
the old connection with France through the Burgundian family, a branch
of which filled the throne of Portugal, or to some strange accident,
like the one that carried “Palmerin de Inglaterra” to Portugal from
France rather than from Spain, its native country. At any rate,
somewhat later, when the passion for such fictions was more developed,
the French stories were translated or imitated in Spanish, and became
a part, and a favored part, of the literature of the country. “The
Romance of Merlin” was printed very early,--as early as 1498,--and “The
Romance of Tristan de Leonnais,” and that of the Holy Cup, “La Demanda
del Sancto Grial,” followed it as a sort of natural sequence.[387]
[387] “Merlin,” 1498, “Artus,” 1501, “Tristan,” 1528, “Sancto
Grial,” 1555, and “Segunda Tabla Redonda,” 1567, would seem to
be the series of them given by the bibliographers. But the last
cannot, perhaps, now be found, though mentioned by Quadrio,
who, in his fourth volume, has a good deal of curious matter
on these old romances generally. I do not think it needful to
notice others, such as “Pierres y Magalona,” 1526, “Tallante de
Ricamonte,” and the “Conde Tomillas,”--the last referred to in
Don Quixote, but otherwise unknown.
The rival story of Charlemagne, however,--perhaps from the greatness
of his name,--seems to have been, at last, more successful. It is a
translation directly from the French, and therefore gives none of
those accounts of his defeat at Roncesvalles by Bernardo del Carpio,
which, in the old Spanish chronicles and ballads, so gratified the
national vanity; and contains only the accustomed stories of Oliver
and Fierabras the Giant; of Orlando and the False Ganelon; relying, of
course, on the fabulous Chronicle of Turpin as its chief authority.
But, such as it was, it found great favor at the time it appeared;
and such, in fact, as Nicolas de Piamonte gave it to the world, in
1528, under the title of “The History of the Emperor Charlemagne,”
it has been constantly reprinted down to our own times, and has done
more than any other tale of chivalry to keep alive in Spain a taste
for such reading.[388] During a considerable period, however, a few
other romances shared its popularity. “Reynaldos de Montalban,” for
instance, always a favorite hero in Spain, was one of them;[389] and a
little later we find another, the story of “Cleomadez,” an invention of
a French queen in the thirteenth century, which first gave to Froissart
the love for adventure that made him a chronicler.[390]
[388] Discussions on the origin of these stories may be found in
the Preface to the excellent edition of Einhard or Eginhard by
Ideler (Hamburg, 1839, 8vo, Band I. pp. 40-46). The very name,
_Roncesvalles_, does not seem to have occurred out of Spain till
much later. (Ibid., p. 169.) There is an edition of the “Carlo
Magno” printed at Madrid, in 1806, 12mo, evidently for popular
use, and I notice others since.
[389] There are several editions of the First Part of it
mentioned in Clemencin’s notes to Don Quixote (Parte I. c. 6);
besides which, it had succession, in Parts II. and III., before
1558.
[390] The “Cleomadez,” one of the most popular stories in Europe
for three centuries, was composed by Adenez, at the dictation
of Marie, queen of Philip III. of France, who married her in
1272. (Fauchet, Recueil, Paris, 1581, folio, Liv. II. c. 116.)
Froissart gives a simple account of his reading and admiring it
in his youth. Poésies, Paris, 1829, 8vo, pp. 206, etc.
In most of the imitations and translations just noticed, the influence
of the Church is more visible than it is in the class of the original
Spanish romances. This is the case, from its very subject, with the
story of the Saint Graal, and with that of Charlemagne, which, so
far as it is taken from the pretended Archbishop Turpin’s Chronicle,
goes mainly to encourage founding religious houses and making pious
pilgrimages. But the Church was not satisfied with this indirect
and accidental influence. Romantic fiction, though overlooked in
its earliest beginnings, or perhaps even punished by ecclesiastical
authority in the person of the Greek Bishop to whom we owe the
first proper romance,[391] was now become important, and might be
made directly useful. Religious romances, therefore, were written.
In general, they were cast into the form of allegories, like “The
Celestial Chivalry,” “The Christian Chivalry,” “The Knight of the
Bright Star,” and “The Christian History and Warfare of the Stranger
Knight, the Conqueror of Heaven”;--all printed after the middle of the
sixteenth century, and during the period when the passion for romances
of chivalry was at its height.[392]
[391] The “Ethiopica,” or the “Loves of Theagenes and Chariclea,”
written in Greek by Heliodorus, who lived in the time of the
Emperors Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius. It was well known
in Spain at the period now spoken of, for, though it was not
printed in the original before 1534, a Spanish translation of it
appeared as early as 1554, anonymously, and another, by Ferdinand
de Mena, in 1587, which was republished at least twice in the
course of thirty years. (Nic. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 380,
and Conde’s Catalogue, London, 1824, 8vo, Nos. 263, 264.) It has
been said that the Bishop preferred to give up his rank and place
rather than consent to have this romance, the work of his youth,
burned by public authority. Erotici Græci, ed. Mitscherlich,
Biponti, 1792, 8vo, Tom. II. p. viii.
[392] The “Caballería Christiana” was printed in 1570, the
“Caballero de la Clara Estrella” in 1580, and the “Caballero
Peregrino” in 1601. Besides these, “Roberto el Diablo”--a story
which was famous throughout Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries, and has been revived in our own
times--was known in Spain from 1628, and probably earlier. (Nic.
Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 251.) In France, it was printed
in 1496, (Ebert, No. 19175,) and in England by Wynkyn de Worde.
See Thomas, Romances, London, 1828, 12mo, Vol. I. p. v.
One of the oldest of them is probably the most curious and remarkable
of the whole number. It is appropriately called “The Celestial
Chivalry,” and was written by Hierónimo de San Pedro, at Valencia,
and printed in 1554, in two thin folio volumes.[393] In his Preface,
the author declares it to be his object to drive out of the world the
profane books of chivalry; the mischief of which he illustrates by a
reference to Dante’s account of Francesca da Rimini. In pursuance of
this purpose, the First Part is entitled “The Root of the Fragrant
Rose”; which, instead of chapters, is divided into “Wonders,”
_Maravillas_, and contains an allegorical version of the most striking
stories in the Old Testament, down to the time of the good King
Hezekiah, told as the adventures of a succession of knights-errant.
The Second Part is divided, according to a similar conceit, into “The
Leaves of the Rose”; and, beginning where the preceding one ends, comes
down, with the same kind of knightly adventures, to the Saviour’s
death and ascension. The Third, which is promised under the name
of “The Flower of the Rose,” never appeared, nor is it now easy to
understand where consistent materials could have been found for its
composition; the Bible having been nearly exhausted in the two former
parts. But we have enough without it.
[393] Who this Hierónimo de San Pedro was is a curious question.
The Privilegio declares he was a Valencian, alive in 1554; and in
the Bibliothecas of Ximeno and Fuster, under the year 1560, we
have Gerónimo Sempere given as the name of the well-known author
of the “Carolea,” a long poem printed in that year. But to him
is not attributed the “Caballería Celestial”; nor does any other
Hierónimo de San Pedro occur in these collections of lives, or
in Nicolas Antonio, or elsewhere that I have noted. Are they,
nevertheless, one and the same person, the name of the poet being
sometimes written Sentpere, Senct Pere, etc.?
Its chief allegory, from the nature of its subject, relates to the
Saviour, and fills seventy-four out of the one hundred and one
“Leaves,” or chapters, that constitute the Second Part. Christ is
represented in it as the Knight of the Lion; his twelve Apostles as
the twelve Knights of his Round Table; John the Baptist as the Knight
of the Desert; and Lucifer as the Knight of the Serpent;--the main
history being a warfare between the Knight of the Lion and the Knight
of the Serpent. It begins at the manger of Bethlehem, and ends on
Mount Calvary, involving in its progress almost every detail of the
Gospel history, and often using the very words of Scripture. Every
thing, however, is forced into the forms of a strange and revolting
allegory. Thus, for the temptation, the Saviour wears the shield of
the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and rides on the steed of Penitence,
given to him by Adam. He then takes leave of his mother, the daughter
of the Celestial Emperor, like a youthful knight going out to his first
passage at arms, and proceeds to the waste and desert country, where he
is sure to find adventures. On his approach, the Knight of the Desert
prepares himself to do battle; but, perceiving who it is, humbles
himself before his coming prince and master. The baptism of course
follows; that is, the Knight of the Lion is received into the order of
the Knighthood of Baptism, in the presence of an old man, who turns
out to be the Anagogic Master, or the Interpreter of all Mysteries,
and two women, one young and the other old. All three of them enter
directly into a spirited discussion concerning the nature of the rite
they have just witnessed. The old man speaks at large, and explains it
as a heavenly allegory. The old woman, who proves to be Sinagoga, or
the representation of Judaism, prefers the ancient ordinance provided
by Abraham, and authorized, as she says, by “that celebrated Doctor,
Moses,” rather than this new rite of baptism. The younger woman
replies, and defends the new institution. She is the Church Militant;
and the Knight of the Desert, deciding the point in her favor, Sinagoga
goes off full of anger, ending thus the first part of the action.
The great Anagogic Master, according to an understanding previously
had with the Church Militant, now follows the Knight of the Lion to
the desert, and there explains to him the true mystery and efficacy of
Christian baptism. After this preparation, the Knight enters on his
first adventure and battle with the Knight of the Serpent, which, in
all its details, is represented as a duel,--one of the parties coming
into the lists accompanied by Abel, Moses, and David, and the other
by Cain, Goliath, and Haman. Each of the speeches recorded in the
Evangelists is here made an arrow-shot or a sword-thrust; the scene on
the pinnacle of the temple, and the promises made there, are brought in
as far as their incongruous nature will permit; and then the whole of
this part of the long romance is abruptly ended by the precipitate and
disgraceful flight of the Knight of the Serpent.
This scene of the temptation, strange as it now seems to us, is,
nevertheless, not an unfavorable specimen of the entire fiction. The
allegory is almost everywhere quite as awkward and unmanageable as it
is here, and often leads to equally painful and disgusting absurdities.
On the other hand, we have occasionally proofs of an imagination that
is not ungraceful; just as the formal and extravagant style in which it
is written now and then gives token that its author was not insensible
to the resources of a language he, in general, so much abuses.[394]
[394] It is prohibited in the Index Expurgatorius, Madrid, 1667,
folio, p. 863.
There is, no doubt, a wide space between such a fiction as this of the
Celestial Chivalry and the comparatively simple and direct story of
the Amadis de Gaula; and when we recollect that only half a century
elapsed between the dates of these romances in Spain,[395] we shall be
struck with the fact that this space was very quickly passed over, and
that all the varieties of the romances of chivalry are crowded into a
comparatively short period of time. But we must not forget that the
success of these fictions, thus suddenly obtained, is spread afterwards
over a much longer period. The earliest of them were familiarly known
in Spain during the fifteenth century, the sixteenth is thronged with
them, and, far into the seventeenth, they were still much read; so that
their influence over the Spanish character extends through quite two
hundred years. Their number, too, during the latter part of the time
when they prevailed, was large. It exceeded seventy, nearly all of
them in folio; each often in more than one volume, and still oftener
repeated in successive editions;--circumstances which, at a period
when books were comparatively rare and not frequently reprinted, show
that their popularity must have been widely spread, as well as long
continued.
[395] I take, as in fairness I ought, the date of the appearance
of Montalvo’s Spanish version, as the period of the first success
of the Amadis in Spain, and not the date of the Portuguese
original; the difference being about a century.
This might, perhaps, have been, in some degree, expected in a country
where the institutions and feelings of chivalry had struck such firm
root as they had in Spain. For Spain, when the romances of chivalry
first appeared, had long been peculiarly the land of knighthood. The
Moorish wars, which had made every gentleman a soldier, necessarily
tended to this result; and so did the free spirit of the communities,
led on as they were, during the next period, by barons, who long
continued almost as independent in their castles as the king was on
his throne. Such a state of things, in fact, is to be recognized as
far back as the thirteenth century, when the Partidas, by the most
minute and painstaking legislation, provided for a condition of society
not easily to be distinguished from that set forth in the Amadis or
the Palmerin.[396] The poem and history of the Cid bear witness yet
earlier, indirectly indeed, but very strongly, to a similar state of
the country; and so do many of the old ballads and other records of
the national feelings and traditions that had come from the fourteenth
century.
[396] See the very curious laws that constitute the twenty-first
Title of the second of the Partidas, containing the most minute
regulations; such as how a knight should be washed and dressed,
etc.
But in the fifteenth, the chronicles are full of it, and exhibit it in
forms the most grave and imposing. Dangerous tournaments, in some of
which the chief men of the time, and even the kings themselves, took
part, occur constantly, and are recorded among the important events of
the age.[397] At the passage of arms near Orbigo, in the reign of John
the Second, eighty knights, as we have seen, were found ready to risk
their lives for as fantastic a fiction of gallantry as is recorded in
any of the romances of chivalry; a folly, of which this was by no means
the only instance.[398] Nor did they confine their extravagances to
their own country. In the same reign, two Spanish knights went as far
as Burgundy, professedly in search of adventures, which they strangely
mingled with a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; seeming to regard both as
religious exercises.[399] And as late as the time of Ferdinand and
Isabella, Fernando del Pulgar, their wise secretary, gives us the names
of several distinguished noblemen personally known to himself, who
had gone into foreign countries, “in order,” as he says, “to try the
fortune of arms with any cavalier that might be pleased to adventure it
with them, and so gain honor for themselves, and the fame of valiant
and bold knights for the gentlemen of Castile.”[400]
[397] I should think there are accounts of twenty or thirty such
tournaments in the Chronicle of John II. There are many, also, in
that of Alvaro de Luna; and so there are in all the contemporary
histories of Spain during the fifteenth century. In the year
1428, alone, four are recorded; two of which involved loss of
life, and all of which were held under the royal auspices.
[398] See the account of the Passo Honroso already given, to
which add the accounts in the Chronicle of John II. of one which
was attempted in Valladolid, by Rui Diaz de Mendoza, on occasion
of the marriage of Prince Henry, in 1440, but which was stopped
by the royal order, in consequence of the serious nature of its
results. Chrónica de Juan el IIº, Ann. 1440, c. 16.
[399] Ibid., Ann. 1435, c. 3.
[400] Claros Varones de Castilla, Título XVII. He boasts, at
the same time, that more Spanish knights went abroad to seek
adventures than there were foreign knights who came to Castile
and Leon; a fact pertinent to this point.
A state of society like this was the natural result of the
extraordinary development which the institutions of chivalry had then
received in Spain. Some of it was suited to the age, and salutary;
the rest was knight-errantry, and knight-errantry in its wildest
extravagance. When, however, the imaginations of men were so excited
as to tolerate and maintain, in their daily life, such manners and
institutions as these, they would not fail to enjoy the boldest and
most free representations of a corresponding state of society in
works of romantic fiction. But they went farther. Extravagant and
even impossible as are many of the adventures recorded in the books
of chivalry, they still seemed so little to exceed the absurdities
frequently witnessed or told of known and living men, that many persons
took the romances themselves to be true histories, and believed
them. Thus, Mexia, the trustworthy historiographer of Charles the
Fifth, says, in 1545, when speaking of “the Amadises, Lisuartes, and
Clarions,” that “their authors do waste their time and weary their
faculties in writing such books, which are read by all and believed by
many. For,” he goes on, “there be men who think all these things really
happened, just as they read or hear them, though the greater part of
the things themselves are sinful, profane, and unbecoming.”[401] And
Castillo, another chronicler, tells us gravely, in 1587, that Philip
the Second, when he married Mary of England, only forty years earlier,
promised, that, if King Arthur should return to claim the throne, he
would peaceably yield to that prince all his rights; thus implying, at
least in Castillo himself, and probably in many of his readers, a full
faith in the stories of Arthur and his Round Table.[402]
[401] Historia Imperial, Anvers, 1561, folio, ff. 123, 124. The
first edition was of 1545.
[402] Pellicer, note to Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 13.
Such credulity, it is true, now seems impossible, even if we suppose it
was confined to a moderate number of intelligent persons; and hardly
less so, when, as in the admirable sketch of an easy faith in the
stories of chivalry by the innkeeper and Maritornes in Don Quixote, we
are shown that it extended to the mass of the people.[403] But before
we refuse our assent to the statements of such faithful chroniclers as
Mexia, on the ground that what they relate is impossible, we should
recollect, that, in the age when they lived, men were in the habit of
believing and asserting every day things no less incredible than those
recited in the old romances. The Spanish Church then countenanced a
trust in miracles, as of constant recurrence, which required of those
who believed them more credulity than the fictions of chivalry; and yet
how few were found wanting in faith! And how few doubted the tales that
had come down to them of the impossible achievements of their fathers
during the seven centuries of their warfare against the Moors, or the
glorious traditions of all sorts, that still constitute the charm of
their brave old chronicles, though we now see at a glance that many of
them are as fabulous as any thing told of Palmerin or Launcelot!
[403] Parte I. c. 32.
But whatever we may think of this belief in the romances of chivalry,
there is no question that in Spain, during the sixteenth century, there
prevailed a passion for them such as was never known elsewhere. The
proof of it comes to us from all sides. The poetry of the country is
full of it, from the romantic ballads that still live in the memory of
the people, up to the old plays that have ceased to be acted and the
old epics that have ceased to be read. The national manners and the
national dress, more peculiar and picturesque than in other countries,
long bore its sure impress. The old laws, too, speak no less plainly.
Indeed, the passion for such fictions was so strong, and seemed so
dangerous, that in 1553 they were prohibited from being printed, sold,
or read in the American colonies; and in 1555 the Cortes earnestly
asked that the same prohibition might be extended to Spain itself, and
that all the extant copies of romances of chivalry might be publicly
burned.[404] And finally, half a century later, the happiest work of
the greatest genius Spain has produced bears witness on every page to
the prevalence of an absolute fanaticism for books of chivalry, and
becomes at once the seal of their vast popularity and the monument of
their fate.
[404] The abdication of the emperor happened the same year, and
prevented this and other petitions of the Cortes from being acted
upon. For the laws here referred to, and other proofs of the
prevalence and influence of the romances of chivalry down to the
time of the appearance of Don Quixote, see Clemencin’s Preface to
his edition of that work.
CHAPTER XIII.
FOURTH CLASS.--DRAMA.--EXTINCTION OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN
THEATRES.--RELIGIOUS ORIGIN OF THE MODERN DRAMA.--EARLIEST NOTICE
OF IT IN SPAIN.--HINTS OF IT IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.--MARQUIS OF
VILLENA.--CONSTABLE DE LUNA.--MINGO REVULGO.--RODRIGO COTA.--THE
CELESTINA.--FIRST ACT.--THE REMAINDER.--ITS STORY, CHARACTER, AND
EFFECTS ON SPANISH LITERATURE.
THE DRAMA.--The ancient theatre of the Greeks and Romans was continued
under some of its grosser and more popular forms at Constantinople, in
Italy, and in many other parts of the falling and fallen empire, far
into the Middle Ages. But, under whatever disguise it appeared, it was
essentially heathenish; for, from first to last, it was mythological,
both in tone and in substance. As such, of course, it was rebuked
and opposed by the Christian Church, which, favored by the confusion
and ignorance of the times, succeeded in overthrowing it, though not
without a long contest, and not until its degradation and impurity had
rendered it worthy of its fate and of the anathemas pronounced against
it by Tertullian and Saint Augustin.[405]
[405] A Spanish Bishop of Barcelona, in the seventh century, was
deposed for merely permitting plays with allusions to heathen
mythology to be acted in his diocese. Mariana, Hist., Lib. VI. c. 3.
A love for theatrical exhibitions, however, survived the extinction
of these poor remains of the classical drama; and the priesthood,
careful neither to make itself needlessly odious, nor to neglect any
suitable method of increasing its own influence, seems early to have
been willing to provide a substitute for the popular amusement it had
destroyed. At any rate, a substitute soon appeared; and, coming as
it did out of the ceremonies and commemorations of the religion of
the times, its appearance was natural and easy. The greater festivals
of the Church had for centuries been celebrated with whatever of
pomp the rude luxury of ages so troubled could afford, and they now
everywhere, from London to Rome, added a dramatic element to their
former attractions. Thus, the manger at Bethlehem, with the worship of
the shepherds and Magi, was, at a very early period, solemnly exhibited
every year by a visible show before the altars of the churches at
Christmas, as were the tragical events of the last days of the
Saviour’s life during Lent and at the approach of Easter.
Gross abuses, dishonoring alike the priesthood and religion, were, no
doubt, afterwards mingled with these representations, both while they
were given in dumb show, and when, by the addition of dialogue, they
became what were called Mysteries; but, in many parts of Europe, the
representations themselves, down to a comparatively late period, were
found so well suited to the spirit of the times, that different Popes
granted especial indulgences to the persons who frequented them, and
they were in fact used openly and successfully, not only as means of
amusement, but for the religious edification of an ignorant multitude.
In England such shows prevailed for above four hundred years,--a longer
period than can be assigned to the English national drama, as we now
recognize it; while in Italy and other countries still under the
influence of the See of Rome, they have, in some of their forms, been
continued, for the edification and amusement of the populace, quite
down to our own times.[406]
[406] Onésime le Roy, Études sur les Mystères, Paris, 1837, 8vo,
Chap. I. De la Rue, Essai sur les Bardes, les Jongleurs, etc.,
Caen, 1834, 8vo, Vol. I. p. 159. Spence’s Anecdotes, ed. Singer,
London, 1820, 8vo, p. 397. The exhibition still annually made,
in the church of Ara Cœli, on the Capitol at Rome, of the manger
and the scene of the Nativity is, like many similar exhibitions
elsewhere, of the same class.
That all traces of the ancient Roman theatre, except the architectural
remains which still bear witness to its splendor,[407] disappeared
from Spain in consequence of the occupation of the country by the
Arabs, whose national spirit rejected the drama altogether, cannot be
reasonably doubted. But the time when the more modern representations
were begun on religious subjects, and under ecclesiastical patronage,
can no longer be determined. It must, however, have been very early;
for, in the middle of the thirteenth century, such performances were
not only known, but had been so long practised, that they had already
taken various forms, and become disgraced by various abuses. This
is apparent from the code of Alfonso the Tenth, which was prepared
about 1260; and in which, after forbidding the clergy certain gross
indulgences, the law goes on to say: “Neither ought they to be makers
of buffoon plays,[408] that people may come to see them; and if other
men make them, clergymen should not come to see them, for such men
do many things low and unsuitable. Nor, moreover, should such things
be done in the churches; but rather we say that they should be cast
out in dishonor, without punishment to those engaged in them. For the
church of God was made for prayer, and not for buffoonery; as our
Lord Jesus Christ declared in the Gospel, that his house was called
the House of Prayer, and ought not to be made a den of thieves. But
exhibitions there be, that clergymen may make, such as that of the
birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, which shows how the angel came to the
shepherds and how he told them Jesus Christ was born, and, moreover,
of his appearance when the Three Kings came to worship him, and of his
resurrection, which shows how he was crucified and rose the third day.
Such things as these, which move men to do well, may the clergy make,
as well as to the end that men may have in remembrance that such things
did truly happen. But this must they do decently, and in devotion,
and in the great cities where there is an archbishop or bishop, and
under their authority, or that of others by them deputed, and not in
villages, nor in small places, nor to gain money thereby.”[409]
[407] Remains of Roman theatres are found at Seville (Triana),
Tarragona, Murviedro (Saguntum), Merida, etc.
[408] _Juegos por Escarnio_ is the phrase in the original. It is
obscure; but I have followed the intimation of Martinez de la
Rosa, who is a good authority, and who considers it to mean short
satirical compositions, from which arose, perhaps, afterwards,
_Entremeses_ and _Saynetes_. (Isabel de Solís, Madrid, 1837,
12mo, Tom. I. p. 225, note 13.) _Escarnido_, in Don Quixote,
(Parte II. c. xxi.,) is used in the sense of “trifled with.”
[409] Partida I. Tít. VI. Ley 34, ed. de la Academia.
But though these earliest religious representations in Spain, whether
pantomimic or in dialogue, were thus given, not only by churchmen,
but by others, certainly before the middle of the thirteenth century,
and probably much sooner, and though they were continued for several
centuries afterwards, still no fragment of them and no distinct account
of them now remain to us. Nor is any thing properly dramatic found
even amongst the secular poetry of Spain, till the latter part of the
fifteenth century, though it may have existed somewhat earlier, as we
may infer from a passage in the Marquis of Santillana’s letter to the
Constable of Portugal;[410] from the notice of a moral play by the
Marquis of Villena, now lost, which is said to have been represented
in 1414, before Ferdinand of Aragon;[411] and from the hint left by
the picturesque chronicler of the Constable de Luna concerning the
_Entremeses_[412] or Interludes, which were sometimes arranged by that
proud favorite a little later in the same century. These indications,
however, are very slight and uncertain.[413]
[410] He says that his grandfather, Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza,
who lived in the time of Peter the Cruel, wrote scenic poems in
the manner of Plautus and Terence, in couplets like _Serranas_.
Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. p. lix.
[411] Velazquez, Orígenes de la Poesía Castellana, Málaga, 1754,
4to, p. 95. I think it not unlikely that Zurita refers to this
play of Villena, when he says, (Anales, Libro XII., Año 1414,)
that, at the coronation of Ferdinand, there were “grandes juegos
y _entremeses_.” Otherwise we must suppose there were several
different dramatic entertainments, which is possible, but not
probable.
[412] “He had a great deal of inventive faculty, and was much
given to making inventions and _entremeses_ for festivals,” etc.
(Crónica del Condestable Don Alvaro de Luna, ed. Flores, Madrid,
1784, 4to, Título 68.) It is not to be supposed that these were
like the gay farces that have since passed under the same name,
but there can be little doubt that they were poetical and were
exhibited. The Constable was beheaded in 1453.
[413] I am not unaware that attempts have been made to give the
Spanish theatre a different origin from the one I have assigned
to it. 1. The marriage of Doña Endrina and Don Melon has been
cited for this purpose in the French translation of “Celestina”
by De Lavigne (Paris, 12mo, 1841, pp. v., vi.). But their
adventures, taken from Pamphylus Maurianus, already noticed, (p.
81,) constitute, in fact, a mere story arranged about 1335, by
the Archpriest of Hita, out of an old Latin dialogue, (Sanchez,
Tom. IV. stanz. 550-865,) but differing in nothing important
from the other tales of the Archpriest, and quite insusceptible
of dramatic representation. (See Preface of Sanchez to the same
volume, pp. xxiii., etc.) 2. The “Dança General de la Muerte,”
already noticed as written about 1350, (Castro, Biblioteca
Española, Tom. I. pp. 200, etc.,) has been cited by L. F. Moratin
(Obras, ed. de la Academia, Madrid, 1830, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 112) as
the earliest specimen of Spanish dramatic literature. But it is
unquestionably not a drama, but a didactic poem, which it would
have been quite absurd to attempt to exhibit. 3. The “Comedieta
de Ponza,” on the great naval battle fought near the island of
Ponza, in 1435, and written by the Marquis of Santillana, who
died in 1454, has been referred to as a drama by Martinez de la
Rosa, (Obras Literarias, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 518,
etc.,) who assigns it to about 1436. But it is, in truth, merely
an allegorical poem thrown into the form of a dialogue and
written in _coplas de arte mayor_. I shall notice it hereafter.
And finally, 4. Blas de Nasarre, in his Prólogo to the plays
of Cervantes, (Madrid, 1749, 4to, Vol. I.,) says there was a
_comedia_ acted before Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469, at the
house of the Count de Ureña, in honor of their wedding. But we
have only Blas de Nasarre’s _dictum_ for this, and he is not a
good authority: besides which, he adds that the author of the
_comedia_ in question was John de la Enzina, who, we know, was
not born earlier than the year before the event referred to.
The moment of the somewhat secret marriage of these illustrious
persons was, moreover, so full of anxiety, that it is not at
all likely _any_ show or mumming accompanied it. See Prescott’s
Ferdinand and Isabella, Part I. c. 3.
A nearer approach to the spirit of the drama, and particularly to the
form which the secular drama first took in Spain, is to be found in
the curious dialogue called “The Couplets of Mingo Revulgo”; a satire
thrown into the shape of an eclogue, and given in the free and spirited
language of the lower classes of the people, on the deplorable state of
public affairs, as they existed in the latter part of the weak reign
of Henry the Fourth. It seems to have been written about the year
1472.[414] The interlocutors are two shepherds; one of whom, called
Mingo Revulgo,--a name corrupted from Domingo Vulgus,--represents
the common people; and the other, called Gil Arribato, or Gil the
Elevated, represents the higher classes, and speaks with the authority
of a prophet, who, while complaining of the ruinous condition of the
state, yet lays no small portion of the blame on the common people,
for having, as he says, by their weakness and guilt, brought upon
themselves so dissolute and careless a shepherd. It opens with the
shouts of Arribato, who sees Revulgo at a distance, on a Sunday
morning, ill dressed and with a dispirited air:--
[414] “Coplas de Mingo Revulgo,” often printed, in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, with the beautiful Coplas of Manrique.
The editions I use are those of 1588, 1632, and the one at the
end of the “Crónica de Enrique IV.,” (Madrid, 1787, 4to, ed. de
la Academia,) with the commentary of Pulgar.
Hollo, Revulgo! Mingo, ho!
Mingo Revulgo! Ho, hollo!
Why, where’s your cloak of blue so bright?
Is it not Sunday’s proper wear?
And where ’s your jacket red and tight?
And such a brow why do you bear,
And come abroad, this dawning mild,
With all your hair in elf-locks wild?
Pray, are you broken down with care?[415]
[415]
A Mingo Revulgo, Mingo!
A Mingo Revulgo, hao!
Que es de tu sayo de blao?
No le vistes en Domingo?
Que es de tu jubon bermejo?
Por que traes tal sobrecejo?
Andas esta madrugada
La cabeza desgreñada:
No te llotras de buen rejo?
Copla I.
Revulgo replies, that the state of the flock, governed by so unfit
a shepherd, is the cause of his squalid condition; and then, under
this allegory, they urge a coarse, but efficient, satire against the
measures of the government, against the base, cowardly character of
the king and his scandalous, passion for his Portuguese mistress, and
against the ruinous carelessness and indifference of the people, ending
with praises of the contentment found in a middle condition of life.
The whole dialogue consists of only thirty-two stanzas of nine lines
each; but it produced a great effect at the time, was often printed in
the next century, and was twice elucidated by a grave commentary.[416]
[416] Velazquez (Orígenes, p. 52) treats Mingo Revulgo as a
satire against King John and his court. But it applies much more
naturally and truly to the time of Henry IV., and has, indeed,
generally been considered as directed against that unhappy
monarch. Copla the sixth seems plainly to allude to his passion
for Doña Guiomar de Castro.
Its author wisely concealed his name, and has never been absolutely
ascertained.[417] The earlier editions generally suppose him to have
been Rodrigo Cota, the elder, of Toledo, to whom also is attributed
“A Dialogue between Love and an Old Man,” which dates from the same
period, and is no less spirited and even more dramatic. It opens with
a representation of an old man retired into a poor hut, which stands
in the midst of a neglected and decayed garden. Suddenly Love appears
before him, and he exclaims, “My door is shut; what do you want? Where
did you enter? Tell me how, robber-like, you leaped the walls of my
garden. Age and reason had freed me from you; leave, therefore, my
heart, retired into its poor corner, to think only of the past.” He
goes on giving a sad account of his own condition, and a still more
sad description of Love; to which Love replies, with great coolness,
“Your discourse shows that you have not been well acquainted with me.”
A discussion follows, in which Love, of course, gains the advantage.
The old man is promised that his garden shall be restored and his youth
renewed; but when he has surrendered at discretion, he is only treated
with the gayest ridicule by his conqueror, for thinking that at his age
he can again make himself attractive in the ways of love. The whole is
in a light tone and managed with a good deal of ingenuity; but though
susceptible, like other poetical eclogues, of being represented, it is
not certain that it ever was. It is, however, as well as the Couplets
of Revulgo, so much like the pastorals which we know were publicly
exhibited as dramas a few years later, that we may reasonably suppose
it had some influence in preparing the way for them.[418]
[417] The Coplas of Mingo Revulgo were very early attributed
to John de Mena, the most famous poet of the time (N. Antonio,
Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 387); but, unhappily for this conjecture,
Mena was of the opposite party in politics. Mariana, who found
Revulgo of consequence enough to be mentioned when discussing the
troubles of Henry IV., declares (Historia, Lib. XXIII. c. 17,
Tom. II. p. 475) the Coplas to have been written by Hernando del
Pulgar, the chronicler; but no reason is given for this opinion
except the fact that Pulgar wrote a commentary on them, making
their allegory more intelligible than it would have been likely
to be made by any body not quite familiar with the thoughts and
purposes of the author. See the dedication of this commentary to
Count Haro, with the Prólogo, and Sarmiento, Poesía Española,
Madrid, 1775, 4to, § 872. But whoever wrote Mingo Revulgo, there
is no doubt it was an important and a popular poem in its day.
[418] The “Diálogo entre el Amor y un Viejo” was first printed,
I believe, in the “Cancionero General” of 1511, but it is found
with the Coplas de Manrique, 1588 and 1632. See, also, N.
Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. pp. 263, 264, for notices of Cota.
The fact of this old Dialogue having an effect on the coming
drama may be inferred, not only from the obvious resemblance
between the two, but from a passage in Juan de la Enzina’s
Eclogue beginning “Vamonos, Gil, al aldea,” which plainly alludes
to the opening of Cota’s Dialogue, and, indeed, to the whole of
it. The passage in Enzina is the concluding _Villancico_, which
begins,--
Ninguno cierre las puertas;
Si Amor viniese a llamar,
Que no le ha aprovechar.
Let no man shut his doors;
If Love should come to call,
’T will do no good at all.
The next contribution to the foundations of the Spanish theatre is
the “Celestina,” a dramatic story, contemporary with the poems just
noticed, and probably, in part, the work of the same hands. It is a
prose composition, in twenty-one acts, or parts, originally called,
“The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibœa”; and though, from its
length, and, indeed, from its very structure, it can never have been
represented, its dramatic spirit and movement have left traces, that
are not to to be mistaken,[419] of their influence on the national
drama ever since.
[419] They are called _actos_ in the original; but neither
_act_ nor _scene_ is a proper name for the parts of which the
Celestina is composed; since it occasionally mingles up, in the
most confused manner, and in the _same_ act, conversations that
necessarily happened at the _same_ moment in _different_ places.
Thus, in the fourteenth act, we have conversations held partly
between Calisto and Melibœa inside her father’s garden, and
partly between Calisto’s servants, who are outside of it; all
given as a consecutive dialogue, without any notice of the change
of place.
The first act, which is much the longest, was probably written by
Rodrigo Cota, of Toledo, and in that case we may safely assume that it
was produced about 1480.[420] It opens in the environs of a city, which
is not named,[421] with a scene between Calisto, a young man of rank,
and Melibœa, a maiden of birth and qualities still more noble than his
own. He finds her in her father’s garden, where he had accidentally
followed his bird in hawking, and she receives him as a Spanish lady
of condition in that age would be likely to receive a stranger who
begins his acquaintance by making love to her. The result is, that the
presumptuous young man goes home full of mortification and despair, and
shuts himself up in his darkened chamber. Sempronio, a confidential
servant, understanding the cause of his master’s trouble, advises him
to apply to an old woman, with whom the unprincipled valet is secretly
in league, and who is half a pretender to witchcraft and half a dealer
in love philters. This personage is Celestina. Her character, the first
hint of which may have been taken from the Archpriest of Hita’s sketch
of one with not dissimilar pretensions, is at once revealed in all its
power. She boldly promises Calisto that he shall obtain possession of
Melibœa, and from that moment secures to herself a complete control
over him, and over all who are about him.[422]
[420] Rojas, the author of all but the first act of the
Celestina, says, in a prefatory letter to a friend, that the
first act was supposed by some to have been the work of Juan
de Mena, and by others to have been the work of Rodrigo Cota.
The absurdity of the first conjecture was noticed long ago by
Nicolas Antonio, and has been admitted ever since, while, on
the other hand, what we have of Cota falls in quite well with
the conjecture that _he_ wrote it; besides which, Alonso de
Villegas, in the verses prefixed to his “Selvagia,” 1554, to be
noticed hereafter, says expressly, “Though he was poor and of
low estate, (_pobre y de baxo lugar_,) we know that Cota’s skill
(_ciencia_) enabled him to begin the great Celestina, and that
Rojas finished it with an ambrosial air that can never be enough
valued”;--a testimony heretofore overlooked, but one which, under
the circumstances of the case, seems sufficient to decide the
question.
As to the time when the Celestina was written, we must bring
it into the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, before which we
cannot find sufficient ground for believing such Spanish prose
to have been possible. It is curious, however, that, from one
and the same passage in the third act of the Celestina, Blanco
White (Variedades, London, 1824, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 226) supposes
Rojas to have written his part of it before the fall of Granada,
and Germond de Lavigne (Celestine, p. 63) supposes him to have
written it either afterwards, or at the very time when the last
siege was going on. But Blanco White’s inference seems to be the
true one, and would place both parts of it before 1490. If to
this we add the allusions (Acts 4 and 7) to the _autos da fé_
and their arrangements, we must place it after 1480, when the
Inquisition was first established. But this is doubtful.
[421] Blanco White gives ingenious reasons for supposing that
Seville is the city referred to. He himself was born there, and
could judge well.
[422] The Trota-conventos of Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of
Hita, has already been noticed; and certainly is not without
a resemblance to the Celestina. Besides, in the Second Act of
“Calisto y Melibœa,” Celestina herself is once expressly called
Trota-conventos.
Thus far Cota had proceeded in his outline, when, from some unknown
reason, he stopped short. The fragment he had written was, however,
circulated and admired, and Fernando de Rojas of Montalvan, a bachelor
of laws living at Salamanca, took it up, at the request of some of
his friends, and, as he himself tells us, wrote the remainder in a
fortnight of his vacations; the twenty acts or scenes which he added
for this purpose constituting about seven eighths of the whole
composition.[423] That the conclusion he thus arranged was such as
the original inventor of the story intended is not to be imagined.
Rojas was even uncertain who this first author was, and evidently
knew nothing about his plans or purposes; besides which, he says, the
portion that came into his hands was a comedy, while the remainder is
so violent and bloody in its course, that he calls his completed work
a tragicomedy; a name which it has generally borne since, and which
he perhaps invented to suit this particular case. One circumstance,
however, connected with it should not be overlooked. It is, that the
different portions attributed to the two authors are so similar in
style and finish, as to have led to the conjecture, that, after all,
the whole might have been the work of Rojas, who, for reasons, perhaps,
arising out of his ecclesiastical position in society, was unwilling to
take the responsibility of being the sole author of it.[424]
[423] Rojas states these facts in his prefatory anonymous letter,
already mentioned, and entitled “El Autor á un su Amigo”; and he
declares his own name and authorship in an acrostic, called “El
Autor excusando su Obra,” which immediately follows the epistle,
and the initial letters of which bring out the following words:
“El Bachiller Fernando de Rojas acabó la comedia de Calysto y
Meliboea, y fue nascido en la puebla de Montalvan.” Of course, if
we believe Rojas himself, there can be no doubt on this point.
[424] Blanco White, in a criticism on the Celestina, (Variedades,
Tom. I. pp. 224, 296,) expresses this opinion, which is
also found in the Preface to M. Germond de Lavigne’s French
translation of the Celestina. L. F. Moratin, too, (Obras, Tom. I.
Parte I. p. 88,) thinks there is no difference in style between
the two parts, though he treats them as the work of different
writers. But the acute author of the “Diálogo de las Lenguas”
(Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Madrid, 1737, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 165)
is of a different opinion, and so is Lampillas, Ensayo, Madrid,
1789, 4to, Tom. VI. p. 54.
But this is not the account given by Rojas himself. He says that he
found the first act already written; and he begins the second with the
impatience of Calisto, in urging Celestina to obtain access to the
high-born and high-bred Melibœa. The low and vulgar woman succeeds, by
presenting herself at the house of Melibœa’s father with lady-like
trifles to sell, and, having once obtained an entrance, easily finds
the means of establishing her right to return. Intrigues of the
grossest kind amongst the servants and subordinates follow; and the
machinations and contrivances of the mover of the whole mischief
advance through the midst of them with great rapidity,--all managed
by herself, and all contributing to her power and purposes. Nothing,
indeed, seems to be beyond the reach of her unprincipled activity
and talent. She talks like a saint or a philosopher, as it suits her
purpose. She flatters; she threatens; she overawes; her unscrupulous
ingenuity is never at fault; her main object is never forgotten or
overlooked.
Meantime, the unhappy Melibœa, urged by whatever insinuation and
seduction can suggest, is made to confess her love for Calisto. From
this moment, her fate is sealed. Calisto visits her secretly in the
night, after the fashion of the old Spanish gallants; and then the
conspiracy hurries onward to its consummation. At the same time,
however, the retribution begins. The persons who had assisted Calisto
to bring about his first interview with her quarrel for the reward
he had given them; and Celestina, at the moment of her triumph, is
murdered by her own base agents and associates, two of whom, attempting
to escape, are in their turn summarily put to death by the officers of
justice. Great confusion ensues. Calisto is regarded as the indirect
cause of Celestina’s death, since she perished in his service; and
some of those who had been dependent upon her are roused to such
indignation, that they track him to the place of his assignation,
seeking for revenge. There they fall into a quarrel with the servants
he had posted in the streets for his protection. He hastens to the
rescue, is precipitated from a ladder, and is killed on the spot.
Melibœa confesses her guilt and shame, and throws herself headlong from
a high tower; immediately upon which the whole melancholy and atrocious
story ends with the lament of the broken-hearted father over her dead
body.
As has been intimated, the Celestina is rather a dramatized romance
than a proper drama, or even a well-considered attempt to produce a
strictly dramatic effect. Such as it is, however, Europe can show
nothing on its theatres, at the same period, of equal literary merit.
It is full of life and movement throughout. Its characters, from
Celestina down to her insolent and lying valets, and her brutal female
associates, are developed with a skill and truth rarely found in
the best periods of the Spanish drama. Its style is easy and pure,
sometimes brilliant, and always full of the idiomatic resources of the
old and true Castilian; such a style, unquestionably, as had not yet
been approached in Spanish prose, and was not often reached afterwards.
Occasionally, indeed, we are offended by an idle and cold display of
learning; but, like the gross manners of the piece, this poor vanity is
a fault that belonged to the age.
The great offence of the Celestina, however, is, that large portions
of it are foul with a shameless libertinism of thought and language.
Why the authority of church and state did not at once interfere to
prevent its circulation seems now hardly intelligible. Probably it was,
in part, because the Celestina claimed to be written for the purpose
of warning the young against the seductions and crimes it so loosely
unveils; or, in other words, because it claimed to be a book whose
tendency was good. Certainly, strange as the fact may now seem to us,
many so received it. It was dedicated to reverend ecclesiastics, and
to ladies of rank and modesty in Spain and out of it, and seems to have
been read generally, and perhaps by the wise, the gentle, and the good,
without a blush. When, therefore, those who had the power were called
to exercise it, they shrank from the task; only slight changes were
required; and the Celestina was then left to run its course of popular
favor unchecked.[425] In the century that followed its first appearance
from the press in 1499, a century in which the number of readers was
comparatively very small, it is easy to enumerate above thirty editions
of the original. Probably there were more. At that time, too, or soon
afterwards, it was made known in English, in German, and in Dutch;
and, that none of the learned at least might be beyond its reach, it
appeared in the universal Latin. Thrice it was translated into Italian,
and thrice into French. The cautious and severe author of the “Dialogue
on Languages,” the Protestant Valdés, gave it the highest praise.[426]
So did Cervantes.[427] The very name of Celestina became a proverb,
like the thousand bywords and adages she herself pours out, with such
wit and fluency;[428] and it is not too much to add, that, down to the
days of the Don Quixote, no Spanish book was so much known and read at
home and abroad.
[425] For a notice of the first known edition,--that of
1499,--which is entitled “Comedia,” and is divided into sixteen
acts, see an article on the Celestina by F. Wolf, in Blätter für
Literarische Unterhaltung, 1845, Nos. 213 to 217, which leaves
little to desire on the subject it so thoroughly discusses.
The expurgations in the editions of Alcalá, 1586, and Madrid,
1595, are slight, and in the Plantiniana edition, 1595, I think
there are none. It is curious to observe how few are ordered
in the Index of 1667, (p. 948,) and that the _whole_ book was
not forbidden till 1793, having been expressly permitted, with
expurgations, in the Index of 1790, and appearing first, as
prohibited, in the Index of 1805. No other book, that I know of,
shows so distinctly how supple and compliant the Inquisition was,
where, as in this case, it was deemed impossible to control the
public taste. An Italian translation printed at Venice, in 1525,
which is well made, and is dedicated to a lady, is not expurgated
at all. There are lists of the editions of the original in L.
F. Moratin, (Obras, Tom. I. Parte I. p. 89,) and B. C. Aribau’s
“Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” (Madrid, 1846, 8vo, Tom. III.
p. xii.,) to which, however, additions can be made by turning to
Brunet, Ebert, and the other bibliographers. The best editions
are those of Amarita (1822) and Aribau (1846).
[426] Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. p. 167. “No book
in Castilian has been written in a language more natural,
appropriate, and elegant.”
[427] Verses by “El Donoso,” prefixed to the first part of Don
Quixote.
[428] Sebastian de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana,
Madrid, 1674, fol., ad verb.
Such success insured for it a long series of imitations; most of them
yet more offensive to morals and public decency than the Celestina
itself, and all of them, as might be anticipated, of inferior literary
merit to their model. One, called “The Second Comedia of Celestina,” in
which she is raised from the dead, was published in 1530, by Feliciano
de Silva, the author of the old romance of “Florisel de Niquea,”
and went through four editions. Another, by Domingo de Castega, was
sometimes added to the successive reprints of the original work
after 1534. A third, by Gaspar Gomez de Toledo, appeared in 1537; a
fourth, ten years later, by an unknown author, called “The Tragedy of
Policiana,” in twenty-nine acts; a fifth, in 1554, by Joan Rodrigues
Florian, in forty-three scenes, called “The Comedia of Florinea”;
and a sixth, “The Selvagia,” in five acts, also in 1554, by Alonso
de Villegas. In 1513, Pedro de Urrea, of the same family with the
translator of Ariosto, rendered the first act of the original Celestina
into good Castilian verse, dedicating it to his mother; and in 1540,
Juan Sedeño, the translator of Tasso, performed a similar service for
the whole of it. Tales and romances followed, somewhat later, in large
numbers; some, like “The Ingenious Helen,” and “The Cunning Flora,” not
without merit; while others, like “The Eufrosina,” praised more than it
deserves by Quevedo, were little regarded from the first.[429]
[429] Puibusque, Hist. Comparée des Littératures Espagnole
et Française, Paris, 1843, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 478;--the Essay
prefixed to the French translation of Lavigne, Paris, 1841,
12mo;--Montiano y Luyando, Discurso sobre las Tragedias
Españolas, Madrid, 1750, 12mo, p. 9, and _post_, c. 21. The
“Ingeniosa Helena” (1613) and the “Flora Malsabidilla” (1623)
are by Salas Barbadillo, and will be noticed hereafter, among
the prose fictions of the seventeenth century. The “Eufrosina”
is by Ferreira de Vasconcellos, a Portuguese, and why, in 1631,
it was translated into Spanish by Ballesteros Saavedra as if it
had been anonymous, I know not. It is often mentioned as the work
of Lobo, another Portuguese, (Barbosa, Bib. Lusit., Tom. II. p.
242, and Tom. IV. p. 143,) and Quevedo, in his Preface to the
Spanish version, seems to have been of that opinion; but this,
too, is not true. Lobo only prepared, in 1613, an edition of the
Portuguese original.
Of the imitations of the Celestina mentioned in the text, two,
perhaps, deserve further notice.
The first is the one entitled “Florinea,” which was printed at
Medina del Campo, in 1554, and which, though certainly without
the power and life of the work it imitates, is yet written in a
pure and good style. The principal personage is Marcelia,--parcel
witch, wholly shameless,--going regularly to matins and vespers,
and talking religion and philosophy, while her house and life
are full of whatever is most infamous. Some of the scenes are
as indecent as any in the Celestina; but the story is less
disagreeable, as it ends with an honorable love-match between
Floriano and Belisea, the hero and heroine of the drama, and
promises to give their wedding in a continuation, which, however,
never appeared. It is longer than its prototype, filling 312
pages of black letter, closely printed, in small quarto; abounds
in proverbs; and contains occasional snatches of poetry, which
are not in so good taste as the prose. Florian, the author, says,
that, though his work is called _comedia_, he is to be regarded
as “historiador cómico,” a dramatic narrator.
The other is the “Selvagia,” by Alonso de Villegas, published
at Toledo, in 1554, 4to, the same year with the Florinea, to
which it alludes with great admiration. Its story is ingenious.
Flesinardo, a rich gentleman from Mexico, falls in love with
Rosiana, whom he has only seen at a window of her father’s house.
His friend Selvago, who is advised of this circumstance, watches
the same window, and falls in love with a lady whom he supposes
to be the same that had been seen by Flesinardo. Much trouble
naturally follows. But it is happily discovered that the lady
is _not_ the same; after which--except in the episodes of the
servants, the bully, and the inferior lovers--every thing goes on
successfully, under the management of an unprincipled counterpart
of the profligate Celestina, and ends with the marriage of the
four lovers. It is not so long as the Celestina or the Florinea,
filling only seventy-three leaves in quarto, but it is an avowed
imitation of both. Of the genius that gives such life and
movement to its principal prototype there is little trace, nor
has it an equal purity of style. But some of its declamations,
perhaps,--though as misplaced as its pedantry,--are not without
power, and some of its dialogue is free and natural. It claims
everywhere to be very religious and moral, but it is any thing
rather than either. Of its author there can be no doubt. As
in every thing else he imitates the Celestina, so he imitates
it in prefatory acrostic verses, from which I have spelt out
the following sentence: “Alonso de Villegas Selvago compuso la
Comedia Selvagia en servicio de su Sennora Isabel de Barrionuevo,
siendo de edad de veynte annos, en Toledo, su patria”;--a
singular offering, certainly, to a lady-love. It is divided into
scenes, as well as acts.
At last, it came upon the stage, for which its original character
had so nearly fitted it. Cepeda, in 1582, formed out of it one half
of his “Comedia Selvage,” which is only the four first acts of the
Celestina, thrown into easy verse;[430] and Alfonso Vaz de Velasco, as
early as 1602, published a drama in prose, called “The Jealous Man,”
founded entirely on the Celestina, whose character, under the name of
Lena, is given with nearly all its original spirit and effect.[431]
How far either the play of Velasco or that of Cepeda succeeded, we are
not told; but the coarseness and indecency of both are so great, that
they can hardly have been long tolerated by the public, if they were
by the Church. The essential type of Celestina, however, the character
as originally conceived by Cota and Rojas, was continued on the stage
in such plays as the “Celestina” of Mendoza, “The Second Celestina” of
Agustin de Salazar, and “The School of Celestina” by Salas Barbadillo,
all produced soon after the year 1600, as well as in others that have
been produced since. Even in our own days, a drama containing so much
of her story as a modern audience will listen to has been received with
favor; while, at the same time, the original tragicomedy itself has
been thought worthy of being reprinted at Madrid, with various readings
to settle its text, and of being rendered anew by fresh and vigorous
translations into the French and the German.[432]
[430] L. F. Moratin, Obras, Tom. I. Parte I. p. 280, and _post_,
Period II. c. 28.
[431] The name of this author seems to be somewhat uncertain,
and has been given in two or three different ways,--Alfonso
Vaz, Vazquez, Velasquez, and Uz de Velasco. I take it as it
stands in Antonio, Bib. Nov. (Tom. I. p. 52). The shameless play
itself is to be found in Ochoa’s edition of the “Orígenes del
Teatro Español” (Paris, 1838, 8vo). Some of the characters are
well drawn; for instance, that of Inocencio, which reminds me
occasionally of the inimitable Dominie Sampson. An edition of it
appeared at Milan in 1602, probably preceded--as in almost all
cases seems of Spanish books printed abroad--by an edition at
home, and certainly followed by one at Barcelona in 1613.
[432] Custine, L’Espagne sous Ferdinand VII., troisième édit.,
Paris, 1838, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 279. The edition of Celestina with
the various readings is that of Madrid, 1822, 18mo, by Leon
Amarita. The French translation is the one already mentioned,
by Germond de Lavigne (Paris, 1841, 12mo); and the German
translation, which is very accurate and spirited, is by Edw.
Bülow (Leipzig, 1843, 12mo). Traces of it on the English stage
are found as early as about 1530 (Collier’s History of Dram.
Poetry, etc., London, 1831, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 408), and I have a
translation of it by James Mabbe (London, 1631, folio), which,
for its idiomatic English style, deserves to be called beautiful.
Three translations of it, in the sixteenth century, into French,
and three into Italian, which were frequently reprinted, besides
one into Latin, already alluded to, and one into German, may be
found noted in Brunet, Ebert, etc.
The influence, therefore, of the Celestina seems not yet at an end,
little as it deserves regard, except for its lifelike exhibition of the
most unworthy forms of human character, and its singularly pure, rich,
and idiomatic Castilian style.
CHAPTER XIV.
DRAMA CONTINUED.--JUAN DE LA ENZINA.--HIS LIFE AND WORKS.--HIS
REPRESENTACIONES, AND THEIR CHARACTER.--FIRST SECULAR DRAMAS ACTED IN
SPAIN.--SOME RELIGIOUS IN THEIR TONE, AND SOME NOT.--GIL VICENTE, A
PORTUGUESE.--HIS SPANISH DRAMAS.--AUTO OF CASSANDRA.--COMEDIA OF THE
WIDOWER.--HIS INFLUENCE ON THE SPANISH DRAMA.