THE PREVAILING QUALITY OF THE SPANISH DRAMA--TYPICAL EXAMPLES--‘LA
DAMA MELINDROSA’--‘EL TEJEDOR DE SEGOVIA’--‘EL CONDENADO POR
DESCONFIADO’--THE PLAYS ON “HONOUR”--‘A SECRETO AGRAVIO SECRETA
VENGANZA’--THE “AUTO SACRAMENTAL”--THE “LOA”--THE ‘VERDADERO DIOS
PAN’--‘LOS DOS HABLADORES.’
[SN: _The prevailing quality of the Spanish drama._]
There may well seem to be something over-bold, even impudent, in the
attempt to give an account of the different kinds of Spanish drama
in one brief chapter. Its abundance alone would appear to render the
effort vain, and the common elaborate classification of the plays into
heroic, romantic, religious, of “cloak and sword,” and so forth, seems
to imply the existence of a number of types distinct from one another,
and calling for separate treatment. Yet though I cannot hope to be
exhaustive, it is, in my opinion, possible to be at least not wholly
inadequate. The task is materially facilitated by the great uniformity
of the Spanish drama. No matter what the name may be, the action is
much the same, and the characters do not greatly vary. It has been
said that Calderon’s personages are all like bullets cast in a mould;
and though this, as is the case with most sweeping assertions, fails to
take notice of the exceptions, it has much truth, and may be applied
to others. The Spanish drama is above all a drama of action, conducted
by fixed types. Juan de la Cueva had said in a spirit of prophecy that
the artful fable was the glory of the Spanish stage, and Lope appeared
in good time to prove him right. The types who move in the action are
the _Dama_, the _Galan_, the _Barba_, and the _Gracioso_--the Lady, the
Lover, the Old Man, and the Clown. They have the stage to themselves
in the _comedia de capa y espada_. This phrase, when translated into
French or English, has an air of romance about it which is somewhat
misleading. The cloak and sword were the distinctive parts of the dress
of the private gentleman. _Caballero de capa y espada_ was the man
about town of our own Restoration plays, who is neither great noble,
churchman, nor lawyer. The _comedia de capa y espada_ was then the
genteel comedy of Spain. But the _Dama_, the _Galan_, the _Barba_, and
the _Gracioso_ figure in every kind of play, even in those of religion.
By these is meant the stage drama turning on some religious motive, and
not the _auto sacramental_, which was a mystery differing from those of
the Middle Ages only in this, that it was written by men of letters on
whom, and on whose art, the Renaissance had had its influence. In the
Romantic plays there is more passion, and the sword is more often out
of its scabbard, but we find the same types, the same general action.
Spain produced a certain number of plays approaching our own comedy of
humours. These are the _comedias de figuron_. _La Verdad Sospechosa_
and the _Lindo Don Diego_ are the best known examples. But here again
the “humour”--the _figuron_--is placed in the midst of the stock types
and the customary action.
[SN: _Typical examples._]
To show what these types and this action were in general terms would be
easy enough, but perhaps a better, and certainly a more entertaining,
method is to take half-a-dozen typical plays, and to give such an
analysis of them as may enable the reader to appreciate for himself
that skilful construction of plot at which the Spaniards aimed, and
to judge how far it is true that however much the subject differed,
the _dramatis personæ_ did not greatly vary. For this purpose it is
not necessary to take what is best but what is most characteristic. I
have selected as an example of the comedy of lively complicated action
the _Dama Melindrosa_, which may be translated ‘My Lady’s Vapours,’
by Lope de Vega; as a romantic play, the _Tejedor de Segovia_--‘The
Weaver of Segovia’--by Juan Ruiz de Alarcon; as a religious play, the
_Condenado por Desconfiado_--‘Damned for want of Faith’--of Tirso
de Molina; for the play which has “honour” for its motive, the _A
Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza_--‘A Secret Vengeance for a Hidden
Wrong’--of Calderon. The _Dama Melindrosa_ draws a little towards the
_comedia de figuron_, but it is none the less a perfect specimen of the
cloak-and-sword comedy, and a good example of Lope. It is chosen also
because it possesses a plot sufficiently entangled to show the Spanish
_enredo_ (_i.e._, tangle), and yet not so complicated as to be obscure
in the telling. Specimens of the romantic, and religious, play might
have been easily found in Calderon, but to show the general quality
of a literature, we must not confine ourselves to the greater men.
There remain the _auto sacramental_, and the short interludes, which
under various names surrounded, and enlivened, the _comedia_. For the
first we must go to Calderon, and none seems more fit to show what the
Renaissance had done with these survivals of the Middle Ages than the
_Verdadero Dios Pan_--‘The True God Pan.’ For an example of the smaller
pieces we can take the _Dos Habladores_--‘The Two Chatterers’--of
Cervantes, who excelled in this, and only in this, dramatic form.[35]
[SN: La Dama Melindrosa.]
Belisa, the Dama Melindrosa, the lady with the vapours, of Lope’s
comedy, is the daughter of a rich widow, Lisarda, and she has a
brother, Don Juan. The brother spends his nights serenading ladies, in
company with his friend Eliso, and lies in bed till midday. Belisa has
hitherto refused all the husbands proposed by her mother, giving more
or less fantastical reasons in each case, and is a very airy whimsical
young person. In the first scene of the play Lisarda confides her
troubles with her children to her brother Tiberio, the _barba_--beard,
or old man--of the piece. Lisarda professes her desire to get her
children married and settled in life, in order that she may retire
to the country with one gentlewoman and a slave, there to bewail her
lost lord (who, we learn, has been dead for about a year), like the
tender turtle on a thorn. Tiberio pooh-poohs his sister’s sentiments,
and makes the unsympathetic remark that widows generally seem to find
solitude a thorn, to judge by their perpetual fidgeting, but offers to
use his influence to persuade Belisa to marry. Then follows a scene
with the young lady. She knows she is going to be sermonised, and puts
on all her airs and graces. A chair is brought for Tiberio and cushions
for the ladies, who squat on them in the old Spanish fashion. Mme.
d’Aulnoy, the author of the fairy tales, who came to Spain as wife of
the French Ambassador, has explained how intolerable she found this
attitude. Belisa provokes her uncle, who has the usual peppery temper
of the _barba_, into expressing a desire to box her ears, but will
accept no husband. To this party enter an _alguacil_, or officer of
police, with an _escribano_, a species of attorney and process-server.
We learn that Lisarda has a claim on her son’s friend Eliso, who owed
her husband money, and will not pay it. She has therefore sued out a
writ, and is sending the officers to seize a _prenda_, or pledge, which
she can keep or sell for the discharge of the debt, if Eliso will not
pay what he owes.
The scene now changes to the house of Eliso, who is found discussing
with his servant Fabio the question whether it is better to pay
the debt or compound by marrying Belisa, with her vapours. His
conversation is broken off by the hurried entry of Felisardo, sword in
hand. He has found a Navarrese cavalier persecuting Celia, who is on
her way home from church, with unwelcome attentions. The usual duel
has followed. The Navarrese is on the pavement, and Felisardo is on
his way to take sanctuary, bringing Celia with him to leave her under
the protection of Eliso. Of course Eliso behaves like a gentleman,
orders his front door to be shut in case the police-officers are in
pursuit, and gives his friends refuge. He persuades the two to disguise
themselves in the holiday dresses of his Morisco slaves, Pedro and
Zara, who are absent on his estate. Meanwhile Fabio reports that there
are police-officers below, and is sent down with orders to delay them
as long as he can. Eliso has a soliloquy on the hazards of love, in
the form of a half-burlesque sonnet in which all the last words are
_esdrújulo_, accented on the antepenult. At last the _alguacil_ is
admitted, deeply angered by the delay, and announces that he has come
to serve Lisarda’s writ. Eliso is relieved, and tells him to take what
he likes--and he takes the two supposed slaves. The scene now returns
to Lisarda’s house. She is much pleased by the intelligence of the
_alguacil_, and the attractive appearance of the supposed Pedro and
Zara. Belisa, too, is impressed by the gallant bearing of Felisardo,
who enters into the game with spirit. Meanwhile Don Juan is at last up.
He finds Celia among the servants, and on learning who she is supposed
to be, observes that his friend Eliso was wise not to let him see
her. Of course he makes hyperbolical love to her at once. Celia is not
pleased at the admiration of Lisarda’s female servants for Felisardo,
and he is jealous of Don Juan. And so the first act ends. Lope, it will
be seen, has carried out his dramatic scheme so far with great success.
He has introduced his persons, and knitted his intrigue. Everything has
happened in a probable way, and there are infinite possibilities of
complications and cross purposes.
The second act opens with Belisa’s confession of her love for the
supposed Pedro. It is made to the indispensable _confidante_, who,
as a matter of course, is her servant Flora, the counterpart of the
_gracioso_, and the _soubrette_ of the French comedy. Belisa speaks
largely in infantile little lines of six syllables. She explains and
excuses her own _melindres_ at considerable length, and asks Flora
how to escape from a love which she feels is disgraceful, and half
considers as a punishment for her whims. Flora makes the ferocious
suggestion that she should insist on having Pedro branded on the face,
after the manner of runaway slaves. This was a rebus formed of the
letter _s_, pronounced “_es_,” and a nail--_clavo_--which together make
the word _esclavo_, a slave. The object of this precious device is to
kill Belisa’s love by degrading its object. The _melindrosa_ hesitates,
but finally takes her servant’s counsel, and when her mother, who is
as much in love with Pedro as herself, declines, threatens hysterics.
Lisarda in despair applies to Tiberio, who advises that the rebus
should be painted on the faces of the slaves, which will quiet Belisa,
and do no harm. In the meantime Eliso pays a visit to Lisarda. He has
at last made up his mind to become Belisa’s suitor. The mother warns
him of her daughter’s humours, but promises her help, insisting,
however, that he must make her a present of the slaves, although he has
now satisfied the debt. Eliso, who knows he gives nothing, consents
with just sufficient appearance of reluctance to provoke the lady’s
wishes still further. He also drops hints that the slaves are not what
they seem. In a short conversation with Felisardo, Eliso tells him
that the Navarrese still lives, though in danger, that the police are
seeking for him and Celia, and that they will be wise to stay where
they are. They agree, and allow the infamatory mark to be painted on
their faces. The play need no longer be told scene by scene, and could
not be so told except at inconvenient length. Lisarda hankers after the
man slave, and Don Juan makes furious love to Celia. Belisa finds her
love is not cured by the supposed branding of Pedro, and is perpetually
either making advances to him, or flying off in more or less affected
hysterics. Celia for her part is jealous of the mother and daughter.
She and her lover are twice surprised in talk, and have to use their
wits to escape discovery. There is no small truth in the part Belisa
plays. Lope accepted slavery as a matter of course, and was writing to
amuse, not to enforce a moral, but he comes very near the best passages
in that powerful book _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_,--the scenes which follow the
death of St Clair. Mrs Beecher Stowe wrote to prove that slavery makes
it possible for a weak self-indulgent nature to be horribly brutal in
act. Belisa is not allowed to go beyond whims. The second act ends by
her insisting that an iron collar shall be put on Pedro’s neck, which
makes an effective “curtain,” and no doubt left the audience highly
excited as to what was coming next.
The third act opens with a scene between Lisarda and Eliso, who
reproaches her with ill-treating the slaves, and repeats his warning
that they are not what they appear to be. This only excites Lisarda
in her determination to marry Pedro. Then Eliso is angered by Don
Juan’s servant Carrillo, the _gracioso_ of the piece, who tells him
that the slave is making love to Belisa. With a want of scruple too
common with the Spanish _galan_, he eggs on Don Juan to persevere in
his pursuit of Celia. Belisa also has begun to have her suspicions
as to the real character of the slaves, but cannot believe that a
free man and woman would allow themselves to be branded. Now follows
a set of scenes hovering between farce and melodrama. In a more than
usually exalted state of the vapours, Belisa pretends to faint, in
order that Pedro may carry her to her room. She has first given him
a ring. Pedro is not a little embarrassed, but finally takes her up
with disgusted resignation, and is about to carry her to her room,
when Celia comes in, and “makes him a scene of jealousy.” Supposing
the _melindrosa_ to be insensible they address one another by their
true names, and say some uncomplimentary truths of Belisa. At last
Felisardo puts Belisa down on a sofa, as Celia insists upon it, gives
his lady-love the ring as a proof of his loyalty, and walks off to
the stable. Belisa is furious, puzzled, but still doubtful. In a fit
of rage she accuses Celia of stealing the ring, and the _dama_ is in
some danger of learning that it is perilous to play the part of slave.
She is, of course, rescued from the officious Carrillo, who is eager
to inflict the punishment ordered by his mistress, by Don Juan. The
young gentleman is in high indignation, and swears that he will marry
the slave. His mother, who means to do the same with Pedro, is not on
that account the less angry with him. Being now thoroughly tired of
Don Juan’s rebellion and Belisa’s whims, she begs the help of Tiberio
to bring about her marriage with the slave. The helpful Tiberio has a
resource. He has seen a gentleman named Felisardo about the court who
is wonderfully like Pedro. Let the slave be dressed as a gentleman
and introduced as Lisarda’s proposed husband. In the meantime Don
Juan has plotted with Eliso that Celia shall be helped to resume her
true place, when he will of course marry her, and present his mother
with the accomplished fact. After a well-handled passage of mutual
reproaches between mother and daughter, there comes a stage device
which the play-goer will recognise as now worn threadbare, but which
is always effective. Lisarda decides that when Tiberio returns with
Felisardo, whom she still believes to be the slave Pedro, she will put
out the light by an affected accident, and seize the opportunity to
make a declaration of love. What follows need hardly be told. The light
is put out. Everybody says the wrong thing to everybody, and when the
candles are lit again the play is over. Felisardo is married to Celia,
who arrives at the right moment. Belisa, her vapours being no longer
heeded, consents to marry Eliso. Carrillo is paired off with Flora.
Lisarda declares herself satisfied, and so the play being played out,
the puppets return to their box.
Here, it will be allowed, is a play--and it is one of many--which may
well have amused a Spanish audience for an afternoon. We may confess
that this was its main purpose. Yet it is also amusing to read. Lope,
indeed, wrote well. His verse in its various forms, including blank
verse, which has been comparatively little written by other Spaniards,
is accomplished, when haste did not make him careless; and it has the
qualities of the prose of our own Vanbrugh--straightforward simplicity
and natural ease. The actors must have found it pleasant to learn. His
characters, again, have a respectable measure of general truth to human
nature. They are not, indeed, the living persons we meet in Molière
and Shakespeare. Even Belisa is only a _dama_ with _melindres_, and as
Celia is, so his other _damas_ are; nor does one _galan_, _gracioso_,
or _barba_ differ essentially from another. Yet they are true, with the
measure of truth possible to conventional types, and their doings are
lively. The doings are always the essential thing. Whatever literary
merit Lope’s play may have, it is always strictly subordinate to the
purely theatrical purpose, to the necessity of pleasing an audience by
a lively action which must be full of surprises in the details, but
always intelligible in the general lines. Of this purely theatrical
art he was a master. He knew how to bring about a good situation, how
to lead up to an effective ending to his act, how to make the wildly
improbable look probable on the boards. In so far he is very modern.
The popular play of to-day, the French comedy of _quiproquo_, is only
Lope’s comedy of intrigue in modern trappings. It is never better in
these qualities than his are at their best. He had discovered all the
devices which the playwright finds more effective, and much easier
to produce, than passion, or thought, or poetry. And he did at least
present them in poetic form. He was the most poetic of playwrights, and
the ancestor of all who write merely for the stage, whose aim it is to
amuse, and to move by direct appeal to the eye, and the laughter, or
tears, which lie near the surface.
[SN: El Tejedor de Segovia.]
The _enredo_ supplied the canvas on which, or the background against
which, the Spanish dramatist had to place whatever romantic, religious,
or other figure or action he wished to present to his audience. In
the _Tejedor de Segovia_--‘The Weaver of Segovia’--of Alarcon we have
romance of the most approved type, the story of a gentleman who is
driven by oppression to become a Robin Hood, a “gallant outlaw,” and
who finally earns pardon, and restoration to his honours, by service
against the Moor. This is Don Fernando Ramirez, whose father has been
unjustly put to death by the king Don Alfonso, at the instigation of
the favourite, the Marques Suero Pelaez. It is supposed that Fernando
has also been killed, but he is living disguised as a weaver at
Segovia, with his _dama_ Teodora. A sister, Doña Ana Ramirez, is
living in retirement near the town with a servant, Florinda. She is
in love with the Count Don Julian, son of Suero Pelaez, who neglects
her, and is tired of her. Don Julian has caught sight of Teodora, and
has fallen in love with her in the usual fire-and-flames style. He is
determined to carry her off, and when the play opens, is prowling about
the weaver’s house with his servant Fineo. Don Julian is convinced
that a mere mechanic will not dare to resist the son of so powerful
a man as Suero Palaez. As a matter of fact the weaver is absent, and
Teodora is alone in the house with the servant Chinchon, the _gracioso_
of the piece, and an accomplished specimen of the greed, cowardice,
brag, and low cunning proper to the type. A moderately experienced
reader of romance sees at once what the course of the story must be.
The count endeavours to gain admittance. Chinchon the coward proves
no protection. He is rather a traitor, and Teodora is assailed by the
count, when the weaver returns. Fernando takes a high line with Don
Julian, and when the count endeavours to carry things with a high
hand, shows that, weaver as he appears to be, he can use a sword like
a gentleman. The count and his servant are ignominiously driven into
the streets. Then the storm breaks on the weaver. He is imprisoned, and
Teodora has to fly to hiding. In prison the weaver finds Don Garceran
de Miranda, and various others, who form the raw material of a model
band of brigands. The courage and craft of Fernando aiding, they all
break out and take to “the sierra”--the hillside--which is the Spanish
equivalent of our green wood. Through many adventures, each coming one
out of the other, all the personages playing their part with that sense
of the theatre which Lope had conveyed to his countrymen, Don Fernando
works back to his own, and to revenge. It is a Robin Hood story, told
by a Spaniard for the stage, and with Spanish types.
There are individual scenes of the best Spanish romance. One is that
in which Suero Pelaez, the _barba_, the personification of austere
Castilian honour and loyalty, reproaches his son with his disorderly
life. Suero Pelaez is the typical _père noble_, the heavy father of the
stage, comparable for rigid loftiness of sentiment to the Ruy Gomez of
_Hernani_. Victor Hugo would have done the scene magnificently, and as
Alarcon wrote it, it will stand comparison with the best of the French
romantic plays. In another scene Teodora and Fernando are prisoners to
the count, and she saves her lover by pretending to betray him. She
asks to be allowed to kill him, and when supplied with a sword for
that atrocious purpose, cuts his bonds and gives him the weapon--a
_coup de théâtre_ repeated with more or less disguise many thousands
of times, but unfailing in its effect. In a more thoroughly Spanish
scene, Fernando forces the count to do justice to his sister, Doña
Ana, by promising to marry her, and having so salved the honour of
his family, kills him in fair fight. Doña Ana displays the philosophy
rarely wanting in the second _dama_ at the end of a play. While Don
Julian was alive, honour required her to insist on marriage; but now
that he is dead, and she has been righted, she is quite prepared to
marry Don Garceran, who has gallantly played his part as Patroclus,
Achates, Horatio, Amyas Leigh’s Lieutenant Cary, or Jack Easy’s friend
Gascoigne--in short, hero’s right-hand man. It is not _King Lear_, or
even _Phèdre_, but it is very amusing reading, made of such stuff as
romance is made of at all times.
[SN: El Condenado por Desconfiado.]
With the play on a religious motive we come to what is far more alien
to ourselves. In Tirso de Molina’s _Condenado por Desconfiado_ we have
something which, at any rate in such a form as this, is unknown on the
modern stage. Paul the hermit is a man of thirty, who has fled from the
world ten years ago, and is living in the practice of every austerity.
Inappropriate as it may seem, he has with him a servant, Pedrisco, the
_gracioso_ of the piece, who differs in nothing from others of the same
function on the Spanish stage. In the first scene Pedrisco is absent
begging for the herbs on which the hermit lives. The play opens with
a soliloquy by Paul, which is a rapid theatrical equivalent for Lord
Tennyson’s monologue of St Simeon Stylites. The hermit is troubled by
no doubts on any point of faith, but he is racked by anxiety to feel
assured that his austerities have earned him salvation, and we see
that he has yielded to spiritual pride. After giving expression to his
doubts and fears, through which there pierces an aggrieved sense that
heaven owes him salvation, Paul retires to his cave. We have a buffoon
interlude from Pedrisco, who complains of his diet (the _gracioso_
is ever a glutton), and tells us that he smuggles in something more
substantial than herbs for his own consumption. Then he goes into his
cave to eat, and Paul returns in great agitation. He has dreamt, and in
his dream has been taken to the judgment-seat of heaven. There he has
seen his good deeds weighed against his evil, and the good have proved
by far the lighter. He breaks into a wild prayer for assurance, for a
sign, which is by far the finest passage of verse in the play. It is
strictly according to tradition that he should be heard by the enemy
of mankind. The devil tells us that he is empowered to tempt the holy
man, that vulgar temptations have failed, but that now Paul is wavering
in his faith in the divine mercy, and he will tempt him in another
way. A disappointment now awaits the reader, who expects a scene of
temptation, and gets a device for helping on the action. Satan appears
in the shape of an angel, and tells Paul to go to Naples. There at a
certain place near the harbour he will meet one Enrico, son of Anareto.
He is to watch that man, for as the fate of Enrico is, so will his
own be, the devil being a liar from the beginning. Paulo wonders, but
obeys, and departs with Pedrisco for Naples.
There we precede him, and find ourselves with two gentlemen at the
door of Celia, who is a courtesan. From the conversation of these
two we learn of her beauty, her rapacity, her great wit, and many
accomplishments, as also that she is devoted to one Enrico, a ruffler,
gambler, and bully, who beats and robs her. One of the two gentlemen
has never seen her, and after due warning from his friend, it is
decided that they shall go in on pretence of asking Celia, who is a
poetess, for some love verses to be sent to their _damas_. They go in,
bearing gifts, and then Enrico bursts in with his follower Galvan.
Enrico plays the bully to perfection, drives off the two gentlemen, and
seizes their gifts to Celia, who wheedles and adores him as the most
valiant of men. All this scene is full of vigour, and is written with
astonishing gusto. When placated by Celia, Enrico promises her a feast
on her own money, and sending for friends, they go out to the sea-shore
by the harbour. Here Paulo is waiting, as he was directed by the
fiend. There is a scene, very intelligible, and not at all ridiculous
to a Spanish audience of the day, in which Paulo proves his Christian
humility by throwing himself on the ground and telling Pedrisco to
trample on him. Then Enrico and his riotous party burst on the scene.
Enrico has just tossed a troublesome old beggar into the sea out of
pure wickedness, and is in jovial spirits. He glories and drinks deep,
bragging of his own sins, and extorting the admiration of Celia and the
subordinate scoundrels who form the party. This, again, is an excellent
scene, and not untrue to nature. Paul recognises the man with whose
fate his own is bound up, and is horrified. He feels convinced that
this man can never be saved, and revolts at thinking that after all his
austerities he is to be lost. In an explosion of passion, not unhuman,
and certainly very southern, he decides that he too will lead a life
of crime and make the world fear one who, “although just,” has been
condemned.
So ends the first act. In the second and third we have the perpetual
contrast between the two men. Paulo has become a brigand, but is still
in trouble about his soul. He has a warning by an angel, who appears
in the shape of a shepherd-boy, and tells him a parable of the lost
sheep. Paulo understands, but still his doubts haunt him. Meanwhile
we learn, with some surprise, that Enrico has one virtue amid his
thousand crimes--a tender affection for his old father. He refuses
to kill an aged man, though he has taken pay to kill him. The old
man’s resemblance to his father disarms Enrico. When reproached by
his employer he kills _him_. He has now to fly Naples, and in order
to escape pursuit has to take to the water. Before plunging in he
prays for God’s mercy, for though a sinner Enrico has never doubted.
Considerations of time and space troubled the Spanish dramatist but
little. Enrico swims from Naples to the place where Paulo is camped
with his band. He falls into the hands of the ex-hermit. Paulo now
conceives a hope. If he can find that Enrico is repentant there will
be a chance for his salvation. He causes his prisoner to be tied to
a tree blindfold, in order that he may be shot to death, and then
resuming his hermit’s dress, exhorts him to prepare for death. But
Enrico will not go beyond a general acknowledgment that the divine
mercy can save him if God so pleases. Of confession and repentance he
will not hear a word, but is in all respects a hardened sinner. Paulo
is again plunged into despair, and repeats his determination to exceed
the crimes of Enrico, “since it is to be all one in the end.” The words
are trivial, but they contain blasphemy in the real sense. The close
of the play finds Paulo still revolving his weary doubt, and Enrico in
a dungeon waiting for execution. Here we have another very arbitrary
and pointless scene of temptation. The fiend shows Enrico a means of
escape, but he hears voices warning him to stay, and he stays. The
scene has no purpose, for the devil makes no attack on the prisoner’s
faith, and Enrico remains still an unbending sinner. At last he yields
to the prayers of his old father, confesses, and makes an edifying end.
In the last scene, while Paulo soliloquises, the soul of Enrico is
borne to heaven by two angels. But Paulo will not believe that so great
a sinner can have been saved. He does not, it is true, see the vision,
and has only the word of Pedrisco for Enrico’s pious end. Then Paulo is
killed by soldiers who are hunting him down. Flames are seen round his
dead body, and his voice is heard announcing that he is lost for ever,
“por desconfiado,” as one who did not trust God’s mercy.
The morality and doctrine of this play need not concern us here,
all the more because they are not unfamiliar. There is some virtue
in a name, for if the Maestro Tirso de Molina had called his play
‘Justification by Faith,’ as he well might, he would have been in peril
of ending at the stake. Head of a house of Nuestra Señora de la Merced
Calzada at Soria, as he was, his play might pass for an illustration
of Luther’s much-debated “pecca fortiter.” The purely literary interest
of the piece is great. The scenes filled with the crimes and violence
of Enrico are written with the greatest _brio_. Indeed this venerable
churchman Gabriel Tellez excelled in drawing types, and more especially
a type of woman, of the simple, sensuous, and passionate order.
He appears to have had a strong sympathy with them, and a belief,
less monastic than sound, that there was something better in their
unfettered loyalty to nature than in the coward virtue of those who
fly the battle. His Enrico is a better fellow from the first than the
hermit. There is a manfulness about him which is more hopeful than the
self-seeking, conventional piety of Paulo. Whether Tirso de Molina
meant so much or not, his lost hermit is a vigorous rough sketch of the
stamp of man who is not essentially good, but only very much afraid
of hell-fire, and abjectly eager to escape it by acting according to
rule. The play, it will be seen, does not differ essentially from
the accepted model of the Spanish drama. There is no development of
character. The action is imposed on the personages, not produced by
them. Enrico does not repent in any real sense of the word. He only
makes a pious end, because his father, whom he loves, persuades him,
and the act is sufficient. As Paulo is at the beginning so he remains
to the end.
[SN: _The plays on “honour.”_]
With the play on the “point of honour” we return to more familiar
regions. There are hundreds of modern comedies in which the leading
personages are the lover, the wife, and the husband. But the Spaniards
were limited in their treatment of the theme. Neither the Church
nor their own more than half-oriental sentiment permitted of the
presentation of adultery as sympathetic, or even pardonable. When
they took this subject it was only for the purpose of showing by a
lively action how the husband vindicated his “honour.” This honour, as
has been already said, lay in the opinion the world had of him. Don
Gutierre Alfonso, in the _Médico de su Honra_, kills his wife, not
because he believes her guilty, but because she has been pursued by
a lover and he will not have it said that this has been, and that he
has not avenged himself. To do this effectually he must kill both--the
innocent woman and the lover who sought to seduce her. If you ask Why?
he answers “Mi opinion”--which means not what I believe, but what the
world may believe of me--leaves me no choice. If I do not, it will
say, There is a man whose wife was courted, and she lives. Where one
failed another may succeed. There must be no doubt of my “honour.” And
so after a little complaint over the tyranny of the world he kills her
with no more scruple than he would show in despatching a worthless
horse or hound. The father, or brother, who is head of a house, is
under the same obligation as the husband. His honour is concerned
in seeing that his daughter or sister gives no occasion to the evil
tongues of the world. In Calderon’s very typical _comedia de capa y
espada_, the _Dama Duende_--the ‘Fairy Lady’--the heroine is a young
and beautiful widow living with a brother, who keeps her in a separate
set of rooms in his house, and will not let her be seen. She accepts
this tyranny as a matter of course, and has no more doubt of her
brother’s right to control, and if she is found disobeying his orders,
to punish her, than she would have had of a husband’s. How far all this
gives a true picture of the society of the time has been a debated
question. It certainly was the picture which that society liked to see
drawn of itself. We may accept it as giving no more than an exaggerated
theatrical representation of truth. Spain is a country of the Roman
law, which allows a husband to kill an unfaithful wife and her lover.
It had also been affected by the long Moorish dominion, and the women
of all ranks were certainly less independent than in England. In the
higher classes they were, and in provincial towns where ancient customs
linger, still are, much secluded.
[SN: A Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza.]
None of the many plays in which Calderon set forth this conception of
honour is more interesting than _A Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza_.
The action takes place in Portugal in the reign of Don Sebastian, just
before that king sails on his disastrous expedition to Africa. Don
Lope de Almeida, a Portuguese gentleman of great fortune, has made a
contract of marriage with Doña Leonora de Guzman, a Castilian lady. He
has never seen his future wife, who is travelling to Lisbon under the
escort of Don Lope’s uncle, Don Bernardino, when the play opens. In
the first scene Don Lope informs the king of his approaching marriage,
and asks leave not to accompany him on his invasion of Morocco. Then
after a brief conversation with his servant Manrique, the inevitable
_gracioso_, he catches sight of an old friend, Don Juan de Silva, who
comes on the stage poorly dressed. Don Lope greets him warmly, and
with some difficulty learns his story. In a long speech, disfigured,
according to a fault too common with Calderon, by repetitions,
apostrophes, and frigid ornament, Don Juan explains that at Goa he has
killed the son of the governor, and has been compelled to fly, leaving
his possessions, and is a ruined man. The provocation was great, for
Manuel de Sousa had given him the lie. Don Juan describes how he drew
at once and killed the insulter on the spot--not, be it observed, in
a duel, but by a thrust delivered before Sousa could draw his sword.
A passage of this speech is very necessary for the understanding of
the play. Don Juan breaks into an outcry against “the tyrannical error
of men,” the folly of the world, which allows honour to be destroyed
by a breath. He labours the point, he repeats himself to insist that
his honour was destroyed when he was called a liar, and that though
he avenged himself in the not very heroic fashion described, still it
will remain the fact that he has been called a liar. At a later stage
of the play this works. For the present Don Lope gives his old friend
refuge, and tells him of his marriage. We are now introduced to Doña
Leonor, and learn that she has had a lover, in all honour of course,
Don Luis de Benavídes. He, she thinks, is dead on an expedition to
Africa. She is marrying because she is forced, but will carry his love
to the altar. Beyond that it shall not go, for it would touch her
honour. But Don Luis is not dead. He appears, and makes himself known
to her by pretending to be a diamond-merchant, and sending her by the
hand of Don Bernardino a ring she has formerly given him. There is a
scene of reproach and explanation between them, but Doña Leonor is
loyal to honour so far. Her husband now comes on the scene, and greets
her with a sonnet, to which she answers with another of double meaning.
It is addressed both to Don Luis and her husband--each may read it his
own way, the first as a farewell, the second as a promise of faithful
obedience. Don Luis decides to follow her to Portugal and die for his
love, if die he must. So the personages being introduced, and the
intrigue on foot, the first act ends.
Now Don Luis establishes himself near the house of Don Lope, and is for
ever prowling about the neighbourhood. Don Lope sees him, and wonders
what he is doing. He suspects wrong at once, for the wronged husband
of these plays is not of a free and noble nature. From the Spanish,
and Italian, point of view he who is not suspicious is credulous, and
a fool. Yet he will not believe at once, his wife being what she is,
and he what he is. He shows his confidence by asking his wife’s leave
to join the king’s expedition to Africa. Leonor gives it, and he sees
no danger. But his friend Don Juan does. He drops a hint that it is
strange the lady should be ready to part with her husband so soon.
Again Don Lope is set speculating and wondering. Meanwhile Don Luis
has been persecuting Leonor for a last interview, and she agrees to
see him in the house, in the early morning, when she thinks she will
not be discovered by her husband. Don Luis comes and is caught by Don
Lope, but invents a story to the effect that he has taken refuge in the
house to escape an enemy. Don Lope pretends to believe, but does not,
and warns Don Luis plainly enough, though not in direct terms, that he
will permit no trifling with his honour. Now the action advances very
rapidly. Don Juan warns Don Lope by putting the supposed case of a man
who knows that an insulting word has been used of a friend, who has
not heard it, and asking whether he ought to be told. Don Lope advises
silence, because the more an offence to honour is repeated, the worse.
But he knows what is meant, and makes his mind up to take a secret
revenge for the secret wrong when once he is sure. The king refuses to
take him to Africa, on the ground that he is more needed in his own
house. “Is my wrong already so public?” is Don Lope’s comment.
Now a very skilful use is made of Don Juan’s story to influence the
mind of Don Lope. Don Juan hears himself described by two cavaliers
as the man to whom the lie was given by Manuel de Sousa. He draws,
kills one, and drives the other off. Then, in a paroxysm of grief, he
once more complains to Don Lope of the injustice which compels the
insulted man to bear the stigma of a public insult for ever. This
incident confirms Don Lope’s intention to be secret in his revenge,
lest it should make his wrong known. Fortune throws a chance in his
way. Doña Leonor, encouraged by what she believes has been her escape
from discovery, invites Don Luis to meet her on the other side of
the river in a garden. He comes on the stage reading her letter, and
meets Don Lope. The husband does not know what is in the letter, but
he suspects. He invites Don Luis to cross the river with him, pushes
off without the boatman, stabs his enemy in mid-stream, and upsets the
boat. Then he swims ashore to the garden where his wife is waiting for
Don Luis. To her he tells a story of an accident, and gives her the
name of the Castilian gentleman who has perished. Leonor faints, and
thus confirms Lope’s belief that she meant to betray him. He pretends
that her anxiety was for himself; but that night he fires his house,
strangles his wife in the confusion, and appears from among the flames
bearing her body in his arms, pretending that she has been stifled by
the smoke. The scene between husband and wife is not given. At the end
he tells the king what has happened as to the death of Don Luis, and
says that being no longer needed in his own house he is ready to sail
for Africa. Don Sebastian approves of his hidden vengeance for the
secret wrong, and we are left to suppose that Don Lope goes to perish
at Alcázar el Quebir.
This is a powerful drama, and a good example of Calderon’s command of
stage effect. It is written in the finished poetic form with which
he replaced the free-flowing dialogue of Lope de Vega. The defect of
this lay in the temptation it afforded to redundancy and undramatic
ornament, but it has a sparkling icy beauty of its own. There is no
development, even very little play, of character. The interest lies in
the consistent working of a fierce, sullen, suspicious jealousy.
[SN: _The_ Auto Sacramental.]
The _Auto Sacramental_ is very Spanish, very remote from us. These
mysteries were performed during the month containing the feast of
Corpus Christi in the streets, not in the theatres, which were shut
at this time, but they were acted by professional actors. “Andar en
los carros”--to go in the cars--was the regular phrase used by the
actors for this form of their work. The cars were elaborate structures,
covered, but capable of being opened to show scenes, and of letting
down drawbridges which served as the stage. They were taken to
different parts of the town, so that performances might be given in the
squares, or before the houses of distinguished people.
_The True God Pan_ may represent for us what the _Auto Sacramental_
had become in Calderon’s hands when his genius was at its fullest
development.[36] Calderon was fond of taking classical myths for
his _autos_, and treating them as symbols of things to come since
fulfilled. He used the story of Psyche and Cupid, and also the
Andromeda. The application of the myth of Pan to Christianity was not
uncommon in the Renaissance. Pan in Spanish means “bread,” and the
_auto_ was especially meant to set forth the mystery of the Sacrament.
This play on words is the key to the whole _auto_. If the reader thinks
the conceit puerile, and of more than dubious taste, he must remember
that he is asked to look not at what would please us, but at what
did please the Spaniards,--what was accepted by their still mediæval
simplicity of piety, and was in keeping with their love for playing on
words. [SN: _The_ loa.] First came the _loa_, or praise. This was an
introductory piece, sometimes delivered by a single speaker, sometimes
containing a little action. It was common on the secular stage, but had
no necessary connection with the piece to follow, being only part of
the surroundings and dependencies of the _comedia_. Calderon’s _loa_
was a regular introduction to the _auto_. In _The True God Pan_ there
are five personages in the _loa_--History, Poetry, Fable, Music, and
Truth. History, the _dama_, begins by announcing that in this time of
general joy it becomes her to speak, since she by the mouth of Paul
and John has told how the Bread (Pan) became flesh, and the Word had
become flesh. She calls in Music and the other personages. A forfeit
dance takes place--that is to say, all sing as they dance, and each who
makes a fault is called upon to pay a small forfeit. This was, and is,
a form of amusement in Spain. The songs all refer to the mystery of
the Sacrament, and the faults are the successive departures of Music,
Poetry, and the others from the Catholic truth. Fable promises to pay
her forfeit by telling one of her stories, and beginning with the
Spanish once upon a time--“Érase que se era”--gives an allegorised
version of the myth of Pan. Poetry promises an _auto_ on the same
subject, to show that the heathen had foreknowledge of our pure truths,
but being blind, without the light of Faith, applied them to their
own False Gods. The _auto_ shall be on the True God Pan. With a loyal
address to Charles the Consoler--the unhappy Carlos II., then a small
boy, before whom the _auto_ was performed--the _loa_ ends.
[SN: _El Verdadero Dios Pan._]
The personages of the _auto_ are--Pan, Night, the Moon, the World,
Judaism, Synagogue, Heathenism, Idolatry, Apostasy, Malice, Simplicity,
the Fiend, Faith, a child, shepherds, shepherdesses, with musicians and
attendants. Pan comes out of a tent, and begins by a lyric appeal to
Night. Night comes, and Pan explains that his birth was at Bethlehem,
which in Hebrew means house of grain, and from that point goes on to
allegorise, in a fashion which it is difficult to interpret, out of
its own proper language of piety and poetry, without offence. He asks
Night to lead him to the Moon, and then again allegorises, explaining
that she is Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpine in hell,
therefore the type of human nature, which dwells on earth, aspires
to heaven, and can sink to the infernal regions. Night refuses,
telling him that all the country is ravaged by a monster of whom Paul,
Chrysostom, and Saint Augustine speak. Here we have an example of those
“impertinences” which excited the ridicule of Madame D’Aulnoy, who
would, no doubt, have found Ben Jonson’s masques “impertinent.” Pan
recognises the monster as “Sin,” and announces that he will retire to
the desert while the Gentiles sing to their false gods. The last words
are taken up by a chorus, and we have now a scene at the altar of the
Moon. Judaism, Heathenism, Synagogue, and the others appear, only
to quarrel and debate. The _auto_ goes on, with constant interludes
of singing and dancing. The monster “Sin” is heard of, ravaging the
flocks. All prove hireling shepherds except Pan, who appears to help
Luna in her distress. There is a scene of defiance between him and the
Fiend, quite in the style of the _comedia_ when _galan_ is opposed to
_galan_. The Fiend flies, leaving the trunk of a tree with which he
meant to strike down Pan. The comic element is not wanting. Judaism
takes up the weapon which the Fiend has dropped, and threatens Pan with
it, but he only succeeds in knocking down, and killing, Synagogue. Then
he carries off the body, saying in an aside that though all the world
knows Synagogue is dead, yet he will always consider him as alive.
Judaism rejects Pan, and Apostasy will not be persuaded that Flesh can
be Bread. Apostasy, of course, stands for the heretics who will not
accept the doctrine of transubstantiation. But Heathenism is persuaded,
and Luna, typifying human nature, believes. Pan takes her as “spouse,”
and both ascend to the celestial mansions.
[SN: _Los Dos Habladores._]
The _entremes_--interlude or farce--was by nature a slight thing. In
the _Dos Habladores_--‘The Two Chatterers’--of Cervantes we have the
simple story of a gentleman who is plagued in the streets by a ragged
gabbler of insufferable fluency. He makes several attempts to shake
him off without success, but at last sees how to make use of him.
Sarmiento, the pestered gentleman, has a talkative wife. He takes the
bore home, introduces him as a poor relation, and sets him at her.
Roldan the chatterer drives the woman frantic by torrents of talk which
leave her no chance to speak. The merit of the piece on the stage lay
no doubt in the opportunity it presented for “patter” and comic acting.
Yet the _entremeses_--not this one only, but the whole class--have
great literary interest as storehouses of vivid, richly coloured,
familiar Castilian.
A drama which flowered for a century, and was so productive as the
Spanish, cannot be fully illustrated by six examples. Yet these may
serve to show the reader what he may expect to find there. Much he
will not find, or will find only in passing indications. Perfection of
poetic form in the verse is too rare; the more than human beauty of the
Elizabethan lyric, the “mighty line,” whether of Marlowe, Shakespeare,
or Corneille, the accomplishment of Molière or Racine, are wanting.
The personages are constantly recurring types, with here and there
a humour. The Juan Crespo of Calderon’s _Alcalde de Zalamea_ stands
almost alone among the characters of the Spanish stage as a being of
the real world fixed for us by the poet. What has been called the _au
delà_ of Molière, and what is found in the very greatest masters--the
something which transcends the mere action before us, and is immortally
true of all human nature--is not on the Spanish stage. But there is
much good verse, easy, with a careless grace, and spirited in Lope,
or stately with a peculiar Spanish dignity in Calderon; there is a
fine wind of romance blowing all through, and there is ingenious,
unresting, yet lucid action. If it never reaches the highest level of
our Elizabethan drama, neither does it fall to the vacant horseplay
which is to be found side by side with the tragedy of Marlowe or
Middleton. And though this essentially theatrical drama cannot be said
to have held the mirror up to nature, yet it does give a picture of the
time and the people, adapted and coloured for the boards, but still
preserving the likeness of the original. This may be said to be its
weakness. Spanish dramatic literature is so much a thing of Spain, and
of the seventeenth century, that it must needs appeal the less on that
account to other peoples and later times. None the less the spectacle
is picturesque in itself, while the great theatrical dexterity of the
Spanish playwrights will always make their work interesting to all
who care for more than the purely literary qualities of drama. The
religion of the Spaniard is conspicuous in his plays. It has been said
that Calderon was the poet of the Inquisition, and if this is not said
as mere blame, it conveys a truth. That solution of the riddle of the
painful earth which A. W. Schlegel professed to have found in him,
is no doubt only the teaching of the mediæval Church. We may on this
account decline very properly to receive him as a deeper thinker than
Shakespeare, but that teaching of the Church, to which the Inquisition
strove to confine all Spaniards, had been the guide and consolation of
all civilised Europe. To have given it a lofty poetical expression for
the second time, as Dante had for the first, was no contemptible feat.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Those who wish to make a closer acquaintance with the minor forms
of the Spanish play may be referred to the _Entremeses, Loaas, y
Jácaras_, of Don Luis Quiñones de Benavente (----?-1652), edited by Don
C. Rosell in the _Libros de Antaño_. Madrid, 1872.
[36] Vol. v. of _Autos Sacramentales_ de Don P. Calderon, published by
Don Juan Fernandez de Apontes, Madrid, 1757-1760--five years before the
public performance of _autos_ was forbidden by Charles III.