As in no long process of time, dramatic poetry became the distinctive
and national turn of Spanish poetic genius, it would be ungrateful
towards the originators of a species of composition imitated all over
the world, and extolled by every man of taste, not to make mention of
them. The first dawn of the drama has been mentioned: the representation
of mysteries and autos being permitted by the clergy, leave was taken to
exchange the purely religious for the pastoral or the moral. Besides the
pastoral dialogues of Juan de Encina, before mentioned, there existed a
moral Spanish play, whose origin is lost in obscurity. It is named,
"Celestina, Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea." The first act is
supposed by some to have been the work of an unknown priest or poet of
the reign of John II. It was finished in the fifteenth century, by
Fernando de Roxas. The drama consists of twenty-one acts, and is rather
a long-drawn tale in dialogue than a play. It is more didactic than
dramatic; descriptive and moral. Its purpose was to warn youth by
displaying the dangers of licentiousness; and many an odious personage
and scene is introduced to conduce to this good end; with considerable
disdain, meanwhile, of good taste. The first act, of ancient date,
brings forward the story--the loves of Calisto and Melibea, two young
persons nobly born, divided from each other by their respective
families. Melibea is perfectly virtuous and prudent, and submits to the
commands that prevent all communication between her and her lover.
Calisto is less patient: he applies to Celestina, an old sort of
go-between, such as is frequent in a land of intrigue like Spain. Her
artifices, her flatteries, her philtres, are all described and put in
action; and the act breaks off under the expectation of what may be the
result of such an engine. Roxas added twenty acts to this one. He
increases the romantic and tragic interest of the tale. Celestina
introduces herself into Melibea's house. She corrupts the servants by
presents; deludes the unfortunate girl by incantations, and induces her,
at last, to yield to her lover. Her parents discover the intrigue;
Celestina is poisoned; Calisto stabbed; and Melibea throws herself from
the top of a tower. According to some writers, where crime is punished
in the end, the tale is moral: thus, this drama was regarded as a moral
composition; at all events, it was popular: doubtless, it pictured the
manners of the times, and interested the readers as the novels of the
present day do, by shadowing forth the passions and events they
themselves experienced.
This was the first genuine Spanish play. In the beginning of the reign
of Charles V., the theatre began to interest classic scholars; and the
first step made towards improving the drama, was an attempt to introduce
antique models. Villalobos, a physician of Charles V., translated the
Amphitryon of Plautus, which was printed in 1515. Perez de Oliva made a
literal translation of the Electra of Sophocles. Oliva was a man of
infinite learning and zealous inquiry: passing through the universities
of Salamanca and Alcala, he visited first Paris, and afterwards Rome,
where he gave himself up to the study of letters. The road of
advancement was open to him in the papal palace at Rome, but he
renounced it to return to Spain. He became professor of philosophy and
theology in the university of Salamanca. One of his chief studies was
his own language, and he is much praised for the classical purity of his
style. Sedano goes so far as to say that the diction of his translation,
which he entitles "La Venganza de Agamemnon," or, Agamemnon Avenged, "is
so perfect in all its parts--so full of harmony, elevation, purity,
sweetness, and majesty, that it not only excuses the author for not
having written in verse, but may rival the most renowned poetry." It
seems strange to read this sentence, and to turn to the bald phraseology
of the work itself: we cannot believe that this translation was ever
acted. The first original tragedy published in Spain was the work of
Geronimo Bermudez, a monk of the order of St. Dominic, a man of austere
and pious life; but who joined a love of letters and poetry to his
theological studies. He wrote "Nise Lastimosa," and "Nise Laureada."
Ines de Castro, of whose name in the title he makes the anagram of Nise,
but who is properly named in the play, is the heroine of these dramas.
The first is by no means destitute of merit. The tale itself is of such
tragic interest, that it naturally supports the dialogue, which is too
long drawn, and interrupted by choruses. The fourth act, however, rises
superior to the rest, and is extremely beautiful. Ines pleads before the
king for her life. She uses every argument suggested by justice, mercy,
and parental affection to move him. The language is free from extraneous
ornament; tender elevated, and impassioned. It is impossible to read it
without being moved by the depth and energy of its pathos. The second
play, the subject of which is the vengeance the infante don Pedro took
on her murderers when he ascended the throne, is a great falling off
from the other. The plot is deficient--the dialogue tiresomely long--and
the catastrophe, though historically true, at once horrible and
unpoetic.
Besides these more classical productions, there were written various
imitations of Celestina. They were all moral, for they all displayed in
an elaborate manner the course of vice, and its punishment. Long drawn
out--too real in their representation of vulgar crime, they neither
interested on the stage, nor pleased in the closet.
The greatest obscurity has enveloped the earliest regular dramas written
in Spanish. They were the work of Bartolomé Torres Naharro, a native of
Estremadura, and a priest. Torres Naharro was born in the little town of
Tore, near Badajos, on the frontiers of Portugal. Little is known of
him, except his reputation as a man of learning. After a shipwreck,
which involved him in various adventures, he arrived at Rome, during the
pontificate of Leo X., and was patronised by that accomplished pope.
Naples was then in the hands of the Spaniards, and Naharro's comedies
were doubtless represented in that city, whither Naharro himself
removed, driven from Rome by the difficulties in which his satirical
works involved him.[31]
Cervantes does not mention Naharro in his preface to his comedies, which
contains the best account we have of the origin of the Spanish drama.
But other writers, and among them the editor of Cervantes's comedies,
mention him as the real inventor of the Spanish drama. His plays were
written in verse; there is propriety in his characters and some elegance
in his style. He brought in the intrigue of an involved story to support
the interest of his plays. They did not, however, obtain possession of
the stage in Spain.
Lope de Rueda followed him. The "great Lope de Rueda" Cervantes calls
him, adding that he was an excellent actor and a clever man. "He was
born," he continues, "at Seville, and was a goldbeater by trade. He was
admirable in pastoral poetry, and no one either before or after excelled
him in this species of composition. Although when I saw him I was a
child, and could not judge of the excellence of his verses, several have
remained in my memory, and, recalling them now at a ripe age, I find
them worthy their reputation. In the time of this celebrated Spaniard,
all the paraphernalia of a dramatic author and manager was contained in
a bag: it consisted of four white dresses for shepherds, trimmed with
copper gilt, four sets of false beards and wigs, and four crooks, more
or less. The comedies were mere conversations, like eclogues, between
two or three shepherds and a shepherdess, adorned and prolonged by two
or three interludes of negresses, clowns or Biscayans. Lope performed
the various parts with all the truth and excellence in the world. At
that time there were no side scenes, no combats between Moors and
Christians on horseback or on foot. There was no figure which arose, or
appeared to rise, from the centre of the earth, through a trapdoor in
the theatre. His stage was formed of a few planks laid across benches,
and so raised about four palms above the ground. Neither angels nor
souls descended from the sky: the only theatrical decoration was an old
curtain, held up by ropes on each side: it formed the back of the stage,
and separated the behind scenes from the front. Behind were placed the
musicians, who sang some old romance to the music of a guitar."
As an actor himself Rueda doubtless could judge best of the public
taste. His own parts were those of fools, roguish servants, and Biscayan
boors. His plays were collected by Timoneda, a bookseller of Valencia,
but, like the witticisms of the masks of the old Italian stage, they
lose much in print. His plots consist of chapters of mistakes: there are
a multitude of characters in his dramas, and jests and witticisms
abound. These generally consist of ridiculous quarrels, in which a clown
plays the principal part.[32] Spanish critics call him the restorer, it
would be better to say--the founder of the Spanish theatre.
After Rueda, Cervantes tells us, came another Naharro, a native of
Toledo; he was also an actor and manager. "He augmented the decorations
of the comedies; he substituted trunks and boxes for the old bag. He
drew the musicians out from behind the curtain, where they were
previously placed. He deprived the actors of their beards; for before
him no actor had ever appeared without a false beard. He desired that
all should show an unmasked battery, except those who represented old
men, or were disguised. He invented side scenes, clouds, thunder,
lightning, challenges, and battles.
Such were the commencements of the Spanish theatre, destined to take so
high a place hereafter in the history of the drama.
We now come to a new era, and names more known. We have arrived at the
age of Cervantes: these were the men who preceded him.
There is something very peculiar in the state of literature at this
time. The infancy of Spanish poetry was such as might have been expected
from a chivalrous nation; its themes were love and war, its heroes
national, and its style such as to render it popular. The continued
struggle with a foreign conqueror gave an ardent and gallant turn to the
national character: and while the superior excellence of the enemy in
arts and literature imparted some portion of refinement, national
enthusiasm inspired independence. But now the enemy was quelled, the
country overflowed with money, the harvest of the most nefarious
cruelties, and the inquisition was established. Even these circumstances
were not enough to subdue the heroism of the Spanish character: they
made a stand for freedom against the encroachments of the monarchs;
their disjointed councils caused them to fail, and from that moment they
sank. The wars of Charles V. drained the country of men and money; the
Lutheran heresy put fresh powers into the hands of the inquisition; a
career of arms in a foreign country was all that was left; the gates of
inquiry and free thought were closed and barred.
Intercourse with Italy opened fresh fields of poetry, which all other
countries have found unlimited in the variety of subjects, and manner of
treating them. Not so the Spaniards; they stopt short at once with
elegies, and pastorals, and songs. Boscan, a man of gentle disposition
and retired habits, naturally dwelt with complacency on descriptions of
rural pleasures, or the sentiments of his own heart. Garcilaso de la
Vega, a gallant soldier, found in poetry a recreation, a mode to gratify
his taste; and retired from the world of arms to brood over the graceful
and passionate reveries of a young lover. Mendoza, a man of harder
temperament, was the servant of a king: a sort of worldly philosophy,
Horatian in its expression, or the passion of love, inspired his
writings at first; and when, later in life, he might be supposed to
entertain the design of making his talents subservient to the good of
mankind, he found, when he wrote the wars of Granada, the political and
inquisitorial yoke so heavy that he could only hint at injuries, and
allude to wrongs. The poets who came after were men of an inferior
grade; they wrote in a great measure to please their contemporaries;
they adopted, therefore, pastoral themes, they wrote elegies, sonnets;
and love and scenic descriptions were the subjects of their
compositions.
In all this, it is not to be supposed that they were servile imitators
of the Italians; they were at first their pupils, but nothing more.
Originality is the great distinctive of the Spanish character. Every
line each author wrote was in its turn of thought and expression
national. The conceits resulting from a meeting of ardent imaginations
with ardent passions, which brought the whole phenomena of nature in the
poet's service,--the burning emotions, the very constant brooding on one
engrossing subject,--all belonged to a people whose souls were fiery,
proud, and concentrated.
Still the Spaniards had found no peculiar form in which to embody the
characteristics of the nation. Perhaps the gay sally of a youthful
student. Lazarillo de Tormes, of Mendoza, was the most national work yet
produced. In Italy the sort of free epic, introduced by Bojardo, became
the expression of national tastes and character. This sort of
composition never took deep root in Spain. The authors were too
circumvented by the inquisition to dare say much; thus we shall find in
the end, that the theatre became the body informed by Spanish poets with
a soul all their own, where passions and imaginations, the most ardent
and the most wild, the most true and the most beautiful, found
expression.
All the authors hitherto mentioned were horn at the very commencement of
the sixteenth century. By the time they had arrived at the age of
manhood, the policy and success of Charles V. had established him firmly
on the Spanish throne, and was extending far and wide the glory of his
name. To fight for and to serve him was the Spaniards' duty: they had
not yet suffered by the yoke, but they had yielded to it. At first the
nobles of the land were the sole authors, while writing was merely a
taste, a study, or an amusement; soon it was followed, for purposes of
gain and reputation by men of inferior rank, who were endowed with
genius; authorship became general; and poetry grew into one of the chief
pleasures of the court.
[Footnote 31: Bouterwek. Pellicer.]
[Footnote 32: Bouterwek.]