LOPE DE VEGA
Cervantes is unquestionably the most glorious figure in the annals
of Spanish literature, but his very universality makes him less
representative of his race. A far more typical local genius is his
great rival Lope Félix de Vega Carpio who, for nearly half a century,
reigned supreme on the stage at which Cervantes often cast longing
eyes. My task would be much easier if I could feel sure that all of
you were acquainted with the best and most recent biography of Lope
which we owe to a distinguished American scholar, Professor Hugo
Albert Rennert. I should then be able to indulge in the luxury of
pure literary criticism. As it is, I must attempt to picture to you
the prodigious personality of one who has enriched us with an immense
library illustrating a new form of dramatic art.
Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, as he signed himself, was born at Madrid
on November 25, 1562, just three hundred and forty-five years
ago to-day.[100] There is some slight reason to think that his
parents—Félix de Vega Carpio and Francisca Hernández Flores—came
from the village of Vega in the valley of Carriedo at the foot of
the Asturian hills. The historic name of Carpio does not accord well
with the modest occupation of Lope’s father who appears to have been
a basket-maker; but every respectable Spanish family is more or less
noble, and, though Lope was given to displaying a splendidly emblazoned
escutcheon in some of his works—a foible which brought down on him the
banter of Cervantes and of Góngora—he made no secret of his father’s
lowly station. Long afterwards, when Lope de Vega was in the noon of
his popularity, Cervantes described him as a _monstruo de naturaleza_—a
portent of nature—and, if we are to believe the legends that float down
to us, he must have been a disconcerting wonder as a child—dictating
verses before he could write, learning Latin when he was five. A few
years later we hear of him as an accomplished dancer and fencer, as
an adventurous little truant from the Theatine school at which he was
educated, and as a juvenile dramatist. One of his plays belonging
to this early period survives, but as a re-cast. It would have been
interesting to read the piece in its original form: its title—_El
Verdadero Amante_ (The True Lover)—suggests some precocity in a boy of
twelve. At an age when most lads are spinning tops Lope was already
imagining dramatic situations and impassioned love-scenes.
He appears to have been page to Jerónimo Manrique de Lara, Bishop of
Ávila, who helped him to complete his studies at the University of
Alcalá de Henares. Lope never forgot a personal kindness, and in the
_Dragontea_ he acknowledges his debt to his benefactor whose intention
was clearly excellent; but it is doubtful if Lope gained much by
his stay at Alcalá except the horrid farrago of undigested learning
which disfigures so much of his non-dramatic work, and is so rightly
ridiculed by Cervantes. His undergraduate days were scarcely over when
he made the acquaintance of Elena Osorio, daughter of a theatrical
manager named Jerónimo Velázquez, whom he has celebrated as Filis in
his early _romances_. He fought under Santa Cruz at the Azores in
1582, and next year became secretary to the Marqués de las Navas. He is
one of the many poets lauded by Cervantes in the _Canto de Calíope_,
and, though Cervantes bestows his praise indiscriminatingly, it may be
inferred that Lope enjoyed a certain reputation when the _Galatea_ was
published in 1585. He was then twenty-three, and was no doubt already
a practised playwright: his acquaintance with Velázquez would probably
open the theatres to him, and enable him to get a hearing on the stage.
So far this intimacy was valuable to Lope, but it finally came near
to wrecking his career. Elena Osorio was not apparently a model of
constancy, and Lope was a passionate, jealous, headstrong youth with
a sharp pen. On December 29, 1587, he was arrested at the theatre for
libelling his fickle flame and her father, and on February 7, 1588, he
was exiled from Madrid for eight years, and from Castile for two. The
court seems to have anticipated that Lope might not think fit to obey
its order, for it provided that if he returned to Madrid before the
fixed limit of time he was to be sent to the galleys, and that if he
entered Castile he was to be executed.
The judges evidently knew their man. He went through the form of
retreating to Valencia, but he had no intention of hiding his talent
under a bushel in the provinces. His next step was astounding in its
insolence: he returned to Madrid, and thence eloped with Isabel de
Urbina y Cortinas, daughter of a king-at-arms. The police were at once
in hot pursuit, but failed to overtake the culprit. He parted from the
lady, was married to her by proxy on May 10, 1588, and nineteen days
later was out of range on the _San Juan_, one of the vessels of the
Invincible Armada. Lope took part in the famous expedition of the ‘sad
Intelligencing Tyrant’ when, as Milton puts it, ‘the very maw of Hell
was ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere she
could vent it in that terrible and damned blast.’ Returning from this
disastrous adventure, during which he found time to write the greater
part of _La Hermosura de Angélica_, an epic consisting of eleven
thousand lines, Lope settled at Valencia, and joined the household
of the fifth Duke of Alba. It was the custom of the time for a poor
Spanish gentleman, who would have been disgraced by the adoption of a
trade or business, to serve as secretary to some rich noble: the duties
were various, indefinite and not always dignified, but they involved
no social degradation. Lope’s versatile talents were thus utilised
in succession by the Marqués de Malpica and the Marqués de Sarriá,
afterwards Conde de Lemos (the son-in-law of Lerma, and in later years
the patron of Cervantes).
His introduction to aristocratic society enlarged Lope’s sphere of
observation: it did nothing to improve his morals, which were not
naturally austere. During this period he was writing incessantly for
the stage, and the Spanish stage was not then a school of asceticism.
His wife died about the year 1595, and the last restraint was gone.
Lope was straightway entangled in a series of scandalous amours. He was
prosecuted for criminal conversation with Antonia Trillo de Armenta in
1596, and in 1597 began a love-affair with Micaela de Luján, the Camila
Lucinda of his sonnets, and the mother of his brilliant children, Lope
Félix del Carpio y Luján and Marcela, who inherited no small share of
her father’s improvising genius. It is impossible to palliate Lope’s
misconduct, and the persistent effort to keep it from public knowledge
has damaged him more than the attacks of all his enemies; but it is
fair to remember that he lived in the most corrupt circles of a corrupt
age, that he suffered such temptations as few men undergo, and that he
repeatedly strove to extricate himself from the mesh of circumstance.
In 1598 he published his patriotic epic, the _Dragontea_, as well as a
pastoral novel entitled the _Arcadia_, and in this same year he married
Juana de Guardo, daughter of a wealthy but frugal man who had made a
fortune by selling pork. Shakespeare was the son of a butcher, but the
fact was not thrown in his teeth: Lope was less fortunate, and his
second marriage was the subject of a derisive sonnet by Góngora. So
far as can be judged, Lope’s marriage with Juana de Guardo was one of
affection, and the reflections cast upon him were absolutely unjust.
But the stage had him in its grip, and he could not break with his
past, try as he might. He strove without ceasing to make a reputation
in other fields of literature: a poem on St. Isidore, the patron-saint
of Madrid, the _Hermosura de Angélica_ with a mass of supplementary
sonnets, the prose romance entitled _El Peregrino en su patria_, the
epic _Jerusalén conquistada_ written in emulation of Tasso—these
diverse works were produced in rapid succession between 1599 and 1609.
Meanwhile Lope had been enrolled as a Familiar of the Holy Office,
but the vague terror attaching to this sinister post did not prevent
an attack being made on his life in 1611. He may have enlisted in the
ranks of the Inquisition from mixed motives; yet we cannot doubt that
he was passing through a pietistic phase at this time, for between 1609
and 1611 he joined three religious confraternities. This was no blind,
no hypocritical attempt to affect a virtue which he had not. He was
even too regardless of appearances all his life long.
The death of his son Carlos Félix was quickly followed by the death
of his wife, and his devotional mood deepened. He now made an
irreparable mistake by entering holy orders. No man was less fitted to
be a minister of religion, and his private correspondence discloses
no sign of a religious spirit, or of anything resembling a religious
vocation: on the contrary, it reveals him as frequenting loose company,
and cracking unseemly jokes at a most solemn moment. The pendulum
had already begun to swing before his ordination, and for some years
afterwards he was prominent as an unscrupulous libertine. No one
as successful as Lope could fail to make many enemies: he had now
delivered himself into their hands, and assuredly they did not spare
him. In the Preface to the Second Part of _Don Quixote_ Cervantes,
though he does not mention Lope de Vega by name, indulges in an
unmistakable allusion to him as a Familiar of the Inquisition notorious
for his ‘virtuous occupation.’ Yes! a ‘virtuous occupation’ which was
an intolerable public scandal. From 1605 onwards Lope had been on
intimate terms with the Duke of Sesa, and his correspondence with the
Duke is his condemnation. But his conscience was not dead. Among his
letters to Sesa many are stained with tears of shame and of remorse.
They reveal him in every mood. He protests against being made the
intermediary of the Duke’s vulgar gallantries; he forms resolutions to
amend, yet falls, and falls again.
In his fifty-fifth year he conceived an insane passion for Marta
de Nevares Santoyo. On the details of this lamentable intrigue
nothing need be said here. Once more Samson was in the hands of the
Philistines. Led on by Góngora, they showed him no mercy, but he
survived their onset. His plays were acted on every stage in Spain;
the people who flocked to the theatre were spell-bound by his dramatic
creations, his dexterity, grace and wit; his name was used as a synonym
for matchless excellence; and he strengthened his position with the
more learned public by a mass of non-dramatic work. He seldom reaches
such a height as in the _Pastores de Belén_—a perfect gem of devotion
and of art—but the adaptability of his talent is amazing in prose and
verse dealing with subjects as diverse as the triumphs of faith in
Japan and the fate of Mary Queen of Scots. The short stories in the
_Filomena_ and _Circe_ represent him at his weakest, but the _Dorotea_,
a work that had lain by him for many years, is an absorbing fragment
of autobiography which exhibits Lope as a master of graceful and
colloquial diction.
In one of his agonies of repentance he exclaimed: ‘A curse on all
unhallowed love!’ But the punishment of his own transgressions was long
delayed. Marta, indeed, died blind and mad; but Lope still had his
children, and, with all his faults, he was a fond and devoted father.
We may well imagine that none of his own innumerable triumphs thrilled
him with a more rapturous delight than the success of his son Lope
Félix at the poetic jousts in honour of St. Isidore. Strengthened by
the domestic happiness which he now enjoyed, Lope underwent a striking
change. He wrote more copiously than ever for the stage, but yielded no
longer to its temptations; his stormy passions lay behind him—part of
a past which all were eager to forget. In 1628 he became chaplain to
the congregation of St. Peter, and was a model of pious zeal. It was
an astonishing metamorphosis, and there may have been an unconscious
histrionic touch in Lope’s rendering of a virtuous _rôle_. But the
transformation was no mere pose. Lope was too frank to be a Pharisee,
and too human to be a saint; but whatever he did, he did with all his
might, and he became a hardworking priest, punctual in the discharge
of his sacred office. Towards the close he occupied an unexampled
pre-eminence. Urban VIII. conferred on him a papal order; though
not a favourite at court, he was invited by Olivares to exercise his
ingenious fantasy for the entertainment of Philip IV., who was assuming
the airs and graces of a patron of the drama. With the crowd Lope’s
popularity knew no bounds. Visitors hovered about to catch a glimpse
of him as he threaded his way through the streets: his fellow-townsmen
gloried in his glory. There is nothing in history comparable to his
position.
Blessings and prayers, a nobler retinue
Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows,
Followed this wondrous potentate.
No man of letters has ever received such visible proofs of his own
celebrity, and none has retained it so long. For something like half
a century Lope had contrived to fascinate his countrymen, but even he
began to grow old at last. Yet the change was not so much in him as in
the rising generation.
The swelling tide of _culteranismo_ was invading the stage; the fatal
protection of Philip IV. was beginning to undermine the national
theatre. Lope had always opposed the new fashion of preciosity, and he
could not, or would not, supply the demand at court for a spectacular
drama. One could scarcely expect him to help in demolishing the work
of his lifetime. In his youth, and even in middle age, he looked down
upon his plays as being almost outside the pale of literature. He lived
long enough to revise his opinion, though perhaps to the last he would
have refused to admit that his plays were worth all his epics put
together. He lived long enough to revise his opinion, and a little too
long for his happiness. His latest plays did not hit the public taste:
his successor was already hailed in the person of the courtly Calderón
whom he himself had first praised. To his artistic mortifications were
added poignant domestic sorrows. He had dissuaded his son, Lope Félix,
from adopting literature as a profession: the youth joined the navy,
went on a cruise to South America, and was there
summoned to the deep.
He, he and all his mates, to keep
An incommunicable sleep.
The drowning of his son in 1634 was a grievous blow to Lope, but a more
cruel stroke awaited him. The flight of his favourite daughter, Antonia
Clara, from her home filled him with an unspeakable despair. He could
endure no more. With the simple, confiding faith that never left him,
he believed that his sins had brought upon him the vengeance of heaven,
and he sought to make tardy atonement by the severest penance, lashing
himself till the walls of his room were flecked with blood. But the end
was at hand. On August 23, 1635, Lope wrote his last two poems, fell
ill, and on August 27 his soul was required of him.
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine.
Headed by the Duke of Sesa, the vast funeral procession turned aside
so as to pass before the convent of the Barefooted Trinitarians where
Lope’s gifted daughter Marcela had taken the vows in 1621. From the
cloister window the nun watched the multitude on its way to the Church
of St. Sebastian in the Calle de Atocha; there, to the mournful music
of the _Dies irae_, Lope was interred beneath the high altar. His
eloquent lips were silent; his untiring hand and his unquiet heart were
still: his passionate pilgrimage was over. It might have been thought
that all that was mortal of him was at peace for ever, and that the
final resting-place of one so famous could not be forgotten. But, as
if to show that all is vanity, it was otherwise decreed by the mocking
fates. Early in the nineteenth century it became necessary to remove
Lope’s coffin from the vault in which it lay, and no care was taken
to ensure its subsequent identification. Hence he, whose renown once
filled the world, now sleeps unrecognised amid the humble and the
obscure.
It has been granted us to know Lope de Vega better than we know most
of our contemporaries. He lived in the merciless light of publicity;
his slightest slip was noted by vigilant eyes and rancorous pens; and
he has himself recorded the weaknesses which any other man would have
studiously concealed. Yet, gross as were his sins, his individual charm
is irresistible. Ruiz de Alarcón taxed him with being envious, and
from the huge mass of his confidential correspondence, a few detached
phrases are picked out to support this charge. None of us is as frank
as Lope; yet it seems highly probable that, if a selection were made
from the private letters written in this city to-day and this selection
were published in the newspapers to-morrow, a certain number of
personal difficulties might follow. But let us test Ruiz de Alarcón’s
charge. Of whom should Lope be envious? Not of Ruiz de Alarcón himself,
undoubtedly a remarkable dramatist, but never popular as Lope was. Not
of Tirso de Molina, another great dramatist, but a personal friend
of Lope’s. Not of Cervantes, who had abandoned the stage long before
he succeeded so greatly in romance. Not of Góngora, of whose poetic
principles Lope disapproved, but to whom he paid sedulous court. Not of
Calderón, who was nearly forty years younger than himself, and whom he
first presented to the public. The accusation has no more solid base
than a few choleric words dropped in haste.
The truth is that Lope is open to precisely the opposite charge
of culpable complaisance. His genius, like that of Cervantes, was
creative, not critical; his praise is fulsome, indiscriminating, and
therefore ineffective. He was a most loyal friend, and to him all his
geese are swans. His _Laurel de Apolo_ is an exercise in adulation
of no more critical value than Cervantes’s _Canto de Calíope_.
Famous writers, once in port, are inclined to ‘nurse’ their fame by
conciliating their rivals. Lope’s constant successes provided him with
so many foes that it would have been folly to increase their number by
attacking rising men. Like most other contemporaries he detested Ruiz
de Alarcón; but Ruiz de Alarcón could take very good care of himself in
a wrangle, and perhaps a man is not universally detested without some
good reason. Apart from any question of tactics, Lope was naturally
generous. There is a credible story that he dashed off the _Orfeo_ to
launch Pérez de Montalbán, who published it under his own name, and
thus started on a prosperous, feverish career.
Lope was a sad sinner, but any attempt to represent him as an unamiable
man is ridiculous. It is certain that he received large sums of money,
and that he died poor: his purse was open to all comers. He lived
frugally, loving nothing better than a romp with his children in the
garden of his little house in the Calle de Francos. His pleasures and
tastes were simple: careless remarks that drop from him reveal him to
us. Typical Spaniard as he was, he disliked bull-fights, but he loved
angling, and was a most enthusiastic gardener. He had, as he tells us
in his pleasant way, half a dozen pictures and a few books; but the
only extravagance which he allowed himself was the occasional purchase
of flowers rare in Spain. He had a passion for the tulip—at that time
a novelty in Europe—and, by dedicating to Manoel Soeiro his _Luscinda
perseguida_ (an early play, not printed till 1621), he handsomely
expressed his thanks for a present of choice Dutch bulbs. But, even
if such positive testimony were wanting, we should confidently guess
Lope’s tastes from his poems, redolent of buds and blossoms, of gardens
and of glades, of sweet perfumes and subtle aromas. In reading him, we
think inevitably of _The Flower’s Name_: you remember the lines, but I
may be allowed to quote them:—
This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name;
What a name! was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep, or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name’s sake.
It is very probable that Browning was not deeply read in the
masterpieces of Spanish literature, and that he knew comparatively
little of Lope; but in these verses we have (as it were) Lope rendered
into English: they are Lope all over.
No competent judge questions Lope de Vega’s right to rank as a great
poet, but scarcely any great poet—except perhaps Wordsworth—is so
unequal. The huge epics upon which he laboured so long, filing and
polishing every line, are now forgotten by all but specialists, and
(even among these elect) who can pretend that he reads the _Jerusalén
conquistada_ solely for pleasure? On the other hand, no unprejudiced
critic denies the beauty of Lope’s best sonnets and lyrics, nor the
natural grace of his prose in the _Dorotea_, and in his unguarded
correspondence. Had he written nothing else, he would be considered
a charming poet, and wonderfully versatile man of letters. But these
performances; astonishing as they are, may be regarded as the mere
diversions of exuberant genius.
It is, of course, to his dramatic works that Lope de Vega owes his
splendid pre-eminence in the history of literature. He was much more
than a great dramatist: in a very real sense he was the founder
of the national theatre in Spain. It cannot be denied that he had
innumerable predecessors—men who employed the dramatic form with more
or less skill; and he himself joined with Cervantes in acclaiming the
metal-beater Lope de Rueda as the patriarch of the Spanish stage.
But even the joint and several authority of Cervantes and Lope do
not suffice in questions of literary history. No doubt Lope de
Rueda is a figure of historical importance, and no doubt his actual
achievement is considerable in its way. There is, however, nothing
that can be called ‘national’ in Rueda’s formal plays, which are
mostly adaptations from the Italian, and the bluff hilarity of his
clever interludes is primitive. The later practitioners in the Senecan
drama are of less significance than Miguel Sánchez and than Juan de
la Cueva, both of whom foreshadow the new developments which Lope de
Vega was to introduce. So far as the drama is concerned Miguel Sánchez
is represented to posterity by two plays only, and it is therefore
difficult to estimate the extent of his influence on the Spanish
drama. Cueva’s innovating tendency is manifest in his choice of themes
and his treatment of them: he strikes out a new line by selecting a
representative historic subject, develops it regardless of the unities,
and occasionally strikes the note of modernity by approximating to
the comedy of manners—the cloak-and-sword play. Withal, Cueva is more
remarkable as an intrepid explorer than as a finished craftsman, and he
inevitably has the uncertain touch of an early experimenter.
Lope de Vega is on a higher plane as an executant, and is moreover a
great original inventor. In its final form the Spanish theatre is his
work, and whatever he may once have said of Lope de Rueda, he finally
claimed the honour which undoubtedly belongs to him. Anticipating
Tennyson, he pointedly remarks in the _Égloga á Claudio_ that
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed.
The passage is well worth quoting. ‘Though I have departed from the
rigidity of Terence, and though I am far from questioning the credit
due to the three or four great geniuses who have guarded the infancy
of the drama, yet to me’—he proudly continues—‘to me the art of the
_comedia_ owes its beginnings. To whom, Claudio, do we owe so many
pictures of love and jealousy, so many stirring passages of eloquence,
so copious a supply of all the figures within the power of rhetoric
to invent? The mass of to-day’s productions is mere imitation of what
art created yesterday. I it was who first struck the path and made it
practicable so that all now use it easily. I it was who set the example
now followed and copied in every direction. ‘I it was who first struck
the path—I it was who first set the example.’ It is a daring thing to
say, but it can be maintained.
One of the chief difficulties in dealing with Lope, or in persuading
others to deal with him, is his prodigious copiousness. But it is not
insuperable. For our immediate purpose we may neglect his non-dramatic
writings—in every sense a great load taken off, for they alone fill
twenty-one quarto volumes. There remain his plays, and their number is
astounding. We shall never know precisely how many plays Lope wrote,
for only a small part of what was acted has survived, and his own
statements are not altogether clear. Roughly speaking, he seems to
have written 220 plays up to the end of 1603, and from this date we
can follow him as he gallops along: the total rises to 483 in 1609,
800 in 1618, 900 in 1620, 1070 in 1625, and 1500 in 1632. Four years
afterwards Pérez de Montalbán published a volume of eulogies on the
master by various hands—something like _Jonsonus Virbius_, to which
Ford, Waller and others contributed posthumous panegyrics on Ben Jonson
in 1638; and in this _Fama Póstuma_ Pérez de Montalbán asserts that
Lope wrote 1800 plays and more than 400 _autos_ and _entremeses_.
Consider a moment what these figures mean: they mean that Lope never
wrote less than thirty-four plays a year, that he usually wrote fifty,
that the yearly average rose to sixty as he grew older, and that in
the last three years of his life it increased to over a hundred—say,
two plays a week. Devout persons are sometimes prone to exaggerate the
number of miracles performed by their favourite saint, and, if Pérez
de Montalbán’s statements were not corroborated by Lope, we might be
inclined to suspect him of some such form of pious fraud. As it is, we
have no ground for thinking that Pérez de Montalbán was guilty of any
deliberate exaggeration: most probably he set down what he heard from
Lope, as well as he remembered it. But perhaps Lope’s calculations were
wrong. If anything like 1800 of Lope’s plays survived, nobody would
have the courage to attack them. Most have perished, and we must judge
Lope by the comparatively few that have escaped destruction—431 plays
and 50 _autos_.
This may seem very much as though we were shown a few stones from the
Coliseum, and invited on the strength of them to form an idea of Rome.
It is no doubt but too likely that among the 1369 lost plays there
may have been some real masterpieces (in literature the best does not
always survive); but it is inconceivable that only the failures have
been saved, and, as the collected pieces range from a play written
when Lope was twelve to another written shortly before his death, we
have the privilege of observing every phase of his stupendous exploit.
That is to say: we may have the privilege if we have the leisure. The
student who sits down to the paltry remnant that has reached us will,
if he reads Lope de Vega’s plays without interruption for seven hours
a day, be over six months before he reaches the end of his delightful
task. I say it in all seriousness—a delightful task—but it would be
idle to pretend that there are no tracts of barren ground. A large
proportion of Lope’s dramatic work is brilliant improvisation, and
is not of stuff that endures; but there are veins of pure ore in
his dross, and in moments of inspiration he ranks with the greatest
dramatists in the world.
He has himself endeavoured to state his dramatic theory in the _Arte
nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo_, and the contrast with his
practice is amusing. He opens with a profession of faith in Aristotle’s
rules, of which he knew nothing beyond what he could gather from the
pedantic schoolmen of the Renaissance, but goes on to confess that he
disregards these sacred precepts because the public which pays cares
nothing for them, and must be addressed in the foolish fashion that
its folly demands. The only approach to a dramatic principle in the
_Arte nuevo_ is a matter-of-course approval of unity of action, the
necessity of which has never been doubted by any playwright who knew
his business. The rest of the unities go by the board, and the aspiring
dramatist is solemnly exhorted to invent a clever plot, to maintain
the interest steadily throughout, and to postpone the climax as long
as possible so as to humour the public which loves to be kept on
tenterhooks till the last moment. ‘Invent a clever plot and maintain
the interest steadily throughout’—it is easily said, but how to do
it? Lope proceeds to give his views as to the metres most appropriate
for certain situations and emotions: laments are best expressed in
_décimas_, the sonnet suits suspense, the _romance_ (or, still better,
the octave) is the vehicle of narrative, tercets are to be used in
weighty passages, and _redondillas_ in love-scenes. And Lope ends by
admitting that only six of the 483 plays which he had composed up to
1609 were in accordance with the rules of art.
How familiar it sounds—this wailing over ‘the rules of art’! Just
so Ben Jonson lamented that Shakespeare ‘wanted art’—that is, he
paid no heed to the pseudo-Aristotelian precepts concerning dramatic
composition. Nor did Lope: and it is precisely by neglecting to follow
blind leaders of the blind, and by giving free play to their individual
genius that Shakespeare and Lope de Vega have become immortal. Rules
may serve for men of simple talent; but an original mind attains
independence by intelligently breaking them, and thus arrives at
inventing a new and living form of art. It is in this sense that we
call Lope the founder of the Spanish theatre. His transforming touch
is magical. Invested with the splendour of his imagination, the merest
shred of fact, as in _La Estrella de Sevilla_, is converted into a
romantic drama, living, natural, real, arresting as an experience
suffered by oneself. And, with all Lope’s rapidity of workmanship, his
finest effects are not the result of rare and happy accident: they are
deliberately and delicately calculated. We know from the testimony of
Ricardo de Turia in the _Norte de la poesía española_ that Lope was an
assiduous frequenter of the theatre; that, long after his reputation
was established, he would sit absorbed, listening to whatever play was
being given; and that he took careful note of every successful scene
or situation. He was never above learning from others; but they could
teach him little: he was the master of them all.
It is frequently alleged against him that his copiousness was an
artistic blunder, and that he would have acted more wisely in the
interest of his fame, if he had concentrated his magnificent powers on
a smaller number of plays, and perfected them. In other words, he would
have done more, if he had done less. This may be true; Virgil wrote ten
lines a day, and they endure for ever: Lope wrote three thousand lines
a day, and most of them have perished. But we must take genius as we
find it, and be thankful to accept it on its own conditions. It is far
from clear to me that Lope chose unwisely. He had not only a reputation
to make, but a mission to fulfil. For the work that he was born to
do—the creation of a national theatre—copiousness was an essential
need. Continuous production, as Chorley puts it, is a vital requisite
to ‘the existence of the drama in its true form, as acted poetry.’
This, however, is beyond the power of a few normal men of genius.
Schiller and Goethe combined failed to create a national theatre at
Weimar: no one but Lope could have succeeded in creating a national
theatre at Madrid. At precisely the right moment Spain happily produced
a most abnormal writer who could throw off admirable plays—many of
them imperfect, but many of them masterpieces—in such profusion as
twenty ordinary men of genius could not equal. Luzán declares that Lope
so accustomed the Spanish public to constant novelty that no piece
could be repeated after two performances. This is not quite exact. But
assuming it to be true, you may say that Lope spoilt the public, as
well as his own work. Well, that is as it may be: in our time, at all
events, the plays that run for a thousand nights are not always the
best.
Lope was equal to the demand made by exacting audiences, and he
remained equal to it for an unexampled length of time. The most hostile
critic must grant that Lope was the greatest inventor in the history
of the drama. And he excelled in every kind. In tragedy he has given
us such works as _Las Paces de los Reyes_ and _La Fianza satisfecha_,
and he would doubtless have given more had not the public rebelled
against a too mournful presentation of life. Chorley, whom it is
impossible to avoid quoting when Lope is under discussion, points
to the significant fact that so great a tragedy as _La Estrella de
Sevilla_ is not included among Lope’s dramatic works, nor in the two
great miscellaneous collections of Spanish plays—the _Escogidas_ and
_Diferentes_, as they are called. It exists only as a _suelta_. Great
in tragedy, Lope is greater—or, at least, is more frequently great—in
contemporary comedy, in the realisation of character: _El perro del
hortelano_, _La batalla del honor_, _Los melindres de Belisa_, _Las
flores de Don Juan_ and _La Esclava de su galán_ are there to prove it.
There are obvious flaws in Lope’s pieces, but we can never feel quite
sure that the flaws which irritate us most are not interpolations.
He seems to have revised only the twelve volumes of his plays (Parts
IX.-XX.) published between 1617 and 1625 inclusive, and two posthumous
volumes; a large proportion of his work is so mishandled in the
pirated editions that, as he avers, one line from his pen is smothered
by a hundred lines from the pen of some unscrupulous actor or needy
theatrical hanger-on.
The marvel is that such bungling has not been able to destroy the
beauty of his conception altogether. Dramatic conception, and the
faculty of distilling from no far-fetched situation all that it
contains, are Lope’s distinctive qualities. He is less successful in
maintaining a constant level of verbal charm; he can caress the ear
with an exquisite rhythmical cadence, but he hears the impresario
calling, sets spurs to Pegasus, and stumbles. The Nemesis of haste
pursues him, and, as has often been remarked, some of his last acts
are weak. _La batalla del honor_ is a case in point: a splendid play
spoiled by a weak ending. But this undeniable defect is not peculiar
to Lope de Vega: it is noticeable in _Julius Cæsar_, the last act of
which reveals Shakespeare pressed for time, and tacking his scenes
rapidly together so as to put the play punctually in rehearsal. Let us
be honest, and use the same scales and weights for every one: we shall
find the greatest works by the greatest men frequently come short of
absolute perfection at some point. Lope fails with the rest, and, if he
fails oftener, that is because he writes more. Is it surprising that he
should sometimes feel the strain upon him? He had not only to invent
plots by the score, and create character by the hundred: he had also to
satisfy a vigilant and fastidious public by the variety of his metrical
craftsmanship, and in this respect he has neither equal nor second.
We must accept Lope as Heaven made him with his inevitable
imperfections and his incomparable endowment. He has the Spanish
desire to shine, to be conspicuous, to please, and he condescends to
please at almost any cost. Yet he has an artistic conscience of his
own, endangers his supremacy by flouting the tribe of _cultos_, and
pours equal scorn on the pageant-plays—the _comedias del vulgo_ which
were so soon to become the fashion in court-circles. Lope needed no
scene-painters to make good his deficiencies. In _Ay verdades que en
amor_, he laughs at the pieces
en que la carpintería
suple concetos y trazas.
And well he might, for his alert presentation would convert a barn
into a palace. In the _comedia_ which he invented—using _comedia_ in
much the same sense as Dante uses _commedia_—his scope is unlimited:
he stages all ranks of human society from kings to rustic clowns, and
is by turns tragic, serious, diverting, pathetic, or gay. He has the
unique power of creating the daintiest heroines in the world—beautiful,
appealing, tender and brave. He has the secret of communicating
emotion, of inventing dialogue, always appropriate, and he is ever
prompt to enliven it with a delicate humour, humane and debonair.
He has not merely enriched Spain: in some degree not yet precisely
known—for the history of comparative literature is in its infancy—he
has contributed to almost every theatre in Europe.
Two or three illustrations must suffice. Rotrou, as the handbooks tell
us, has borrowed four—perhaps five—plays from Lope: we may now say five
and perhaps six, for in _Cosroès_ Lope’s _Las Mudanzas de la fortuna
y sucesos de don Beltrán de Aragón_ is combined with a Latin play by
Louis Cellot. Every one remembers that Corneille borrowed _Don Sanche
d’Aragon_ and the _Suite du Menteur_ from Lope. There are traces of
Lope in Molière: in _Les Femmes savantes_, in _L’École des maris_,
in _L’École des Femmes_, in _Le Médecin malgré lui_—and perhaps in
_Tartufe_. And, even in the present incomplete state of our knowledge,
it would be possible to draw up a long list of foreign debtors from
Boisrobert and D’Ouville to Lesage. Of Lope’s Spanish imitators this
is not the time to speak. He did not found a school, but every Spanish
dramatist of the best period marches under Lope’s flag. There are still
some who, in a spirit of chicane, would withhold from him the glory of
being the architect of the Spanish theatre. So be it: but even they
acknowledge that he found it brick, and left it marble.