CALDERÓN
For some time before Lope de Vega’s death, it was evident that Calderón
would succeed him as dictator of the stage. There was no serious
competitor in sight. Tirso de Molina was becoming rusty; Vélez de
Guevara and Ruiz de Alarcón, both on the wrong side of fifty when
Lope died, had given the measure of what they could do, and Ruiz de
Alarcón’s art was too individual to be popular. No possible rival to
Calderón was to be found among the younger men. His path lay smooth
before him. He developed the national drama which Lope had created; he
accentuated its characteristics, but introduced no radical innovation.
He found the most difficult part of the work already done; he inherited
a vast intellectual estate, and it is the general opinion that the
patronage of Philip IV. helped him to exploit it profitably. This point
may stand over for the moment. Here and now, it is enough to say that
Calderón’s career, so far as we can trace it, was one of uninterrupted
success. Unfortunately, at present, we can only sketch his biography
in outline. Within a year of his death, a short life of him was
published by his admirer and editor, Juan de Vera Tassis y Villarroel;
but, as Vera Tassis was thirty or forty years younger than Calderón,
he naturally knew nothing of the dramatist’s early circumstances. He
begins badly with a blunder as to the date of Calderón’s birth, shows
himself untrustworthy in matters of fact, and indulges too freely in
flatulent panegyric. For the present we are condemned to make bricks
with only a few wisps of straw; but if, as seems likely, Dr. Pérez
Pastor is as fortunate with Calderón as he was with Cervantes, many a
blank will be filled in before long.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca was born at Madrid on January 17, 1600.
He became an orphan at an early age. His mother, who was of Flemish
origin, died in 1610; his father, who was Secretary of the Council
of the Treasury, seems to have offended his first wife’s family by
marrying again, was excluded from administering a chaplaincy in their
gift, and died in 1615. Calderón was educated at the Jesuit college
in Madrid, and later studied theology at the University of Salamanca
with a view to holding the family living; but he gave up his idea of
entering the Church, and took to literature. It has been said that he
collaborated with Rojas Zorrilla and Belmonte in writing _El mejor
amigo el muerto_, and he is specifically named as being the author of
the Third Act. On the other hand, it is asserted that _El mejor amigo
el muerto_ was played on Christmas Eve, 1610, and, if this be so, we
must abandon the ascription, for Calderón was then a boy of ten, while
Rojas Zorrilla was only three years old. We may also hesitate to accept
the unsupported statement of Vera Tassis that Calderón wrote _El Carro
del Cielo_ at the age of thirteen. Such ‘fond legends of their infancy’
accumulate round all great men. So far as can be gathered, Calderón
first came before the public in 1620-22 at the literary _fêtes_ held at
Madrid in honour of St. Isidore, the patron saint of the city; and on
the latter occasion Lope de Vega, who was usually florid in compliment,
welcomed the new-comer as one who ‘in his youth has gained the laurels
which time, as a rule, only grants together with grey hair.’ From the
date of these first triumphs onward, Calderón never went back.
In 1621, four years before reaching his legal majority, he was granted
letters-patent to administer his estate. Vera Tassis asserts that
Calderón entered the army in 1625, and that he served in Milan and
Flanders. If so, his service must have been very short, for he was
at Madrid on September 11, 1625, and was still residing in that city
on April 16, 1626. We find him again at Madrid, and in a scrape, in
January 1629. His brother, Diego, had been stabbed by the actor Pedro
de Villegas, who took sanctuary in the convent of the Trinitarian
nuns; Calderón and his backers determined to seize the culprit, broke
into the cloister, handled the nuns roughly, dragged off their veils,
and used strong language to them. Such conduct is very unlike all
that we know of Calderón; but this was the current version of his
proceedings, and the rumour fluttered the dovecots of the devout. The
alleged misdeeds of Calderón and his friends were denounced by the
fashionable preacher, Hortensio Félix Paravicino, in a sermon delivered
before Philip IV. on January 11, 1629. Calderon retaliated by making a
sarcastic reference in _El Príncipe constante_ to the popular ranter’s
habit of spouting unintelligible jargon:—
Una oración se fragua
funebre, que es un sermón de Berberia.
Panegírico es que digo al agua,
y era emponomio Horténsico me quejo.
But ‘the king of preachers and the preacher of kings,’ though ready
enough to attack others, was not disposed to share this privilege:
and he had Philip’s ear. Calderón was arrested. As the jibe does not
appear in the text of _El Príncipe constante_, possibly the author
was released on the understanding that the offensive passage should
be omitted from any printed edition; but it is just as likely that
Calderón, who had not a shade of rancour in his nature, voluntarily
struck out the lines when the play was published after Paravicino’s
death, which occurred in 1633.
The escapade does not appear to have damaged him in any way, and his
fame grew rapidly. The chronology of his plays is not yet determined,
but it is certain that his activity at this period was remarkable. It
seems probable that he collaborated with Pérez de Montalbán and Antonio
Coello in _El Privilegio de las mugeres_ during the visit of the Prince
of Wales (afterwards Charles I.) and Buckingham to Madrid in 1623; _El
Sitio de Bredá_ was no doubt written soon after the surrender on June
8, 1625; _La Dama duende_ is not later than 1629, _La Cena de Baltasar_
was performed at Seville in 1632, in which year also _La Banda y la
flor_ was produced and _El Astrólogo fingido_ was printed; _Amor,
honor y poder_ with _La Devoción de la Cruz_ and _Un Castigo en tres
venganzas_ were issued in a pirated edition in 1634. Two years later
Philip IV. was so enchanted with _Los tres mayores prodigios_ (a poor
piece given at the Buen Retiro) that he resolved to admit Calderón to
the Order of Santiago. The official _pretensión_ was granted on July
3, 1636, and the robe was bestowed on April 8, 1637. In 1636 twelve
of Calderón’s plays were issued by his brother José, who published
twelve more in 1637. These two volumes raised the writer’s reputation
immensely, and well they might; for, besides _La Dama duende_ and _La
Devoción de la Cruz_ (already mentioned), the first volume contained,
amongst other plays, _La Vida es sueño_, _Casa con dos puertas_, _El
Purgatorio de San Patricio_, _Peor está que estaba_, and _El Príncipe
constante_; while the second volume, besides _El Astrólogo fingido_
(already mentioned) contained _El Galán fantasma_, _El Médico de su
honra_, _El Hombre pobre todo es trazas_, _Á secreto agravio secreta
venganza_, and the typical show-piece _El mayor encanto amor_.
Apart from the popular esteem which he thoroughly deserved, Calderón
was evidently a special favourite with Olivares, who never stinted
Philip in the matter of toys and amusements, and levied a sort of
blackmail (for this purpose) on those whom he nominated to high office.
Great preparations were made for a gorgeous production of _El mayor
encanto amor_ at the Buen Retiro in 1639. The Viceroy of Naples was
induced to make arrangements for a lavish display by the ingenious
stage-machinist, Cosme Lotti. A floating stage was provided lit up with
three thousand lanterns; seated in gondolas, the King and his suite
listened to the performance; and the evening closed with a banquet.
These freakish shows were frequent. In February 1640 we hear of a
stormy scene at a rehearsal, which ended in Calderón’s being wounded.
It is commonly said that he was at work on his _Certamen de amor y
celos_ when the Catalan revolt broke out in 1640, and that he finished
it off hurriedly by a _tour de force_ so as to be able to take the
field. This is a picturesque tale, but, like most other picturesque
tales, it seems to be somewhat doubtful. On May 28, 1640, before the
rebellion began, Calderón enrolled himself in a troop of cuirassiers
raised by Olivares, the Captain-General of the Spanish cavalry; and
he did not actually take his place in the ranks till September 29. He
proved an efficient soldier, was employed on a special mission, and
received promotion. His health, as often happens with those destined to
live long, was never robust, and forced him to resign on November 15,
1642. In 1645 he was granted a military pension of thirty _escudos_ a
month: it was not paid punctually, and he was more than once obliged to
dun the Treasury for arrears.
He had now reached an age when men begin to lose their relatives
and friends. In June 1645 his brother José was killed in action at
Camarasa; his brother Diego died at Madrid on November 20, 1647.
Calderón’s life was generally most correct, but he had his frailties,
and his commerce with the stage exposed him to the occasions of sin.
We do not know who was the mother of his son, Pedro José, but it may
be assumed that she was an actress. She died about 1648-50, soon after
the birth of the boy, who passed as Calderón’s nephew. In 1648 Calderón
was dangerously ill, and in December 1650 he alleged his increasing
age and waning strength as a reason for quitting the King’s service;
he announced his intention of taking orders, and petitioned that his
pension might, nevertheless, be continued. He had already been received
as a Tertiary of St. Francis, and accepted the nomination to the living
(founded by his grandmother in 1612) which he had thought of taking
when he went to Salamanca University, some thirty years earlier. He was
ordained in 1651, and seems to have been an exemplary priest.
An attempt was made to utilise his talents in a new direction. He was
requested to write a chronicle of the Franciscan Tertiaries, undertook
the task in 1651, but was compelled to abandon it in 1653 owing to
his ‘many occupations.’ In a letter of this period addressed to the
Patriarch of the Indies, Alfonso Pérez de Guzmán, Calderón declares
that he had meant to cease writing for the stage when he took orders,
and that he had yielded to the personal request of the Prime Minister,
Luis de Haro, who had begged him to continue for the King’s sake.
In the same letter Calderón states that he had been censured for
writing _autos_, that a favour conferred on him had been revoked owing
to the objection of somebody unknown—_no sé quién_—that poetry was
incompatible with the priesthood, and he ends by asking the Primate
for a definite ruling: ‘the thing is either wrong or right; if right,
let there be no more difficulties; and, if wrong, let no one order me
to do it.’ The drift of this alembicated letter is clear. The favour
revoked was no doubt a chaplaincy at Toledo, and Calderón politely gave
the Primate to understand that he should supply no more _autos_ till
he received an equivalent for the post of which he had been deprived.
His hint was taken; he was appointed ‘chaplain of the Reyes Nuevos’ at
Toledo in 1653, and his scruples were quieted. For the rest of his life
he wrote most of the _autos_ given at Madrid, and he readily supplied
show-pieces to be performed at the palace of the Buen Retiro. Some idea
of the importance attached to these performances may be gathered from
the _Avisos_ of Barrionuevo, who tells us that—while the enemy was at
the gate, while there was not a _real_ in the Treasury, while the King
was compelled to dine on eggs, while a capon ‘stinking like dead dogs’
was served to the Infanta, and while the court buffoon Manuelillo de
Gante paid for the Queen’s dessert,—there was always money to meet the
bills of the stage-machinist Juan Antonio Forneli, to maintain a staff
of from twenty-four to seventy actresses, and to import from Genoa
hogsheads of costly jasmine-oil for stage-purposes.
Apart from the composition of _autos_ and _comedias palaciegas_,
Calderón’s life was henceforth uneventful. His position in Spain was
firmly established, but foreigners were sometimes recalcitrant. The
French traveller Bertaut thought little of one of Calderón’s plays
which he saw in 1659, and thought even less of the author whom he
visited later in the day:—‘From his talk, I saw that he did not know
much, though he is quite white-haired. We argued a little concerning
the rules of the drama which they do not know at all, and which they
make game of in that country.’ This seems to have been the average
French view.[101] Chapelain, writing to Carrel de Sainte-Garde on
April 29, 1662, says that he had read an abridgment of a play by
Calderón:—‘par où j’ay connu au moins que si les vers sont bons, son
dessein est très mauvais, et sa conduite ridicule.’ What else could a
champion of the unities think?
Though a priest beyond reproach, Calderón was not left in peace by
busybodies and heresy-hunters. His _auto_ concerning the conversion
of the eccentric Christina of Sweden was forbidden in 1656. Another
_auto_, entitled _Las órdenes militares ó Pruebas del segundo Adán_,
gave rise to no objection when acted before the King on June 8, 1662;
but it was ‘delated’ to the Inquisition, the stage-copies were seized,
and permission to perform it was refused. There can have been no
heresy in this _auto_, for the prohibition was withdrawn nine years
later. On February 18, 1663, Calderón became chaplain to Philip IV.
(a post which carried with it no stipend), and in this same year
he joined the Congregation of St. Peter, of which he was appointed
Superior in 1666. He continued writing _comedias palaciegas_ during the
next reign: _Fieras afemina amor_ and _La Estatua de Prometeo_ were
produced in honour of the Queen-Mother’s birthday in 1675 and 1679
respectively; and _El segundo Escipión_ was played on November 6, 1677,
to commemorate the coming of age of Charles II. On August 24, 1679, an
Order in Council was issued granting Calderón a _ración de cámara en
especie_ on account of his services, great age, and poverty; this is
perplexing, for his will (made twenty-one months later) shows that he
was very comfortably off.
There is a disquieting sentence in the preface to the fifth volume of
Calderón’s plays: Vera Tassis says that the dramatist tried to draw up
a list of pieces falsely ascribed to him, and adds that ‘his infirm
condition did not allow of his forming a clear judgment about them.’
What does Vera Tassis mean? Are we to understand that Calderón’s
intellect was slightly clouded towards the end, that he could not
distinguish his own plays from those of other writers, and that perhaps
he had become possessed with the notion (not uncommon in the aged)
that he would die in want? Surely not. The financial statements of
petitioners are often obscure. Calderón’s memory may naturally have
begun to fail when he was close on eighty, but in other respects his
mind was vigorous. His _Hado y divisa de Leonido y Marfisa_, composed
to celebrate the wedding of Charles II. with Marie-Louise de Bourbon,
was given at the Buen Retiro on March 3, 1680; it was produced later
for the general public at the Príncipe and Cruz _corrales_, and
altogether was played twenty-one times—a great ‘run’ for those days.
For over thirty years Calderón had been commissioned to write the
_autos_ for Madrid, and in 1681 he set to work as usual, but while
engaged on _El Cordero de Isaías_ and _La divina Filotea_, his strength
failed him. He could only finish one of these two _autos_, and left the
other to be completed by Melchor Fernández de León. He signed his will
on May 20, took to his bed and added a codicil on May 23, bequeathing
his manuscripts to Juan Mateo Lozano, the parish priest of St.
Michael’s at Madrid, who wrote the _Aprobación_ to the volume of _Autos
Sacramentales, alegóricos y historiales_ published in 1677. Calderón
died on Whitsunday, May 25, 1681.
Almost all that we hear of him is eminently to his credit. Vera
Tassis, who knew him intimately,—though perhaps less intimately than
he implies,—dwells affectionately on Calderón’s open-handed charity,
his modesty and courtesy, his kindliness in speaking of contemporaries,
his gentleness and patience towards envious calumniators. Calderón
was a gentleman as well as a great man of letters—a rare combination.
Like Lope de Vega, he was apparently not inclined to rank his plays
as literature, and, unlike Lope, he does not seem to have changed his
opinion on this point. In his letter to the Patriarch of the Indies he
speaks slightingly of poetry as a foible pardonable enough in an idle
courtier, but one which he regarded with contempt as soon as he took
orders; and his disdain for his own work is commemorated in a ponderous
epitaph, written by those who knew him best:—
CAMŒNIS OLIM DELICIARUM AMÆNISSIMUM FLUMEN
QUÆ SUMMO PLAUSU VIVENS SCRIPSIT,
MORIENS PRÆSCRIBENDO DESPEXIT.
He was never sufficiently interested in his secular plays to collect
them, though he complained of being grossly misrepresented in the
pirated editions which were current. According to Vera Tassis, he
corrected _Las Armas de la hermosura_ and _La Señora y la Criada_ for
the forty-sixth volume of the _Escogidas_ printed in 1679; but he did
no more towards protecting his reputation, though at the very end
of his life he began an edition of the _autos_, the sacred subjects
of these investing them in his eyes with more importance than could
possibly attach to any secular drama. It is by the merest accident
that we have an authorised list of the titles of his secular plays. He
drew it up, ten months before he died, at the urgent request of the
Almirante-Duque de Veraguas (a descendant of Columbus), and it was
included in the preface to the _Obelisco fúnebre, pirámide funesto_,
published by Gaspar Agustín de Lara in 1784. Calderón’s plays were
printed by Vera Tassis who—though, as Lara is careful to inform us,
he had not access to the original manuscripts in Lozano’s keeping—was
a fairly competent editor, as editors went in those days. It is not
rash to say that to this happy hazard Calderón owes no small part of
his international renown. For a long while, he was the only great
Spanish dramatist whose works were readily accessible. Students who
wished to read Lope de Vega—if there were any such—could not find an
edition of his plays; Tirso de Molina was still further out of reach.
Circumstances combined to concentrate attention on Calderón at the
expense of his brethren. With the best will in the world, you cannot
act authors whose plays are not available; but Calderón could be found
at any bookseller’s, and a few of his plays, together with two or three
of Moreto’s, were acted even during the latter half of the eighteenth
century when French influence was dominant on the Spanish stage.
Calderón thus survived in Spain; and, owing to this survival, he came
to be regarded by the evangelists of the Romantic movement abroad
as the leading representative of the Spanish drama. Some of these
depreciated Lope de Vega, with no more knowledge of him than they could
gather from two or three plays picked up at random. German writers
made themselves remarkable by their vehement dogmatism. Friedrich von
Schlegel declared that, whereas Shakespeare had merely described the
enigma of life, Calderón had solved it, thus proving himself to be, ‘in
all conditions and circumstances, the most Christian, and therefore
the most romantic, of dramatic poets.’ August von Schlegel was as
dithyrambic as his brother. Dismissing Lope’s plays as containing
interesting situations and ‘inimitable jokes,’—Schlegel, _On Jokes_,
is one of the many unwritten masterpieces, ‘for which the whole world
longs,’—he turns to Calderón, hails him as that ‘blessed man,’ and in a
rhetorical transport proclaims him to be ‘the last summit of romantic
poetry.’ Nobody writes in this vein now, and the loss is endurable. We
are no longer stirred on reading that Calderón’s ‘tears reflect the
view of heaven, like dewdrops on a flower in the sun’: such imagery
leaves us cold. But the rhetoric of the Schlegels, Tieck, and others
was most effective at the time.
It was noised abroad that the Germans had discovered the supreme
dramatic genius of the world; the great names of Goethe and Shelley
were quoted as being worshippers of the new sun in the poetic heavens;
the superstition spread to England, and would seem to have infected
a group of brilliant young men at Cambridge—Trench, FitzGerald, and
Tennyson. _In The Palace of Art_, as first published, Calderón was
introduced with some unexpected companions:—
Cervantes, the bright face of Calderon,
Robed David touching holy strings,
The Halicarnasseän, and alone,
Alfred the flower of kings,
Isaïah with fierce Ezekiel,
Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,
Plato, Petrarca, Livy and Raphaël,
And eastern Confutzee.
This motley company was dispersed later. In the revised version of
_The Palace of Art Calderón_ finds no place, and the omission causes
no more surprise than the omission of ‘eastern Confutzee.’ He is
admired as a splendid poet and a great dramatist, but we no longer see
him, as Tennyson saw him in 1833, on a sublime and solitary pinnacle
of glory—‘a poetical Melchisedec, without spiritual father, without
spiritual mother, with nothing round him to explain or account for the
circumstances of his greatness.’ As Trench says, there are no such
appearances in literature, and Calderón has ceased to be a mystery or
a miracle. Yet it was not unnatural that those who took the Schlegels
for guides should see him in this light. The fact that the works of
other Spanish dramatists were not easily obtainable necessarily gave
an exaggerated idea of Calderón’s originality and importance, for it
was next to impossible to compare him with his rivals. We are now more
favourably situated. We know—what our grandfathers could not know—that
Friedrich von Schlegel was as wrong as wrong can be when he assured
the world that Calderón was too rich to borrow. In literature no one
is too rich to borrow, and Calderón’s indebtedness to his predecessors
is great. To give but one instance out of many: the Second Act of _Los
Cabellos de Absalón_ is taken bodily from the Third Act of Tirso de
Molina’s sombre and sinister tragedy, _La Venganza de Tamar_.
This was no offence against the prevailing code of morality in literary
matters. Most Spanish dramatists of this period borrowed freely. Lope
de Vega, indeed, had such wealth of invention that he was never tempted
in this way: so, too, he seldom collaborated. So far from being a help,
this division of labour was almost an impediment to him, for he could
write a hundred lines in the time that it took him to consult his
collaborator. But Lope was unique. Manuel de Guerra, in his celebrated
_Aprobación_ to the _Verdadera Quinta Parte_ of Calderón’s plays,
calls him a _monstruo de ingenio_. The words recall the _monstruo de
naturaleza_, the phrase applied by Cervantes to Lope, but there is a
marked difference between the two men—a difference perhaps implied in
the two expressions. Lope was possessed by an irresistible instinct
which impelled him to constant, and often careless, creation; Calderón
creates less lavishly, treats existing themes without scruple, and his
recasts are sometimes completely successful. His devotees never allow
us to forget, for instance, that in _El Alcalde de Zalamea_ he has
transformed one of Lope’s dashing improvisations into a most powerful
drama, and they cite as a parallel case the _Electra_ of Euripides and
the _Electra_ of Sophocles. Just so, when Calderón receives a prize at
the poetical jousts held at Madrid in 1620-22, the extreme Calderonians
are reminded of ‘the boy Sophocles dancing at the festival after the
battle of Salamis.’ Why drag in Sophocles? There are degrees. It is
quite true that Calderón has made an admirable play out of Lope’s
sketch; but it is also true that the dramatic conception of _El Alcalde
de Zalamea_ is due to Lope, and not to Calderón.
Any other dramatist in Calderón’s place would have been compelled to
accept the conventions which Lope de Vega had imposed upon the Spanish
stage—conventional presentations of loyalty and honour. Calderón
devoted his magnificent gifts to elaborating these conventions into
something like a code. His readiness in borrowing may be taken to mean
that he was not, in the largest sense, an inventor, and the substance
of his plays shows that he was rarely interested in the presentation
of character. But he had the keenest theatrical sense, and once he
is provided with a theme he can extract from it an intense dramatic
interest. Moreover, he equals Lope in the cleverness with which he
works up a complicated plot, and surpasses Lope in the adroitness
with which he employs the mechanical resources of the stage. In
addition to these minor talents, he has the gift of impressive and
ornate diction. It is a little unfortunate that many who read him
in translations begin with _La Vida es sueño_, a fine symbolic play
disfigured by the introduction of so incredible a character as Rosaura,
declaiming gongoresque speeches altogether out of place. Calderón is
liable to these momentary aberrations; yet, at his best, he is almost
unsurpassable. Read, for example, the majestic speech of the Demon in
_El Mágico prodigioso_ which Trench very justifiably compares with
Milton. The address to Cyprian loses next to nothing of its splendour
in Shelley’s version:—
Chastised, I know
The depth to which ambition falls; too mad
Was the attempt, and yet more mad were now
Repentance of the irrevocable deed:—
Therefore I chose this ruin with the glory
Of not to be subdued, before the shame
Of reconciling me with him who reigns
By coward cession.
It was once the fashion to praise Calderón chiefly as a philosophic
dramatist, and it may be that to this philosophic quality his plays
owe much of the vogue which they once enjoyed—and which, in a much
less degree, they still enjoy—in Germany. As it happens, only two
of Calderón’s plays can be classified as philosophic—_La Vida es
sueño_ and _En esta vida todo es verdad y todo es mentira_—and, with
respect to the latter, a question arises as to its originality. French
writers have maintained that _En esta vida_ is taken from Corneille’s
_Héraclius_, while Spaniards argue that Corneille’s play is taken from
Calderón’s. On _a priori_ grounds we should be tempted to admit the
Spanish contention, for Corneille was—I do not wish to put the point
too strongly—more given to borrowing from Spain than to lending to
contemporary Spanish playwrights. But there is the awkward fact that
_Héraclius_ dates from 1647, whereas _En esta vida_ was not printed
till 1664. This is not decisive, for we have seen that Calderón was not
interested enough in his secular plays to print them, and we gather
incidentally that _En esta vida_ was being rehearsed at Madrid by Diego
Osorio’s company in February 1659. How much earlier it was written, we
cannot say at present. The idea that Calderón borrowed from the French
cannot be scouted as impossible, for Corneille’s _Cid_ was adapted by
Diamante in 1658.[102] Perhaps both Calderón and Corneille drew upon
Mira de Amescua’s _Rueda de la fortuna_—a play which, as we know from
Lope de Vega’s letter belittling _Don Quixote_, was written in 1604, or
earlier. But, whichever explanation we accept, Calderón’s originality
is compromised. With all respect to the eminent authorities who have
debated this question of priority, we may be allowed to think that
they have shown unnecessary heat over a rather unimportant matter.
Neither _Héraclius_ nor _En esta vida_ is a masterpiece, and Sr.
Menéndez y Pelayo holds that _En esta vida_ contains only one striking
situation—the tenth scene in the First Act, when both Heraclio and
Leonido claim to be the sons of Mauricio, and Astolfo refuses to state
which of the two is mistaken:—
Que es uno dellos diré;
pero cuál es dellos, no.
This amounts to saying that Calderón’s play is no great marvel, for
very few serious pieces are ever produced on the stage unless the
first act is good. The hastiest of impresarios, the laziest dramatic
censor—even they read as far as the end of the First Act. But, if we
give up _En esta vida_, Calderón is deprived of half his title to rank
as a ‘philosophic’ dramatist. We still have _La Vida es sueño_, a noble
and (apparently) original play disfigured, as I have said, by verbal
affectations, such as the opening couplet on the
Hipogrifo[103] violento
que corriste pareja con el viento,
which is almost invariably quoted against the author. So, too, whenever
_La Vida es sueño_ is mentioned, we are almost invariably told that, as
though to prove that life is indeed a dream, ‘a Queen of Sweden expired
in the theatre of Stockholm during its performance.’ This picturesque
story does not seem to be true, and, at any rate, it adds no more to
the interest of the play than the verbal blemishes take from it. The
weak spot in the piece is the sudden collapse of Segismundo when sent
back to the dungeon, but otherwise the conception is admirable in
dignity and force.
Many critics find these qualities in Calderón’s tragedies, and I
perceive them in _Amar después de la muerte_. The scene in which Garcés
describes how he murdered Doña Clara, and is interrupted by Don Álvaro
with—
¿Fue
Como ésta la puñalada?—
is, as Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo says, worthy of Shakespeare; and it long
ago reminded Trench of the scene in _Cymbeline_ where Iachimo’s
confession—
Whereupon—
Methinks, I see him now—
is interrupted by Posthumus with—
Ay, so thou dost,
Italian fiend!
But, for some reason, _Amar después de la muerte_ is not among the
most celebrated of Calderón’s tragic plays, and it is certainly
not the most typical—not nearly so typical as _Á secreto agravio
secreta venganza_, and two or three others. Here the note of genuine
passion is almost always faint, and is sometimes wanting altogether.
Othello murders Desdemona in a divine despair because he believes her
guilty, and because he loves her: Calderón’s jealous heroes, with the
exception of the Tetrarch in _El Mayor monstruo los celos_, commit
murder as a social duty. In _Á secreto agravio secreta venganza_
Don Lope de Almeida, with his interminable soliloquies, ceases to
be human, and becomes the incarnation of (what we now think to be)
a silly conventional code of honour. Doña Leonor in this play is
not so completely innocent in thought as Doña Mencía in _El Médico
de su honra_; but Don Lope de Almeida murders the one, and Don
Gutierre Alfonso Solís murders the other, with the same cold-blooded
deliberation shown in _El Pintor de su deshonra_ by Don Juan de Roca,
who has some apparent justification for killing Doña Serafina.
With all the skill spent on their construction, these tragedies do
not move us deeply, and they would fail to interest, if it were not
that they embody the accepted ideas concerning the point of honour in
Spain during the seventeenth century. It is most difficult for us to
see things as a Spaniard then saw them. He began by assuming that any
personal insult could only be washed away by the blood of the offender:
a man is killed in fair fight in a duel, but the survivors of the slain
must slay the slayer. Modern Europe, as Chorley wrote more than half
a century ago, has nothing like this, ‘except the terrible Corsican
_vendetta_.’ And, as stated by the same great authority—the greatest
we have ever had on all relating to the Spanish stage—‘beneath the
unbounded devotion which the Castilian professed to the sex, lay a
conviction of their absolute and universal frailty.’ In Spanish eyes
‘no woman’s purity,’ Chorley continues, ‘was safe but in absolute
seclusion from men:—guilt was implied and honour lost in every case
where the risk of either was possible,—nay, even had accident thrown
into a temptation a lady whose innocence was proved to her master,
the appearance of crime to the world’s eye must be washed out in her
blood.’ It has often been said that, in Calderón, ‘honour’ is what
destiny is in the Greek drama.
This code of honour seems to many of us immoral nonsense, and it is
difficult to suppose that Friedrich von Schlegel had _El Médico de
su honra_ in mind when he declared Calderón to be ‘in all conditions
and circumstances the most Christian ... of dramatic poets.’ It is
hard to imagine anything more unchristian than the conduct of Don
Gutierre Alfonso Solís which is held up for approval; but no doubt
it was approved by contemporary playgoers. In this glorification of
punctilio Calderón is thoroughly representative. He reproduces the
conventional ideas which obtained for a certain time, in certain
complicated conditions, in a certain latitude and longitude. This
local verisimilitude, which contributed to his immediate success, now
constitutes a limitation. The dramatist may be true to life, in so far
as he presents temporary aspects of it with fidelity; he is not true to
universal nature, and therefore he makes no permanent appeal. This, or
something like it, has been said a thousand times, and, I think, with
good reason. Still, it leaves Calderón where he was as the spokesman of
his age.
He is no less representative in his _comedias de capa y espada_—his
plays of intrigue, which are really dramatic presentations of ordinary
contemporary manners in the vein of high comedy. Opponents of the
Spanish national theatre have charged him with inventing this typical
form of dramatic art, as though it were a misdemeanour. There is no
sense in belittling so characteristic a _genre_, and no ground for
ascribing the invention of cloak-and-sword plays to Calderón. They
were being written by Lope de Vega before Calderón was born, and were
still further elaborated by Tirso de Molina. Lope’s redundant genius
adapts itself easily enough to the narrow bounds of the _comedia de
capa y espada_, but he instinctively prefers a more spacious field.
The very artificiality of such plays must have been an attraction to
Calderón. All plays of this class are much alike. There are always a
gallant and a lady engaged in a love-affair; a grim father or petulant
brother, who may be a loose liver but is a rigid moralist where his
own women-folk are concerned; a _gracioso_ or buffoon, who comes on
the scene when things begin to look dangerous. The material is the
same in all cases; the playwright’s dexterity is shown in the variety
of his arrangement, the ingenious novelty of the plot, the polite
mirth of the dialogue, the apt introduction of episodes which revive
or diversify the interest, and prolong it by leaving the personages at
cross-purposes till the last moment. Calderón is a master of all the
devices that help to make a good play of this kind. Character-drawing
would be almost out of place, and, as character-drawing is Calderón’s
weak point, one of his chief difficulties is removed. He is free to
concentrate his skill on polishing witty ‘points,’ on contriving
striking situations, and preparing deft surprises at which he himself
smiles good-humouredly. The whole play is based on an idealistic
convention, and Calderón displays a startling cleverness in conforming
to the complicated rules of the game.
He fails at the point where the convention is weakest. His _graciosos_
or drolls are too laboriously comic to be amusing. He has abundant
wit, and the _discreteo_ of the lover and the lady is often brilliant.
But there is some foundation for the taunt that he is interested only
in fine gentlemen and _précieuses_. He had not lived in courts and
palaces for nothing. The racy, rough humour of the illiterate clearly
repelled his fastidious temper, and the fun of his _graciosos_ is
unreal. This is what might be anticipated. It takes one cast in the
mould of Shakespeare, or Cervantes, or Lope, to sympathise with all
conditions of men. Calderón fails in another point, and the failure
is certainly very strange in a man of his meticulous refinement and
social opportunities. With few exceptions, the women in his most famous
plays are unattractive. A Spanish critic puts it strongly when he
calls the women on Calderón’s stage _hombrunas_ or mannish. No foreign
critic would be brave enough to say this, but it is not an unfair
description. A man’s idea of a womanly woman is often quaint: he sees
her as something between a white-robed angel and a perfect imbecile.
That is not Calderón’s way. Doña Mencía in _El Médico de su honra_ and
Doña Leonor in _Á secreto agravio secreta venganza_ are distinctly
formidable, and, even in the cloak-and-sword plays, there is something
masculine in the academic preciosity of the lively heroines. It is
manifest that Calderón has no deep knowledge of feminine character,
that his interest in it is assumed for stage purposes, and that his
chief preoccupation is—not to portray idiosyncrasies, nor even types
of womanhood, but—to make physical beauty the theme of his eloquent,
poetic flights. In this he succeeds admirably, though his flights are
apt to be too long. You probably know Suppico de Moraes’ story of
Calderón’s acting before Philip IV. in an improvisation at the Buen
Retiro, the poet taking the part of Adam, and Vélez de Guevara that of
God the Father. Once started, Calderón declaimed and declaimed, and,
when he came to an end at last, Vélez de Guevara took up the dialogue
with the remark: ‘I repent me of creating so garrulous an Adam!’ Most
probably the tale is an invention,[104] but it is not without point,
for Philip and the rest would have been a match for Job, if they had
never been bored with the favourite’s tirades. Like most Spaniards,
Calderón is too copious; but in lyrical splendour he is unsurpassed by
any Spanish poet, and is surpassed by few poets in any language. Had he
added more frequent touches of nature to his idealised presentations,
he would rank with the greatest dramatists in the world.
As it is, he ranks only just below the greatest, and in one dramatic
form peculiar to Spain, he is, by common consent, supreme. Everybody
quotes Shelley’s phrase about ‘the light and odour of the starry
_autos_’; but scarcely anybody reads the _autos_, and I rather doubt if
Shelley read them. It is suggested that he took an _auto_ to mean an
ordinary play, and this seems likely enough, for that is what an _auto_
did mean at one time. But an _auto sacramental_ in Calderón’s time was
a one-act piece (performed in the open air on the Feast of Corpus
Christi) in which the Eucharistic mystery was presented symbolically.
We can imagine this being done successfully two or three times, but not
oftener. The difficulty was extreme, and as a new _auto_—usually two
new _autos_—had to be provided every year, authors had recourse to the
strangest devices. There are _autos_ in which Christ is symbolised by
Charlemagne (surrounded by his twelve peers), or by Jason, or Ulysses;
there are _autos_ in which an attempt is made to evade the conditions
by introducing saints famous for their devotion to the Eucharist. Such
pieces are illegitimate: they are not really _autos sacramentales_, but
_comedias devotas_.
Calderón treats the subject within the rigid limits of the
convention,—as a doctrinal abstraction,—and he treats it in a spirit
of the most reverential art. He does not fail even in _El Valle de
la Zarzuela_, where he hampers himself by connecting the theme with
one of Philip IV.’s hunting-expeditions. He tells us with a certain
dignified pride that his _autos_ had been played before the King and
Council for more than thirty years, and he apologises for occasional
repetitions by saying that these are not so noticeable at a distance
of twenty years as when they occur between the covers of a book. But
no apology is needed. Calderón dealt with his abstruse theme more
than seventy times—not always with equal success, but never quite
unsuccessfully, and never repeating himself unduly. This is surely one
of the most dexterous exploits in literature, and Calderón appears to
have done it with consummate ease. His reflective genius, steeped in
dogma, was far more interested in the mysteries of faith than in the
passions of humanity, far more interested in devout symbolism than in
realistic characterisation. His figures are pale abstractions? Yes: but
he compels us to accept them by virtue of his sublime allegory, his
majestic vision of the world invisible, and the adorable loveliness of
his lyrism.
His _autos_ endured for over a century. As late as 1760 _El Cubo de
la Almudena_ was played on Corpus Christi at the Teatro del Príncipe
in Madrid, while _La Semilla y la cizaña_ was played at the Teatro de
la Cruz. The _autos_ were obviously dying; they were no longer given
in the open air before the King and Court, and the devout multitude;
they were shorn of their pomp, and played indoors before an indifferent
audience amid irreverent remarks. On one occasion, according to
Clavijo, after the actor who played the part of Satan had declaimed
a passage effectively, an admirer in the pit raised a cheer for the
devil:—_¡Viva el demonio!_ There is evidence to prove that the public
performance of the _autos sacramentales_ was often the occasion of
disorderly and scandalous scenes. Clavijo has been blamed for his
articles in _El Pensador matritense_, advocating their suppression,
and perhaps his motives were not so pure as he pretends. Yet he was
certainly right in suggesting that the day for _autos_ was over. They
were prohibited on June 9, 1765. But they must soon have died in any
case, for the supply had ceased, and later writers like Antonio de
Zamora were mostly content to retouch Calderón’s _autos_.[105] Zamora
and Bancés Candamo were not the men to keep up the high tradition, and
the attitude of the public had completely changed.
The fact that his _autos sacramentales_ are little read in Spain,
and are scarcely read at all out of Spain, is most unfortunate for
Calderón, for his noblest achievement remains comparatively unknown.
His reputation abroad is based on his secular plays which represent
but one side of his delightful genius, and that side is not his
strongest. The works of Lope de Vega and of Tirso de Molina have become
available once more, and this circumstance has necessarily affected the
critical estimate of Calderón as a dramatist. Paul Verlaine, indeed,
persisted in placing him above Shakespeare, but Verlaine was the last
of the Old Guard. Calderón is relatively less important than he was
thought to be before Chorley’s famous campaign in _The Athenæum_: all
now agree with Chorley that Calderón is inferior to Lope de Vega in
creative faculty and humour, and inferior to Tirso de Molina in depth
and variety of conception. But, when every deduction is made, Calderón
is still one of the most stately figures in Spanish literature.
Naturally a great lyric poet, his deliberate art won him a pre-eminent
position among poets who used the dramatic form, and he lives as the
typical representative of the devout, gallant, loyal, artificial
society in which he moved. He is not, as once was thought, the
synthesis of the Spanish genius, but no one incarnates more completely
one aspect of that genius. Who illustrates better than the author of
_El Principe constante_ what Heiberg wrote of Spanish poets generally
just ninety years ago:—‘Habet itaque poësis hispanica animam gothicam
in corpore romano, quod orientali vestimento induitur; verum in intimo
corde Christiana fides regnat, et per omnes se venas diffundit’? The
same thought recurs in _The Nightingale in the Study_:—
A bird is singing in my brain
And bubbling o’er with mingled fancies,
Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain
Fed with the sap of old romances.
I ask no ampler skies than those
His magic music rears above me,
No falser friends, no truer foes,—
And does not Doña Clara love me?
Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars,
A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing,
Then silence deep with breathless stars,
And overhead a white hand flashing.
O music of all moods and climes,
Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly,
Where still, between the Christian chimes,
The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly!
O life borne lightly in the hand,
For friend or foe with grace Castilian!
O valley safe in Fancy’s land,
Not tramped to mud yet by the million!
Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale
To his, my singer of all weathers,
My Calderon, my nightingale,
My Arab soul in Spanish feathers!
To most of us, as to Lowell, the Spain of romance is the Spain revealed
to us by Calderón. Though not the greatest of Spanish authors, nor
even the greatest of Spanish dramatists, he is perhaps the happiest in
temperament, the most brilliant in colouring. He gives us a magnificent
pageant in which the pride of patriotism and the charm of gallantry
are blended with the dignity of art and ‘the fair humanities of old
religion.’ And unquestionably he has imposed his enchanting vision upon
the world.