then in the flush of its prosperity and fame from the success of the
University founded there by Cardinal Ximenes, about fifty years before.
At any rate, like many other generous spirits, he has taken an obvious
delight in recalling the days of his childhood in different parts
of his works; as in his Don Quixote, where he alludes to the burial
and enchantments of the famous Moor Muzaraque on the great hill of
Zulema,[82] just as he had probably heard them in some nursery story;
and in his prose pastoral, “Galatea,” where he arranges the scene of
some of its most graceful adventures “on the banks,” as he fondly calls
it, “of the famous Henares.”[83] But concerning his youth we know only
what he incidentally tells us himself;--that he took great pleasure in
attending the theatrical representations of Lope de Rueda;[84] that he
wrote verses when very young;[85] and that he always read every thing
within his reach, even, as it should seem, the torn scraps of paper he
picked up in the public streets.[86]
[82] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 29.
[83] “En las riberas del famoso Henares.” (Galatea, Madrid, 1784,
8vo, Tom. I. p. 66.) Elsewhere, he speaks of “_nuestro_ Henares”;
the “_famoso_ Compluto” (p. 121); and “_nuestro_ fresco Henares,”
p. 108.
[84] Comedias, Madrid, 1749, 4to, Tom. I., Prólogo.
[85] Galatea, Tom. I. p. x., Prólogo; and in the well-known
fourth chapter of the “Viage al Parnaso,” (Madrid, 1784, 8vo, p.
53), he says:--
Desde mis tiernos años amé el arte
Dulce de la agradable poesía,
Y en ella procuré siempre agradarte.
[86] “Como soy aficionado á leer aunque sean los papeles rotos
de las calles, llevado desta mi natural inclinacion, tomé un
cartapacio,” etc., he says, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 9, ed.
Clemencin, Madrid, 1833, 4to, Tom. I. p. 198), when giving an
account of his taking up the waste paper at the silk-mercer’s,
which, as he pretends, turned out to be the Life of Don Quixote
in Arabic.
It has been conjectured that he pursued his studies in part at Madrid,
and there is some probability, notwithstanding the poverty of his
family, that he passed two years at the University of Salamanca. But
what is certain is, that he obtained a public and decisive mark of
respect, before he was twenty-two years old, from one of his teachers;
for, in 1569, Lope de Hoyos published, by authority, on the death of
the unhappy Isabelle de Valois, wife of Philip the Second, a volume of
verse, in which, among other contributions of his pupils, are six short
poems by Cervantes, whom he calls his “dear and well-beloved disciple.”
This was, no doubt, Cervantes’s first appearance in print as an author;
and though he gives in it little proof of poetical talent, yet the
affectionate words of his master by which his verses were accompanied,
and the circumstance, that one of his elegies was written in the name
of the whole school, show that he enjoyed the respect of his teacher
and the good-will of his fellow-students.[87]
[87] The verses of Cervantes on this occasion may be found partly
in Rios, “Pruebas de la Vida de Cervantes,” ed. Academia, Nos.
2-5, and partly in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 262, 263. They are poor,
and the only circumstance that makes it worth while to refer to
them is, that Hoyos, who was a professor of elegant literature,
calls Cervantes repeatedly “_caro_ discípulo,” and “_amado_
discípulo”; and says that the _Elegy_ is written “en nombre de
_todo el estudio_.” These, with other miscellaneous poems of
Cervantes, are collected for the first time in the first volume
of the “Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” by Aribau (Madrid,
1846, 8vo, pp. 612-620); and prove the pleasant relations in
which Cervantes stood with some of the principal poets of his
day, such as Padilla, Maldonado, Barros, Yague de Salas, Hernando
de Herrera, etc.
The next year, 1570, we find him, without any notice of the cause,
removed from all his early connections, and serving at Rome as
chamberlain in the household of Monsignor Aquaviva, soon afterwards
a cardinal; the same person who had been sent, in 1568, on a special
mission from the Pope to Philip the Second, and who, as he seems to
have had a regard for literature and for men of letters, may, on his
return to Italy, have taken Cervantes with him from interest in his
talents. The term of service of the young man must, however, have been
short. Perhaps he was too much of a Spaniard, and had too proud a
spirit, to remain long in a position at best very equivocal, and that,
too, at a period when the world was full of solicitations to adventure
and military glory.
But whatever may have been his motive, he soon left Rome and its
court. In 1571, the Pope, Philip the Second, and the state of Venice,
concluded what was called a “Holy League” against the Turks, and set
on foot a joint armament, commanded by the chivalrous Don John of
Austria, a natural son of Charles the Fifth. The temptations of such a
romantic, as well as imposing, expedition against the ancient oppressor
of whatever was Spanish, and the formidable enemy of all Christendom,
were more than Cervantes, at the age of twenty-three, could resist;
and the next thing we hear of him is, that he had volunteered in it
as a common soldier. For, as he says in a work written just before
his death, he had always observed “that none make better soldiers than
those who are transplanted from the region of letters to the fields
of war, and that never scholar became soldier that was not a good and
brave one.”[88] Animated with this spirit, he entered the service of
his country among the troops with which Spain then filled a large part
of Italy, and continued in it till he was honorably discharged in 1575.
[88] “No hay mejores soldados, que los que se trasplantan de la
tierra de los estudios en los campos de la guerra; ninguno salió
de estudiante para soldado, que no lo fuese por estremo,” etc.
Persiles y Sigismunda, Lib. III. c. 10, Madrid, 1802, 8vo, Tom.
II. p. 128.
During these four or five years he learned many of the hardest lessons
of life. He was present in the sea-fight of Lepanto, October 7, 1571,
and, though suffering at the time under a fever, insisted on bearing
his part in that great battle, which first decisively arrested the
intrusion of the Turks into the West of Europe. The galley in which he
served was in the thickest of the contest, and that he did his duty
to his country and to Christendom he carried proud and painful proof
to his grave; for, besides two other wounds, he received one which
deprived him of the use of his left hand and arm during the rest of
his life. With the other sufferers in the fight, he was taken to the
hospital at Messina, where he remained till April, 1572; and then,
under Mark Antonio Colonna, went on the expedition to the Levant, to
which he alludes with so much satisfaction in his dedication of the
“Galatea,” and which he has so well described in the story of the
Captive, in Don Quixote.
The next year, 1573, he was in the affair of the Goleta at Tunis,
under Don John of Austria, and afterwards, with the regiment to which
he was attached,[89] returned to Sicily and Italy, many parts of
which, in different journeys or expeditions, he seems to have visited,
remaining at one time in Naples above a year.[90] This period of his
life, however, though marked with much suffering, seems never to
have been regarded by him with regret. On the contrary, above forty
years afterwards, with a generous pride in what he had undergone, he
declared, that, if the alternative were again offered him, he should
account his wounds a cheap exchange for the glory of having been
present in that great enterprise.[91]
[89] The regiment in which he served was one of the most famous
in the armies of Philip II. It was the “Tercio de Flandes,” and
at the head of it was Lope de Figueroa, who acts a distinguished
part in two of the plays of Calderon,--“Amar despues de la
Muerte,” and “El Alcalde de Zalamea.” Cervantes probably joined
this favorite regiment again, when, as we shall see, he engaged
in the expedition to Portugal in 1581, whither we know not only
that he went that year, but that the Flanders regiment went also.
[90] All his works contain allusions to the experiences of his
life, and especially to his travels. When he sees Naples in his
imaginary Viage del of Parnaso, (c. 8, p. 126), he exclaims,--
Esta ciudad es Nápoles la ilustre,
Que yo pisé sus ruas mas de un año.
[91] “Si ahora me propusieran y facilitaran un imposible,” says
Cervantes, in reply to the coarse personalities of Avellaneda,
“quisiera ántes haberme hallado en aquella faccion prodigiosa,
que sano ahora de mis heridas, sin haberme hallado en ella.”
Prólogo á Don Quixote, Parte Segunda, 1615.
When he was discharged, in 1575, he took with him letters from the
Duke of Sessa and Don John, commending him earnestly to the king, and
embarked for Spain. But on the 26th of September he was captured and
carried into Algiers, where he passed five years yet more disastrous
and more full of adventure than the five preceding. He served
successively three cruel masters,--a Greek and a Venetian, both
renegadoes, and the Dey, or King, himself; the first two tormenting him
with that peculiar hatred against Christians which naturally belonged
to persons who, from unworthy motives, had joined themselves to the
enemies of all Christendom; and the last, the Dey, claiming him for
his slave, and treating him with great severity, because he had fled
from his master and become formidable by a series of efforts to obtain
liberty for himself and his fellow-captives.
Indeed, it is plain that the spirit of Cervantes, so far from
having been broken by his cruel captivity, had been only raised and
strengthened by it. On one occasion he attempted to escape by land
to Oran, a Spanish settlement on the coast, but was deserted by his
guide and compelled to return. On another, he secreted thirteen
fellow-sufferers in a cave on the sea-shore, where, at the constant
risk of his own life, he provided during many weeks for their daily
wants, while waiting for rescue by sea; but at last, after he had
joined them, was basely betrayed, and then nobly took the whole
punishment of the conspiracy on himself. Once he sent for help to break
forth by violence, and his letter was intercepted; and once he had
matured a scheme for being rescued, with sixty of his countrymen,--a
scheme of which, when it was defeated by treachery, he again announced
himself as the only author and the willing victim. And finally, he had
a grand project for the insurrection of all the Christian slaves in
Algiers, which was, perhaps, not unlikely to succeed, as their number
was full twenty-five thousand, and which was certainly so alarming
to the Dey, that he declared, that, “if he could but keep that lame
Spaniard well guarded, he should consider his capital, his slaves,
and his galleys safe.”[92] On each of these occasions, severe, but
not degrading,[93] punishments were inflicted upon him. Four times he
expected instant death in the awful form of impalement or of fire; and
the last time a rope was absolutely put about his neck, in the vain
hope of extorting from a spirit so lofty the names of his accomplices.
[92] One of the most trustworthy and curious sources for this
part of the life of Cervantes is “La Historia y Topografia de
Argel,” por D. Diego de Haedo, (Valladolid, 1612, folio), in
which Cervantes is often mentioned, but which seems to have been
overlooked in all inquiries relating to him, till Sarmiento
stumbled upon it, in 1752. It is in this work that occur the
words cited in the text, and which prove how formidable Cervantes
had become to the Dey,--“Decia Asan Bajá, Rey de Argel, que como
él tuviese guardado al estropeado Español tenia seguros sus
cristianos, sus baxeles y aun toda la ciudad.” (f. 185.) And just
before this, referring to the bold project of Cervantes to take
the city by an insurrection of the slaves, Haedo says, “Y si á
su animo, industria, y trazas, correspondiera la ventura, hoi
fuera el dia, que Argel fuera de cristianos; porque no aspiraban
á menos sus intentos.” All this, it should be recollected, was
published four years before Cervantes’s death. The whole book,
including not only the history, but the dialogues at the end on
the sufferings and martyrdom of the Christians in Algiers, is
very curious, and often throws a strong light on passages of
Spanish literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
which so often refer to the Moors and their Christian slaves on
the coasts of Barbary.
[93] With true Spanish pride, Cervantes, when alluding to himself
in the story of the Captive, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40), says
of the Dey, “Solo libró bien con él un soldado Español llamado
tal de Saavedra, al qual con haber hecho cosas que quedarán en la
memoria de aquellas gentes por muchos años, y todos por alcanzar
libertad, _jamas le dió palo_, ni se lo mandó dar, ni le dixo
mala palabra, y por la menor cosa de muchas que hizo, temiamos
todos que habia de ser empalado, y _así lo temió él mas de una
vez_.”
At last, the moment of release came. His elder brother, who was
captured with him, had been ransomed three years before; and now his
widowed mother was obliged to sacrifice, for her younger son’s freedom,
all the pittance that remained to her in the world, including the dowry
of her daughters. But even this was not enough; and the remainder of
the poor five hundred crowns that were demanded as the price of his
liberty was made up partly by small borrowings, and partly by the
contributions of religious charity.[94] In this way he was ransomed on
the 19th of September, 1580, just at the moment when he had embarked
with his master, the Dey, for Constantinople, whence his rescue would
have been all but hopeless. A short time afterwards he left Algiers,
where we have abundant proof, that, by his disinterestedness, his
courage, and his fidelity, he had, to an extraordinary degree, gained
the affection and respect of the multitude of Christian captives with
which that city of anathemas was then crowded.[95]
[94] A beautiful tribute is paid by Cervantes, in his tale of
the “Española Inglesa,” (Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. I. pp.
358, 359), to the zeal and disinterestedness of the poor priests
and monks, who went, sometimes at the risk of their lives, to
Algiers to redeem the Christians, and one of whom remained there,
giving his person in pledge for four thousand ducats which he had
borrowed to send home captives. Of Father Juan Gil, who effected
the redemption of Cervantes himself from slavery, Cervantes
speaks expressly, in his “Trato de Argel,” as
Un frayle Trinitario, Christianísimo,
Amigo de hacer bien y conocido,
Porque ha estado otra vez en esta tierra
Rescatando Christianos; y dió exemplo
De una gran Christiandad y gran prudencia;--
Su nombre es Fray Juan Gil.
Jornada V.
A friar of the blessed Trinity,
A truly Christian man, known as the friend
of all good charities, who once before
Came to Algiers to ransom Christian slaves,
And gave example in himself, and proof
Of a most wise and Christian faithfulness.
His name is Friar Juan Gil.
[95] Cervantes was evidently a person of great kindliness and
generosity of disposition; but he never overcame a strong feeling
of hatred against the Moors, inherited from his ancestors and
exasperated by his own captivity. This feeling appears in both
his plays, written at distant periods, on the subject of his life
in Algiers; in the fifty-fourth chapter of the second part of Don
Quixote; and elsewhere. But except this, and an occasional touch
of satire against duennas,--in which Quevedo and Luis Vélez de
Guevara are as sever as he is,--and a little bitterness about
private chaplains that exercised a cunning influence in the
houses of the great, I know nothing, in all his works, to impeach
his universal good-nature. See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Vol.
V. p. 260, note, and p. 138, note.
But though he was thus restored to his home and his country, and though
his first feelings may have been as fresh and happy as those he has
so eloquently expressed more than once when speaking of the joys of
freedom,[96] still it should be remembered that he returned after an
absence of ten years, beginning at a period of life when he could
hardly have taken root in society, or made for himself, amidst its
struggling interests, a place which would not be filled almost as soon
as he left it. His father was dead. His family, poor before, had been
reduced to a still more bitter poverty by his own ransom and that of
his brother. He was unfriended and unknown, and must have suffered
naturally and deeply from a sort of grief and disappointment which he
had felt neither as a soldier nor as a slave. It is not remarkable,
therefore, that he should have entered anew into the service of his
country,--joining his brother, probably in the same regiment to which
he had formerly belonged, and which was now sent to maintain the
Spanish authority in the newly acquired kingdom of Portugal. How long
he remained there is not certain. But he was at Lisbon, and went, under
the Marquis of Santa Cruz, in the expedition of 1581, as well as in the
more important one of the year following, to reduce the Azores, which
still held out against the arms of Philip the Second. From this period,
therefore, we are to date the full knowledge he frequently shows of
Portuguese literature, and that strong love for Portugal which, in the
third book of “Persiles and Sigismunda,” as well as in other parts of
his works, he exhibits with a kindliness and generosity remarkable in a
Spaniard of any age, and particularly in one of the age of Philip the
Second.[97]
[96] For a beautiful passage on Liberty, see Don Quixote, Parte
II., opening of chapter 58.
[97]
“Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know
’Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low”;--
an opinion which Childe Harold found in Spain when he was there,
and could have found at any time for two hundred years before.
It is not unlikely that this circumstance had some influence on the
first direction of his more serious efforts as an author, which, soon
after his return to Spain, ended in the pastoral romance of “Galatea.”
For prose pastorals have been a favorite form of fiction in Portugal
from the days of the “Menina e Moça”[98] down to our own times; and
had already been introduced into Spanish literature by George of
Montemayor, a Portuguese poet of reputation, whose “Diana Enamorada”
and the continuation of it by Gil Polo were, as we know, favorite books
with Cervantes.
[98] The “Menina e Moça” is the graceful little fragment of a
prose pastoral, by Bernardino Ribeyro, which dates from about
1500, and has always been admired, as indeed it deserves to be.
It gets its name from the two words with which it begins,--“Small
and young”; a quaint circumstance, showing its extreme popularity
with those classes that were little in the habit of referring to
books by their formal titles.
But whatever may have been the cause, Cervantes now wrote all he ever
published of his Galatea, which was licensed on the 1st of February,
1584, and printed in the December following. He himself calls it
“An Eclogue,” and dedicates it, as “the first fruits of his poor
genius,”[99] to the son of that Colonna under whose standard he had
served, twelve years before, in the Levant. It is, in fact, a prose
pastoral, after the manner of Gil Polo’s; and, as he intimates in the
Preface, “its shepherds and shepherdesses are many of them such only in
their dress.”[100] Indeed, it has always been understood that Galatea,
the heroine, is the lady to whom he was soon afterwards married; that
he himself is Elicio, the hero; and that several of his literary
friends, especially Luis Barahona de Soto, whom he seems always to
have overrated as a poet, Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Lainez, and
some others, are disguised under the names of Lauso, Tirsi, Damon, and
similar pastoral appellations. At any rate, these personages of his
fable talk with so much grace and learning, that he finds it necessary
to apologize for their too elegant discourse.[101]
[99] “Estas primicias de mi corto ingenio.” Dedicatoria.
[100] “Muchos de los disfrazados pastores della lo eran solo en
el hábito.”
[101] “Cuyas razones y argumentos mas parecen de ingenios
entre libros y las aulas criados que no de aquellos que entre
pagizas cabañas son crecidos.” (Libro IV. Tomo II. p. 90.) This
was intended, no doubt, at the same time, as a compliment to
Figueroa, etc.
Like other works of the same sort, the Galatea is founded on an
affectation which can never be successful; and which, in this
particular instance, from the unwise accumulation and involution of
the stories in its fable, from the conceited metaphysics with which it
is disfigured, and from the poor poetry profusely scattered through
it, is more than usually unfortunate. Yet there are traces both of
Cervantes’s experience in life, and of his talent, in different parts
of it. Some of the tales, like that of Sileno, in the second and third
books, are interesting; others, like Timbrio’s capture by the Moors, in
the fifth book, remind us of his own adventures and sufferings; while
yet one, at least, that of Rosaura and Grisaldo, in the fourth book,
is quite emancipated from pastoral conceits and fancies. In all, we
have passages marked with his rich and flowing style, though never,
perhaps, with what is most peculiar to his genius. The inartificial
texture of the whole, and the confusion of Christianity and mythology,
almost inevitable in such a work, are its most obvious defects; though
nothing, perhaps, is more incongruous than the representation of that
sturdy old soldier and formal statesman, Diego de Mendoza, as a lately
deceased shepherd.[102]
[102] The chief actors in the Galatea visit the tomb of Mendoza,
in the sixth book, under the guidance of a wise and gentle
Christian priest; and when there, Calliope strangely appears
to them and pronounces a tedious poetical eulogium on a vast
number of the contemporary Spanish poets, most of whom are now
forgotten. The Galatea was abridged by Florian, at the end of
the eighteenth century, and reproduced, with an appropriate
conclusion, in a prose pastoral, which, in the days when Gessner
was so popular, was frequently reprinted. In this form, it is by
no means without grace.
But when speaking thus slightingly of the Galatea, we ought to
remember, that, though it extends to two volumes, it is unfinished,
and that passages which now seem out of proportion or unintelligible
might have their meaning, and might be found appropriate, if the second
part, which Cervantes had perhaps written, and which he continued to
talk of publishing till a few days before his death,[103] had ever
appeared. And certainly, as we make up our judgment on its merits, we
are bound to bear in mind his own touching words, when he represents
it as found by the barber and curate in Don Quixote’s library.[104]
“‘But what book is the next one?’ said the curate. ‘The Galatea of
Miguel de Cervantes,’ replied the barber. ‘This Cervantes,’ said the
curate, ‘has been a great friend of mine these many years; and I know
that he is more skilled in sorrows than in verse. His book is not
without happiness in the invention; it proposes something, but finishes
nothing. So we must wait for the second part, which he promises; for
perhaps he will then obtain the favor that is now denied him; and in
the mean time, my good gossip, keep it locked up at home.’”
[103] In the Dedication to “Persiles y Sigismunda,” 1616, April
19th, only four days before his death.
[104] Parte Primera, cap. 6.
If the story be true, that he wrote the Galatea to win the favor of his
lady, his success may have been the reason why he was less interested
to finish it; for, almost immediately after the appearance of the first
part, he was married, December 12th, 1584, to a lady of a good family
in Esquivias, a village near Madrid.[105] The pecuniary arrangements
consequent on the marriage, which have been published,[106] show that
both parties were poor; and the Galatea intimates that Cervantes had a
formidable Portuguese rival, who was, at one time, nearly successful
in winning his bride.[107] But whether the course of his love ran
smooth before marriage or not, his wedded life, for above thirty years,
seems to have been happy, and his widow, at her death, desired to be
buried by his side.
[105] He alludes, I think, but twice in all his works to
Esquivias; and, both times, it is to praise its wines. The first
is in the “Cueva de Salamanca,” (Comedias, 1749, Tom. II. p.
313), and the last is in the Prólogo to “Persiles y Sigismunda,”
though in the latter he speaks, also, of its “ilustres linages.”
[106] See the end of Pellicer’s Life of Cervantes, prefixed to
his edition of Don Quixote (Tom. I. p. ccv.). There seems to have
been an earlier connection between the family of Cervantes and
that of his bride, for the lady’s mother had been named executrix
of his father’s will, who died while Cervantes himself was a
slave in Algiers.
[107] At the end of the sixth book.
In order to support his family, he probably lived much at Madrid,
where, we know, he was familiar with several contemporary poets,
such as Juan Rufo, Pedro de Padilla, and others, whom, with his
inherent good-nature, he praises constantly in his later works, and
often unreasonably. From the same motive, too, and perhaps partly
in consequence of these intimacies, he now undertook to gain some
portion of his subsistence by authorship, turning away from the life of
adventure to which he had earlier been attracted.
His first efforts in this way were for the stage, which naturally
presented strong attractions to one who was early fond of dramatic
representations, and who was now in serious want of such immediate
profit as the theatre sometimes yields. The drama, however, in the time
of Cervantes, was rude and unformed. He tells us, as we have already
noticed, that he had witnessed its beginnings in the time of Lope de
Rueda and Naharro,[108] which must have been before he went to Italy,
and when, from his description of its dresses and apparatus, we plainly
see that the theatre was not so well understood and managed as it
is now by strolling companies and in puppet-shows. From this humble
condition, which the efforts made by Bermudez and Argensola, Virues, La
Cueva, and their contemporaries, had not much ameliorated, Cervantes
undertook to raise it; and he succeeded so far, that, thirty years
afterwards, he thought his success of sufficient consequence frankly
to boast of it.[109]
[108] Prólogo al Lector, prefixed to his eight plays and eight
Entremeses, Madrid, 1615, 4to.
[109] Adjunta al Parnaso, first printed in 1614; and the Prólogo
last cited.
But it is curious to see the methods he deemed it expedient to adopt
for such a purpose. He reduced, he says, the number of acts from five
to three; but this is a slight matter, and, though he does not seem
to be aware of the fact, it had been done long before by Avendaño. He
claims to have introduced phantasms of the imagination, or allegorical
personages, like War, Disease, and Famine; but, besides that Juan de la
Cueva had already done this, it was, at best, nothing more in either of
them than reviving the forms of the old religious shows. And finally,
though this is not one of the grounds on which he himself places his
dramatic merits, he seems to have endeavoured in his plays, as in his
other works, to turn his personal travels and sufferings to account,
and thus, unconsciously, became an imitator of some of those who were
among the earliest inventors of such representations in modern Europe.
But, with a genius like that of Cervantes, even changes or attempts
as crude as these were not without results. He wrote, as he tells us
with characteristic carelessness, twenty or thirty pieces, which were
received with applause;--a number greater than can be with certainty
attributed to any preceding Spanish author, and a success before quite
unknown. None of these pieces were printed at the time, but he has
given us the names of nine of them, two of which were discovered in
1782, and printed, for the first time, in 1784.[110] The rest, it is
to be feared, are irrecoverably lost, and among them is “La Confusa,”
which, long after Lope de Vega had given its final character to the
proper national drama, Cervantes fondly declared was still one of the
very best of the class to which it belonged;[111] a judgment which the
present age might perhaps confirm, if the proportions and finish of the
drama he preferred were equal to the strength and originality of the
two that have been rescued.
[110] They are in the same volume with the “Viage al Parnaso,”
Madrid, 1784, 8vo.
[111] Adjunta al Parnaso, p. 139, ed. 1784.
The first of these is “El Trato de Argel,” or, as he elsewhere calls
it, “Los Tratos de Argel,” which may be translated Life, or Manners,
in Algiers. It is a drama slight in its plot, and so imperfect in its
dialogue, that, in these respects, it is little better than some of the
old eclogues on which the earlier theatre was founded. His purpose,
indeed, seems to have been simply to set before a Spanish audience such
a picture of the sufferings of the Christian captives at Algiers as his
own experience would justify, and such as might well awaken sympathy
in a country which had furnished a deplorable number of the victims.
He, therefore, is little careful to construct a regular plot, if, after
all, he were aware that such a plot was important; but, instead of it,
he gives us a stiff and unnatural love-story, which he thought good
enough to be used again, both in one of his later plays and in one of
his tales;[112] and then trusts the main success of the piece to its
episodical sketches.
[112] In the “Baños de Argel,” and the “Amante Liberal.”
Of these sketches, several are striking. First, we have a scene between
Cervantes himself and two of his fellow-captives, in which they are
jeered at as slaves and Christians by the Moors, and in which they give
an account of the martyrdom in Algiers of a Spanish priest, which was
subsequently used by Lope de Vega in one of his dramas. Next, we have
the attempt of Pedro Alvarez to escape to Oran, which is, no doubt,
taken from the similar attempt of Cervantes, and has all the spirit of
a drawing from life. And, in different places, we have two or three
painful scenes of the public sale of slaves, and especially of little
children, which he must often have witnessed, and which again Lope de
Vega thought worth borrowing, when he had risen, as Cervantes calls
it, to the monarchy of the scene.[113] The whole play is divided into
five _jornadas_ or acts, and written in octaves, _redondillas_, _terza
rima_, blank verse, and almost all the other measures known to Spanish
poetry; while among the persons of the drama are strangely scattered,
as prominent actors, Necessity, Opportunity, a Lion, and a Demon.
[113] The “Esclavos en Argel” of Lope is found in his Comedias,
Tom. XXV., (Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, pp. 231-260), and shows that
he borrowed very freely from the play of Cervantes, which, it
should be remembered, had not then been printed, so that he must
have used a manuscript. The scenes of the sale of the Christian
children, (pp. 249, 250), and the scenes between the same
children after one of them had become a Mohammedan, (pp. 259,
260), as they stand in Lope, are taken from the corresponding
scenes in Cervantes (pp. 316-323, and 364-366, ed. 1784). Much
of the story, and passages in other parts of the play, are also
borrowed. The martyrdom of the Valencian priest, which is merely
described by Cervantes, (pp. 298-305), is made a principal
dramatic point in the third _jornada_ of Lope’s play, where the
execution occurs, in the most revolting form, on the stage (p.
263).
Yet, notwithstanding the unhappy confusion and carelessness all
this implies, there are passages in the Trato de Argel which are
poetical. Aurelio, the hero,--who is a Christian captive, affianced
to another captive named Sylvia,--is loved by Zara, a Moorish lady,
whose confidante, Fatima, makes a wild incantation in order to obtain
means to secure the gratification of her mistress’s love; the result
of which is that a demon rises and places in her power Necessity
and Opportunity. These two immaterial agencies are then sent by her
upon the stage, and--invisible to Aurelio himself, but seen by the
spectators--tempt him with evil thoughts to yield to the seductions
of the fair unbeliever.[114] When they are gone, he thus expresses, in
soliloquy, his feelings at the idea of having nearly yielded:--
[114] Cervantes, no doubt, valued himself upon these immaterial
agencies; and after his time, they became common on the Spanish
stage. Calderon, in his “Gran Príncipe de Fez,” (Comedias,
Madrid, 1760, 4to, Tom. III. p. 389), thus explains two, whom he
introduces, in words that may be applied to those of Cervantes:--
Representando los dos
De su buen Genio y mal Genio
Exteriormente la lid,
Que arde interior en su pecho.
His good and evil genius bodied forth,
To show, as if it were in open fight,
The hot encounter hidden in his heart.
Aurelio, whither goest thou? Where, O where,
Now tend thine erring steps? Who guides thee on?
Is, then, thy fear of God so small, that thus,
To satisfy mad fantasy’s desires,
Thou rushest headlong? Can light and easy
Opportunity, with loose solicitation,
Thus persuade and overcome thy soul,
And yield thee up to love a prisoner?
Is this the lofty thought and firm resolve
In which thou once wast rooted, to resist
Offence and sin, although in torments sharp
Thy days should end and earthly martyrdom?
So soon hast thou offended, to the winds
Thy true and loving hopes cast forth,
And yielded up thy soul to low desire?
Away with such wild thoughts, of basest birth
And basest lineage sprung! Such witchery
Of foul, unworthy love shall by a love
All pure be broke! A Christian soul is mine,
And as a Christian’s shall my life be marked;--
Nor gifts, nor promises, nor cunning art,
Shall from the God I serve my spirit turn,
Although the path I trace lead on to death![115]
[115]
Aurelio donde vas? para dó mueves
El vagaroso paso? Quien te guia?
Con tan poco temor de Dios te atreves
A contentar tu loca fantasía? etc.
Jornada V.
The conception of this passage and of the scene preceding it is
certainly not dramatic, though it is one of those on which, from the
introduction of spiritual agencies, Cervantes valued himself. But
neither is it without poetry. Like the rest of the piece, it is a
mixture of personal feelings and fancies, struggling with an ignorance
of the proper principles of the drama, and with the rude elements of
the theatre in its author’s time. He calls the whole a _Comedia_; but
it does not deserve the name. Like the old Mysteries, it is rather an
attempt to exhibit, in living show, a series of unconnected incidents;
but it has no properly constructed plot, and, as he honestly confesses
afterwards, it comes to no proper conclusion.[116]
[116]
Y aquí da este trato fin,
Que _no lo tiene_ el de Argel,
is the jest with which he ends his other play on the same
subject, printed thirty years after the representation of this
one.
The other play of Cervantes, that has reached us from this period of
his life, is founded on the tragical fate of Numantia, which, having
resisted the Roman arms fourteen years,[117] was reduced by famine;
the Roman forces consisting of eighty thousand men, and the Numantian
of less than four thousand, not one of whom was found alive when the
conquerors entered the city.[118] Cervantes probably chose this subject
in consequence of the patriotic recollections it awakened and still
continues to awaken in the minds of his countrymen; and, for the same
reason, he filled his drama chiefly with the public and private horrors
consequent on the self-devotion of the Numantians.
[117] Cervantes makes Scipio say of the siege, on his arrival,--
Diez y seis años son y mas pasados.
The true length of the contest with Numantia was, however,
fourteen years, and the length of the last siege fourteen months.
[118] It is well to read, with the “Numancia” of Cervantes,
the account of Florus, (Epit. II. 18), and especially that in
Mariana, (Lib. III. c. 6-10), the latter being the proud Spanish
version of it.
It is divided into four _jornadas_, and, like the Trato de Argel,
is written in a great variety of measures; the ancient _redondilla_
being preferred for the more active portions. Its _dramatis personæ_
are no fewer than forty in number; and among them are Spain and the
River Duero, a Dead Body, War, Sickness, Famine, and Fame; the last
personage speaking the Prologue. The action opens with Scipio’s
arrival. He at once reproaches the Roman army, that, in so long a time,
they had not conquered so small a body of Spaniards,--as Cervantes
always patriotically calls the Numantians,--and then announces that
they must now be subdued by Famine. Spain enters, as a fair matron,
and, aware of what awaits her devoted city, invokes the Duero in two
poetical octaves,[119] which the river answers in person, accompanied
by three of his tributary streams, but gives no hope to Numantia,
except that the Goths, the Constable of Bourbon, and the Duke of Alva
shall one day avenge its fate on the Romans. This ends the first act.
[119]
Duero gentil, que, con torcidas vueltas,
Humedeces gran parte de mi seno,
Ansí en tus aguas siempre veas envueltas
Arenas de oro qual el Tajo ameno,
Y ansí las ninfas fugitivas sueltas,
De que está el verde prado y bosque lleno,
Vengan humildes á tus aguas claras,
Y en prestarte favor no sean avaras,
Que prestes á mis ásperos lamentos
Atento oido, ó que á escucharlos vengas,
Y aunque dexes un rato tus contentos,
Suplícote que en nada te detengas:
Si tú con tus continos crecimientos
Destos fieros Romanos no te vengas,
Cerrado veo ya qualquier camino
A la salud del pueblo Numantino.
Jorn. I., Sc. 2.
It should be added, that these two octaves occur at the end of a
somewhat tedious soliloquy of nine or ten others, all of which
are really octave stanzas, though not printed as such.
The other three divisions are filled with the horrors of the siege
endured by the unhappy Numantians; the anticipations of their defeat;
their sacrifices and prayers to avert it; the unhallowed incantations
by which a dead body is raised to predict the future; and the cruel
sufferings to old and young, to the loved and the lovely, and even to
the innocence of childhood, through which the stern fate of the city is
accomplished. The whole ends with the voluntary immolation of those who
remained alive among the starving inhabitants, and the death of a youth
who holds up the keys of the gates, and then, in presence of the Roman
general, throws himself headlong from one of the towers of the city;
its last self-devoted victim.
In such a story there is no plot, and no proper development of any
thing like a dramatic action. But the romance of real life has rarely
been exhibited on the stage in such bloody extremity; and still more
rarely, when thus exhibited, has there been so much of poetical effect
produced by individual incidents. In a scene of the second act,
Marquino, a magician, after several vain attempts to compel a spirit
to reënter the body it had just left on the battle-field, in order to
obtain from it a revelation of the coming fate of the city, bursts
forth indignantly and says:--
Rebellious spirit! Back again, and fill
The form which, but a few short hours ago,
Thyself left tenantless.
To which the spirit, reëntering the body, replies:--
Restrain the fury of thy cruel power!
Enough, Marquino! O, enough of pain
I suffer in those regions dark, below,
Without the added torments of thy spell!
Thou art deluded, if thou deem’st indeed
That aught of earthly pleasure can repay
Such brief return to this most wretched world,
Where, when I barely seem to live again,
With urgent speed life harshly shrinks away.
Nay, rather dost thou bring a shuddering pain;
Since, on the instant, all-prevailing death
Triumphant reigns anew, subduing life and soul;
Thus yielding twice the victory to my foe,
Who now, with others of his grisly crew,
Obedient to thy will, and stung with rage,
Awaits the moment when shall be fulfilled
The knowledge thou requirest at my hand;
The knowledge of Numantia’s awful fate.[120]
[120]
_Marquino._
Alma rebelde, vuelve al aposento
Que pocas horas ha desocupaste.
_El Cuerpo._
Cese la furia del rigor violento
Tuyo. Marquino, baste, triste, baste,
La que yo paso en la region escura,
Sin que tú crezcas mas mi desventura.
Engáñaste, si piensas que recibo
Contento de volver á esta penosa,
Mísera y corta vida, que ahora vivo,
Que ya me va faltando presurosa;
Antes, me causas un dolor esquivo,
Pues otra vez la muerte rigurosa
Triunfará de mi vida y de mi alma;
Mi enemigo tendrá doblada palma,
El cual, con otros del escuro bando
De los que son sugetos á aguardarte,
Está con rabia en torno, aquí esperando
A que acabe, Marquino, de informarte
Del lamentable fin, del mal nefando,
Que de Numancia puedo asegurarte.
Jorn. II., Sc. 2.
There is nothing of so much dignity in the incantations of Marlowe’s
“Faustus,” which belong to the contemporary period of the English
stage; nor does even Shakspeare demand from us a sympathy so strange
with the mortal head reluctantly rising to answer Macbeth’s guilty
question, as Cervantes makes us feel for this suffering spirit,
recalled to life only to endure a second time the pangs of dissolution.
The scenes of private and domestic affliction arising from the pressure
of famine are sometimes introduced with unexpected effect, especially
one between a mother and her child, and the following between Morandro,
a lover, and his mistress, Lira, whom he now sees wasted by hunger and
mourning over the universal desolation. She turns from him to conceal
her sufferings, and he says tenderly,--
Nay, Lira, haste not, haste not thus away;
But let me feel an instant’s space the joy
Which life can give even here, amidst grim death.
Let but mine eyes an instant’s space behold
Thy beauty, and, amidst such bitter woes,
Be gladdened! O my gentle Lira!--thou,
That dwell’st for ever in such harmony
Amidst the thoughts that throng my fantasy,
That suffering grows glorious for thy sake;--
What ails thee, love? On what are bent thy thoughts,
Chief honor of mine own?
_Lira._ I think, how fast
All happiness is gliding both from thee
And me; and that, before this cruel war
Can find a close, my life must find one too.
_Morandro._ What sayst thou, love?
_Lira._ That hunger so prevails
Within me, that it soon must triumph quite,
And break my life’s thin thread. What wedded love
Canst thou expect from me in such extremity,--
Looking for death perchance in one short hour?
With famine died my brother yesterday;
With famine sank my mother; and if still
I struggle on, ’t is but my youth that bears
Me up against such rigors horrible.
But sustenance is now so many days
Withheld, that all my weakened powers
Contend in vain.
_Morandro._ O Lira! dry thy tears,
And let but mine bemoan thy bitter griefs!
For though fierce famine press thee merciless,
Of famine, while I live, thou shalt not die.
Fosse deep and wall of strength shall be o’erleaped,
And death confronted, and yet warded off!
The bread the bloody Roman eats to-day
Shall from his lips be torn and placed in thine;--
My arms shall hew a passage for thy life;--
For death is naught when I behold thee thus.
Food thou shall have, in spite of Roman power,
If but these hands are such as once they were.
_Lira._ Thou speak’st, Morandro, with a loving heart;--
But food thus bought with peril to thy life
Would lose its savor. All that thou couldst snatch
In such an onset must be small indeed,
And rather cost thy life than rescue mine.
Enjoy, then, love, thy fresh and glowing youth!
Thy life imports the city more than mine;
Thou canst defend it from this cruel foe,
Whilst I, a maiden, weak and faint at heart,
Am worthless all. So, gentle love, dismiss this thought;
I taste no food bought at such deadly price.
And though a few short, wretched days thou couldst
Protect this life, still famine, at the last,
Must end us all.
_Morandro._ In vain thou strivest, love,
To hinder me the way my will alike
And destiny invite and draw me on.
Pray rather, therefore, to the gods above,
That they return me home, laden with spoils,
Thy sufferings and mine to mitigate.
_Lira._ Morandro, gentle friend, O, go not forth!
For here, before me, gleams a hostile sword,
Red with thy blood! O, venture, venture not
Such fierce extremity, light of my life!
For if the sally be with dangers thick,
More dread is the return.[121]
[121]
_Morandro._
No vayas tan de corrida,
Lira, déxame gozar
Del bien que me puede dar
En la muerte alegre vida:
Dexa, que miren mis ojos
Un rato tu hermosura,
Pues tanto mi desventura
Se entretiene en mis enojos.
O dulce Lira, que suenas
Contino en mi fantasía
Con tan suave harmonía
Que vuelve en gloria mis penas!
Que tienes? Que estás pensando,
Gloria de mi pensamiento?
_Lira._
Pienso como mi contento
Y el tuyo se va acabando,
Y no será su homicida
El cerco de nuestra tierra,
Que primero que la guerra
Se me acabará la vida.
_Morandro._
Que dices, bien de mi alma?
_Lira._
Que me tiene tal la hambre,
Que de mi vital estambre
Llevará presto la palma.
Que tálamo has de esperar
De quien está en tal extremo,
Que te aseguro que temo
Antes de una hora espirar?
Mi hermano ayer espiró
De la hambre fatigado,
Y mi madre ya ha acabado,
Que la hambre la acabó.
Y si la hambre y su fuerza
No ha rendido mi salud,
Es porque la juventud
Contra su rigor se esfuerza.
Pero como ha tantos dias
Que no le hago defensa,
No pueden contra su ofensa
Las débiles fuerzas mias.
_Morandro._
Enjuga, Lira, los ojos,
Dexa que los tristes mios
Se vuelvan corrientes rios
Nacidos de tus enojos;
Y aunque la hambre ofendida
Te tenga tan sin compas,
De hambre no morirás
Mientras yo tuviere vida.
Yo me ofrezco de saltar
El foso y el muro fuerte,
Y entrar por la misma muerte
Para la tuya escusar.
El pan que el Romano toca,
Sin que el temor me destruya,
Lo quitaré de la suya
Para ponerlo en tu boca.
Con mi brazo haré carrera
A tu vida y á mi muerte,
Porque mas me mata el verte,
Señora, de esa manera.
Yo te traeré de comer
A pesar de los Romanos,
Si ya son estas mis manos
Las mismas que solian ser.
_Lira._
Hablas como enamorado,
Morandro, pero no es justo,
Que ya tome gusto el gusto
Con tu peligro comprado.
Poco podrá sustentarme
Qualquier robo que harás,
Aunque mas cierto hallarás
El perderte que ganarme.
Goza de tu mocedad
En fresca edad y crecida,
Que mas importa tu vida
Que la mia, á la ciudad.
Tu podrás bien defendella,
De la enemiga asechanza,
Que no la flaca pujanza
Desta tan triste doncella.
Ansí que, mi dulce amor,
Despide ese pensamiento,
Que yo no quiero sustento
Ganado con tu sudor.
Que aunque puedes alargar
Mi muerte por algun dia,
Esta hambre que porfia
En fin nos ha de acabar.
_Morandro._
En vano trabajas, Lira,
De impidirme este camino,
Do mi voluntad y signo
Allá me convida y tira.
Tú rogarás entre tanto
A los Dioses, que me vuelvan
Con despojos que resuelvan
Tu miseria y mi quebranto.
_Lira._
Morandro, mi dulce amigo,
No vayas, que se me antoja,
Que de tu sangre veo roxa
La espada del enemigo.
No hagas esta jornada,
Morandro, bien de mi vida,
Que si es mala la salida,
Es muy peor la tornada.
Jorn. III., Sc. 1.
There is, in this scene, a tone of gentle, broken-hearted
self-devotion on the part of Lira, awakening a fierce despair in
her lover, that seems to me very true to nature. The last words
of Lira, in the passage translated, have, I think, much beauty in
the original.
He persists, and, accompanied by a faithful friend, penetrates into the
Roman camp and obtains bread. In the contest he is wounded; but still,
forcing his way back to the city, by the mere energy of despair, he
gives to Lira the food he has won, wet with his own blood, and then
falls dead at her feet.
A very high authority in dramatic criticism speaks of the Numancia
as if it were not merely one of the more distinguished efforts of
the early Spanish theatre, but one of the more striking exhibitions
of modern poetry.[122] It is not probable that this opinion will
prevail. Yet the whole piece has the merit of originality, and, in
several of its parts, succeeds in awakening strong emotions; so that,
notwithstanding the want of dramatic skill and adaptation, it may still
be cited as a proof of its author’s poetical talent, and, in the actual
condition of the Spanish stage when he wrote, as a bold effort to raise
it.
[122] A. W. von Schlegel, Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und
Literatur, Heidelberg, 1811, Tom. II. Abt. ii. p. 345.
CHAPTER XI.
CERVANTES NEGLECTED.--AT SEVILLE.--HIS FAILURE.--ASKS EMPLOYMENT IN
AMERICA.--AT VALLADOLID.--HIS TROUBLES.--PUBLISHES THE FIRST PART OF
DON QUIXOTE.--HE REMOVES TO MADRID.--HIS LIFE THERE.--HIS RELATIONS
WITH LOPE DE VEGA.--HIS TALES AND THEIR CHARACTER.--HIS JOURNEY
TO PARNASSUS, AND DEFENCE OF HIS DRAMAS.--PUBLISHES HIS PLAYS AND
ENTREMESES.--THEIR CHARACTER.--SECOND PART OF DON QUIXOTE.--HIS DEATH.
The low condition of the theatre in his time was a serious misfortune
to Cervantes. It prevented him from obtaining, as a dramatic author,
a suitable remuneration for his efforts, even though they were, as
he tells us, successful in winning public favor. If we add to this,
that he was now married, that one of his sisters was dependent on
him, and that he was maimed in his person and a neglected man, it
will not seem remarkable, that, after struggling on for three years
at Esquivias and Madrid, he found himself obliged to seek elsewhere
the means of subsistence. In 1588, therefore, he went to Seville, then
the great mart for the vast wealth coming in from America, and, as he
afterwards called it, “a shelter for the poor and a refuge for the
unfortunate.”[123] There he acted for some time as one of the agents
of Antonio de Guevara, a royal commissary for the American fleets,
and afterwards as a collector of moneys due to the government and to
private individuals; an humble condition, certainly, and full of cares,
but still one that gave him the bread he had vainly sought in other
pursuits.
[123] “Volvíme á Sevilla,” says Berganza, in the “Coloquio de
los Perros,” “que es amparo de pobres y refugio de desdichados.”
Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 362.
The chief advantage, perhaps, of these employments to a genius like
that of Cervantes was, that they led him to travel much for ten years
in different parts of Andalusia and Granada, and made him familiar with
life and manners in these picturesque parts of his native country.
During the latter portion of the time, indeed, partly owing to the
failure of a person to whose care he had intrusted some of the moneys
he had received, and partly, it is to be feared, owing to his own
negligence, he became indebted to the government, and was imprisoned
at Seville, as a defaulter, for a sum so small, that it seems to mark
a more severe degree of poverty than he had yet suffered. After a
strong application to the government, he was released from prison under
an order of December 1, 1597, when he had been confined, apparently,
about three months; but the claims of the public treasury on him were
not adjusted in 1608, nor do we know what was the final result of his
improvidence in relation to them, except that he does not seem to have
been molested on the subject after that date.
During his residence at Seville, which, with some interruptions,
extended from 1588 to 1598, or perhaps somewhat longer, Cervantes
made an ineffectual application to the king for an appointment in
America; setting forth by exact documents--which now constitute the
most valuable materials for his biography--a general account of his
adventures, services, and sufferings while a soldier in the Levant,
and of the miseries of his life while he was a slave in Algiers.[124]
This was in 1590. But no other than a formal answer seems ever to have
been returned to the application; and the whole affair only leaves us
to infer the severity of that distress which should induce him to seek
relief in exile to a colony of which he has elsewhere spoken as the
great resort of rogues.[125]
[124] This extraordinary mass of documents is preserved in the
Archivos de las Indias, which are admirably arranged in the
old and beautiful Exchange built by Herrera in Seville, when
Seville was the great _entrepôt_ between Spain and her colonies.
The papers referred to may be found in Estante II. Cajon 5,
Legajo 1, and were discovered by the venerable Cean Bermudez in
1808. The most important of them are published entire, and the
rest are well abridged, in the Life of Cervantes by Navarrete
(pp. 311-388). Cervantes petitioned in them for one of four
offices:--the Auditorship of New Granada; that of the galleys of
Carthagena; the Governorship of the Province of Soconusco; or the
place of Corregidor of the city of Paz.
[125] “Viéndose pues tan falto de dineros y aun no con muchos
amigos, se acogió al remedio á que otros muchos perdidos en
aquella ciudad [Sevilla] se acogen; que es, el pasarse á las
Indias, refugio y amparo de los desesperados de España, iglesia
de los alzados, salvo conducto de los homicidas, pala y cubierta
de los jugadores, añagaza general de mugeres libres, engaño comun
de muchos y remedio particular de pocos.” El Zeloso Estremeño,
Novelas, Tom. II. p. 1.
As an author, his residence at Seville has left few distinct traces of
him. In 1595, he sent some trifling verses to Saragossa, which gained
one of the prizes offered at the canonization of San Jacinto;[126] in
1596, he wrote a sonnet in ridicule of a great display of courage made
in Andalusia after all danger was over and the English had evacuated
Cadiz, which, under Essex, Elizabeth’s favorite, they had for a short
time occupied;[127] and in 1598, he wrote another sonnet, in ridicule
of an unseemly uproar that took place in the cathedral at Seville, from
a pitiful jealousy between the municipality and the Inquisition, on
occasion of the religious ceremonies observed there after the death of
Philip the Second.[128] But except these trifles, we know of nothing
that he wrote, during this active period of his life, unless we are to
assign to it some of his tales, which, like the “Española Inglesa,”
are connected with known contemporary events, or, like “Rinconete y
Cortadillo,” savor so much of the manners of Seville, that it seems as
if they could have been written nowhere else.
[126] These verses may be found in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 444, 445.
[127] Pellicer, Vida, ed. Don Quixote, (Madrid, 1797, 8vo, Tom. I.
p. lxxxv.), gives the sonnet.
[128] Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. IX. p. 193. In the “Viage al
Parnaso,” c. 4, he calls it “Honra principal de mis escritos.”
But he was mistaken, or he jested,--I rather think the last.
For an account of the indecent uproar Cervantes ridiculed, and
needful to explain this sonnet, see Semanario Pintoresco, Madrid,
1842, p. 177.
Of the next period of his life,--and it is the important one
immediately preceding the publication of the First Part of Don
Quixote,--we know even less than of the last. A uniform tradition,
however, declares that he was employed by the Grand Prior of the Order
of Saint John in La Mancha to collect rents due to his monastery in
the village of Argamasilla; that he went there on this humble agency
and made the attempt, but that the debtors refused payment, and,
after persecuting him in different ways, ended by throwing him into
prison, where, in a spirit of indignation, he began to write the Don
Quixote, making his hero a native of the village that treated him so
ill, and laying the scene of most of the knight’s earlier adventures
in La Mancha. But though this is possible, and even probable, we have
no direct proof of it. Cervantes says, indeed, in his Preface to the
First Part, that his Don Quixote was begun in a prison;[129] but this
may refer to his earlier imprisonment at Seville, or his subsequent one
at Valladolid. All that is certain, therefore, is, that he had friends
and relations in La Mancha; that, at some period of his life, he must
have enjoyed an opportunity of acquiring the intimate knowledge of its
people, antiquities, and topography, which the Don Quixote shows; and
that this could hardly have happened except between the end of 1598,
when we lose all trace of him at Seville, and the beginning of 1603,
when we find him established at Valladolid.
[129] “Se engendró en una cárcel.” Avellaneda says the same thing
in his Preface, but says it contemptuously: “Pero disculpan los
yerros de su Primera Parte en esta materia, el haberse escrito
entre _los_ de una cárcel,” etc. A base insinuation seems implied
in the use of the relative article _los_.
To Valladolid he went, apparently because the court had been removed
thither by the caprice of Philip the Third and the interests of his
favorite, the Duke of Lerma; but, as everywhere else, there too, he
was overlooked and left in poverty. Indeed, we should hardly know he
was in Valladolid at all before the publication of the First Part of
his Don Quixote, but for two painful circumstances. The first is an
account, in his own handwriting, for sewing done by his sister, who,
having sacrificed every thing for his redemption from captivity, became
dependent on him during her widowhood and died in his family. The other
is, that, in one of those night-brawls common among the gallants of the
Spanish court, a stranger was killed near the house where Cervantes
lived; in consequence of which, and of some suspicions that fell on
the family, he was, according to the hard provisions of the Spanish
law, confined with the other principal witnesses until an investigation
could take place.[130]
[130] Pellicer’s Life, pp. cxvi.-cxxxi.
But in the midst of poverty and embarrassments, and while acting in the
humble capacity of general agent and amanuensis for those who needed
his services,[131] Cervantes had prepared for the press the First Part
of his Don Quixote, which was licensed in 1604, at Valladolid, and
printed in 1605, at Madrid. It was received with such decided favor,
that, before the year was out, another edition was called for at
Madrid, and two more elsewhere; circumstances which, after so many
discouragements in other attempts to procure a subsistence, naturally
turned his thoughts more towards letters than they had been at any
previous period of his life.
[131] One of the witnesses in the preceding criminal inquiry says
that Cervantes was visited by different persons, “por ser hombre
que escribe y trata negocios.”
In 1606, the court having gone back to Madrid, Cervantes followed it,
and there passed the remainder of his life; changing his residence
to different parts of the city at least seven times in the course
of ten years, apparently as he was driven hither and thither by
his necessities. In 1609, he joined the Brotherhood of the Holy
Sacrament,--one of those religious associations which were then
fashionable, and the same of which Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and other
distinguished men of letters of the time, were members. About the same
period, too, he seems to have become known to most of these persons, as
well as to others of the favored poets round the court, among whom were
Espinel and the two Argensolas; though what were his relations with
them, beyond those implied in the commendatory verses they prefixed to
each other’s works, we do not know.
Concerning his relations with Lope de Vega there has been much
discussion to little purpose. Certain it is, that Cervantes often
praises this great literary idol of his age, and that four or five
times Lope stoops from his pride of place and compliments Cervantes,
though never beyond the measure of praise he bestows on many whose
claims were greatly inferior. But in his stately flight, it is plain
that he soared much above the author of Don Quixote, to whose highest
merits he seemed carefully to avoid all homage;[132] and though I find
no sufficient reason to suppose their relation to each other was marked
by any personal jealousy or ill-will, as has been sometimes supposed,
yet I can find no proof that it was either intimate or kindly. On the
contrary, when we consider the good-nature of Cervantes, which made him
praise to excess nearly all his other literary contemporaries, as well
as the greatest of them all, and when we allow for the frequency of
hyperbole in such praises at that time, which prevented them from being
what they would now be, we may perceive an occasional coolness in his
manner, when he speaks of Lope, which shows, that, without overrating
his own merits and claims, he was not insensible to the difference in
their respective positions, or to the injustice towards himself implied
by it. Indeed, his whole tone, whenever he notices Lope, seems to be
marked with much personal dignity, and to be singularly honorable to
him.[133]
[132] Laurel de Apolo, Silva 8, where he is praised _only_ as a
poet.
[133] Most of the materials for forming a judgment on this point
in Cervantes’s character are to be found in Navarrete, (Vida,
pp. 457-475), who maintains that Cervantes and Lope were sincere
friends, and in Huerta, (Leccion Crítica, Madrid, 1786, 12mo,
pp. 33-47), who maintains that Cervantes was an envious rival
of Lope. As I cannot adopt either of these results, and think
the last particularly unjust, I will venture to add one or two
considerations.
Lope was fifteen years younger than Cervantes, and was
forty-three years old when the First Part of the Don Quixote was
published; but from that time till the death of Cervantes, a
period of eleven years, he does not, that I am aware, once allude
to him. The five passages in the immense mass of Lope’s works, in
which alone, so far as I know, he speaks of Cervantes are,--1.
In the “Dorothea,” 1598, twice slightly and without praise. 2.
In the Preface to his own Tales, 1621, still more slightly, and
even, I think, coldly. 3. In the “Laurel de Apolo,” 1630, where
there is a somewhat stiff eulogy of him, fourteen years after his
death. 4. In his play, “El Premio del Bien Hablar,” printed in
Madrid, 1635, where Cervantes is barely mentioned (Comedias, 4to,
Tom. XXI. f. 162). And 5. In “Amar sin Saber á Quien,” (Comedias,
Madrid, Tom. XXII., 1635), where (Jornada primera) Leonarda, one
of the principal ladies, says to her maid, who had just cited a
ballad of Audalla and Xarifa to her,--
Inez, take care; your common reading is,
I know, the Ballad-book; and, after all,
Your case may prove like that of the poor knight----
to which Inez replies, interrupting her mistress,--
Don Quixote of la Mancha, if you please,--
May God Cervantes pardon!--was a knight
Of that wild, erring sort the Chronicle
So magnifies. For me, I only read
The Ballad-book, and find myself from day
To day the better for it.
All this looks very reserved; but when we add to it, that
there were numberless occasions on which Lope could have
gracefully noticed the merit to which he could never have
been insensible,--especially when he makes so free a use of
Cervantes’s “Trato de Argel” in his own “Esclavos de Argel,”
absolutely introducing him by name on the stage, and giving him
a prominent part in the action, (Comedias, Çaragoça, 1647, 4to,
Tom. XXV. pp. 245, 251, 257, 262, 277), without showing any of
those kindly or respectful feelings which it was easy and common
to show to friends on the Spanish stage, and which Calderon,
for instance, so frequently shows to Cervantes, (e. g. Casa con
Dos Puertas, Jorn. I., etc.),--we can hardly doubt that Lope
willingly overlooked and neglected Cervantes, at least from the
time of the appearance of the First Part of Don Quixote, in 1605,
till after its author’s death, in 1616.
On the other hand, Cervantes, from the date of the “Canto de
Calíope” in the “Galatea,” 1584, when Lope was only twenty-two
years old, to the date of the Preface to the Second Part of Don
Quixote, 1615, only a year before his own death, was constantly
giving Lope the praises due to one who, beyond all _contemporary_
doubt or rivalship, was at the head of Spanish literature; and,
among other proofs of such elevated and generous feelings,
prefixed, in 1598, a laudatory sonnet to Lope’s “Dragontea.” But
at the same time that he did this, and did it freely and fully,
there is a dignified reserve and caution in some parts of his
remarks about Lope that show he was not impelled by any warm,
personal regard; a caution which is so obvious, that Avellaneda,
in the Preface to his Don Quixote, maliciously interpreted it
into envy.
It therefore seems to me difficult to avoid the conclusion,
that the relations between the two great Spanish authors of
this period were such as might be expected, where one was, to
an extraordinary degree, the idol of his time, and the other a
suffering and neglected man. What is most agreeable about the
whole matter is the generous justice Cervantes never fails to
render to Lope’s merits.
In 1613, he published his “Novelas Exemplares,” Instructive or Moral
Tales,[134] twelve in number, and making one volume. Some of them were
written several years before, as was “The Impertinent Curiosity,”
inserted in the First Part of Don Quixote,[135] and “Rinconete y
Cortadillo,” which is mentioned there, so that both must be dated as
early as 1604; while others contain internal evidence of the time of
their composition, as the “Española Inglesa” does, which seems to have
been written in 1611. All of these stories are, as he intimates in
their Preface, original, and most of them have the air of being drawn
from his personal experience and observation.
[134] He explains in his Preface the meaning he wishes to
give the word _exemplares_, saying, “Heles dado nombre de
_exemplares_, y si bien lo miras, no hay ninguna de quien no se
puede sacar algun exemplo provechoso.” The word _exemplo_, from
the time of the Archpriest of Hita and Don Juan Manuel, has had
the meaning of _instruction_ or _instructive story_.
[135] The “Curioso Impertinente,” first printed in 1605, in
the First Part of Don Quixote, was separately printed in Paris
in 1608,--five years before the collected Novelas appeared in
Madrid,--by Cæsar Oudin, a teacher of Spanish at the French
court, who caused several other Spanish books to be printed
in Paris, where the Castilian was in much favor from the
intermarriages between the crowns of France and Spain.
Their value is different, for they are written with different views,
and in a variety of style and manner greater than he has elsewhere
shown; but most of them contain touches of what is peculiar in his
talent, and are full of that rich eloquence and of those pleasing
descriptions of natural scenery which always flow so easily from his
pen. They have little in common with the graceful story-telling spirit
of Boccaccio and his followers, and still less with the strictly
practical tone of Don Juan Manuel’s tales; nor, on the other hand,
do they approach, except in the case of the Impertinent Curiosity,
the class of short novels which have been frequent in other countries
within the last century. The more, therefore, we examine them, the more
we shall find that they are original in their composition and general
tone, and that they are strongly marked with the individual genius of
their author, as well as with the more peculiar traits of the national
character,--the ground, no doubt, on which they have always been
favorites at home, and less valued than they deserve to be abroad. As
works of invention, they rank, among their author’s productions, next
after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before
it.
The first in the series, “The Little Gypsy Girl,” is the story of a
beautiful creature, Preciosa, who had been stolen, when an infant,
from a noble family, and educated in the wild community of the
Gypsies,--that mysterious and degraded race which, until within the
last fifty years, has always thriven in Spain since it first appeared
there in the fifteenth century. There is a truth, as well as a
spirit, in parts of this little story, that cannot be overlooked. The
description of Preciosa’s first appearance in Madrid during a great
religious festival; the effect produced by her dancing and singing in
the streets; her visits to the houses to which she was called for the
amusement of the rich; and the conversations, compliments, and style of
entertainment, are all admirable, and leave no doubt of their truth and
reality. But there are other passages which, mistaking in some respects
the true Gypsy character, seem as if they were rather drawn from some
such imitations of it as the “Life of Bampfylde Moore Carew” than from
a familiarity with Gypsy life as it then existed in Spain.[136]
[136] This story has been dramatized more than once in Spain,
and freely used elsewhere. See note on the “Gitanilla” of Solís,
_post_, Chap. 25.
The next of the tales is very different, and yet no less within the
personal experience of Cervantes himself. It is called “The Generous
Lover,” and is nearly the same in its incidents with an episode found
in his own “Trato de Argel.” The scene is laid in Cyprus, two years
after the capture of that island by the Turks in 1570; but here it is
his own adventures in Algiers upon which he draws for the materials
and coloring of what is Turkish in his story, and the vivacity of his
descriptions shows how much of reality there is in both.
The third story, “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” is again quite unlike any
of the others. It is an account of two young vagabonds, not without
ingenuity and spirit, who join at Seville, in 1569, one of those
organized communities of robbers and beggars which often recur in the
history of Spanish society and manners during the last three centuries.
The realm of Monipodio, their chief, reminds us at once of Alsatia in
Sir Walter Scott’s “Nigel,” and the resemblance is made still more
obvious afterwards, when, in “The Colloquy of the Dogs,” we find the
same Monipodio in secret league with the officers of justice. A single
trait, however, will show with what fidelity Cervantes has copied from
nature. The members of this confederacy, who lead the most dissolute
and lawless lives, are yet represented as superstitious, and as
having their images, their masses, and their contributions for pious
charities, as if robbery were a settled and respectable vocation, a
part of whose income was to be devoted to religious purposes in order
to consecrate the remainder; a delusion which, in forms alternately
ridiculous and revolting, has subsisted in Spain from very early times
down to the present day.[137]
[137] It is an admirable hit, when Rinconete, first becoming
acquainted with one of the rogues, asks him, “Es vuesa merced
por ventura ladron?” and the rogue replies, “_Sí, para servir
á Dios y á la buena gente._” (Novelas, Tom. I. p. 235.) And,
again, the scene (pp. 242-247) where Rinconete and Cortadillo are
received among the robbers, and that (pp. 254, 255) where two
of the shameless women of the gang are very anxious to provide
candles to set up as devout offerings before their patron saints,
are hardly less happy, and are perfectly true to the characters
represented. Indeed, it is plain from this tale, and from several
of the Entremeses of Cervantes, that he was familiar with the
life of the rogues of his time. Fermin Caballero, in a pleasant
tract on the Geographical Knowledge of Cervantes, (Pericia
Geográfica de Cervantes, Madrid, 1840, 12mo), notes the aptness
with which Cervantes alludes to the different localities in the
great cities of Spain, which constituted the rendezvous and
lurking-places of its vagabond population. (p. 75.) Among these
Seville was preëminent. Guevara, when he describes a community
like that of Monipodio, places it, as Cervantes does, in Seville.
Diablo Cojuelo, Tranco IX.
It would be easy to go on and show how the rest of the tales are marked
with similar traits of truth and nature: for example, the story founded
on the adventures of a Spanish girl carried to England when Cadiz
was sacked in 1596; “The Jealous Estremadurian,” and “The Fraudulent
Marriage,” the last two of which bear internal evidence of being
founded on fact; and even “The Pretended Aunt,” which, as he did not
print it himself,--apparently in consequence of its coarseness,--ought
not now to be placed among his works, is after all the story of an
adventure that really occurred at Salamanca in 1575.[138] Indeed, they
are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that
character is found in Andalusia; and are written with an idiomatic
richness, a spirit, and a grace, which, though they are the oldest
tales of their class in Spain, have left them ever since without
successful rivals.
[138] Coarse as it is, however, the “Tia Fingida” was found,
with “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” and several other tales and
miscellanies, in a manuscript collection of stories and trifles
made 1606-10, for the amusement of the Archbishop of Seville,
D. Fernando Niño de Guevara; and long afterwards carefully
preserved by the Jesuits of St. Hermenegild. A castigated copy
of it was printed by Arrieta in his “Espíritu de Miguel de
Cervantes” (Madrid, 1814, 12mo); but the Prussian ambassador in
Spain, if I mistake not, soon afterwards obtained possession of
an unaltered copy and sent it to Berlin, where it was published
by the famous Greek scholar, F. A. Wolf, first in one of the
periodicals of Berlin, and afterwards in a separate pamphlet.
(See his Vorbericht to the “Tia Fingida, Novela inédita de Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra,” Berlin, 1818, 8vo.) It has since been
printed in Spain with the other tales of Cervantes.
Some of the tales of Cervantes were translated into English as
early as 1640; but not into French, I think, till 1768, and not
well into that language till Viardot published his translation
(Paris, 1838, 2 tom., 8vo). Even he, however, did not venture
on the obscure puns and jests of the “Licenciado Vidriera,” a
fiction of which Moreto made some use in his play of the same
name, representing the Licentiate, however, as a feigned madman
and not as a real one, and showing little of the humor of the
original conception. (Comedias Escogidas, Madrid, 4to, Tom. V.
1653.) Under the name of “Léocadie,” there is a poor abridgment
of the “Fuerza de la Sangre,” by Florian. The old English
translation by Mabbe (London, 1640, folio) is said by Godwin to
be “perhaps the most perfect specimen of prose translation in the
English language.” (Lives of E. and J. Phillips, London, 1815,
4to, p. 246.) The praise is excessive, but the translation is
certainly very well done. It, however, extends only to six of the
tales.
In 1614, the year after they appeared, Cervantes printed his “Journey
to Parnassus”; a satire in _terza rima_, divided into eight short
chapters, and written in professed imitation of an Italian satire, by
Cesare Caporali, on the same subject and in the same measure.[139]
The poem of Cervantes has little merit. It is an account of a summons
by Apollo, requiring all good poets to come to his assistance for the
purpose of driving all the bad poets from Parnassus, in the course
of which Mercury is sent in a royal galley, allegorically built
and rigged with different kinds of verses, to Cervantes, who, being
confidentially consulted about the Spanish poets that can be trusted as
allies in the war against bad taste, has an opportunity of speaking his
opinion on whatever relates to the poetry of his time.
[139] The first edition is in small duodecimo, (Madrid, 1614),
80 leaves; better printed, I think, than any other of his works
that were published under his own care. Little but the opening is
imitated from Cesare Caporali’s “Viaggio in Parnaso,” which is
only about one fifth as long as the poem of Cervantes.
The most interesting part is the fourth chapter, in which he slightly
notices the works he has himself written,[140] and complains, with
a gayety that at least proves his good-humor, of the poverty and
neglect with which they have been rewarded.[141] It may be difficult,
perhaps, to draw a line between such feelings as Cervantes here very
strongly expresses, and the kindred ones of vanity and presumption;
but yet, when his genius, his wants, and his manly struggles against
the gravest evils of life are considered, and when to this are added
the light-heartedness and simplicity with which he always speaks
of himself, and the indulgence he always shows to others, few will
complain of him for claiming with some boldness honors that had been
coldly withheld, and to which he felt that he was entitled.
[140] Among them he speaks of many ballads that he had written:--
Yo he compuesto Romances infinitos,
Y el de los Zelos es aquel que estimo
Entre otros, que los tengo por malditos.
c. 4.
All these are lost, except such as may be found scattered through
his longer works, and some which have been suspected to be his
in the Romancero General. Clemencin, notes to his ed. of Don
Quixote, Tom. III. pp. 156, 214. Coleccion de Poesías de Don
Ramon Fernandez, Madrid, 1796, 8vo, Tom. XVI. p. 175. Mayans,
Vida de Cervantes, No. 164.
[141] Apollo tells him, (Viage, ed. 1784, p. 55),--
“Mas si quieres salir de tu querella,
Alegre y no confuso y consolado,
Dobla tu capa y siéntate sobre ella.
Que tal vez suele un venturoso estado,
Quando le niega sin razon la suerte,
Honrar mas merecido que alcanzado.”
“Bien parece, Señor, que no se advierte,”
Le respondí, “que yo no tengo capa.”
El dixo: “Aunque sea así, gusto de verte.”
At the end he has added a humorous prose dialogue, called the
“Adjunta,” defending his dramas, and attacking the actors who refused
to represent them. He says that he had prepared six full-length plays,
and six Entremeses or farces; but that the theatre had its pensioned
poets, and so took no note of him. The next year, however, when
their number had become eight plays and eight Entremeses, he found a
publisher, though not without difficulty; for the bookseller, as he
says in the Preface, had been warned by a noble author, that from his
prose much might be hoped, but from his poetry nothing. And truly his
position in relation to the theatre was not one to be desired. Thirty
years had passed since he had himself been a successful writer for
it; and the twenty or more pieces he had then produced, some of which
he mentions anew with great complacency,[142] were, no doubt, long
since forgotten. In the interval, as he tells us, “that great prodigy
of nature, Lope de Vega, has raised himself to the monarchy of the
theatre, subjected it to his control, and placed all its actors under
his jurisdiction; filled the world with becoming plays, happily and
well written; ... and if any persons (and in truth there are not a few
such) have desired to enter into competition with him and share the
glory of his labors, all they have done, when put together, would not
equal the half of what has been done by him alone.”[143]
[142] The “Confusa” was evidently his favorite among these
earlier pieces. In the Viage he says of it,--
Soy por quien La Confusa nada fea
Pareció en los teatros admirable;
and in the “Adjunta” he says, “De la que mas me precio fué _y
es_, de una llamada La Confusa, la qual, con paz sea dicho, de
quantas comedias de capa y espada hasta hoy se han representado,
bien puede tener lugar señalado por buena entre las mejores.”
This boast, it should be remembered, was made in 1614, when
Cervantes had printed the First Part of the Don Quixote, and
when Lope and his school were at the height of their glory. It
is probable, however, that we, at the present day should be
more curious to see the “Batalla Naval,” which, from its name,
contained, I think, his personal experiences at the fight of
Lepanto, as the “Trato de Argel” contained those at Algiers.
[143] After alluding to his earlier efforts on the stage,
Cervantes goes on in the Prólogo to his new plays: “Tuve otras
cosas en que ocuparme; dexé la pluma y las comedias, y entró
luego el monstruo de naturaleza, el gran Lope de Vega, y
alzóse con la monarquía cómica; avasalló y puso debaxo de su
jurisdiccion á todos los Farsantes, llenó el mundo de Comedias
propias, felices y bien razonadas; y tantas que passan de diez
mil pliegos los que tiene escritos, y todas (que es una de las
mayores cosas que puede decirse) las ha visto representar, ú
oido decir (por lo menos) que se han representado; y si algunos,
(que hay muchos) han querido entrar á la parte y gloria de sus
trabajos, todos juntos no llegan en lo que han escrito á la mitad
de lo que él solo,” etc.
The number of these writers for the stage in 1615 was, as Cervantes
intimates, very considerable; and when he goes on to enumerate, among
the more successful, Mira de Mescua, Guillen de Castro, Aguilar, Luis
Vélez de Guevara, Gaspar de Avila, and several others, we perceive, at
once, that the essential direction and character of the Spanish drama
were at last determined. Of course, the free field open to him when he
composed the plays of his youth was now closed; and as he wrote from
the pressure of want, he could venture to write only according to the
models triumphantly established by Lope de Vega and his imitators.
The eight plays or Comedias he now produced were, therefore, all
composed in the style and in the forms of verse already fashionable and
settled. Their subjects are as various as the subjects of his tales.
One of them is a _rifacimento_ of his “Trato de Argel,” and is curious,
because it contains some of the materials, and even occasionally the
very phraseology, of the story of the Captive in Don Quixote, and
because Lope de Vega thought fit afterwards to use it somewhat too
freely in the composition of his own “Esclavos en Argel.”[144] Much
of it seems to be founded in fact; among the rest, the deplorable
martyrdom of a child in the third act, and the representation of one
of the _Coloquios_ or farces of Lope de Rueda by the slaves in their
prison-yard.
[144] This play, which Cervantes calls “Los Baños de Argel,”
(Comedias, 1749, Tom. I. p. 125), opens with the landing of a
Moorish corsair on the coast of Valencia; gives an account of the
sufferings of the captives taken in this descent, as well as the
sufferings of others afterward; and ends with a Moorish wedding
and a Christian martyrdom. He says of it himself,--
No de la imaginacion
Este trato se sacó,
Que la verdad lo fraguó
Bien lejos de la ficcion.
p. 186.
The verbal resemblances between the play and the story of the
Captive are chiefly in the first _jornada_ of the play, as
compared with Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40.
Another of the plays, the story of which is also said to be true, is
“El Gallardo Español,” or The Bold Spaniard.[145] Its hero, named
Saavedra, and therefore, perhaps, of the old family into which that
of Cervantes had long before intermarried, goes over to the Moors for
a time, from a point of honor about a lady, but turns out at last a
true Spaniard in every thing else, as well as in the exaggeration of
his gallantry. “The Sultana” is founded on the history of a Spanish
captive, who rose so high in the favor of the Grand Turk, that she is
represented in the play as having become, not merely a favorite, but
absolutely the Sultana, and yet as continuing to be a Christian,--a
story which was readily believed in Spain, though only the first part
of it is true, as Cervantes must have known, since Catharine of Oviedo,
who is the heroine, was his contemporary.[146] The “Rufian Dichoso” is
a Don Juan in licentiousness and crime, who is converted and becomes
so extraordinary a saint, that, to redeem the soul of a dying sinner,
Doña Ana de Treviño, he formally surrenders to her his own virtues and
good works, and assumes her sins, beginning anew, through incredible
sufferings, the career of penitence and reformation; all of which, or
at least what is the most gross and revolting in it, is declared by
Cervantes, as an eye-witness, to be true.[147]
[145] The part we should least willingly suppose to be true--that
of a droll, roistering soldier, who gets a shameful subsistence
by begging for souls in Purgatory, and spending on his own
gluttony the alms he receives--is particularly vouched for by
Cervantes. “Esto de pedir para las ánimas es cuento verdadero,
que _yo lo ví_.” How so indecent an exhibition on the stage could
be permitted is the wonder. Once, for instance, when in great
personal danger, he prays thus, as if he had read the “Clouds” of
Aristophanes:--
Animas de Purgatorio!
Favoreced me, Señoras!
Que mi peligro es notorio,
Si ya no estais en estas horas
Durmiendo en el dormitorio.
Tom. I. p. 34.
At the end he says his principal intent has been--
Mezclar verdades
Con fabulosos intentos.
The Spanish doctrine of the play--all for love and glory--is well
expressed in the two following lines from the second _jornada_:--
Que por reynar y por amor no hay culpa,
Que no tenga perdon, y halle disculpa.
[146]
Se vino á Constantinopla,
Creo el ano de seiscientos.
Jor. III.
[147] The Church prayers on the stage, in this play and
especially in Jornada II., and the sort of legal contract used
to transfer the merits of the healthy saint to the dying sinner,
are among the revolting exhibitions of the Spanish drama which
at first seem inexplicable, but which anyone who reads far in
it easily understands. Cervantes, in many parts of this strange
play, avers the truth of what he thus represents, saying, “Todo
esto fué verdad”; “Todo esto fué así”; “Así se cuenta en su
historia,” etc.
The remaining four plays are no less various in their subjects and
no less lawless in the modes of treating them; and all the eight
are divided into three _jornadas_, which Cervantes uses as strictly
synonymous with acts.[148] All preserve the character of the Fool, who
in one instance is an ecclesiastic,[149] and all extend over any amount
of time and space that is found convenient to the action; the “Rufian
Dichoso,” for instance, beginning in Seville and Toledo, during the
youth of the hero, and ending in Mexico in his old age. The personages
represented are extravagant in their number,--once amounting to above
thirty,--and among them, besides every variety of human existences,
are Demons, Souls in Purgatory, Lucifer, Fear, Despair, Jealousy, and
other similar phantasms. The truth is, Cervantes had renounced all
the principles of the drama which his discreet canon had so gravely
set forth ten years earlier in the First Part of Don Quixote; and
now, whether with the consent of his will, or only with that of his
poverty, we cannot tell, but, as may be seen, not merely in the plays
themselves, but in a sort of induction to the second act of the Rufian
Dichoso, he had fully and knowingly adopted the dramatic theories of
Lope’s school.
[148] He uses the words as convertible. Tom. I. pp. 21, 22; Tom.
II. p. 25, etc.
[149] In the “Baños de Argel,” where he is sometimes indecorous
enough, as when, (Tom. I. p. 151), giving the Moors the reason
why his old general, Don John of Austria, does not come to subdue
Algiers, he says:--
Sin duda, que, en el cielo,
Debia de haber gran guerra,
Do el General faltaba,
Y á Don Juan se llevaron para serlo.
The eight Entremeses are better than the eight full-length plays.
They are short farces, generally in prose, with a slight plot, and
sometimes with none, and were intended merely to amuse an audience in
the intervals between the acts of the longer pieces. “The Spectacle
of Wonders,” for instance, is only a series of practical tricks to
frighten the persons attending a puppet-show, so as to persuade them
that they see what is really not on the stage. “The Watchful Guard”
interests us, because he seems to have drawn the character of the
soldier from his own; and the date of 1611, which is contained in
it, may indicate the time when it was written. “The Jealous Old Man”
is a reproduction of the tale of “The Jealous Estremadurian,” with a
different and more spirited conclusion. And the “Cueva de Salamanca” is
one of those jests at the expense of husbands which are common enough
on the Spanish stage, and were, no doubt, equally common in Spanish
life and manners. All, indeed, have an air of truth and reality, which,
whether they were founded in fact or not, it was evidently the author’s
purpose to give them.
But there was an insuperable difficulty in the way of all his efforts
on the stage. Cervantes had not dramatic talent, nor a clear perception
how dramatic effects were to be produced. From the time when he wrote
the “Trato de Argel,” which was an exhibition of the sufferings he
had himself witnessed and shared in Algiers, he seemed to suppose
that whatever was both absolutely true and absolutely striking
could be produced with effect on the theatre; thus confounding the
province of romantic fiction and story-telling with that of theatrical
representation, and often relying on trivial incidents and an humble
style for effects which could be produced only by ideal elevation and
incidents so combined by a dramatic instinct as to produce a dramatic
interest.
This was, probably, owing in part to the different direction of his
original genius, and in part to the condition of the theatre, which
in his youth he had found open to every kind of experiment and really
settled in nothing. But whatever may have been the cause of his
failure, the failure itself has been a great stumbling-block in the
way of Spanish critics, who have resorted to somewhat violent means
in order to prevent the reputation of Cervantes from being burdened
with it. Thus, Blas de Nasarre, the king’s librarian,--who, in 1749,
published the first edition of these unsuccessful dramas that had
appeared since they were printed above a century earlier,--would
persuade us, in his Preface, that they were written by Cervantes to
parody and caricature the theatre of Lope de Vega;[150] though, setting
aside all that at once presents itself from the personal relations of
the parties, nothing can be more serious than the interest Cervantes
took in the fate of his plays, and the confidence he expressed in their
dramatic merit; while, at the same time, not a line has ever been
pointed out as a parody in any one of them.[151]
[150] See the early part of the “Prólogo del que hace imprimir.”
I am not certain that Blas de Nasarre was perfectly fair in
all this; for he printed, in 1732, an edition of Avellaneda’s
continuation of Don Quixote, in the Preface to which he says
that he thinks the character of Avellaneda’s Sancho is more
natural than that of Cervantes’s Sancho; that the Second Part of
Cervantes’s Don Quixote is taken from Avellaneda’s; and that,
in its essential merits, the work of Avellaneda is equal to
that of Cervantes. “No se puede disputar,” he says, “la gloria
de la invencion de Cervantes, aunque no es inferior la de la
imitacion de Avellaneda”; to which he adds afterwards, “Es cierto
que es necesario mayor esfuerzo de ingenio para añadir á las
primeras invenciones, que para hacerlas.” (See Avellaneda, Don
Quixote, Madrid, 1805, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 34.) Now, the _Juicio_,
or Preface, from which these opinions are taken, and which is
really the work of Nasarre, is announced by him, not as his own,
but as the work of an anonymous friend, precisely as if he were
not willing to avow such opinions under his own name. (Pellicer’s
Vida de Cervantes, ed. Don Quixote, I. p. clxvi.) In this way a
disingenuous look is given to what would otherwise have been only
an absurdity; and what, taken in connection with this reprint of
Cervantes’s poor dramas and the Preface to them, seems like a
willingness to let down the reputation of a genius that Nasarre
could not comprehend.
It is intimated, in an anonymous pamphlet, called “Exámen Crítico
del Tomo Primero del Antiquixote,” (Madrid, 1806, 12mo), that
Nasarre had sympathies with Avellaneda as an Aragonese; and the
pamphlet in question being understood to be the work of J. A.
Pellicer, the editor of Don Quixote, this intimation deserves
notice. It may be added, that Nasarre belonged to the French
school of the eighteenth century in Spain;--a school that saw
little merit in the older Spanish drama.
[151] The extravagant opinion, that these plays of Cervantes were
written to discredit the plays then in fashion on the stage,
just as the Don Quixote was written to discredit the fashionable
books of chivalry, did not pass uncontradicted at the time. The
year after it was published, a pamphlet appeared, entitled “La
Sinrazon impugnada y Beata de Lavapies, Coloquio Crítico apuntado
al disparatado Prólogo que sirve de delantal (segun nos dice su
Autor) á las Comedias de Miguel de Cervantes, compuesto por Don
Joseph Carillo” (Madrid, 1750, 4to, pp. 25). It is a spirited
little tract, chiefly devoted to a defence of Lope and of
Calderon, though the point about Cervantes is not forgotten (pp.
13-15.) But in the same year a more formidable work appeared on
the same side, called “Discurso Crítico sobre el Orígen, Calidad,
y Estado presente de las Comedias de España, contra el Dictámen
que las supone corrompidas, etc., por un Ingenio de esta Corte”
(Madrid, 1750, 4to, pp. 285). The author was a lawyer in Madrid,
D. Thomas Zavaleta, and he writes with as little philosophy and
judgment as the other Spanish critics of his time; but he treats
Blas de Nasarre with small ceremony.
This position being untenable, Lampillas, who, in the latter part of
the last century, wrote a long defence of Spanish literature against
the suggestions of Tiraboschi and Bettinelli in Italy, gravely
maintains that Cervantes sent, indeed, eight plays and eight Entremeses
to the booksellers, but that the booksellers took the liberty to
change them, and printed eight others with his name and Preface. It
should not, however, be forgotten that Cervantes lived to prepare two
works after this, and if such an insult had been offered him, the
country, judging from the way in which he treated the less gross
offence of Avellaneda, would have been filled with his reproaches and
remonstrances.[152]
[152] “Ensayo Histórico-apologético de la Literatura Española,”
Madrid, 1789, 8vo, Tom. VI. pp. 170, etc. “Suprimiendo las que
verdaderamente eran de él,” are the bold words of the critic.
Nothing remains, therefore, but to confess--what seems, indeed, to be
quite incontestable--that Cervantes wrote several plays which fell
seriously below what might have been hoped from him. Passages, indeed,
may be found in them where his genius asserts itself. “The Labyrinth
of Love,” for instance, has a chivalrous air and plot that make it
interesting; and the Entremes of “The Pretended Biscayan,” contains
specimens of the peculiar humor with which we always associate the name
of its author. But it is quite too probable that he had made up his
mind to sacrifice his own opinions respecting the drama to the popular
taste; and if the constraint he thus laid upon himself was one of the
causes of his failure, it only affords another ground for our interest
in the fate of one whose whole career was so deeply marked with trials
and calamity.[153]
[153] There can be little doubt, I think, that this was the
case, if we compare the opinions expressed by the canon on the
subject of the drama in the 48th chapter of the First Part of
Don Quixote, 1605, and the opinions in the opening of the third
_jornada_ of the “Baños de Argel,” 1615.
But the life of Cervantes, with all its troubles and sufferings, was
now fast drawing to a close. In October of the same year, 1615, he
published the Second Part of his Don Quixote; and in its Dedication
to the Count de Lemos, who had for some time favored him,[154] he
alludes to his failing health, and intimates that he hardly looked for
the continuance of life beyond a few months. His spirits, however,
which had survived his sufferings in the Levant, at Algiers, and in
prisons at home, and which, as he approached his seventieth year, had
been sufficient to produce a work like the Second Part of Don Quixote,
did not forsake him, now that his strength was wasting away under
the influence of disease and old age. On the contrary, with unabated
vivacity he urged forward his romance of “Persiles and Sigismunda”;
anxious only that life enough should be allowed him to finish it,
as the last offering of his gratitude to his generous patron. In
the spring he went to Esquivias, where was the little estate he had
received with his wife, and after his return wrote a Preface to his
unpublished romance, full of a delightful and simple humor, in which he
tells a pleasant story of being overtaken in his ride back to Madrid
by a medical student, who gave him much good advice about the dropsy,
under which he was suffering; to which he replied, that his pulse had
already warned him that he was not to live beyond the next Sunday. “And
so,” says he, at the conclusion of this remarkable Preface, “farewell
to jesting, farewell my merry humors, farewell my gay friends, for I
feel that I am dying, and have no desire but soon to see you happy in
the other life.”
[154] It has been generally conceded that the Count de Lemos and
the Archbishop of Toledo favored and assisted Cervantes; the
most agreeable proof of which is to be found in the Dedication
of the Second Part of Don Quixote. I am afraid, however, that
their favor was a little too much in the nature of alms. Indeed,
it is called _limosna_ the only time it is known to be mentioned
by any contemporary of Cervantes. See Salas Barbadillo, in the
Dedication of the “Estafeta del Dios Momo,” Madrid, 1627, 12mo.
In this temper he prepared to meet death, as many Catholics of strong
religious impressions were accustomed to do at that time;[155] and, on
the 2d of April, entered the order of Franciscan friars, whose habit he
had assumed three years before at Alcalá. Still, however, his feelings
as an author, his vivacity, and his personal gratitude did not desert
him. On the 18th of April he received the extreme unction, and the next
day wrote a Dedication of his “Persiles y Sigismunda” to the Count
de Lemos, marked, to an extraordinary degree, with his natural humor,
and with the solemn thoughts that became his situation.[156] The last
known act of his life, therefore, shows that he still possessed his
faculties in perfect serenity, and four days afterwards, on the 23d of
April, 1616, he died, at the age of sixty-eight.[157] He was buried,
as he probably had desired, in the convent of the Nuns of the Trinity;
but a few years afterwards this convent was removed to another part of
the city, and what became of the ashes of the greatest genius of his
country is, from that time, wholly unknown.[158]
[155]
“Who, to be sure of Paradise,
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised.”
[156] The only case I recollect at all parallel is that of
the graceful Dedication of Addison’s works to his friend and
successor in office, Secretary Craggs, which is dated June 4,
1719; thirteen days before his death. But the Dedication of
Cervantes is much more genial and spirited.
[157] Bowle says, (Anotaciones á Don Quixote, Salisbury, 1781,
4to, Prólogo ix., note), that Cervantes died on the same day with
Shakspeare; but this is a mistake, the calendar not having then
been altered in England, and there being, therefore, a difference
between that and the Spanish calendar of ten days.
[158] Nor was any monument raised to Cervantes, in Spain, until
1835, when a bronze statue of him larger than life, cast at Rome
by Solá of Barcelona, was placed in the Plaza del Estamento at
Madrid. (See El Artista, a journal published at Madrid, 1834,
1835, Tom. I. p. 205; Tom. II. p. 12; and Semanario Pintoresco,
1836, p. 249.) Before this I believe there was nothing that
approached nearer to a monument in honor of Cervantes throughout
the world than an ordinary medal of him, struck in 1818, at
Paris, as one of a large series which would have been absurdly
incomplete without it; and a small medallion or bust, that was
placed in 1834, at the expense of an individual, over the door
of the house in the Calle de los Francos, where he died. But, in
saying this, I ought to add,--whether in praise or censure,--that
I believe the statue of Cervantes was the first erected in Spain
to honor a man of letters or science.
CHAPTER XII.
CERVANTES.--HIS PERSILES AND SIGISMUNDA, AND ITS CHARACTER.--HIS DON
QUIXOTE.--CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH IT WAS WRITTEN.--ITS PURPOSE AND
GENERAL PLAN.--PART FIRST.--AVELLANEDA.--PART SECOND.--CHARACTER OF THE
WHOLE.--CHARACTER OF CERVANTES.
Six months after the death of Cervantes,[159] the license for
publishing “Persiles y Sigismunda” was granted to his widow, and in
1617 it was printed.[160] His purpose seems to have been to write
a serious romance, which should be to this species of composition
what the Don Quixote is to comic romance. So much, at least, may be
inferred from the manner in which it is spoken of by himself and by
his friends. For in the Dedication of the Second Part of Don Quixote
he says, “It will be either the worst or the best book of amusement
in the language”; adding, that his friends thought it admirable; and
Valdivielso,[161] after his death, said he had equalled or surpassed in
it all his former efforts.
[159] At the time of his death Cervantes seems to have had the
following works more or less prepared for the press, namely: “Las
Semanas del Jardin,” announced as early as 1613;--the Second Part
of “Galatea,” announced in 1615;--the “Bernardo,” mentioned in
the Dedication of “Persiles,” just before he died;--and several
plays, referred to in the Preface to those he published, and in
the Appendix to the “Viage al Parnaso.” All these works are now
probably lost.
[160] The first edition of Persiles y Sigismunda was printed with
the following title: “Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda.
Historia Setentrional, por M. de Cervantes Saavedra, dirigida,”
etc., Madrid, 1617, 8vo, por Juan de la Cuesta; and reprints
of it appeared in Valencia, Pamplona, Barcelona, and Brussels,
the same year. I have a copy of the first edition; but the most
agreeable one is that of Madrid, 1802, 8vo, 2 tom. There is
an English translation by M. L., published 1619, which I have
never seen; but from which I doubt not Fletcher borrowed the
materials for that part of the Persiles which he has used, or
rather abused, in his “Custom of the Country,” acted as early as
1628, but not printed till 1647; the very names of the personages
being sometimes the same. See Persiles, Book I. c. 12 and 13; and
compare Book II. c. 4 with the English play, Act IV. scene 3, and
Book III. c. 6, etc., with Act II. scene 4, etc. Sometimes we
have almost literal translations, like the following:--
“Sois Castellano?” me preguntó en su lengua Portuguesa. “No,
Señora,” le respondí yo, “sino forastero, y bien lejos de esta
tierra.” “Pues aunque fuerades mil veces Castellano,” replicó
ella, “os librara yo, si pudiera, y os libraré si puedo; subid
por cima deste lecho, y éntraos debaxo de este tapiz, y éntraos
en un hueco que aquí hallareis, y no os movais, que si la
justicia viniere, me tendrá respeto, y creerá lo que yo quisiere
decirles.” Persiles, Lib. III. cap. 6.
In Fletcher we have it as follows:--
_Guiomar._ Are you a Castilian?
_Rutilio._ No, Madam: Italy claims my birth.
_Gui._ I ask not
With purpose to betray you. If you were
Ten thousand times a Spaniard, the nation
We Portugals most hate, I yet would save you,
If it lay in my power. Lift up these hangings;
Behind my bed’s head there’s a hollow place,
Into which enter.
[_Rutilio retires behind the bed._
So;--but from this stir not.
If the officers come, as you expect they will do,
I know they owe such reverence to my lodgings,
That they will easily give credit to me
And search no further.
Act II. Sc. 4.
Other parallel passages might be cited; but it should not be
forgotten, that there is one striking difference between the
two; for that, whereas the Persiles is a book of great purity of
thought and feeling, “The Custom of the Country” is one of the
most indecent plays in the language; so indecent, indeed, that
Dryden rather boldly says it is worse in this particular than all
his own plays put together. Dryden’s Works, Scott’s ed., London,
1808, 8vo, Vol. XI. p. 239.
[161] In the Aprobacion, dated Sept. 9, 1616, ed. 1802, Tom. I.
p. vii.
But serious romantic fiction, which is peculiarly the offspring of
modern civilization, was not yet far enough developed to enable one
like Cervantes to obtain a high degree of success in it, especially as
the natural bent of his genius was to humorous fiction. The imaginary
travels of Lucian, three or four Greek romances, and the romances of
chivalry, were all he had to guide him; for any thing approaching
nearer to the proper modern novel than some of his own tales had not
yet been imagined. Perhaps his first impulse was to write a romance
of chivalry, modified by the spirit of the age, and free from the
absurdities which abound in the romances that had been written before
his time.[162] But if he had such a thought, the success of his own
Don Quixote almost necessarily prevented him from attempting to put it
in execution. He therefore looked rather to the Greek romances, and,
as far as he used any model, took the “Theagenes and Chariclea” of
Heliodorus.[163] He calls what he produced “A Northern Romance,” and
makes its principal story consist of the sufferings of Persiles and
Sigismunda,--the first the son of a king of Iceland, and the second
the daughter of a king of Friesland,--laying the scene of one half of
his fiction in the North of Europe, and that of the other half in the
South. He has some faint ideas of the sea-kings and pirates of the
Northern Ocean, but very little of the geography of the countries that
produced them; and as for his savage men and frozen islands, and the
wild and strange adventures he imagines to have passed among them,
nothing can be more fantastic and incredible.
[162] This may be fairly suspected from the beginning of the 48th
chapter of the First Part of Don Quixote.
[163] Once he intimates that it is a translation, but does not
say from what language. (See opening of Book II.) An acute
and elegant critic of our own time says, “Des naufrages, des
déserts, des descentes par mer, et des ravissements, c’est donc
toujours plus ou moins l’ancien roman d’Héliodore.” (Sainte
Beuve, Critiques, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. IV. p 173.) These words
describe more than half of the Persiles and Sigismunda. Two
imitations of the Persiles, or, at any rate, two imitations of
the Greek romance which was the chief model of the Persiles,
soon appeared in Spain. The first is the “Historia de Hipólito y
Aminta” of Francisco de Quintana, (Madrid, 1627, 4to), divided
into eight books, with a good deal of poetry intermixed. The
other is “Eustorgio y Clorilene, Historia Moscovica,” by Enrique
Suarez de Mendoza y Figueroa, (1629), in thirteen books, with
a hint of a continuation; but my copy was printed Çaragoça,
1665, 4to. Both are written in bad taste, and have no value as
fictions. The latter seems to have been plainly suggested by the
Persiles.
In Portugal, Spain, and Italy, through which his hero and
heroine--disguised as they are from first to last under the names of
Periandro and Auristela--make a pilgrimage to Rome, we get rid of most
of the extravagances which deform the earlier portion of the romance.
The whole, however, consists of a labyrinth of tales, showing, indeed,
an imagination quite astonishing in an old man like Cervantes, already
past his grand climacteric,--a man, too, who might be supposed to be
broken down by sore calamities and incurable disease;--but it is a
labyrinth from which we are glad to be extricated, and we feel relieved
when the labors and trials of his Persiles and Sigismunda are over,
and when, the obstacles to their love being removed, they are happily
united at Rome. No doubt, amidst the multitude of separate stories with
which this wild work is crowded, several are graceful in themselves,
and others are interesting because they contain traces of Cervantes’s
experience of life,[164] while, through the whole, his style is more
carefully finished, perhaps, than in any other of his works. But, after
all, it is far from being what he and his friends fancied it was,--a
model of this peculiar style of fiction, and the best of his works.
[164] From the beginning of Book III., we find that the action
of Persiles and Sigismunda is laid in the time of Philip II. or
Philip III., when there was a Spanish viceroy in Lisbon, and the
travels of the hero and heroine in the South of Spain and Italy
seem to be, in fact, Cervantes’s own recollections of the journey
he made through the same countries in his youth; while Chapters
10 and 11 of Book III. show bitter traces of his Algerine
captivity. His familiarity with Portugal, as seen in this work,
should also be noticed. Frequently, indeed, as in almost every
thing else he wrote, we meet intimations and passages from his
own life.