addressed to Ovando, the Maltese envoy, and published at the end
of the “Laurel de Apolo,” (Madrid, 1630, 4to, f. 118), he gives
an account of this poem, and says he wrote it in the country,
where “the soul in solitude labors more gently and easily!”
The Corona Trágica was, however, perhaps on this very account, thought
worthy of being dedicated to Pope Urban the Eighth, who had himself
written an epitaph on the unfortunate Mary of Scotland, which Lope, in
courtly phrase, declared was “beatifying her in prophecy.” The flattery
was well received. Urban sent the poet in return a complimentary
letter; gave him a degree of Doctor in Divinity, and the cross of the
Order of Saint John; and appointed him to the honorary places of Fiscal
in the Apostolic Chamber and Notary of the Roman Archives. The measure
of his ecclesiastical honors was now full.
In 1630, he published “The Laurel of Apollo,” a poem somewhat like
“The Journey to Parnassus” of Cervantes, but longer, more elaborate,
and still more unsatisfactory. It describes a festival, supposed to
have been held by the god of Poetry, on Mount Helicon, in April, 1628,
and records the honors then bestowed on nearly three hundred Spanish
poets;--a number so great, that the whole account becomes monotonous
and almost valueless, partly from the impossibility of drawing with
distinctness or truth so many characters of little prominence, and
partly from its too free praise of nearly all of them. It is divided
into ten _silvas_, and contains about seven thousand irregular verses.
At the end, besides a few minor and miscellaneous poems, Lope added
an eclogue, in seven scenes, which had been previously represented
before the king and court with a costly magnificence in the theatre and
a splendor in its decorations that show, at least, how great was the
favor he enjoyed, when he was indulged, for so slight an offering, with
such royal luxuries.[272]
[272] It is not easy to tell why these later productions of
Lope are put in the first volume of his Miscellaneous Works,
(1776-79), but so it is. That collection was made by Cerdá y
Rico; a man of learning, though not of good taste or sound
judgment.
The last considerable work he published was his “Dorotea,” a long
prose romance in dialogue.[273] It was written in his youth, and, as
has been already suggested, probably contains more or less of his own
youthful adventures and feelings. But whether this be so or not, it
was a favorite with him. He calls it “the most beloved of his works,”
and says he has revised it with care and made additions to it in his
old age.[274] It was first printed in 1632. A moderate amount of verse
is scattered through it, and there is a freshness and a reality in
many passages that remind us constantly of its author’s life before
he served as a soldier in the Armada. The hero, Fernando, is a poet,
like Lope, who, after having been more than once in love and married,
refuses Dorotea, the object of his first attachment, and becomes
religious. There is, however, little plan, consistency, or final
purpose in most of the manifold scenes that go to make up its five long
acts; and it is now read only for its rich and easy prose style, for
the glimpses it seems to give of the author’s own life, and for a few
of its short poems, some of which were probably written for occasions
not unlike those to which they are here applied.
[273] It fills the whole of the seventh volume of his Obras
Sueltas.
[274] “Dorotea, the posthumous child of my Muse, the most beloved
of my long-protracted life, still asks the public light,” etc.
Egloga á Claudio; Obras, Tom. IX. p. 367.
The last work he printed was an eclogue in honor of a Portuguese lady;
and the last things he wrote--only the day before he was seized with
his mortal illness--were a short poem on the Golden Age, remarkable for
its vigor and harmony, and a sonnet on the death of a friend.[275] All
of them are found in a collection consisting chiefly of a few dramas,
published by his son-in-law, Luis de Usategui, two years after Lope’s
death.
[275] These three poems--curious as his last works--are in Tom.
X. p. 193, and Tom. IX. pp. 2 and 10.
But as his life drew to a close, his religious feelings, mingled with a
melancholy fanaticism, predominated more and more. Much of his poetry
composed at this time expressed them; and at last they rose to such a
height, that he was almost constantly in a state of excited melancholy,
or, as it was then beginning to be called, of hypochondria.[276] Early
in the month of August, he felt himself extremely weak, and suffered
more than ever from that sense of discouragement which was breaking
down his resources and strength. His thoughts, however, were so
exclusively occupied with his spiritual condition, that, even when thus
reduced, he continued to fast, and on one occasion went through with a
private discipline so cruel, that the walls of the apartment where it
occurred were afterwards found sprinkled with his blood. From this he
never recovered. He was taken ill the same night; and, after fulfilling
the offices prescribed by his Church with the most submissive
devotion,--mourning that he had ever been engaged in any occupations
but such as were exclusively religious,--he died on the 25th of August,
1635, nearly seventy-three years old.
[276] “A continued melancholy passion, which of late has been
called hypochondria,” etc., is the description Montalvan gives
of his disease. The account of his last days follows it. Obras,
Tom. XX. pp. 37, etc.; and Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. pp.
360-363.
The sensation produced by his death was such as is rarely witnessed
even in the case of those upon whom depends the welfare of nations.
The Duke of Sessa, who was his especial patron, and to whom he left
his manuscripts, provided for the funeral in a manner becoming his
own wealth and rank. It lasted nine days. The crowds that thronged
to it were immense. Three bishops officiated, and the first nobles
of the land attended as mourners. Eulogies and poems followed on all
sides, and in numbers all but incredible. Those written in Spain make
one considerable volume, and end with a drama in which his apotheosis
was brought upon the public stage. Those written in Italy are hardly
less numerous, and fill another.[277] But more touching than any of
them was the prayer of that much-loved daughter who had been shut up
from the world fourteen years, that the long funeral procession might
pass by her convent and permit her once more to look on the face she
so tenderly venerated; and more solemn than any was the mourning of
the multitude, from whose dense mass audible sobs burst forth, as his
remains slowly descended from their sight into the house appointed for
all living.[278]
[277] See Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX.-XXI., in which they are
republished;--Spanish, Latin, French, Italian, and Portuguese.
The Spanish, which were brought together by Montalvan, and are
preceded by his “Fama Póstuma de Lope de Vega,” may be regarded
as a sort of _justa poética_ in honor of the great poet, in which
above a hundred and fifty of his contemporaries bore their part.
[278] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 42. For an excellent and
interesting discussion of Lope’s miscellaneous works, and one to
which I have been indebted in writing this chapter, see London
Quarterly Review, No. 35, 1818. It is by Mr. Southey.
CHAPTER XV.
LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.--CHARACTER OF HIS MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.--HIS
DRAMAS.--HIS LIFE AT VALENCIA.--HIS MORAL PLAYS.--HIS SUCCESS AT
MADRID.--VAST NUMBER OF HIS DRAMAS.--THEIR FOUNDATION AND THEIR VARIOUS
FORMS.--HIS COMEDIAS DE CAPA Y ESPADA, AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS.
The works of Lope de Vega that we have considered, while tracing his
long and brilliant career, are far from being sufficient to explain
the degree of popular admiration that, almost from the first, followed
him. They show, indeed, much original talent, a still greater power
of invention, and a wonderful facility of versification. But they are
rarely imbued with the deep and earnest spirit of a genuine poetry;
they generally have an air of looseness and want of finish; and almost
all of them are without that national physiognomy and character, in
which, after all, resides so much of the effective power of genius over
any people.
The truth is, that Lope, in what have been called his miscellaneous
works, was seldom in the path that leads to final success. He was
turned aside by a spirit which, if not that of the whole people, was
the spirit of the court and the higher classes of Castilian society.
Boscan and Garcilasso, who preceded him by only half a century, had
made themselves famous by giving currency to the lighter forms of
Italian verse, especially those of the sonnet and the _canzone_; and
Lope, who found these fortunate poets the idols of the period, when
his own character was forming, thought that to follow their brilliant
course would open to him the best chances for success. His aspirations,
however, stretched very far beyond theirs. He felt other and higher
powers within him, and entered boldly into rivalship, not only with
Sannazaro and Bembo, as they had done, but with Ariosto, Tasso, and
Petrarch. Eleven of his longer poems, epic, narrative, and descriptive,
are in the stately _ottava rima_ of his great masters; besides which
he has left us two long pastorals in the manner of the “Arcadia,” many
adventurous attempts in the _terza rima_, and numberless specimens of
all the varieties of Italian lyrics, including, among the rest, nearly
seven hundred sonnets.
But in all this there is little that is truly national,--little that
is marked with the old Castilian spirit; and if this were all he had
done, his fame would by no means stand where we now find it. His prose
pastorals and his romances are, indeed, better than his epics; and
his didactic poetry, his epistles, and his elegies are occasionally
excellent; but it is only when he touches fairly and fully upon the
soil of his country,--it is only in his _glosas_, his _letrillas_, his
ballads, and his light songs and roundelays, that he has the richness
and grace which should always have accompanied him. We feel at once,
therefore, whenever we meet him in these paths, that he is on ground
he should never have deserted, because it is ground on which, with his
extraordinary gifts, he could easily have erected permanent monuments
to his own fame. But he himself determined otherwise. Not that he
entirely approved the innovations of Boscan and Garcilasso; for he
tells us distinctly, in his “Philomena,” that their imitations of the
Italian had unhappily supplanted the grace and the glory that belonged
peculiarly to the old Spanish genius.[279] The theories and fashions
of his time, therefore, misled, though they did not delude, a spirit
that should have been above them; and the result is, that little of
poetry such as marks the old Castilian genius is to be found in the
great mass of his works we have thus far been called on to examine.
In order to account for his permanent success, as well as marvellous
popularity, we must, then, turn to another and wholly distinct
department,--that of the drama,--in which he gave himself up to the
leading of the national spirit as completely as if he had not elsewhere
seemed sedulously to avoid it; and thus obtained a kind and degree of
fame he could never otherwise have reached.
[279] Philomena, Segunda Parte, Obras Sueltas, Tom. II. p. 458.
It is not possible to determine the year when Lope first began to write
for the public stage; but whenever it was, he found the theatre in a
rude and humble condition. That he was very early drawn to this form of
composition, though not, perhaps, for the purposes of representation,
we know on his own authority; for, in his pleasant didactic poem on
the New Art of Making Plays, which he published in 1609, but read
several years earlier to a society of _dilettanti_ in Madrid, he says
expressly,--
The Captain Virues, a famous wit,
Cast dramas in three acts, by happy hit;
For, till his time, upon all fours they crept,
Like helpless babes that never yet had stepped.
Such plays I wrote, eleven and twelve years old;
Four acts--each measured to a sheet’s just fold--
Filled out four sheets; while still, between,
Three _entremeses_ short filled up the scene.[280]
[280]
El capitan Virues, insigne ingenio,
Puso en tres actos la Comedia, que ántes
Andaba en quatro, como pies de niño;
Que eran entonces niñas las Comedias:
Y yo las escribí, de once y doce años,
De á quatro actos y de á quatro pliegos,
Porque cada acto un pliego contenia:
Y era que entonces en las tres distancias
Se hacian tres pequeños entremeses.
Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 412.
This was as early as 1574. A few years later, or about 1580, when the
poet was eighteen years old, he attracted the notice of his early
patron, Manrique, the Bishop of Avila, by a pastoral. His studies
at Alcalá followed; then his service under the young Duke of Alva,
his marriage, and his exile of several years; for all which we must
find room before 1588, when we know he served in the Armada. In 1590,
however, if not a year earlier, he had returned to Madrid; and it does
not seem unreasonable to assume that soon afterwards he began to be
known in the capital as a dramatic writer, being then twenty-eight
years old.
But it was during the period of his exile that he seems to have
really begun his public dramatic career, and prepared himself, in
some measure, for his subsequent more general popularity. Much of
this interval was passed in Valencia; and in Valencia a theatre had
been known for a long time.[281] As early as 1526, the hospital there
received an income from it, by a compromise similar to that in virtue
of which the hospitals of Madrid long afterwards laid the theatre
under contribution for their support.[282] The Captain Virues, who was
a friend of Lope de Vega, and is commemorated by him more than once,
wrote for this theatre, as did Timoneda, the editor of Lope de Rueda;
the works of both the last being printed in Valencia about 1570. These
Valencian dramas, however, except in the case of Lope de Rueda, were
of moderate amount and value; nor was what was done at Seville by Cueva
and his followers, about 1580, or at Madrid by Cervantes, a little
later, of more real importance, regarded as the foundations for a
national theatre.
[281] Dramatic entertainments of some kind are spoken of at
Valencia in the fourteenth century. In 1394, we are told, there
was represented at the palace a tragedy, entitled “L’ hom
enamorat e la fembra satisfeta,” by Mossen Domingo Maspons,
a counsellor of John I. This was undoubtedly a Troubadour
performance. Perhaps the _Entramesos_ mentioned as having
occurred in the same city in 1412, 1413, and 1415, were of the
same sort. At any rate, they seem to have belonged, like those
we have noticed (_ante_, Vol. I. p. 259) by the Constable Alvaro
de Luna, to courtly festivities. Aribau, Biblioteca de Autores
Españoles, Madrid, 1846, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 178, note; and an
excellent article on the early Spanish theatre, by F. Wolf, in
Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung, 1848, p. 1287, note.
[282] Jovellanos, Diversiones Públicas, Madrid, 1812, 8vo, p. 57.
Indeed, if we look over all that can be claimed for the Spanish drama
from the time of the eclogues of Juan de la Enzina, in 1492, to the
appearance of Lope de Rueda, about 1544, and then, again, from his time
to that of Lope de Vega, we shall find, not only that the number of
dramas was small, but that they had been written in forms so different
and so often opposed to each other as to have little consistency or
authority, and to offer no sufficient indication of the channel in
which the dramatic literature of the country was at last destined to
flow. We may even say, that, except Lope de Rueda, no author for the
theatre had yet enjoyed a permanent popularity; and he having now been
dead more than twenty years, Lope de Vega must be admitted to have had
a fair and free field open before him.
Unfortunately we have few of his earlier efforts. He seems, however,
to have begun upon the old foundations of the eclogues and moralities,
whose religious air and tone commended them to that ecclesiastical
toleration without which little could thrive in Spain.[283] An eclogue,
which is announced as having been represented, and which seems
really to be arranged for exhibition, is found in the third book of
the “Arcadia,” the earliest of Lope’s published works, and one that
was written before his exile.[284] Several similar attempts occur
elsewhere,--so rude and pious, that it seems almost as if they might
have belonged to the age of Juan de la Enzina and Gil Vicente; and
others of the same character are scattered through other parts of his
multitudinous works.[285]
[283] In one of his earlier efforts he says, (Obras, Tom. V. p.
346), “The laws help them little.” But of this we shall see more
hereafter.
[284] It is probable, from internal evidence, that this eclogue,
and some others in the same romance, were acted before the Duke
Antonio de Alva. At any rate, we know similar representations
were common in the age of Cervantes and Lope, as well as before
and after it.
[285] Such dramas are found in the “Pastores de Belen,” Book
III., and elsewhere.
Of his more regular plays, the two oldest, that were subsequently
included in his printed collection, are not without similar indications
of their origin. Both are pastorals. The first is called “The True
Lover,” and was written when Lope was fourteen years old, though it
may have been altered and improved before he published it, when he
was fifty-eight. It is the story of a shepherd who refuses to marry a
shepherdess, though she had put him in peril of his life by accusing
him of having murdered her husband, who, as she was quite aware, had
died a natural death, but whose supposed murderer could be released
from his doom only at her requisition, as next of kin to the pretended
victim;--a process by which she hoped to obtain all power over his
spirit, and compel him to marry her, as Ximena married the Cid, by
royal authority. Lope admits it to be a rude performance; but it is
marked by the sweetness of versification which seems to have belonged
to him at every period of his career.[286]
[286] “El Verdadero Amante” is in the Fourteenth Part of the
Comedias, printed at Madrid, 1620, and is dedicated to his son
Lope, who died the next year, only fifteen years old;--the father
saying in the Dedication, “This play was written when I was of
about your age.”
The other of his early performances above alluded to is the “Pastoral
de Jacinto,” which Montalvan tells us was the first play Lope wrote
in three acts, and that it was composed while he was attached to the
person of the Bishop of Avila. This must have been about the year
1580; but as the Jacinto was not printed till thirty-seven years
afterwards, it may perhaps have undergone large changes before it was
offered to the public, whose requisitions had advanced in the interval
no less than the condition of the theatre. He says in the Dedication,
that it was “written in the years of his youth,” and it is founded
on the somewhat artificial story of a shepherd fairly made jealous
of himself by the management of another shepherd, who hopes thus to
obtain the shepherdess they both love, and who passes himself off, for
some time, as another Jacinto, and as the only one to whom the lady is
really attached. It has the same flowing versification with the “True
Lover,” but it is not superior in merit to that drama, which can hardly
have preceded it by more than two or three years.[287]
[287] Montalvan says, “Lope greatly pleased Manrique, the Bishop
of Avila, by certain eclogues which he wrote for him, and by the
drama of ‘The Pastoral of Jacinto,’ the earliest he wrote in
three acts.” (Obras, Tom. XX. p. 30.) It was first printed at
Madrid, in 1617, 4to, by Sanchez, in a volume entitled “Quatro
Comedias Famosas de Don Luis de Góngora y Lope de Vega Carpio,”
etc.; and afterwards in the eighteenth volume of the Comedias of
Lope, Madrid, 1623. It was also printed separately, under the
double title of “La Selva de Albania, y el Çeloso de sí mismo.”
Moralities, too, written with no little spirit, and with strong
internal evidence of having been publicly performed, occur here and
there;--sometimes where we should least look for them. Four such are
produced in his “Pilgrim in his own Country”; the romance, it may be
remembered, which is not without allusions to its author’s exile, and
which seems to contain some of his personal experiences at Valencia.
One of these allegorical plays, “The Salvation of Man,” is declared to
have been performed in front of the venerable cathedral at Saragossa,
and is among the more curious specimens of such entertainments, since
it is accompanied with explanations of the way in which the churches
were used for theatrical purposes, and ends with an account of the
exposition of the Host, as an appropriate conclusion for a drama so
devout.[288]
[288] It fills nearly fifty pages in the third book of the
romance.
Another, called “The Soul’s Voyage,” is set forth as if represented in
a public square of Barcelona.[289] It opens with a ballad, which is
sung by three persons, and is followed, first, by a prologue full of
cumbrous learning, and then by another ballad both sung and danced,
as we are told, “with much skill and grace.” After all this note of
preparation comes the “Moral Action” itself. The Soul enters dressed
in white,--the way in which a disembodied spirit was indicated to the
audience. A clown, who, as the droll of the piece, represents the
Human Will, and a gallant youth, who represents Memory, enter at the
same time; one of them urging the Soul to set out on the voyage of
salvation, and the other endeavouring to jest her out of such a pious
purpose. At this critical moment, Satan appears as a ship-captain, in
a black suit, fringed with flames, and accompanied by Selfishness,
Appetite, and other vices, as his sailors, and offers to speed the Soul
on her voyage, all singing merrily together,--
[289] In the first book. It is entitled “A Moral Representation
of the Soul’s Voyage”;--in other words, _A Morality_.
Holloa! the good ship of Delight
Spreads her sails for the sea to-day;
Who embarks? who embarks, then, I say?
To-day, the good ship of Content,
With a wind at her choice for her course,
To a land where no troubles are sent,
Where none knows the stings of remorse,
With a wind fair and free takes her flight;--
Who embarks? who embarks, then, I say?[290]
[290]
Oy la Nabe del deleyte
Se quiere hazer á la Mar;--
Ay quien se quiera embarcar?
Oy la Nabe del contento,
Con viento en popa de gusto,
Donde jamas ay disgusto,
Penitencia, ni tormento,
Viendo que ay prospero viento,
Se quiere hazer á la Mar.
Ay quien se quiera embarcar?
El Peregrino en su Patria, Sevilla, 1604, 4to, f. 36. b.
A new world is announced as their destination, and the Will asks
whether it is the one lately discovered by Columbus; to which and to
other similar questions Satan replies evasively, but declares that
he is a greater pilot of the seas than Magellan or Drake, and will
insure to all who sail with him a happy and prosperous voyage. Memory
opposes the project, but, after some resistance, is put asleep; and
Understanding, who follows as a greybeard full of wise counsel, comes
too late. The adventurers are already gone. But still he shouts after
them, and continues his warnings, till the ship of Penitence arrives,
with the Saviour for its pilot, a cross for its mast, and sundry Saints
for its sailors. They summon the Soul anew. The Soul is surprised and
shocked at her situation; and the piece ends with her embarkation on
board the sacred vessel, amidst a _feu de joie_, and the shouts of the
delighted spectators, who, we may suppose, had been much edified by the
show.
Another of these strange dramas is founded on the story of the Prodigal
Son, and is said to have been represented at Perpignan, then a Spanish
fortress, by a party of soldiers; one of the actors being mentioned
by name in its long and absurdly learned Prologue.[291] Among the
interlocutors are Envy, Youth, Repentance, and Good Advice; and among
other extraordinary passages, it contains a flowing paraphrase of
Horace’s “Beatus ille,” pronounced by the respectable proprietor of the
swine intrusted to the unhappy Prodigal.
[291] Book Fourth. The compliment to the actor shows, of course,
that the piece was acted. Indeed, this is the proper inference
from the whole Prologue. Obras, Tom. V. p. 347.
The fourth Morality, found in the romance of the Pilgrim, is entitled
“The Marriage of the Soul and Divine Love”; and is set forth as having
been acted in a public square at Valencia, on occasion of the marriage
of Philip the Third with Margaret of Austria, which took place in
that city,--an occasion, we are told, when Lope himself appeared in
the character of a buffoon,[292] and one to which this drama, though
it seems to have been written earlier, was carefully adjusted.[293]
The World, Sin, the City of Jerusalem, and Faith, who is dressed in
the costume of a captain-general of Spain, all play parts in it. Envy
enters, in the first scene, as from the infernal regions, through
a mouth casting forth flames; and the last scene represents Love,
stretched on the cross, and wedded to a fair damsel who figures as the
Soul of Man. Some parts of this drama are very offensive; especially
the passage in which Margaret of Austria, with celestial attributes,
is represented as arriving in the galley of Faith, and the passage in
which Philip’s entrance into Valencia is described literally as it
occurred, but substituting the Saviour for the king, and the prophets,
the martyrs, and the hierarchy of heaven for the Spanish nobles and
clergy who really appeared on the occasion.[294]
[292] Miñana, in his continuation of Mariana, (Lib. X. c. 15,
Madrid, 1804, folio, p. 589), says, when speaking of the marriage
of Philip III. at Valencia, “In the midst of such rejoicings,
tasteful and frequent festivities and masquerades were not
wanting, in which Lope de Vega played the part of the buffoon.”
[293] In Book Second.
[294] Lope boasts that he has made this sort of commutation
and accommodation, as if it were a merit. “This was literally
the way,” he says, “in which his Majesty, King Philip, entered
Valencia.” Obras, Tom. V. p. 187.
Such were, probably, the unsteady attempts with which Lope began his
career on the public stage during his exile at Valencia and immediately
afterwards. They are certainly wild enough in their structure, and
sometimes gross in sentiment, though hardly worse in either respect
than the similar allegorical mysteries and farces which, till just
about the same period, were performed in France and England, and much
superior in their general tone and style. How long he continued to
write them, or how many he wrote, we do not know. Few of them appear in
the collection of his dramas, which does not begin till 1604, though an
allegorical spirit is occasionally visible in some of his plays, which
are, in other respects, quite in the temper of the secular theatre.
But that he wrote such religious dramas early, and that he wrote great
numbers of them, is unquestionable.
In Madrid, if he found little to hinder, he also found little to help
him, except two rude theatres, or rather court-yards, licensed for the
representation of plays, and a dramatic taste formed or forming in the
character of the people. But this was enough for a spirit like his.
His success was immediate and complete; his popularity overwhelming.
Cervantes, as we have seen, declared him to be a “prodigy of nature”;
and, though himself seeking both the fame and the profit of a writer
for the public stage, generously recognized his great rival as its sole
monarch.[295]
[295] See _ante_, p. 90, and Comedias, Madrid, 1615, 4to,
Prólogo. The phrase _monstruo de naturaleza_, in this passage,
has been sometimes supposed to imply a censure of Lope on
the part of Cervantes. But this is a mistake. It is a phrase
frequently used; and though sometimes understood _in malam
partem_, as it is in D. Quixote, Part I. c. 46,--“Vete de mi
presencia, monstruo de naturaleza,”--it is generally understood
to be complimentary; as, for instance, in the “Hermosa Ester” of
Lope, (Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621), near the end of the
first act, where Ahasuerus, in admiration of the fair Esther,
says,--
Tanta belleza
Monstruo será de la naturaleza.
Cervantes, I have no doubt, used it in wonder at Lope’s
prodigious fertility.
Many years, however, elapsed before he published even a single volume
of the plays with which he was thus delighting the audiences of
Madrid, and settling the final forms of the national drama. This was,
no doubt, in part owing to the habit, which seems to have prevailed
in Spain from the first appearance of the theatre, of regarding
its literature as ill-suited for publication; and in part to the
circumstance, that, when plays were produced on the stage, the author
usually lost his right in them, if not entirely, yet so far that he
could not publish them without the assent of the actors. But whatever
may have been the cause, it is certain that a multitude of Lope’s plays
had been acted before he published any of them; and that, to this
day, not a fourth part of those he wrote has been preserved by the
press.[296]
[296] Lope must have been a writer for the public stage as early
as 1586 or 1587, and a popular writer at Madrid soon after 1590;
but we have no knowledge that any of his plays were printed,
with his own consent, before the volume which appeared at
Valladolid, in 1604. Yet, in the Preface to the “Peregrino en su
Patria,” licensed in 1603, he gives us a list of three hundred
and forty-one plays which he acknowledges and claims. Again, in
1618, when he says he had written eight hundred, (Comedias, Tom.
XI., Barcelona, 1618, Prólogo), he had printed but one hundred
and thirty-four full-length plays, and a few _entremeses_.
Finally, of the eighteen hundred attributed to him in 1635,
after his death, by Montalvan and others, (Obras Sueltas, Tom.
XX. p. 49), only about three hundred and twenty or thirty can be
found in the volumes of his collected plays; and Lord Holland,
counting _autos_ and all, which would swell the _general_ claim
of Montalvan to at least twenty-two hundred, makes out but five
hundred and sixteen printed dramas of Lope. Life of Lope de Vega,
London, 1817, 8vo, Vol. II. pp. 158-180.
Their very number, however, may have been one obstacle to their
publication; for the most moderate and certain accounts on this point
have almost a fabulous air about them; so extravagant do they seem. In
1603, he gives us the titles of three hundred and forty-one pieces that
he had already written;[297] in 1609, he says their number had risen
to four hundred and eighty-three;[298] in 1618, he says it was eight
hundred;[299] in 1619, again in round numbers, he states it at nine
hundred;[300] and in 1624, at one thousand and seventy.[301] After his
death, in 1635, Perez de Montalvan, his intimate friend and executor,
who three years before had declared the number to be fifteen hundred,
without reckoning the shorter pieces,[302] puts it at eighteen hundred
plays and four hundred _autos_;[303] numbers which are confidently
repeated by Antonio in his notice of Lope,[304] and by Franchi, an
Italian, who had been much with Lope at Madrid, and who wrote one of
the multitudinous eulogies on him after his death.[305] The prodigious
facility implied by this is further confirmed by the fact stated by
himself in one of his plays, that it was written and acted in five
days,[306] and by the anecdotes of Montalvan, that he wrote five
full-length dramas at Toledo in fifteen days, and one act of another in
a few hours of the early morning, without seeming to make any effort in
either case.[307]
[297] This curious list, with the Preface in which it stands, is
worth reading over carefully, as affording indications of the
history and progress of Lope’s genius. It is to Lope’s dramatic
life what the list in Meres is to Shakspeare. It is found in the
Obras Sueltas, Tom. V.
[298] In his “New Art of Writing Plays,” he says, “I have now
written, including one that I have finished this week, four
hundred and eighty-three plays.” He printed this for the first
time in 1609; and though it was probably written four or five
years earlier, yet these lines near the end may have been added
at the moment the whole poem went to the press. Obras Sueltas,
Tom. IV. p. 417.
[299] In the Prólogo to Comedias, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618;--a
witty address of the theatre to the readers.
[300] Comedias, Tom. XIV., Madrid, 1620, Dedication of “El
Verdadero Amante” to his son.
[301] Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, Preface,--where he says,
“Candid minds will hope, that, as I have lived long enough to
write a thousand and seventy dramas, I may live long enough to
print them.” The certificates of this volume are dated 1624-25.
[302] In the “Índice de los Ingenios de Madrid,” appended to the
“Para Todos” of Montalvan, printed in 1632, he says Lope had
then published twenty volumes of plays, and that the number of
those that had been acted, without reckoning _autos_, was fifteen
hundred. Lope also himself puts it at fifteen hundred in the
“Egloga á Claudio,” which, though not published till after his
death, must have been written as early as 1632, since it speaks
of the “Dorotea,” first published in that year, as still waiting
for the light.
[303] Fama Póstuma, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 49.
[304] Art. _Lupus Felix de Vega_.
[305] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. pp. 3, 19.
[306] “All studied out and written in five days.” Comedias, Tom.
XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 72. b.
[307] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. pp. 51, 52. How eagerly his plays
were sought by the actors and received by the audiences of
Madrid may be understood from the fact Lope mentions in the
poem to his friend Claudio, that above a hundred were acted
within twenty-four hours of the time when their composition was
completed. Obras Sueltas, Tom. IX. p. 368.
Of this enormous mass, a little more than five hundred dramas appear
to have been published at different times,--most of them in the
twenty-five, or more properly twenty-eight, volumes which were printed
in various places between 1604 and 1647, but of which it is now nearly
impossible to form a complete collection. In these volumes, so far
as any rules of the dramatic art are concerned, it is apparent that
Lope took the theatre in the state in which he found it; and instead
of attempting to adapt it to any previous theory, or to any existing
models, whether ancient or recent, made it his great object to satisfy
the popular audiences of his age;[308]--an object which he avows so
distinctly in his “Art of Writing Plays,” and in the Preface to the
twentieth volume of his Dramas, that there is no doubt it was the
prevailing purpose with which he labored for the theatre. For such a
purpose, he certainly appeared at a fortunate moment; and, possessing
a genius no less fortunate, was enabled to become the founder of
the national Spanish theatre, which, since his time, has rested
substantially on the basis where he placed and left it.
[308] As early as 1603, Lope maintains this doctrine in the
Preface to his “Peregrino”;--it occurs frequently afterwards in
different parts of his works, as, for instance, in the Prólogo
to his “Castigo sin Venganza”; and he left it as a legacy in the
“Egloga á Claudio,” printed after his death. The “Nueva Arte de
Hacer Comedias,” however, is abundantly explicit on the subject
in 1609, and, no doubt, expressed the deliberate purpose of its
author, from which he seems never to have swerved during his
whole dramatic career.
But this very system--if that may be called a system which was rather
an instinct--almost necessarily supposes that he indulged his audiences
in a great variety of dramatic forms; and accordingly we find, among
his plays, a diversity, alike in spirit, tone, and structure, which
was evidently intended to humor the uncertain cravings of the popular
taste, and which we know was successful. Whether he himself ever took
the trouble to consider what were the different classes into which his
dramas might be divided does not appear. Certainly no attempt at any
technical arrangement of them is made in the collection he printed,
except that, in the first and third volumes, a few _entremeses_, or
farces, generally in prose, are thrown in at the end of each, as a
sort of appendix. All the rest of the plays contained in them are
in verse, and are called _comedias_,--a word which is by no means
to be translated “comedies,” but “dramas,” since no other name is
comprehensive enough to include their manifold varieties,--and all of
them are divided into three _jornadas_, or acts.
But in every thing else there seems no end to their
diversities,--whether we regard their subjects, running from the
deepest tragedy to the broadest farce, and from the most solemn
mysteries of religion down to the loosest frolics of common life, or
their style, which embraces every change of tone and measure known to
the poetical language of the country. And all these different masses
of Lope’s drama, it should be further noted, run insensibly into each
other,--the sacred and the secular; the tragic and the comic; the
heroic action and that from vulgar life,--until sometimes it seems as
if there were neither separate form nor distinctive attribute to any of
them.
This, however, is less the case than it at first appears to be. Lope,
no doubt, did not always know or care into what peculiar form the
story of his drama was cast; but still there were certain forms and
attributes invented by his own genius, or indicated to him by the
success of his predecessors or the demands of his time, to which each
of his dramas more or less tended. A few, indeed, may be found so
nearly on the limits that separate the different classes, that it is
difficult to assign them strictly to either; but in all--even in those
that are the freest and wildest--the distinctive elements of some
class are apparent, while all, by the peculiarly national spirit that
animates them, show the source from which they come, and the direction
they are destined to follow.
The _first_ class of plays that Lope seems to have invented--the
one in which his own genius seemed most to delight, and which still
remains more popular in Spain than any other--consists of those called
“Comedias de Capa y Espada,” or Dramas with Cloak and Sword. They took
their name from the circumstance, that their principal personages
belong to the genteel portion of society, accustomed, in Lope’s time,
to the picturesque national dress of cloaks and swords,--excluding,
on the one hand, those dramas in which royal personages appear,
and, on the other, those which are devoted to common life and the
humbler classes. Their main and moving principle is gallantry,--such
gallantry as existed in the time of their author. The story is almost
always involved and intriguing, and almost always accompanied with an
underplot and parody on the characters and adventures of the principal
parties, formed out of those of the servants and other inferior
personages.
Their titles are intended to be attractive, and are not infrequently
taken from among the old rhymed proverbs that were always popular,
and that sometimes seem to have suggested the subject of the drama
itself. They uniformly extend to the length of regular pieces for the
theatre, now settled at three _jornadas_, or acts, each of which,
Lope advises, should have its action compressed within the limits of
a single day, though he himself is rarely scrupulous enough to follow
his own recommendation. They are not properly comedies, for nothing
is more frequent in them than duels, murders, and assassinations; and
they are not tragedies, for, besides that they end happily, they are
generally composed of humorous and sentimental dialogue, and their
action is carried on chiefly by lovers full of romance, or by low
characters whose wit is mingled with buffoonery. All this, it should be
understood, was new on the Spanish stage; or if hints might have been
furnished for individual portions of it as far back as Torres Naharro,
the combination, at least, was new, as well as the manners, tone, and
costume.
Of such plays Lope wrote a very large number; several hundreds, at
least. His genius--rich, free, and eminently inventive--was well fitted
for their composition, and in many of them he shows great dramatic
tact and talent. Among the best are “The Ugly Beauty”;[309] “Money
makes the Man”;[310] “The Pruderies of Belisa,”[311] which has the
accidental merit of being all but strictly within the rules; “The Slave
of her Lover,”[312] in which he has sounded the depths of a woman’s
tenderness; and “The Dog in the Manger,” in which he has almost equally
well sounded the depths of her selfish vanity.[313] But perhaps there
are some others which, even better than these, will show the peculiar
character of this class of Lope’s dramas, and his peculiar position in
relation to them. To two or three such we will, therefore, now turn.
[309] Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, 4to, f. 22, etc.
[310] I know this play, “Dineros son Calidad,” only among the
Comedias Sueltas of Lope; but it is no doubt his, as it is in
Tom. XXIV. printed at Zaragoza in 1632, which contains different
plays from a Tom. XXIV. printed at Zaragoza in 1641, which I
have. There is yet a third Tom. XXIV., printed at Madrid in 1638.
The internal evidence would, perhaps, be enough to prove its
authorship.
[311] Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, f. 277, etc., but
often reprinted since under the title of “La Melindrosa.”
[312] Comedias, Tom. XXV., Çaragoça, 1647, f. 1, etc.
[313] Comedias, Tom. XI, Barcelona, 1618, f. 1, etc. The Preface
to this volume is curious, on account of Lope’s complaints of
the booksellers. He calls it “Prólogo del Teatro,” and makes the
surreptitious publication of his plays an offence against the
drama itself. He intimates that it was not very uncommon for one
of his plays to be acted seventy times.
“El Azero de Madrid,” or The Madrid Steel, is one of them, and is
among his earlier works for the stage.[314] It takes its name from
the preparations of steel for medicinal purposes, which, in Lope’s
time, had just come into fashionable use; but the main story is that
of a light-hearted girl who deceives her father, and especially a
hypocritical old aunt, by pretending to be ill and taking steel
medicaments from a seeming doctor, who is a friend of her lover, and
who prescribes walking abroad, and such other free modes of life as may
best afford opportunities for her admirer’s attentions.
[314] The “Azero de Madrid,” which was written as early as 1603,
has often been printed separately, and is found in the regular
collection, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, f. 27, etc.
There can be little doubt that in this play we find some of the
materials for the “Médecin Malgré Lui”; and though the full success
of Molière’s original wit is not to be questioned, still the happiest
portions of his comedy can do no more than come into fair competition
with some passages in that of Lope. The character of the heroine, for
instance, is drawn with more spirit in the Spanish than it is in the
French play; and that of the devotee aunt, who acts as her duenna, and
whose hypocrisy is exposed when she herself falls in love, is one which
Molière might well have envied, though it was too exclusively Spanish
to be brought within the courtly conventions by which he was restrained.
The whole drama is full of life and gayety, and has a truth and reality
about it rare on any stage. Its opening is both a proof of this and a
characteristic specimen of its author’s mode of placing his audience
at once, by a decisive movement, in the midst of the scene and the
personages he means to represent. Lisardo, the hero, and Riselo, his
friend, appear watching the door of a fashionable church in Madrid,
at the conclusion of the service, to see a lady with whom Lisardo is
in love. They are wearied with waiting, while the crowds pass out,
and Riselo at last declares he will wait for his friend’s fancy no
longer. At this moment appears Belisa, the lady in question, attended
by her aunt, Theodora, who wears an affectedly religious dress and is
lecturing her:--
_Theodora._ Show more of gentleness and modesty;--
Of gentleness in walking quietly,
Of modesty in looking only down
Upon the earth you tread.
_Belisa._ ’T is what I do.
_Theodora._ What? When you’re looking straight towards that man?
_Belisa._ Did you not bid me look upon the earth?
And what is he but just a bit of it?
_Theodora._ I said the earth whereon you tread, my niece.
_Belisa._ But that whereon I tread is hidden quite
With my own petticoat and walking-dress.
_Theodora._ Words such as these become no well-bred maid.
But, by your mother’s blessed memory,
I’ll put an end to all your pretty tricks;--
What? You look back at him again?
_Belisa._ Who? I?
_Theodora._ Yes, you;--and make him secret signs besides.
_Belisa._ Not I. ’T is only that you troubled me
With teasing questions and perverse replies,
So that I stumbled and looked round to see
Who would prevent my fall.
_Riselo._ (_to Lisardo_). She falls again.
Be quick and help her.
_Lisardo._ (_to Belisa_). Pardon me, lady,
And forgive my glove.
_Theodora._ Who ever saw the like?
_Belisa._ I thank you, Sir; you saved me from a fall.
_Lisardo._ An angel, lady, might have fallen so;
Or stars that shine with heaven’s own blessed light.
_Theodora._ I, too, can fall; but ’t is upon your trick.
Good gentleman, farewell to you!
_Lisardo._ Madam,
Your servant. (Heaven save us from such spleen!)
_Theodora._ A pretty fall you made of it; and now, I hope,
You’ll be content, since they assisted you.
_Belisa._ And you no less content, since now you have
The means to tease me for a week to come.
_Theodora._ But why again do you turn back your head?
_Belisa._ Why, sure you think it wise and wary
To notice well the place I stumbled at,
Lest I should stumble there when next I pass.
_Theodora._ Mischief befall you! But I know your ways!
You’ll not deny this time you looked upon the youth?
_Belisa._ Deny it? No!
_Theodora._ You dare confess it, then?
_Belisa._ Be sure I dare. You saw him help me,--
And would you have me fail to thank him for it?
_Theodora._ Go to! Come home! come home!
_Belisa._ Now we shall have
A pretty scolding cooked up out of this.[315]
[315]
_Teo._ Lleua cordura y modestia;--
Cordura en andar de espacio;
Modestia en que solo veas
La misma tierra que pisas.
_Bel._ Ya hago lo que me enseñas.
_Teo._ Como miraste aquel hombre?
_Bel._ No me dixiste que viera
Sola tierra? pues, dime,
Aquel hombre no es de tierra?
_Teo._ Yo la que pisas te digo.
_Bel._ La que piso va cubierta
De la saya y los chapines.
_Teo._ Que palabras de donzella!
Por el siglo de tu madre,
Que yo te quite essas tretas!
Otra vez le miras?
_Bel._ Yo?
_Teo._ Luego no le hiziste señas?
_Bel._ Fuy á caer, como me turbas
Con demandas y respuestas,
Y miré quien me tuuiesse.
_Ris._ Cayó! llegad á tenerla!
_Lis._ Perdone, vuessa merced,
El guante.
_Teo._ Ay cosa como esta?
_Bel._ Beso os las manos, Señor;
Que, si no es por vos, cayera.
_Lis._ Cayera un ángel, Señora,
Y cayeran las estrellas,
A quien da mas lumbre el sol.
_Teo._ Y yo cayera en la cuenta.
Yd, cauallero, con Dios!
_Lis._ El os guarde, y me defienda
De condicion tan estraña!
_Teo._ Ya cayste, y vás contenta,
De que te dieron la mano.
_Bel._ Y tú lo irás de que tengas
Con que pudrirme seys dias.
_Teo._ A que bueluas la cabeça?
_Bel._ Pues no te parece que es
Advertencia muy discreta
Mirar adonde cahí,
Para que otra vez no buelua
A tropeçar en lo mismo?
_Teo._ Ay, mala pascua te venga,
Y como entiendo tus mañas.
Otra vez, y dirás que esta
No miraste el mancebito?
_Bel._ Es verdad.
_Teo._ Y lo confiessas?
_Bel._ Si me dió la mano allí,
No quieres que lo agradesca?
_Teo._ Anda, que entraras en casa.
_Bel._ O lo que harás de quimeras!
Comedias de Lope de Vega. Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, f. 27.
Other passages are equally spirited and no less Castilian. The scene,
at the beginning of the second act, between Octavio, another lover of
the lady, and his servant, who jests at his master’s passion, as well
as the scene with the mock doctor, that follows, are both admirable in
their way, and must have produced a great effect on the audiences of
Madrid, who felt how true they were to the manners of the time.
But all Lope’s dramas were not written for the public theatres of the
capital. He was the courtly, no less than the national, poet of his
age; and as we have already noticed a play full of the spirit of his
youth, and of the popular character, to which it was addressed, we will
now turn to one no less buoyant and free, which was written in his old
age and prepared expressly for a royal entertainment. It is the “Saint
John’s Eve,” and shows that his manner was the same, whether he was
to be judged by the unruly crowds gathered in one of the court-yards
of the capital, or by a few persons selected from whatever was most
exclusive and elevated in the kingdom.
The occasion for which it was prepared and the arrangements for its
exhibition mark, at once, the luxury of the royal theatres in the reign
of Philip the Fourth, and the consideration enjoyed by their favored
poet.[316] The drama itself was ordered expressly by the Count Duke
Olivares, for a magnificent entertainment which he wished to give his
sovereign in one of the gardens of Madrid, on Saint John’s eve, in
June, 1631. No expense was spared by the profligate favorite to please
his indulgent master. The Marquis Juan Bautista Crescencio--the same
artist to whom we owe the sombre Pantheon of the Escurial--arranged the
architectural constructions, which consisted of luxurious bowers for
the king and his courtiers, and a gorgeous theatre in front of them,
where, amidst a blaze of torch-light, the two most famous companies of
actors of the time performed successively two plays: one written by the
united talent of Francisco de Quevedo and Antonio de Mendoça; and the
other, the crowning grace of the festival, by Lope de Vega.
[316] The facts relating to this play are taken partly from the
play itself, (Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 68. b), and
partly from Casiano Pellicer, Orígen y Progresos de la Comedia,
Madrid, 1804, 12mo, Tom. I. pp. 174-181.
A similar entertainment had been given by his queen to Philip
IV., on his birthday, in 1622, at the beautiful country-seat
of Aranjuez, for which the unfortunate Count of Villamediana
furnished the poetry, and Fontana, the distinguished Italian
architect, erected a theatre of great magnificence. The drama,
which was much like a masque of the English theatre, and was
performed by the queen and her ladies, is in the Works of Count
Villamediana (Çaragoça, 1629, 4to, pp. 1-55); and an account of
the entertainment itself is given in Antonio de Mendoça (Obras,
Lisboa, 1690, 4to, pp. 426-464);--all indicating the most
wasteful luxury and extravagance.
The subject of the play of Lope is happily taken from the frolics of
the very night on which it was represented;--a night frequently alluded
to in the old Spanish stories and ballads, as one devoted, both by
Moors and Christians, to gayer superstitions, and adventures more
various, than belonged to any other of the old national holidays.[317]
What was represented, therefore, had a peculiar interest, from its
appropriateness both as to time and place.
[317] Lope himself, in 1624, published a poem on the same
subject, which fills thirty pages in the third volume of his
Works; but a description of the frolics of St. John’s eve, better
suited to illustrate this play of Lope, and much else on St.
John’s eve in Spanish poetry, is in “Doblado’s Letters,” (1822,
p. 309),--a work full of the most faithful sketches of Spanish
character and manners.
Leonora, the heroine, first comes on the stage, and confesses her
attachment to Don Juan de Hurtado, a gentleman who has recently
returned rich from the Indies. She gives a lively sketch of the way in
which he had made love to her in all the forms of national admiration,
at church by day, and before her grated balcony in the evenings. Don
Luis, her brother, ignorant of all this, gladly becomes acquainted with
the lover, whom he interests in a match of his own with Doña Blanca,
sister of Bernardo, who is the cherished friend of Don Juan. Eager to
oblige the brother of the lady he loves, Don Juan seeks Bernardo, and,
in the course of their conversation, ingeniously describes to him a
visit he has just made to see all the arrangements for the evening’s
entertainment now in progress before the court, including this
identical play of Lope; thus whimsically claiming from the audience a
belief that the action they are witnessing on the stage in the garden
is, at the very same moment, going on in real life in the streets
of Madrid, just behind their backs;--a passage which, involving, as
it does, compliments to the king and the Count Duke, to Quevedo and
Mendoça, must have been one of the most brilliant in its effect that
can be imagined. But when Don Juan comes to explain his mission about
the lady Blanca, although he finds a most willing consent on the part
of her brother, Bernardo, he is thunderstruck at the suggestion, that
this brother, his most intimate friend, wishes to make the alliance
double and marry Leonora himself.
Now, of course, begin the involutions and difficulties. Don Juan’s
sense of what he owes to his friend forbids him from setting up his own
claim to Leonora, and he at once decides that nothing remains for him
but flight. At the same time, it is discovered that the Lady Blanca is
already attached to another person, a noble cavalier, named Don Pedro,
and will, therefore, never marry Don Luis, if she can avoid it. The
course of true love, therefore, runs smooth in neither case. But both
the ladies avow their determination to remain steadfastly faithful to
their lovers, though Leonora, from some fancied symptoms of coldness in
Don Juan, arising out of his over-nice sense of honor, is in despair at
the thought that he may, after all, prove false to her.
So ends the first act. The second opens with the lady Blanca’s account
of her own lover, his condition, and the way in which he had made
his love known to her in a public garden;--all most faithful to the
national costume. But just as she is ready to escape and be privately
married to him, her brother, Don Bernardo, comes in and proposes to
her to make her first visit to Leonora, in order to promote his own
suit. Meantime, the poor Leonora, quite desperate, rushes into the
street with her attendant, and meets her lover’s servant, the clown
and harlequin of the piece, who tells her that his master, unable any
longer to endure his sufferings, is just about escaping from Madrid.
The master, Don Juan, follows in hot haste, booted for his journey.
The lady faints. When she revives, they come to an understanding,
and determine to be married on the instant; so that we have now two
private marriages, beset with difficulties, on the carpet at once.
But the streets are full of frolicsome crowds, who are indulged in
a sort of carnival freedom during this popular festival. Don Juan’s
rattling servant gets into a quarrel with some gay young men, who
are impertinent to his master, and to the terrified Leonora. Swords
are drawn, and Don Juan is arrested by the officers of justice and
carried off,--the lady, in her fright, taking refuge in a house,
which accidentally turns out to be that of Don Pedro. But Don Pedro
is abroad, seeking for his own lady, Doña Blanca. When he returns,
however, making his way with difficulty through the rioting populace,
he promises, as in Castilian honor bound, to protect the helpless and
unknown Leonora, whom he finds in his balcony timidly watching the
movements of the crowd in the street, among whom she is hoping to catch
a glimpse of her own lover.
In the last act we learn that Don Juan has at once, by bribes, easily
rid himself of the officers of justice, and is again in the noisy and
gay streets seeking for Leonora. He falls in with Don Pedro, whom he
has never seen before; but Don Pedro, taking him, from his inquiries,
to be the brother from whom Leonora is anxious to be concealed,
carefully avoids betraying her to him. Unhappily, the Lady Blanca now
arrives, having been prevented from coming earlier by the confusion in
the streets; and he hurries her into his house for concealment till
the marriage ceremony can be performed. But she hurries out again no
less quickly, having found another lady already concealed there;--a
circumstance which she takes to be direct proof of her lover’s
falsehood. Leonora follows her, and begins an explanation; but in the
midst of it, the two brothers, who had been seeking these same missing
sisters, come suddenly in; a scene of great confusion and mutual
reproaches ensues; and then the curtain falls with a recognition of
all the mistakes and attachments, and the full happiness of the two
ladies and their two lovers. At the end, the poet, in his own person,
declares, that, if his art permits him to extend his action over
twenty-four hours, he has, in the present case, kept within its rules,
since he has occupied less than ten.
As a specimen of plays founded on Spanish manners, few are happier
than the “Saint John’s Eve.” The love-scenes, all honor and passion;
the scenes between the cavaliers and the populace, at once rude and
gay; and the scenes with the free-spoken servant who plays the wit are
almost all excellent, and instinct with the national character. It was
received with the greatest applause, and constituted the finale of the
Count Duke’s magnificent entertainment, which, with its music and
dances, interludes and refreshments, occupied the whole night, from
nine o’clock in the evening till daylight the next morning.
Another of the plays of Lope, and one that belongs to the division of
the _Capa y Espada_, but approaches that of the heroic drama, is his
“Fool for Others and Wise for Herself.”[318] It is of a lighter and
livelier temper throughout than most of its class. Diana, educated in
the simple estate of a shepherdess, and wholly ignorant that she is the
daughter and heir of the Duke of Urbino, is suddenly called, by the
death of her father, to fill his place. She is surrounded by intriguing
enemies, but triumphs over them by affecting a rustic simplicity in
whatever she says and does, while, at the same time, she is managing
all around her, and carrying on a love intrigue with the Duke Alexander
Farnese, which ends in her marriage with him.
[318] Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 45, etc.
The jest of the piece lies in the wit she is able to conceal under her
seeming rusticity. For instance, at the very opening, after she has
been secretly informed of the true state of things, and has determined
what course to pursue, the ambassadors from Urbino come in and tell
her, with a solemnity suited to the occasion,--
Lady, our sovereign lord, the Duke, is dead!
To which she replies,--
What’s that to me? But if ’t is surely so,
Why then, Sirs, ’t is for you to bury him.
I’m not the parish curate.[319]
[319]
_Camilo._ Señora, el Duque es muerto.
_Diana._ Pues que se me da á mí? pero si es cierto,
Enterralde, Señores,
Que yo no soi el Cura.
Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635. f. 47.
This tone is maintained to the end, whenever the heroine appears; and
it gives Lope an opportunity to bring forth a great deal of the fluent,
light wit of which he had such ample store.
Little like all we have yet noticed, but still belonging to the same
class, is “The Reward of Speaking Well,”[320] a charming play, in which
the accounts of the hero’s birth and early condition are so absolutely
a description of his own, that it can hardly be doubted that Lope
intended to draw the character in some degree from himself. Don Juan,
who is the hero, is standing with some idle gallants near a church in
Seville, to see the ladies come out; and, while there, defends, though
he does not know her, one of them who is lightly spoken of. A quarrel
ensues. He wounds his adversary, is pursued, and chances to take
refuge in the house of the very lady whose honor he had so gallantly
maintained a few moments before. She from gratitude secretes him, and
the play ends with a wedding, though not until there has been a perfect
confusion of plots and counterplots, intrigues and concealments, such
as so often go to make up the three acts of Lope’s dramas.
[320] Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 158, etc.
Many other plays might be added to these, showing, by the diversity
of their tone and character, how diverse were the gifts of the
extraordinary man who invented them and filled them with various and
easy verse. Among them are “Por la Puente Juana,”[321] “El Anzuelo
de Fenisa,”[322] “El Ruyseñor de Sevilla,”[323] and “Porfiar hasta
Morir”;[324] which last is on the story of Macias el Enamorado, always
a favorite with the old Spanish, and Provençal poets. But it is
neither needful nor possible to go farther. Enough has been said to
show the general character of their class, and we therefore now turn to
another.
[321] Ibid., f. 243, etc. It has often been printed separately;
once in London.
[322] Comedias, Tom. VIII., Madrid, 1617, and often printed
separately; a play remarkable for its gayety and spirit.
[323] Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, f. 187, etc.
[324] Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, f. 96, etc.
CHAPTER XVI.
LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.--HIS HEROIC DRAMA, AND ITS
CHARACTERISTICS.--GREAT NUMBER ON SUBJECTS FROM SPANISH HISTORY, AND
SOME ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS.
The dramas of Lope de Vega that belong to the next class were called
“Comedias Heróicas,” or “Comedias Historiales,”--Heroic or Historical
Dramas. The chief differences between these and the last are that
they bring on the stage personages in a higher rank of life, such as
kings and princes; that they generally have an historical foundation,
or, at least, use historical names, as if claiming it; and that
their prevailing tone is grave, imposing, and even tragical. They
have, however, in general, the same involved, intriguing stories and
underplots, the same play of jealousy and an over-sensitive honor, and
the same low, comic caricatures to relieve their serious parts, that
are found in the dramas of “the Cloak and Sword.” Philip the Second
disapproved of this class of plays, thinking they tended to diminish
the royal dignity,--a circumstance which shows at once the state of
manners at the time, and the influence attributed to the theatre.[325]
[325] Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 410.
Lope wrote a very large number of plays in the forms of the heroic
drama, which he substantially invented,--perhaps as many as he wrote
in any other class. Every thing historical seemed, indeed, to furnish
him with a subject, from the earliest annals of the world down to the
events of his own time; but his favorite materials were sought in Greek
and Roman records, and especially in the chronicles and ballads of
Spain itself.
Of the manner in which he dealt with ancient history, his “Roma
Abrasada,” or Rome in Ashes, may be taken as a specimen, though
certainly one of the least favorable specimens of the class to which
it belongs.[326] The facts on which it is founded are gathered from
the commonest sources open to its author,--chiefly from the “General
Chronicle of Spain”; but they are not formed into a well-constructed
or even ingenious plot,[327] and they relate to the whole twenty years
that elapsed between the death of Messalina, in the reign of Claudius,
and the death of Nero himself, who is not only the hero, but the
_gracioso_, or droll, of the piece.
[326] Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, ff. 177, etc. It is
entitled “_Tragedia_ Famosa.”
[327] It is worth while to compare Suetonius, (Books V. and VI.),
and the “Crónica General,” (Parte I. c. 110 and 111), with the
corresponding passages in the “Roma Abrasada.” In one passage of
Act III., Lope uses a ballad, the first lines of which occur in
the first act of the “Celestina.”
The first act, which comes down to the murder of Claudius by Nero and
Agrippina, contains the old jest of the Emperor asking why his wife
does not come to dinner, after he had put her to death, and adds,
for equally popular effect, abundant praises of Spain and of Lucan
and Seneca, claiming both of them to be Spaniards, and making the
latter an astrologer as well as a moralist. The second act shows Nero
beginning his reign with great gentleness, and follows Suetonius and
the old Chronicle in making him grieve that he knew how to write, since
otherwise he could not have been required to sign an order for a
just judicial execution. The subsequent violent change in his conduct
is not, however, in any way explained or accounted for. It is simply
set before the spectators as a fact, and from this moment begins the
headlong career of his guilt.
A curious scene, purely Spanish, is one of the early intimations of
this change of character. Nero falls in love with Eta; but not at all
in the Roman fashion. He visits her by night at her window, sings a
sonnet to her, is interrupted by four men in disguise, kills one of
them, and escapes from the pursuit of the officers of justice with
difficulty; all, as if he were a wandering knight so fair of the time
of Philip the Third.[328] The more historical love for Poppæa follows,
with a shocking interview between Nero and his mother, in consequence
of which he orders her to be at once put to death. The execution of
this order, with the horrid exposure of her person afterwards, ends the
act, which, gross as it is, does not sink to the revolting atrocities
of the old Chronicle from which it is chiefly taken.
[328] This scene is in the second act, and forms that part of the
play where Nero enacts the _gracioso_.
The third act is so arranged as partly to gratify the national vanity
and partly to conciliate the influence of the Church, of which
Lope, like his contemporaries, always stood in awe. Several devout
Christians, therefore, are now introduced, and we have an edifying
confession of faith, embracing the history of the world from the
creation to the crucifixion, with an account of what the Spanish
historians regard as the first of the twelve persecutions. The deaths
of Seneca and Lucan follow; and then the conflagration of Rome, which,
as it constitutes the show part of the play and is relied on for
the stage effect it would produce, is brought in near the end, out
of the proper order of the story, and after the building of Nero’s
luxurious palace, the “aurea domus,” which was really constructed
in the desert the fire had left. The audience, meantime, have been
put in good humor by a scene in Spain, where a conspiracy is on foot
to overthrow the Emperor’s power; and the drama concludes with the
death of Poppæa,--again less gross than the account of it in the
Chronicle,--with Nero’s own death, and with the proclamation of Galba
as his successor; all of them crowded into a space disproportionately
small for incidents so important.
But it was not often that Lope wrote so ill or so grossly. On modern,
and especially on national subjects, he is almost always more
fortunate, and sometimes becomes powerful and imposing. Among these,
as a characteristic, though not as a remarkably favorable, specimen
of his success, is to be placed the “Príncipe Perfeto,”[329] in which
he intends to give his idea of a perfect prince under the character
of Don John of Portugal, son of Alfonso the Fifth and contemporary
with Ferdinand and Isabella, a full-length portrait of whom, by his
friend and confidant, is drawn in the opening of the second act, with a
minuteness of detail that leaves no doubt as to the qualities for which
princes were valued in the age of the Philips, if not those for which
they would be valued now.
[329] Comedias, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 121, etc.
Elsewhere in the piece, Don John is represented to have fought bravely
in the disastrous battle of Toro, and to have voluntarily restored
the throne to his father, who had once abdicated in his favor and had
afterwards reclaimed the supreme power. Personal courage and strict
justice, however, are the attributes most relied on to exhibit him
as a perfect prince. Of the former he gives proof by killing a man in
self-defence, and entering into a bull-fight under the most perilous
circumstances. Of the latter--his love of justice--many instances are
brought on the stage, and, among the rest, his protection of Columbus,
after the return of that great navigator from America, though aware how
much his discoveries had redounded to the honor of a rival country,
and how great had been his own error in not obtaining the benefit of
them for Portugal. But the most prominent of these instances of justice
relates to a private and personal history, and forms the main subject
of the drama. It is as follows.
Don Juan de Sosa, the king’s favorite, is twice sent by him to Spain
on embassies of consequence, and, while residing there, lives in the
family of a gentleman connected with him by blood, to whose daughter,
Leonora, he makes love and wins her affections. Each time, when Don
Juan returns to Portugal, he forgets his plighted faith and leaves the
lady to languish. At last, she comes with her father to Lisbon in the
train of the Spanish princess, Isabella, now married to the king’s son.
But even there the false knight refuses to recognize his obligations.
In her despair, she presents herself to the king, and explains her
position in the following conversation, which is a favorable specimen
of the easy narrative in which resides so much of the charm of Lope’s
drama. As Leonora enters, she exclaims:--
Prince, whom in peace and war men perfect call,
Listen a woman’s cry!
_King._ Begin;--I hear.
_Leonora._ Fadrique--he of ancient Lara’s house,
And governor of Seville--is my sire.
_King._ Pause there, and pardon first the courtesy
That owes a debt to thy name and to his,
Which ignorance alone could fail to pay.
_Leonora._ Such condescending gentleness, my lord,
Is worthy of the wisdom and the wit
Which through the world are blazoned and admired.--
But to my tale. Twice came there to Castile
A knight from this thy land, whose name I hide
Till all his frauds are manifest. For thou,
My lord, dost love him in such wise, that, wert
Thou other than thou art, my true complaints
Would fear to seek a justice they in vain
Would strive to find. Each time within our house
He dwelt a guest, and from the very first
He sought my love.
_King._ Speak on, and let not shame
Oppress thy words; for to the judge and priest
Alike confession’s voice should boldly come.
_Leonora._ I was deceived. He went and left me sad
To mourn his absence; for of them he is
Who leave behind their knightly, nobler parts,
When they themselves are long since fled and gone.
Again he came, his voice more sweetly tuned,
More syren-like, than ever. I heard the voice,
Nor knew its hidden fraud. O, would that Heaven
Had made us, in its highest justice, deaf,
Since tongues so false it gave to men! He lured,
He lured me as the fowler lures the bird
And snares in meshes hid beneath the grass.
I struggled, but in vain; for Love, heaven’s child,
Has power the mightiest fortress to subdue.
He pledged his knightly word,--in writing pledged it,--
Trusting that afterwards, in Portugal,
The debt and all might safely be denied;--
As if the heavens were narrower than the earth,
And justice not supreme. In short, my lord,
He went; and, proud and vain, the banners bore
That my submission marked, not my defeat;
For where love is, there comes no victory.
His spoils he carried to his native land,
As if they had been torn in heathen war
From Africa; such as in Arcila,
In earliest youth, thyself with glory won;
Or such as now, from shores remote, thy ships
Bring home,--dark slaves, to darker slavery.
No written word of his came back to me.
My honor wept its obsequies, and built its tomb
With Love’s extinguished torches. Soon, the prince,
Thy son, was wed with our Infanta fair,--
God grant it for a blessing to both realms!--
And with her, as ambassador, my sire
To Lisbon came, and I with him. But here--
Even here--his promises that knight denies,
And so disheartens and despises me,
That, if your Grace no remedy can find,
The end of all must be the end of life,--
So heavy is my misery.
_King._ That scroll?
Thou hast it?
_Leonora._ Surely. It were an error
Not to be repaired, if I had lost it.
_King._ It cannot be but I should know the hand,
If he who wrote it in my household serve.
_Leonora._ This is the scroll, my lord.
_King._ And John de Sosa’s is
The signature! But yet, unless mine eyes
Had seen and recognized his very hand,
I never had believed the tale thou bring’st;--
So highly deem I of his faithfulness.[330]
[330]
_D. Leo._ Principe, qu’ en paz, y en guerra,
Te llama perfeto el mundo,
Oye una muger!
_Rey._ Comiença.
_D. Leo._ Del gobernador Fadrique
De Lara soy hija.
_Rey._ Espera.
Perdona al no conocerte
La cortesia, que es deuda
Digna á tu padre y á ti.
_D. Leo._ Essa es gala y gentileza
Digna de tu ingenio claro,
Que el mundo admira y celebra.--
For dos vezes á Castilla
Fue un fidalgo desta tierra,--
Que quiero encubrir el nombre,
Hasta que su engaño sepas;
Porque le quieres de modo,
Que temiera que mis quexas
No hallaran justicia en ti,
Si otro que tu mismo fueras.
Poso entrambas en mi casa;
Solicito la primera
Mi voluntad.
_Rey._ Di adelante,
Y no te oprima verguença,
Que tambien con los juezes
Las personas se confiessan.
_D. Leo._ Agradeci sus engaños.
Partiose; llore su ausencia;
Que las partes deste hidalgo,
Quando el se parte, ellas quedan.
Boluio otra vez, y boluio
Mas dulcemente Sirena.
Con la voz no vi el engaño.
Ay, Dios! Señor, si nacieran
Las mugeres sin oydos,
Ya que los hombres con lenguas.
Llamome al fin, como suele
A la perdiz la cautela
Del caçador engañoso,
Las redes entre la yerua.
Resistime; mas que importa,
Si la mayor fortaleza
No contradize el amor,
Que es hijo de las estrellas?
Una cedula me hizo
De ser mi marido, y esta
Deuio de ser con intento
De no conocer la deuda,
En estando en Portugal,
Como si el cielo no fuera
Cielo sobre todo el mundo,
Y su justicia suprema.
Al fin, Señor, el se fue,
Ufano con las banderas
De una muger ya rendida;
Que donde hay amor, no hay fuerça.
Despojos traxo á su patria,
Como si de Africa fueran,
De los Moros, que en Arcila
Venciste en tu edad primera,
O de los remotos mares,
De cuyas blancas arenas
Te traen negros esclauos
Tus armadas Portuguesas.
Nunca mas vi letra suya.
Lloro mi amor sus obsequias,
Hize el tumulo del llanto,
Y de amor las hachas muertas.
Caso el Principe tu hijo
Con nuestra Infanta, que sea
Para bien de entrambos reynos.
Vino mi padre con ella.
Vine con el á Lisboa,
Donde este fidalgo niega
Tan justas obligaciones,
Y de suerte me desprecia,
Que me ha de quitar la vida,
Si tu Alteza no remedia
De una muger la desdicha.
_Rey._ Viue la cedula?
_D. Leo._ Fuera
Error no auerla guardado.
_Rey._ Yo conocere la letra,
Si es criado de mi casa.
_D. Leo._ Señor, la cedula es esta.
_Rey._ La firma dize, Don Juan
De Sosa! No lo creyera,
A no conocer la firma,
De su virtud y prudencia.
Comedias de Lope de Vega, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618,
ff. 143, 144.
This passage is near the end of the piece, and leads to the
_dénouement_ by one of those flowing narratives, like an Italian
_novella_, to which Lope frequently resorts, when the intriguing
fable of the drama has been carried far enough to fill up the
three customary acts.
The _dénouement_ naturally consists in the marriage, which is thus made
a record of the king’s perfect justice.
Columbus, as we have seen, appears in this piece. He is introduced with
little skill, but the dignity of his pretensions is not forgotten. In
another drama, devoted to the discovery of America, and called “The New
World of Columbus,” his character is further and more truly developed.
The play itself embraces the events of the great Admiral’s life between
his first vain effort to obtain countenance in Portugal and his
triumphant presentation of the spoils of the New World to Ferdinand
and Isabella at Barcelona,--a period amounting to about fourteen
years.[331] It is one of Lope’s more wild and extravagant attempts,
but not without marks of his peculiar talent, and fully embodies
the national feeling in regard to America, as a world rescued from
heathenism. Some of its scenes are in Portugal; others on the plain of
Granada, at the moment of its fall; others in the caravel of Columbus
during the mutiny; and yet others in the West Indies, and before his
sovereigns on his return home.
[331] Comedias, Tom. IV., Madrid, 1614; and also in the Appendix
to Ochoa’s “Teatro Escogido de Lope de Vega” (Paris, 1838, 8vo).
Fernando de Zarate took some of the materials for his “Conquista
de Mexico,” (Comedias escogidas, Tom. XXX., Madrid, 1668), such
as the opening of Jornada II., from this play of Lope de Vega.
Among the personages, besides such as might be reasonably anticipated
from the course of the story, are Gonzalvo de Córdova, sundry Moors,
several American Indians, and several spiritual beings, such as
Providence, Christianity, and Idolatry; the last of whom struggles with
great vehemence against the introduction of the Spaniards and their
religion into the New World, and in passages like the following seems
in danger of having the best of the argument.
O Providence Divine, permit them not
To do me this most plain unrighteousness!
’T is but base avarice that spurs them on.
Religion is the color and the cloak;
But gold and silver, hid within the earth,
Are all they truly seek and strive to win.[332]
[332]
No permitas, Providencia,
Hacerme esta sinjusticia;
Pues los lleua la codicia
A hacer esta diligencia.
So color de religion,
Van á buscar plata y oro
Del encubierto tesoro.
El Nuevo Mundo, Jorn. I.
The greater part of the action and the best portions of it pass in the
New World; but it is difficult to imagine any thing more extravagant
than the whole fable. Dramatic propriety is constantly set at naught.
The Indians, before the appearance of Europeans among them, sing
about Phœbus and Diana; and while, from the first, they talk nothing
but Spanish, they frequently pretend, after the arrival of the
Spaniards, to be unable to understand a word of their language. The
scene in which Idolatry pleads its cause against Christianity before
Divine Providence, the scenes with the Demon, and those touching the
conversion of the heathen, might have been presented in the rudest
of the old Moralities. Those, on the contrary, in which the natural
feelings and jealousies of the simple and ignorant natives are brought
out, and those in which Columbus appears,--always dignified and
gentle,--are not without merit. Few, however, can be said to be truly
good or poetical; and yet a poetical interest is kept up through the
worst of them, and the story they involve is followed to the end with a
living curiosity.
The common traditions are repeated, that Columbus was born at Nervi,
and that he received from a dying pilot at Madeira the charts that led
him to his grand adventure; but it is singular, that, in contradiction
to all this, Lope, in other parts of the play, should have hazarded
the suggestion, that Columbus was moved by Divine inspiration. The
friar, in the scene of the mutiny, declares it expressly; and Columbus
himself, in his discourse with his brother Bartholomew, when their
fortunes seemed all but desperate, plainly alludes to it, when he
says,--
A hidden Deity still drives me on,
Bidding me trust the truth of what I feel,
And, if I watch, or if I sleep, impels
The strong will boldly to work out its way.
But what is this that thus possesses me?
What spirit is it drives me onward thus?
Where am I borne? What is the road I take?
What track of destiny is this I tread?
And what the impulse that I blindly follow?
Am I not poor, unknown, a broken man,
Depending on the pilot’s anxious trade?
And shall I venture on the mighty task
To add a distant world to this we know?[333]
[333]
Una secreta deidad
A que lo intente me impele,
Diciéndome que es verdad,
Que en fin, que duerma ó que vele,
Persigue mi voluntad.
Que es esto que ha entrado en mí?
Quien me lleva ó mueve ansí?
Donde voy, donde camino?
Que derrota, que destino
Sigo, ó me conduce aquí?
Un hombre pobre, y aun roto,
Que ansí lo puedo decir,
Y que vive de piloto,
Quiere á este mundo añadir
Otro mundo tan remoto!
El Nuevo Mundo, Jorn. I.
The conception of the character in this particular is good, and, being
founded, as we know it was, on the personal convictions of Columbus
himself, might have been followed out by further developments with
poetical effect. But the opportunity is neglected, and, like many
other occasions for success, is thrown away by Lope, through haste and
carelessness.
Another of the dramas of this class, “El Castigo sin Venganza,” or
Punishment, not Revenge, is important from the mode in which its
subject is treated, and interesting from the circumstance that its
history can be more exactly traced than that of any other of Lope’s
plays. It is founded on the dark and hideous story in the annals of
Ferrara, during the fifteenth century, which Lord Byron found in
Gibbon’s “Antiquities of the House of Brunswick,” and made the subject
of his “Parisina,”[334] but which Lope, following the old chronicles of
the duchy, has presented in a somewhat different light, and thrown with
no little skill into a dramatic form.
[334] The story was well known, from its peculiar horrors, though
the events occurred in 1405,--more than two centuries before the
date of the play. Lope, in the Preface to his version of it, says
it was extant in Latin, French, German, Tuscan, and Castilian.
The Duke of Ferrara, in his tragedy, is a person of mark and spirit; a
commander of the Papal forces, and a prince of statesmanlike experience
and virtues. He marries when already past the middle age of life, and
sends his natural son, Frederic, to receive his beautiful bride, a
daughter of the Duke of Mantua, and to conduct her to Ferrara. Before
he reaches Mantua, however, Frederic meets her accidentally on the way;
and his first interview with his step-mother is when he rescues her
from drowning. From this moment they become gradually more and more
attached to each other, until their attachment ends in guilt; partly
through the strong impulses of their own natures, and partly from the
coldness and faithlessness of the Duke to his young and passionate wife.
On his return home from a successful campaign, the Duke discovers the
intrigue. A struggle ensues between his affection for his son and the
stinging sense of his own dishonor. At last he determines to punish;
but in such a manner as to hide the grounds of his offence. To effect
this, he confines his wife in a darkened room, and so conceals and
secures her person, that she can neither move, nor speak, nor be seen.
He then sends his offending son to her, under the pretence that beneath
the pall that hides her is placed a traitor, whom the son is required
to kill in order to protect his father’s life; and when the desperate
young man rushes from the room, ignorant who has been his victim, he is
instantly cut down by the by-standers, on his father’s outcry, that he
has just murdered his step-mother, with whose blood his hands are, in
fact, visibly reeking.
Lope finished this play on the 1st of August, 1631, when he was nearly
sixty-nine years old; and yet there are few of his dramas, in the class
to which it belongs, that are more marked with poetical vigor, and in
none is the versification more light and various.[335] The characters,
especially those of the father and son, are better defined and better
sustained than usual; and the whole was evidently written with care,
for there are not infrequently large alterations, as well as many
minute verbal corrections, in the original manuscript, which is still
extant.
[335] This play contains all the usual varieties of
measure,--_redondillas_, _tercetas_, a sonnet, etc.; but
especially, in the first act, a _silva_ of beautiful fluency.
It was not licensed for representation till the 9th of May,
1632,--apparently from the known unwillingness of the court to have
persons of rank, like the Duke of Ferrara, brought upon the stage in a
light so odious. At any rate, when the tardy permission was granted,
it was accompanied with a certificate that the Duke was treated with
“the decorum due to his person”; though, even with this assurance, it
was acted but once, notwithstanding it made a strong impression at
the time, and was brought out by the company of Figueroa, the most
successful of the period,--Arias, whose acting Montalvan praises
highly, taking the part of the son. In 1634, Lope printed it, with more
than common care, at Barcelona, dedicating it to his great patron, the
Duke of Sessa, among “the servants of whose house,” he says, he “was
inscribed”; and the next year, immediately after his death, it appeared
again, without the Dedication, in the twenty-first volume of his plays,
prepared anew by himself for the press, but published by his daughter
Feliciana.[336]
[336] I possess the original MS., entirely in Lope’s handwriting,
with many alterations, corrections, and interlineations by
himself. It is prepared for the actors, and has the certificate
to license it by Pedro de Vargas Machuca, a poet himself, and
Lope’s friend, who was much employed to license plays for
the theatre. He also figured at the “Justas Poéticas” of San
Isidro, published by Lope in 1620 and 1622; and in the “Justa”
in honor of the Vírgen del Pilar, published by Caceres in 1629;
in neither of which, however, do his poems give proof of much
talent, though there is no doubt of his popularity with his
contemporaries. (Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. IV. p. 199.) At
the top of each page in the MS. of Lope de Vega is a cross with
the names or ciphers of “Jesus, Maria, Josephus, Christus”; and
at the end, “Laus Deo et Mariæ Virgini,” with the date of its
completion and the signature of the author. Whether Lope thought
it possible to consecrate the gross immoralities of such a drama
by religious symbols, I do not know; but if he did, it would not
be inconsistent with his character or the spirit of his time. A
cross was commonly put at the top of Spanish letters,--a practice
alluded to in Lope’s “Perro del Hortelano,” (Jornada II.), and
one that must have led often to similar incongruities.
Like “Punishment, not Vengeance,” several other dramas of its class are
imbued with the deepest spirit of tragedy. “The Knights Commanders of
Córdova” is an instance in point.[337] It is a parallel to the story
of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra in its horrors; but the husband, instead
of meeting the fate of Agamemnon, puts to death, not only his guilty
wife, but all his servants and every living thing in his household, to
satisfy his savage sense of honor. Poetry is not wanting in some of
its scenes, but the atrocities of the rest will hardly permit it to be
perceived.
[337] Comedias, Tom. II., Madrid, 1609. Thrice, at
least,--viz., in this play, in his “Fuente Ovejuna,” and in his
“Peribañez,”--Lope has shown us commanders of the great military
orders of his country in very odious colors, representing them as
men of the most fierce pride and the grossest passions, like the
Front-de-Bœuf of Ivanhoe.
“The Star of Seville,” on the other hand, though much more truly
tragic, is liable to no such objection.[338] In some respects it
resembles Corneille’s “Cid.” At the command of his king and from the
loftiest loyalty, a knight of Seville kills his friend, a brother of
the lady whom he is about to marry. The king afterwards endeavours
to hold him harmless for the crime; but the royal judges refuse to
interrupt the course of the law in his favor, and the brave knight
is saved from death only by the plenary confession of his guilty
sovereign. It is one of the very small number of Lope’s pieces that
have no comic and distracting underplot. Not a few of its scenes are
admirable; especially that in which the king urges the knight to
kill his friend; that in which the lovely and innocent creature whom
the knight is about to marry receives, in the midst of the frank and
delightful expressions of her happiness, the dead body of her brother,
who has been slain by her lover; and that in which the Alcaldes
solemnly refuse to wrest the law in obedience to the royal commands.
The conclusion is better than that in the tragedy of Corneille. The
lady abandons the world and retires to a convent.
[338] Old copies of this play are excessively scarce, and I
obtained, therefore, many years ago, a manuscript of it, from
which it was reprinted twice in this country by Mr. F. Sales,
in his “Obras Maestras Dramáticas” (Boston, 1828 and 1840); the
last time with corrections, kindly furnished by Don A. Duran, of
Madrid;--a curious fact in Spanish bibliography, and one that
should be mentioned to the honor of Mr. Sales, whose various
publications have done much to spread the love of Spanish
literature in the United States, and to whom I am indebted for my
first knowledge of it. The same play is well known on the modern
Spanish stage, and has been reprinted, both at Madrid and London,
with large alterations, under the title of “Sancho Ortis de las
Roelas.” An excellent abstract of it, in its original state, and
faithful translations of parts of it, are to be found in Lord
Holland’s Life of Lope (Vol. I. pp. 155-200); out of which, and
not out of the Spanish original, Baron Zedlitz composed “Der
Stern von Sevilla”; a play by no means without merit, which
was printed at Stuttgard in 1830, and has been often acted in
different parts of Germany.
Of the great number of Lope’s heroic dramas on national subjects, a few
should be noticed, in order to indicate the direction he gave to this
division of his theatre. One, for instance, is on the story of Bamba,
taken from the plough to be made king of Spain;[339] and another,
“The Last Goth,” is on the popular traditions of the loss of Spain by
Roderic;[340]--the first being among the earliest of his published
plays,[341] and the last not printed till twelve years after his
death, but both written in one spirit and upon the same system. On the
attractive subject of Bernardo del Carpio he has several dramas. One is
called “The Youthful Adventures of Bernardo,” and relates his exploits
down to the time when he discovered the secret of his birth. Another,
called “Bernardo in France,” gives us the story of that part of his
life for which the ballads and chronicles afford only slight hints. And
a third, “Marriage in Death,” involves the misconduct of King Alfonso,
and the heart-rending scene in which the dead body of Bernardo’s father
is delivered to the hero, who has sacrificed every thing to filial
piety, and now finds himself crushed and ruined by it.[342] The seven
Infantes of Lara are not passed over, as we see both in the play that
bears their name, and in the more striking one on the story of Mudarra,
“El Bastardo Mudarra.”[343] Indeed, it seems as if no picturesque point
in the national annals were overlooked by Lope;[344] and that, after
bringing on the stage the great events in Spanish history and tradition
consecutively down to his own times, he looks round on all sides for
subjects, at home and abroad, taking one from the usurpation of Boris
Gudunow at Moscow, in 1606,[345] another from the conquest of Arauco,
in 1560,[346] and another from the great league that ended with the
battle of Lepanto, in 1571; in which last, to avoid the awkwardness
of a sea-fight on the stage, he is guilty of introducing the greater
awkwardness of an allegorical figure of Spain describing the battle to
the audience in Madrid, at the very moment when it is supposed to be
going on near the shores of Greece.[347]
[339] Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, ff. 91, etc., in which
Lope has wisely followed the old monkish traditions, rather than
either the “Crónica General,” (Parte II. c. 51), or the yet more
sobered account of Mariana, Hist., Lib. VI. c. 12.
[340] Comedias, Tom. XXV., Çaragoça, 1647, ff. 369, etc. It is
called “Tragicomedia.”
[341] The first edition of the first volume of Lope’s plays is
that of Valladolid, 1604. See Brunet, etc.
[342] The first two of these plays, which are not to be found in
the collected dramatic works of Lope, have often been printed
separately; but the last occurs, I believe, only in the first
volume of the Comedias, (Valladolid, 1604, f. 98), and in
the reprints of it. It makes free use of the old ballads of
Durandarte and Belorma.
[343] The “Siete Infantes de Lara” is in the Comedias, Tom.
V., Madrid, 1615; and the “Bastardo Mudarra” is in Tom. XXIV.,
Zaragoza, 1641.
[344] Thus, the attractive story of “El Mejor Alcalde el Rey” is,
as he himself tells us at the conclusion, taken from the fourth
part of the “Crónica General.”
[345] “El Gran Duque de Muscovia,” Comedias, Tom. VII., Madrid,
1617.
[346] “Arauco Domado,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629.
The scene is laid about 1560; but the play is intended as a
compliment to the living son of the conqueror. In the Dedication
to him, Lope asserts it to be a true history; but there is, of
course, much invention mingled with it, especially in the parts
that do honor to the Spaniards. Among its personages is the
author of the “Araucana,” Alonso de Ercilla, who comes upon the
stage beating a drum. Another and earlier play of Lope may be
compared with the “Arauco”; I mean “Los Guanches de Tenerife”
(Comedias, Tom. X., Madrid, 1620, f. 128). It is on the similar
subject of the conquest of the Canary Islands, in the time of
Ferdinand and Isabella, and, as in the “Arauco Domado,” the
natives occupy much of the canvas.
[347] “La Santa Liga,” Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621.
The whole class of these heroic and historical dramas, it should be
remembered, makes little claim to historical accuracy. A love-story,
filled as usual with hairbreadth escapes, jealous quarrels, and
questions of honor, runs through nearly every one of them; and though,
in some cases, we may trust to the facts set before us, as we must in
“The Valiant Cespedes,” where the poet gravely declares that all except
the love adventures are strictly true,[348] still, in no case can it be
pretended, that the manners of an earlier age, or of foreign nations,
are respected, or that the general coloring of the representation is
to be regarded as faithful. Thus, in one play we see Nero hurrying
about the streets of Rome, like a Spanish gallant, with a guitar on
his arm, and making love to his mistress at her grated window.[349] In
another, Belisarius, in the days of his glory, is selected to act the
part of Pyramus in an interlude before the Emperor Justinian, much as
if he belonged to Nick Bottom’s company, and afterwards has his eyes
put out, on a charge of making love to the Empress.[350] And in yet a
third, Cyrus the Great, after he is seated on his throne, marries a
shepherdess.[351] But there is no end to such absurdities in Lope’s
plays; and the explanation of them all is, that they were not felt to
be such at the time. Truth and faithfulness in regard to the facts,
manners, and costume of a drama were not supposed to be more important,
in the age of Lope, than an observation of the unities;--not more
important than they were supposed to be a century later, in France, in
the unending romances of Calprenède and Scudéry;--not more important
than they are deemed in an Italian opera now:--so profound is the
thought of the greatest of all the masters of the historical drama,
that “the best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no
worse, if imagination amend them.”
[348] “El Valiente Cespedes,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629.
This notice is specially given to the reader by Lope, out of
tenderness to the reputation of Doña María de Cespedes, who does
not appear in the play with all the dignity which those who, in
Lope’s time, claimed to be descended from her might exact at his
hands.
[349] In “Roma Abrasada,” Acto II. f. 89, already noticed,
_ante_, p. 193.
[350] Jornada II. of “Exemplo Mayor de la Desdicha, y Capitan
Belisario”; not in the collection of Lope’s plays, and though
often printed separately as his, and inserted as such on Lord
Holland’s list, it is published in the old and curious collection
entitled “Comedias de Diferentes Autores,” (4to, Tom. XXV.,
Zaragoza, 1633), as the work of Montalvan, both he and Lope being
then alive.
[351] “Contra Valor no hay Desdicha.” Like the last, it has been
often reprinted. It begins with the romantic account of Cyrus’s
exposure to death, in consequence of his grandfather’s dream,
and ends with a battle and his victory over Astyages and all his
enemies.
CHAPTER XVII.
LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.--DRAMAS THAT ARE FOUNDED ON THE MANNERS OF
COMMON LIFE.--THE WISE MAN AT HOME.--THE DAMSEL THEODORA.--CAPTIVES
IN ALGIERS.--INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH ON THE DRAMA.--LOPE’S PLAYS FROM
SCRIPTURE.--THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.--THE CREATION OF THE WORLD.--LOPE’S
PLAYS ON THE LIVES OF SAINTS.--SAINT ISIDORE OF MADRID.--LOPE’S
SACRAMENTAL AUTOS FOR THE FESTIVAL OF THE CORPUS CHRISTI.--THEIR
PROLOGUES.--THEIR INTERLUDES.--THE AUTOS THEMSELVES.
The historical drama of Lope was but a deviation from the more
truly national type of the “Comedia de Capa y Espada,” made by the
introduction of historical names for its leading personages, instead of
those that belong to fashionable and knightly life. This, however, was
not the only deviation he made.[352] He went sometimes quite as far on
the other side, and created a variety or subdivision of the theatre,
founded _on common life_, in which the chief personages, like those
of “The Watermaid,” and “The Slave of her Lover,” belong to the lower
classes of society.[353] Of such dramas he has left only a few, but
these few are interesting.
[352] We occasionally meet with the phrase _comedias de ruido_;
but it does not mean a class of plays separated from the others
by different rules of composition. It refers to the machinery
used in their exhibition; so that _comedias de capa y espada_,
and especially _comedias de santos_, which often demanded a large
apparatus, were not unfrequently _comedias de ruido_. In the same
way, _comedias de apariencias_ were plays demanding much scenery
and scene-shifting.
[353] “La Moza de Cantaro” and “La Esclava de su Galan” have
continued to be favorites down to our own times. The first was
printed at London, not many years ago, and the last at Paris,
in Ochoa’s collection, 1838, 8vo, and at Bielefeld, in that of
Schütz, 1840, 8vo.
Perhaps the best specimen of them is “The Wise Man at Home,” in
which the hero, if he may be so called, is Mendo, the son of a poor
charcoal-burner.[354] He has married the only child of a respectable
farmer, and is in an easy condition of life, with the road to
advancement, at least in a gay course, open before him. But he prefers
to remain where he is. He refuses the solicitations of a neighbouring
lawyer or clerk, engaged in public affairs, who would have the honest
Mendo take upon himself the airs of an _hidalgo_ and _caballero_.
Especially upon what was then the great point in private life,--his
relations with his pretty wife,--he shows his uniform good sense, while
his more ambitious friend falls into serious embarrassments, and is
obliged at last to come to him for counsel and help.
[354] Comedias, Tom. VI., Madrid, 1615, ff. 101, etc. It may be
worth notice, that the character of Mendo is like that of Camacho
in the Second Part of Don Quixote, which was first printed in the
same year, 1615. The resemblance between the two, however, is not
very strong, and I dare say is wholly accidental.
The doctrine of the piece is well explained in the following reply of
Mendo to his friend, who had been urging him to lead a more showy life,
and raise the external circumstances of his father.
He that was born to live in humble state
Makes but an awkward knight, do what you will.
My father means to die as he has lived,
The same plain collier that he always was;
And I, too, must an honest ploughman die.
’T is but a single step, or up or down;
For men there must be that will plough and dig,
And, when the vase has once been filled, be sure
’T will always savor of what first it held.[355]
[355]
El que nacio para humilde
Mal puede ser cauallero.
Mi padre quiere morir,
Leonardo, como nacio.
Carbonero me engendró;
Labrador quiero morir.
Y al fin es un grado mas,
Aya quien are y quien caue.
Siempre el vaso al licor sabe.
Comedias, Tom. VI, Madrid, 1615, f. 117.
The story is less important than it is in many of Lope’s dramas;
but the sketches of common life are sometimes spirited, like the one
in which Mendo describes his first sight of his future wife busied
in household work, and the elaborate scene where his first child is
christened.[356] The characters, on the other hand, are better defined
and drawn than is common with him; and that of the plain, practically
wise Mendo is sustained, from beginning to end, with consistency and
skill, as well as with good dramatic effect.[357]
[356] There is in these passages something of the euphuistical
style then in favor, under the name of the _estilo culto_, with
which Lope sometimes humored the more fashionable portions of his
audience, though on other occasions he bore a decided testimony
against it.
[357] This play, I think, gave the hint to Calderon for his
“Alcalde de Zalamea,” in which the character of Pedro Crespo, the
peasant, is drawn with more than his accustomed distinctness.
It is the last piece in the common collection of Calderon’s
Comedias, and nearly all its characters are happily touched.
Another of these more domestic pieces is called “The Damsel Theodora,”
and shows how gladly and with what ingenuity Lope seized on the
stories current in his time and turned them to dramatic account. The
tale he now used, which bears the same name with the play, and is
extremely simple in its structure, was written by an Aragonese, of
whom we know only that his name was Alfonso.[358] The damsel Theodora,
in this original fiction, is a slave in Tunis, and belongs to a
Hungarian merchant living there, who has lost his whole fortune. At her
suggestion, she is offered by her master to the king of Tunis, who is
so much struck with her beauty and with the amount of her knowledge,
that he purchases her at a price which reëstablishes her master’s
condition. The point of the whole consists in the exhibition of this
knowledge through discussions with learned men; but the subjects are
most of them of the commonest kind, and the merit of the story is quite
inconsiderable,--less, for instance, than that of “Friar Bacon,” in
English, to which, in several respects, it may be compared.[359]
[358] This is among the more curious of the old popular Spanish
tales. N. Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 9) assigns no age to
its author, and no date to the published story. Denis, in his
“Chroniques de l’Espagne,” etc., (Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. I. p.
285) gives no additional light, but, in one of his notes, treats
its ideas on natural history as those of the _moyen âge_. It
seems, however, from internal evidence, to have been composed
after the fall of Granada. Brunet (Table, No. 17,572) notices
an edition of it in 1607. The copy I use is of 1726, showing
that it was in favor in the eighteenth century; and I possess
another printed for popular circulation about 1845. We find early
allusions to the Donzella Teodor, as a well-known personage; for
example, in the “Modest Man at Court” of Tirso de Molina, where
one of the characters, speaking of a lady he admires, cries out,
“Que Donzella Teodor!” Cigarrales de Toledo, Madrid, 1624, 4to,
p. 158.
[359] The popular English story of “Fryer Bacon” hardly goes back
farther than to the end of the sixteenth century, though some
of its materials may be traced to the “Gesta Romanorum.” Robert
Greene’s play on it was printed in 1594. Both may be considered
as running parallel with the story and play of the “Donzella
Teodor,” so as to be read with advantage when comparing the
Spanish drama with the English.
But Lope knew his audiences, and succeeded in adapting this old tale
to their taste. The damsel Theodora, as he arranges her character for
the stage, is the daughter of a professor at Toledo, and is educated in
all the learning of her father’s schools. She, however, is not raised
by it above the influences of the tender passion, and, running away
with her lover, is captured by a vessel from the coast of Barbary,
and carried as a slave successively to Oran, to Constantinople, and
finally to Persia, where she is sold to the Sultan for an immense sum
on account of her rare knowledge, displayed in the last act of the play
much as it is in the original tale of Alfonso, and sometimes in the
same words. But the love intrigue, with a multitude of jealous troubles
and adventures, runs through the whole; and as the Sultan is made to
understand at last the relations of all the parties, who are strangely
assembled before him, he gives the price of the damsel as her dower,
and marries her to the lover with whom she originally fled from Toledo.
The principal jest, both in the drama and the story, is, that a
learned doctor, who is defeated by Theodora in a public trial of wits,
is bound by the terms of the contest to be stripped naked, and buys off
his ignominy with a sum which goes still further to increase the lady’s
fortune and the content of her husband.[360]
[360] Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 27, etc.