[489] The “Cartas del Cavallero de la Tenaza” were first printed,

I believe, in 1635; and there is a very good translation of them

in Band I. of the Magazin of Bertuch, an active man of letters,

the friend of Musäus, Wieland, and Goethe, who, by translations

and in other ways, did much, between 1769 and 1790, to promote a

love for Spanish literature in Germany.

The next is called “Fortune no Fool, and the Hour of All”;--a long

apologue, in which Jupiter, surrounded by the deities of Heaven,

calls Fortune to account for her gross injustice in the affairs of

the world; and, having received from her a defence no less spirited

than amusing, determines to try the experiment, for a single hour,

of apportioning to every human being exactly what he deserves. The

substance of the fiction, therefore, is an exhibition of the scenes of

intolerable confusion which this single hour brings into the affairs of

the world; turning a physician instantly into an executioner; marrying

a match-maker to the ugly phantom she was endeavouring to pass off

upon another; and, in the larger concerns of nations, like France and

Muscovy, introducing such violence and uproar, that, at last, by the

decision of Jupiter and with the consent of all, the empire of Fortune

is restored, and things are allowed to go on as they always had done.

Many parts of it are written in the gayest spirit, and show a great

happiness of invention; but, from the absence of much of Quevedo’s

accustomed bitterness, it may be suspected, that, though it was not

printed till several years after his death, it was probably written

before either of his imprisonments.[490]

[490] I know of no edition of “La Fortuna con Seso” earlier than

one I possess, printed at Zaragoza, 1650, 12mo; and as N. Antonio

declares this satire to have been a posthumous work, I suppose

there is none older. It is there said to be translated from the

Latin of Rifroscrancot Viveque Vasgel Duacense; an imperfect

anagram of Quevedo’s own name, Francisco Quevedo Villegas.

But what is wanting of severity in this whimsical fiction is fully made

up in his Visions, six or seven in number, some of which seem to have

been published separately soon after his first persecution, and all of

them in 1635.[491] Nothing can well be more free and miscellaneous than

their subjects and contents. One, called “El Alguazil alguazilado,”

or The Catchpole Caught, is a satire on the inferior officers of

justice, one of whom being possessed, the demon complains bitterly

of his disgrace in being sent to inhabit the body of a creature so

infamous. Another, called “Visita de los Chistes,” A Visit in Jest, is

a visit to the empire of Death, who comes sweeping in surrounded by

physicians, surgeons, and especially a great crowd of idle talkers and

slanderers, and leads them all to a sight of the infernal regions, with

which Quevedo at once declares he is already familiar, in the crimes

and follies to which he has long been accustomed on earth. But a more

distinct idea of his free and bold manner will probably be obtained

from the opening of his “Dream of Skulls,” or “Dream of the Judgment,”

than from any enumeration of the subjects and contents of his Visions;

especially since, in this instance, it is a specimen of that mixture of

the solemn and the ludicrous in which he so much delighted.

[491] One of these _Sueños_ is dated as early as 1608,--the

“Zahurdas de Pluton”; but none, I think, was printed earlier than

1627; and all the six that are certainly by Quevedo were first

printed together in a small collection of his satirical works

that appeared at Barcelona, in 1635, entitled “Juguetes de la

Fortuna.” They were translated into French by Genest, and printed

in 1641. Into English they were very freely rendered by Sir

Roger L’Estrange, and published in 1668 with such success, that

the tenth edition of them was printed at London in 1708, 8vo,

and I believe there was yet one more. This is the basis of the

translations of the Visions found in Quevedo’s Works, Edinburgh,

1798, Vol. I., and in Roscoe’s Novelists, 1832, Vol. II. All the

translations I have seen are bad. The best is that of L’Estrange,

or at least the most spirited; but still L’Estrange is not always

faithful when he knew the meaning, and he is sometimes unfaithful

from ignorance. Indeed, the great popularity of his translations

was probably owing, in some degree, to the additions he boldly

made to his text, and the frequent accommodations he hazarded

of its jests to the scandal and taste of his times by allusions

entirely English and local.

“Methought I saw,” he says, “a fair youth borne with prodigious speed

through the heavens, who gave a blast to his trumpet so violent, that

the radiant beauty of his countenance was in part disfigured by it.

But the sound was of such power, that it found obedience in marble and

hearing among the dead; for the whole earth began straightway to move,

and to give free permission to the bones it contained to come forth

in search of each other. And thereupon I presently saw those who had

been soldiers and captains start fiercely from their graves, thinking

it a signal for battle; and misers coming forth, full of anxiety and

alarm, dreading some onslaught; while those who were given to vanity

and feasting thought, from the shrillness of the sound, that it was a

call to the dance or the chase. At least, so I interpreted the looks

of each of them, as they started forth; nor did I see one, to whose

ears the sound of that trumpet came, who understood it to be what it

really was. Soon, however, I noted the way in which certain souls fled

from their former bodies; some with loathing, and others with fear.

In one an arm was missing, in another an eye; and while I was moved

to laughter as I saw the varieties of their appearance, I was filled

with wonder at the wise providence which prevented any one of them,

all shuffled together as they were, from putting on the legs or other

limbs of his neighbours. In one grave-yard alone I thought that there

was some changing of heads, and I saw a notary whose soul did not quite

suit him, and who wanted to get rid of it by declaring it to be none of

his.

“But when it was fairly understood of all that this was the Day of

Judgment, it was worth seeing how the voluptuous tried to avoid

having their eyes found for them, that they need not bring into court

witnesses against themselves,--how the malicious tried to avoid their

own tongues, and how robbers and assassins seemed willing to wear

out their feet in running away from their hands. And turning partly

round, I saw one miser asking another, (who, having been embalmed and

his bowels left at a distance, was waiting silently till they should

arrive), whether, because the dead were to rise that day, certain

money-bags of his must also rise. I should have laughed heartily at

this, if I had not, on the other side, pitied the eagerness with

which a great rout of notaries rushed by, flying from their own ears,

in order to avoid hearing what awaited them, though none succeeded

in escaping, except those who in this world had lost their ears as

thieves, which, owing to the neglect of justice, was by no means the

majority. But what I most wondered at was, to see the bodies of two or

three shop-keepers, that had put on their souls wrong side out, and

crowded all five of their senses under the nails of their right hands.”

The “Casa de los Locos de Amor,” the Lovers’ Mad-house,--which is

placed among Quevedo’s Visions, though it is the work of his friend

Lorenzo Vander Hammen, to whom it is dedicated,--lacks, no doubt, the

freedom and force which characterize the Vision of the Judgment.[492]

But this is a remark that can by no means be extended to the Vision of

“Las Zahurdas de Pluton,” Pluto’s Pigsties, which is a show of what

may be called the rabble of Pandemonium; “El Mundo por de Dentro,” The

World Inside Out; and “El Entremetido, la Dueña, y el Soplon,” The

Busy-body, the Duenna, and the Informer;--all of which are full of the

most truculent sarcasm, recklessly cast about, by one to whom the world

had not been a friend, nor the world’s law.

[492] The six unquestioned _Sueños_ are in Tom. I. of the Madrid

edition of Quevedo, 1791. The “Casa de los Locos de Amor” is in

Tom. II.; and as N. Antonio (Bib. Nov., I. 462, and II. 10) says

Vander Hammen, a Spanish author of Flemish descent, _told him_

that he wrote it himself, we are bound to take it from the proper

list of Quevedo’s works.

In these Visions, as well as in nearly all that Quevedo wrote, much is

to be found that indicates a bold, original, and independent spirit.

His age and the circumstances amidst which he was placed have, however,

left their traces both on his poetry and on his prose. Thus, his long

residence in Italy is seen in his frequent imitations of the Italian

poets, and once, at least, in the composition of an original Italian

sonnet;[493]--his cruel sufferings during his different persecutions

are apparent in the bitterness of his invectives everywhere, and

especially in one of his Visions, dated from his prison, against

the administration of justice and the order of society;--while the

influence of the false taste of his times, which, in some of its forms,

he manfully resisted, is yet no less apparent in others, and persecutes

him with a perpetual desire to be brilliant, to say something quaint

or startling, and to be pointed and epigrammatic. But over these,

and over all his other defects, his genius from time to time rises,

and reveals itself with great power. He has not, indeed, that sure

perception of the ridiculous which leads Cervantes, as if by instinct,

to the exact measure of satirical retribution; but he perceives quickly

and strongly; and though he often errs, from the exaggeration and

coarseness to which he so much tended, yet, even in the passages where

these faults most occur, we often find touches of a solemn and tender

beauty, that show he had higher powers and better qualities than his

extraordinary wit, and add to the effect of the whole, though without

reconciling us to the broad and gross farce that is too often mingled

with his satire.[494]

[493] Obras, Tom. VII. p. 289.

[494] A violent attack was made on Quevedo, ten years before his

death, in a volume entitled “El Tribunal de la Justa Venganza,”

printed at Valencia, 1635, 12mo, pp. 294, and said to be written

by the Licenciado Arnaldo Franco-Furt; probably a pseudonyme. It

is thrown into the form of a trial, before regular judges, of the

satirical works of Quevedo then published; and, except when the

religious prejudices of the author prevail over his judgment,

is not more severe than Quevedo’s license merited. No honor,

however, is done to his genius or his wit; and personal malice

seems apparent in many parts of it.

In 1794, Sancha printed, at Madrid, a translation of Anacreon,

with notes by Quevedo, making 160 pages, but not numbering them

as a part of the eleventh volume, 8vo, of Quevedo’s Works, which

he completed that year. They are more in the terse and classical

manner of the Bachiller de la Torre than the same number of pages

anywhere among Quevedo’s acknowledged works; but the translation

is not very strict, and the spirit of the original is not so well

caught as it is by Estévan Manuel de Villegas, whose “Eróticas”

will be noticed hereafter. The version of Quevedo is dedicated to

the Duke of Ossuna, his patron, Madrid, 1st April, 1609. Villegas

did not publish till 1617; but it is not likely that he knew any

thing of the labors of Quevedo.

CHAPTER XX.

THE DRAMA.--MADRID AND ITS THEATRES.--DAMIAN DE VEGAS.--FRANCISCO

DE TARREGA.--GASPAR DE AGUILAR.--GUILLEN DE CASTRO.--LUIS VÉLEZ DE

GUEVARA.--JUAN PEREZ DE MONTALVAN.

The want of a great capital, as a common centre for letters and

literary men, was long felt in Spain. Until the time of Ferdinand and

Isabella, the country, broken into separate kingdoms and occupied

by continual conflicts with a hated enemy, had no leisure for the

projects that belong to a period of peace; and even later, when there

was tranquillity at home, the foreign wars and engrossing interests of

Charles the Fifth in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands led him so

much abroad, that there was still little tendency to settle the rival

claims of the great cities; and the court resided occasionally in each

of them, as it had from the time of Saint Ferdinand. But already it

was plain that the preponderance which for a time had been enjoyed

by Seville was gone. Castile had prevailed in this, as it had in the

greater contest for giving a language to the country; and Madrid, which

had been a favorite residence of the Emperor, because he thought its

climate dealt gently with his infirmities, began, from 1560, under the

arrangements of Philip the Second, to be regarded as the real capital

of the whole monarchy.[495]

[495] Quintana, Historia de Madrid, 1630, folio, Lib. III., c.

24-26. Cabrera, Historia de Felipe II., Madrid, 1619, folio, Lib.

V., c. 9; where he says Charles V. had intended to make Madrid

his capital.

On no department of Spanish literature did this circumstance produce

so considerable an influence as it did on the drama. In 1583, the

foundations for the two regular theatres that have continued such

ever since were already laid; and from about 1590, Lope de Vega, if

not the absolute monarch of the stage that Cervantes describes him

to have been, was, at least, its controlling spirit. The natural

consequences followed. Under the influence of the nobility, who

thronged to the royal residence, and led by the example of one of the

most popular writers and men that ever lived, the Spanish theatre

rose like an exhalation; and a school of poets--many of whom had

hastened from Seville, Valencia, and other parts of the country, and

thus extinguished the hopes of an independent drama in the cities

they deserted--was collected around him in the new capital, until the

dramatic writers of Madrid became suddenly more numerous, and in many

respects more remarkable, than any other similar body of poets in

modern times.

The period of this transition of the drama is well marked by a single

provincial play, the “Comedia Jacobina,” printed at Toledo in 1590,

but written, as its author intimates, some years earlier. It was the

work of Damian de Vegas, an ecclesiastic of that city, and is on the

subject of the blessing of Jacob by Isaac. Its structure is simple, and

its action direct and unembarrassed. As it is religious throughout,

it belongs, in this respect, to the elder school of the drama; but,

on the other hand, as it is divided into three acts, has a prologue

and epilogue, a chorus, and much lyrical poetry in various measures,

including the _terza rima_ and blank verse, it is not unlike what was

attempted about the same time, on the secular stage, by Cervantes and

Argensola. Though uninteresting in its plot, and dry and hard in its

versification, it is not wholly without poetical merit; but we have no

proof that it ever was acted in Madrid, or, indeed, that it was known

on the stage beyond the limits of Toledo; a city to which its author

was much attached, and where he seems always to have lived.[496]

[496] The “Comedia Jacobina” is found in a curious and rare

volume of religious poetry, entitled “Libro de Poesía,

Christiana, Moral, y Divina,” por el Doctor Frey Damian de

Vegas (Toledo, 1590, 12mo, ff. 503). It contains a poem on

the Immaculate Conception, long the turning-point of Spanish

orthodoxy; a colloquy between the Soul, the Will, and the

Understanding, which may have been represented; and a great

amount of religious poetry, both lyric and didactic, much of it

in the old Spanish measures, and much in the Italian, but none

better than the mass of poor verse on such subjects then in favor.

Whether Francisco de Tarrega, who can be traced from 1591 to 1608, was

one of those who early came from Valencia to Madrid as writers for the

theatre is uncertain. But we have proof that he was a canon of the

cathedral in the first-named city, and yet was well known in the new

capital, where his plays were acted and printed.[497] One of them is

important, because it shows the modes of representation in his time,

as well as the peculiarities of his own drama. It begins with a _loa_,

which in this case is truly a compliment, as its name implies; but

it is, at the same time, a witty and quaint ballad in praise of ugly

women. Then comes what is called a “Dance at Leganitos,”--a popular

resort in the suburbs of Madrid, which here gives its name to a rude

farce founded on a contest in the open street between two lackeys.[498]

[497] It is ascertained that the Canon Tarrega lived at Valencia

in 1591, and wrote eleven plays, two of which are known only by

their titles. The rest were printed at Madrid in 1614, and again

in 1616. Cervantes praises him in the Preface to his Comedias,

1615, among the early followers of Lope, for his _discrecion é

inumerables conceptos_. It is evident from the notice of the

“Enemiga Favorable,” by the wise canon in Don Quixote, that it

was then regarded as the best of its author’s plays, as it has

been ever since. Rodriguez, Biblioteca Valentina, Valencia, 1747,

folio, p. 146. Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Valencia, 1747,

Tom. I. p. 240. Fuster, Biblioteca Valentina, Valencia, 1827,

folio, Tom. I. p. 310. Don Quixote, Parte I., c. 48.

[498] This farce, much like an _entremes_ or _saynete_ of modern

times, is a quarrel between two lackeys for a damsel of their

own condition, which ends with one of them being half drowned by

the other in a public fountain. It winds up with a ballad older

than itself; for it alludes to a street as being about to be

constructed through Leganitos, while one of the personages in

the farce speaks of the street as already there. The fountain is

appropriately introduced, for Leganitos was famous for it. (See

Cervantes, Ilustre Fregona, and D. Quixote, Parte II., c. 22,

with the note of Pellicer.) Such little circumstances abound in

the popular portions of the old Spanish drama, and added much to

its effect at the time it appeared.

After the audience have thus been put in good-humor, we have the

principal play, called “The Well-disposed Enemy”; a wild, but not

uninteresting, heroic drama, of which the scene is laid at the court

of Naples, and the plot turns on the jealousy of the Neapolitan king

and queen. Some attempt is made to compress the action within probable

limits of time and space; but the character of Laura--at first in

love with the king and exciting him to poison the queen, and at last

coming out in disguise as an armed champion to defend the same queen

when she is in danger of being put to death on a false accusation of

infidelity--destroys all regularity of movement, and is a blemish that

extends through the whole piece. Parts of it, however, are spirited,

like the opening,--a scene full of life and nature,--where the court

rush in from a bull-fight, that had been suddenly broken up by the

personal danger of the king; and parts of it are poetical, like

the first interview between Laura and Belisardo, whom she finally

marries.[499] But the impression left by the whole is, that, though the

path opened by Lope de Vega is the one that is followed, it is followed

with footsteps ill-assured and a somewhat uncertain purpose.

[499] The “Enemiga Favorable” is divided into three _jornadas_

called _actos_, and shows otherwise that it was constructed on

the model of Lope’s dramas. But Tarrega wrote also at least one

religious play, “The Foundation of the Order of Mercy.” It is the

story of a great robber who becomes a great saint, and may have

suggested to Calderon his “Devocion de la Cruz.”

Gaspar de Aguilar was, as Lope tells us, the rival of Tarrega.[500]

He was secretary to the Viscount Chelva, and afterwards major-domo to

the Duke of Gandia, one of the most prominent noblemen at the court of

Philip the Third. But an allegorical poem which Aguilar wrote, in honor

of his last patron’s marriage, found so little favor, that its unhappy

author, discouraged and repulsed, died of mortification. He lived, as

Tarrega probably did, both in Valencia and in Madrid, and wrote several

minor poems, besides one of some length on the expulsion of the Moors

from Spain, which was printed in 1610. The last date we have relating

to his unfortunate career is 1623.

[500] Laurel de Apolo, (Madrid, 1630, 4to, f. 21), where Lope

says, speaking of Tarrega, “Gaspar Aguilar _competia_ con él en

la dramática poesía.”

Of the nine or ten plays he published, only two can claim our notice.

The first is “The Merchant Lover,” praised by Cervantes, who, like

Lope de Vega, mentions Aguilar more than once with respect. It is the

story of a rich merchant, who pretends to have lost his fortune in

order to see whether either of two ladies to whose favor he aspires

loved him for his own sake rather than for that of his money; and he

finally marries the one who, on this hard trial, proves herself to be

disinterested. It is preceded by a _prólogo_, or _loa_, which in this

case is a mere jesting tale; and it ends with six stanzas, sung for the

amusement of the audience, about a man who, having tried unsuccessfully

many vocations, and, among the rest, those of fencing-master, poet,

actor, and tapster, threatens, in despair, to enlist for the wars.

Neither the beginning nor the end, therefore, has any thing to do with

the subject of the play itself, which is written in a spirited style,

but sometimes shows bad taste and extravagance, and sometimes runs into

conceits.

One character is happily hit,--that of the lady who loses the rich

merchant by her selfishness. When he first tells her of his pretended

loss of fortune, and seems to bear it with courage and equanimity, she

goes out saying,--

Heaven save me from a husband such as this,

Who finds himself so easily consoled!

Why, he would be as gay, if it were _me_

That he had lost, and not his money!

And again, in the second act, where she finally rejects him, she says,

in the same jesting spirit,--

Would you, Sir, see that you are not a man,--

Since all that ever made you one is gone,--

(The figure that remains availing but

To bear the empty name that marked you once),--

Go and proclaim aloud your loss, my friend,

And then inquire of your own memory

What has become of you, and where you are;

And you will learn, at once, that you are not

The man to whom I lately gave my heart.[501]

[501]

Dios me guarde de hombre

Que tan pronto se consuela,

Que lo mismo hará de mí.

Mercader Amante, Jorn. I.

Quieres ver que no eres hombre,

Pues el ser tuyo has perdido;

Y que de aquello que has sido,

No te queda sino el nombre?

Haz luego un alarde aquí

De tu perdida notoria;

Toma cuenta á tu memoria;

Pide á tí mismo por tí,

Verás que no eres aquel

A quien dí mi corazon.

Ibid., Jorn. II.

What, perhaps, is most remarkable about this drama is, that the unity

of place is observed, and possibly the unity of time; a circumstance

which shows that the freedom of the Spanish stage from such restraints

was not yet universally acknowledged.

Quite different from this, however, is “The Unforeseen Fortune”; a

play which, if it have only one action, has one whose scene is laid at

Saragossa, at Valencia, and along the road between these two cities,

while the events it relates fill up several years. The hero, just at

the moment he is married by proxy in Valencia, is accidentally injured

in the streets of Saragossa, and carried into the house of a stranger,

where he falls in love with the fair sister of the owner, and is

threatened with instant death by her brother, if he does not marry her.

He yields to the threat. They are married and set out for Valencia.

On the way, he confesses his unhappy position to his bride, and very

coolly proposes to adjust all his difficulties by putting her to death.

From this, however, he is turned aside, and they arrive in Valencia,

where she serves him, from blind affection, as a voluntary slave; even

taking care of a child that is borne to him by his Valencian wife.

Other absurdities follow. At last, she is driven to declare publicly

who she is. Her ungrateful husband then attempts to kill her, and

thinks he has succeeded. He is arrested for the supposed murder; but at

the same instant her brother arrives, and claims his right to single

combat with the offender. Nobody will serve as the base seducer’s

second. At the last moment, the injured lady herself, supposed till

then to be dead, appears in the lists, disguised in complete armour,

not to protect her guilty husband, but to vindicate her own honor and

prowess. Ferdinand, the king, who presides over the combat, interferes;

and the strange show ends by her marriage to a former lover, who

has hardly been seen at all on the stage,--a truly “Unforeseen

Fortune,”--which gives its name to the ill-constructed drama.

The poetry, though not absolutely good, is better than the action. It

is generally in flowing _quintillas_, or stanzas of five short lines

each, but not without long portions in the old ballad-measure. The

scene of an entertainment on the sea-shore near Valencia, where all

the parties meet for the first time, is good. So are portions of the

last act. But, in general, the whole play abounds in conceits and puns,

and is poor. It opens with a _loa_, whose object is to assert the

universal empire of man; and it ends with an address to the audience

from King Ferdinand, in which he declares that nothing can give him so

much pleasure as the settlement of all these troubles of the lovers,

except the conquest of Granada. Both are grotesquely inappropriate.[502]

[502] The accounts of Aguilar are found in Rodriguez, pp. 148,

149, and in Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 255, who, as is often the case,

has done little but arrange in better order the materials

collected by Rodriguez. Aguilar’s nine plays are in collections

printed at Valencia in 1614 and 1616, mingled with the plays

of other poets. A copy of the “Suerte sin Esperanza” which I

possess, without date or paging, seems older.

Better known than either of the last authors is another Valencian poet,

Guillen de Castro, who, like them, was respected at home, but sought

his fortunes in the capital. He was born of a noble family, in 1567,

and seems to have been early distinguished, in his native city, as a

man of letters; for, in 1591, he was a member of the _Nocturnos_, one

of the most successful of the fantastic associations established in

Spain, in imitation of the _Academias_ that had been for some time

fashionable in Italy. His literary tendencies were further cultivated

at the meetings of this society, where he found among his associates

Tarrega, Aguilar, and Artieda.[503]

[503] In the note of Cerdá y Rico to the “Diana” of Gil Polo,

1802, pp. 515-519, is an account of this Academy, and a list of

its members.

His life, however, was not wholly devoted to letters. At one time,

he was a captain of cavalry; at another, he stood in such favor with

Benavente, the munificent viceroy of Naples, that he had a place

of consequence intrusted to his government; and at Madrid he was

so well received, that the Duke of Ossuna gave him an annuity of

nearly a thousand crowns, to which the reigning favorite, the Count

Duke Olivares, added a royal pension. But his unequal humor, his

discontented spirit, and his hard obstinacy ruined his fortunes, and

he was soon obliged to write for a living. Cervantes speaks of him,

in 1615, as among the popular authors for the theatre, and in 1620

he assisted Lope at the festival of the canonization of San Isidro,

wrote several of the pieces that were exhibited, and gained one of the

prizes. Six years later, he was still earning a painful subsistence as

a dramatic writer; and in 1631 he died so poor, that he was buried by

charity.[504]

[504] Rodriguez, p. 177; Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 305; Fuster, Tom. I.

p. 235. The last is important on this subject.

Very few of his works have been published, except his plays. Of these

we have twenty-seven or twenty-eight, printed between 1614 and 1625.

They belong decidedly to the school of Lope, between whom and Guillen

de Castro there was a friendship, which can be traced back, by the

Dedication of one of Lope’s plays and by several passages in his

miscellaneous works, to the period of Lope’s exile to Valencia; while,

on the side of Guillen de Castro, a similar testimony is borne to the

same kindly regard by a volume of his own plays addressed to Marcela,

Lope’s favorite daughter.

The marks of Guillen de Castro’s personal condition, and of the age in

which he lived and wrote, are no less distinct in his dramas than the

marks of his poetical allegiance. His “Mismatches in Valencia” seems as

if its story might have been constructed out of facts within the poet’s

own knowledge. It is a series of love intrigues, like those in Lope’s

plays, and ends with the dissolution of two marriages by the influence

of a lady, who, disguised as a page, lives in the same house with

her lover and his wife, but whose machinations are at last exposed,

and she herself driven to the usual resort of entering a convent. His

“Don Quixote,” on the other hand, is taken from the First Part of

Cervantes’s romance, then as fresh as any Valencian tale. The loves of

Dorothea and Fernando, and the madness of Cardenio, form the materials

for its principal plot; and the _dénouement_ is the transportation of

the knight, in a cage, to his own house, by the curate and barber,

just as he is carried home by them in the romance;--parts of the story

being slightly altered to give it a more dramatic turn, though the

language of the original fiction is often retained, and the obligations

to it are fully recognized. Both of these dramas are written chiefly

in the old _redondillas_, with a careful versification; but there is

little poetical invention in either of them, and the first act of the

“Mismatches in Valencia” is disfigured by a game of wits, fashionable,

no doubt, in society at the time, but one that gives occasion, in the

play, to nothing but a series of poor tricks and puns.[505]

[505] Both these plays are in the first volume of his Comedias,

printed in 1614; but I have the Don Quixote in a separate

pamphlet, without paging or date, and with rude wood-cuts, such

as belong to the oldest Spanish publications of the sort. The

first time Don Quixote appears in it, the stage direction is,

“Enter Don Quixote on Rozinante, dressed as he is described in

his book.” The _redondillas_ in this drama, regarded as mere

verses, are excellent; e. g. Cardenio’s lamentations at the end

of the first act:--

Donde me llevan los pies

Sin la vida? El seso pierdo;

Pero como seré cuerdo

Si fué traydor el Marques?

Que cordura, que concierto,

Tendré yo, si estoy sin mí?

Sin ser, sin alma y sin tí?

Ay, Lucinda, que me has muerto!--

and so on. Guerin de Bouscal, one of a considerable number of

French dramatists (see Puybusque, Tom. II. p. 441) who resorted

freely to Spanish sources between 1630 and 1650, brought this

drama of Guillen on the French stage in 1638.

Very unlike them, though no less characteristic of the times, is

his “Mercy and Justice”; the shocking story of a prince of Hungary

condemned to death by his father for the most atrocious crimes, but

rescued from punishment by the multitude, because his loyalty has

survived the wreck of all his other principles, and led him to refuse

the throne offered to him by rebellion. It is written in a greater

variety of measures than either of the dramas just mentioned, and shows

more freedom of style and movement; relying chiefly for success on the

story, and on that sense of loyalty which, though originally a great

virtue in the relations of the Spanish kings and their people, was now

become so exaggerated, that it was undermining much of what was most

valuable in the national character.[506]

[506] It is in the second volume of Guillen’s plays; but it is

also in the “Flor de las Mejores Doce Comedias,” etc., Madrid,

1652.

“Santa Bárbara, or the Mountain Miracle and Heaven’s Martyr,” belongs,

again, to another division of the popular drama as settled by Lope de

Vega. It is one of those plays where human and Divine love, in tones

too much resembling each other, are exhibited in their strongest

light, and, like the rest of its class, was no doubt a result of the

severe legislation in relation to the theatre at that period, and of

the influence of the clergy on which that legislation was founded. The

scene is laid in Nicomedia, in the third century, when it was still a

crime to profess Christianity; and the story is that of Saint Barbara,

according to the legend that represents her to have been a contemporary

of Origen, who, in fact, appears on the stage as one of the principal

personages. At the opening of the drama, the heroine declares that she

is already, in her heart, attached to the new sect; and at the end, she

is its triumphant martyr, carrying with her, in a public profession of

its faith, not only her lover, but all the leading men of her native

city.

One of the scenes of this play is particularly in the spirit and faith

of the age when it was written; and was afterwards imitated by Calderon

in his “Wonder-working Magician.” The lady is represented as confined

by her father in a tower, where, in solitude, she gives herself up

to Christian meditations. Suddenly the arch-enemy of the human race

presents himself before her, in the dress of a fashionable Spanish

gallant. He gives an account of his adventures in a fanciful allegory,

but does not so effectually conceal the truth that she fails to suspect

who he is. In the mean time, her father and her lover enter. To her

father the mysterious gallant is quite invisible, but he is plainly

seen by the lover, whose jealousy is thus excited to the highest

degree; and the first act ends with the confusion and reproaches which

such a state of things necessarily brings on, and with the persuasion

of the father that the lover may be fit for a mad-house, but would make

a very poor husband for his gentle daughter.[507]

[507] This _comedia de santo_ does not appear in the collection

of Guillen’s plays; but my copy of it (Madrid, 1729) attributes

it to him, and so does the Catalogue of Huerta; besides which,

the internal evidence from its versification and manner is strong

for its genuineness. The passages in which the lady speaks of

Christ as her lover and spouse are, like all such passages in the

old Spanish drama, offensive to Protestant ears.

The most important of the plays of Guillen de Castro are two which he

wrote on the subject of Rodrigo the Cid,--“Las Mocedades del Cid,”

The Youth, or Youthful Adventures, of the Cid;--both founded on the

old ballads of the country, which, as we know from Santos, as well as

in other ways, continued long after the time of Castro to be sung in

the streets.[508] The first of these two dramas embraces the earlier

portion of the hero’s life. It opens with a solemn scene of his arming

as a knight, and with the insult immediately afterwards offered to

his aged father at the royal council-board; and then goes on with the

trial of the spirit and courage of Rodrigo, and the death of the proud

Count Lozano, who had outraged the venerable old man by a blow on the

cheek;--all according to the traditions in the old chronicles.

[508] Fr. Santos, “El Verdad en el Potro, y el Cid resuscitado,”

(Madrid, 1686, 12mo), contains (pp. 9, 10, 51, 106, etc.) ballads

on the Cid, as he says they were _then_ sung in the streets by

the blind beggars. The same or similar statements are made by

Sarmiento, nearly a century later.

Now, however, comes the dramatic part of the action, which was so

happily invented by Guillen de Castro. Ximena, the daughter of Count

Lozano, is represented in the drama as already attached to the young

knight; and a contest, therefore, arises between her sense of what she

owes to the memory of her father and what she may yield to her own

affection; a contest that continues through the whole of the play,

and constitutes its chief interest. She comes, indeed, at once to the

king, full of a passionate grief, that struggles with success, for a

moment, against the dictates of her heart, and claims the punishment

of her lover according to the ancient laws of the realm. He escapes,

however, in consequence of the prodigious victories he gains over the

Moors, who, at the moment when these events occurred, were assaulting

the city. Subsequently, by the contrivance of false news of the Cid’s

death, a confession of her love is extorted from her; and at last her

full consent to marry him is obtained, partly by Divine intimations,

and partly by the natural progress of her admiration and attachment

during a series of exploits achieved in her honor and in defence of her

king and country.

This drama of Guillen de Castro has become better known throughout

Europe than any other of his works; not only because it is the best of

them all, but because Corneille, who was his contemporary, made it

the basis of his own brilliant tragedy of “The Cid”; a drama which did

more than any other to determine for two centuries the character of the

theatre all over the continent of Europe. But though Corneille--not

unmindful of the angry discussions carried on about the unities, under

the influence of Cardinal Richelieu--has made alterations in the action

of his play, which are fortunate and judicious, still he has relied,

for its main interest, on that contest between the duties and the

affections of the heroine which was first imagined by Guillen de Castro.

Nor has he shown in this exhibition more spirit or power than his

Spanish predecessor. Indeed, sometimes he has fallen into considerable

errors, which are wholly his own. By compressing the time of the action

within twenty-four hours, instead of suffering it to extend through

many months, as it does in the original, he is guilty of the absurdity

of overcoming Ximena’s natural feelings in relation to the person who

had killed her father, while her father’s dead body is still before her

eyes. By changing the scene of the quarrel, which in Guillen occurs

in presence of the king, he has made it less grave and natural. By a

mistake in chronology, he establishes the Spanish court at Seville

two centuries before that city was wrested from the Moors. And by

a general straitening of the action within the conventional limits

which were then beginning to bind down the French stage, he has, it

is true, avoided the extravagance of introducing, as Guillen does,

so incongruous an episode out of the old ballads as the miracle of

Saint Lazarus; but he has hindered the free and easy movement of the

incidents, and diminished their general effect.

Guillen, on the contrary, by taking the traditions of his country just

as he found them, instantly conciliated the good-will of his audience,

and at the same time imparted the freshness of the old ballad spirit

to his action, and gave to it throughout a strong national air and

coloring. Thus, the scene in the royal council, where the father of

the Cid is struck by the haughty Count Lozano, several of the scenes

between the Cid and Ximena, and several between both of them and the

king, are managed with great dramatic skill and a genuine poetical

fervor.

The following passage, where the Cid’s father is waiting for him in the

evening twilight at the place appointed for their meeting after the

duel, is as characteristic, if not as striking, as any in the drama,

and is superior to the corresponding passage in the French play, which

occurs in the fifth and sixth scenes of the third act.

The timid ewe bleats not so mournfully,

Its shepherd lost, nor cries the angry lion

With such a fierceness for its stolen young,

As I for Roderic.--My son! my son!

Each shade I pass, amid the closing night,

Seems still to wear thy form and mock my arms!

O, why, why comes he not? I gave the sign,--

I marked the spot,--and yet he is not here!

Has he neglected? Can he disobey?

It may not be! A thousand terrors seize me.

Perhaps some injury or accident

Has made him turn aside his hastening step;--

Perhaps he may be slain, or hurt, or seized.

The very thought freezes my breaking heart.

O holy Heaven, how many ways for fear

Can grief find out!--But hark! What do I hear?

Is it his footstep? Can it be? O, no!

I am not worthy such a happiness!

’T is but the echo of my grief I hear.--

But hark again! Methinks there comes a gallop

On the flinty stones. He springs from off his steed!

Is there such happiness vouchsafed to me?

Is it my son?

_The Cid._ My father?

_The Father._ May I truly

Trust myself, my child? O, am I, am I, then,

Once more within thine arms? Then let me thus

Compose myself, that I may honor thee

As greatly as thou hast deserved. But why

Hast thou delayed? And yet, since thou art here,

Why should I weary thee with questioning?--

O, bravely hast thou borne thyself, my son;

Hast bravely stood the proof; hast vindicated well

Mine ancient name and strength; and well hast paid

The debt of life which thou receivedst from me.

Come near to me, my son. Touch the white hairs

Whose honor thou hast saved from infamy,

And kiss, in love, the cheek whose stain thy valor

Hath in blood washed out.--My son! my son!

The pride within my soul is humbled now,

And bows before the power that has preserved

From shame the race so many kings have owned

And honored.[509]

[509]

_Diego._ No la ovejuela su pastor perdido,

Ni el leon que sus hijos le han quitado,

Balo quejosa, ni bramo ofendido,

Como yo por Rodrigo. Ay, hijo amado!

Voy abrazando sombras descompuesto

Entre la oscura noche que ha cerrado.

Díle la seña, y señaléle el puesto,

Donde acudiese, en sucediendo el caso.

Si me habrá sido inobediente en esto?

Pero no puede ser; mil penas paso!

Algun inconveniente le habrá hecho,

Mudando la opinion, torcer el paso.

Que helada sangre me rebienta el pecho!

Si es muerto, herido, ó preso? Ay, Cielo santo!

Y quantas cosas de pesar sospecho!

Que siento? es él? mas no meresco tanto.

Será que corresponden á mis males

Los ecos de mi voz y de mi llanto.

Pero entre aquellos secos pedregales

Vuelvo á oir el galope de un caballo.

De él se apea Rodrigo! hay dichas tales?

_Sale Rodrigo._

Hijo?

_Cid._ Padre?

_Diego._ Es posible que me hallo

Entre tus brazos? Hijo, aliento tomo

Para en tus alabanzas empleallo.

Como tardaste tanto? pues de plomo

Te puso mi deseo; y pues veniste,

No he de cansarte pregando el como.

Bravamente probaste! bien lo hiciste!

Bien mis pasados brios imitaste!

Bien me pagaste el ser que me debiste!

Toca las blancas canas que me honraste,

Llega la tierna boca á la mexilla

Donde la mancha de mi honor quitaste!

Soberbia el alma á tu valor se humilla,

Como conservador de la nobleza,

Que ha honrado tantos Reyes en Castilla.

Mocedades del Cid, Primera Parte, Jorn. II.

The Second Part, which gives the adventures of the siege of Zamora, the

assassination of King Sancho beneath its walls, and the defiance and

duels that were the consequence, is not equal in merit to the First

Part. Portions of it, such as some of the circumstances attending the

death of the king, are quite incapable of dramatic representation, so

gross and revolting are they; but even here, as well as in the more

fortunate passages, Guillen has faithfully followed the popular belief

concerning the heroic age he represents, just as it had come down to

him, and has thus given to his scenes a life and reality that could

hardly have been given by any thing else.

Indeed, it is a great charm of this drama, that the popular traditions

everywhere break through so picturesquely, imparting to it their

peculiar tone and character. Thus, the insult offered to old Laynez in

the council; the complaints of Ximena to the king on the death of her

father, and the conduct of the Cid to herself; the story of the Leper;

the base treason of Bellido Dolfos; the reproaches of Queen Urraca from

the walls of the beleaguered city, and the defiance and duels that

follow,[510]--all are taken from the old ballads; often in their very

words, and generally in their fresh spirit and with their picture-like

details. The effect must have been great on a Castilian audience,

always sensible to the power of the old popular poetry, and always

stirred as with a battle-cry when the achievements of their earlier

national heroes were recalled to them.[511]

[510] This impeachment of the honor of the whole city of Zamora,

for having harboured the murderer of King Sancho, fills a large

place in the “Crónica General,” (Parte IV.), in the “Crónica

del Cid,” and in the old ballads, and is called _El Reto de

Zamora_,--a form of challenge preserved in this play of Guillen,

and recognized as a legal form so far back as the Partida VII.,

Tít. III., “De los Rieptos.”

[511] The plays of Guillen on the Cid have often been reprinted,

though hardly one of his other dramas has been. Voltaire, in

his Preface to Corneille’s Cid, says Corneille took his hints

from Diamante. But the reverse is the case. Diamante wrote after

Corneille, and was indebted to him largely, as we shall see

hereafter. Lord Holland’s Life of Guillen, already referred to,

_ante_, p. 121, is interesting, though imperfect.

In his other dramas we find traces of the same principles and the

same habits of theatrical composition that we have seen in those we

have already noticed. The “Impertinent Curiosity” is taken from the

tale which Cervantes originally printed in the First Part of his Don

Quixote. The “Count Alarcos,” and the “Count d’ Irlos,” are founded

on the fine old ballads that bear these names. And the “Wonders of

Babylon” is a religious play, in which the story of Susanna and

the Elders fills a space somewhat too large, and in which King

Nebuchadnezzar is introduced eating grass, like the beasts of the

field.[512] But everywhere there is shown a desire to satisfy the

demands of the national taste; and everywhere it is plain Guillen is

a follower of Lope de Vega, and is distinguished from his rivals more

by the sweetness of his versification than by any more prominent or

original attribute.

[512] “Las Maravillas de Babilonia” is not in Guillen’s collected

dramas, and is not mentioned by Rodriguez or Fuster. But it is in

a volume entitled “Flor de las Mejores Doce Comedias,” Madrid,

1652, 4to.

Another of the early followers of Lope de Vega, and one recognized as

such at the time by Cervantes, is Luis Vélez de Guevara. He was born at

Ecija in Andalusia, in 1570, but seems to have lived almost entirely

at Madrid, where he died in 1644. Twelve years before his death, he is

said, on good authority, to have written already four hundred pieces

for the theatre; and as neither the public favor nor that of the court

seems to have deserted him during the rest of his long life, we may

feel assured that he was one of the most successful authors of his

time.[513]

[513] Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 68, and Montalvan, Para

Todos, in his catalogue of authors who wrote for the stage when

(in 1632) that catalogue was made out. Guevara will be noticed

again as the author of the “Diablo Cojuelo.”

His plays, however, were never collected for publication, and few of

them have come down to us. One of those that have been preserved is

fortunately one of the best, if we are to judge of its relative rank

by the sensation it produced on its first appearance, or by the hold

it has since maintained on the national regard. Its subject is taken

from a well-known passage in the history of Sancho the Brave, when,

in 1293, the city of Tarifa, near Gibraltar, was besieged by that

king’s rebellious brother, Don John, at the head of a Moorish army,

and defended by Alonso Perez, chief of the great house of the Guzmans.

“And,” says the old Chronicle, “right well did he defend it. But the

Infante Don John had with him a young son of Alonso Perez, and sent and

warned him that he must either surrender that city, or else he would

put to death this child whom he had with him. And Don Alonso Perez

answered, that he held that city for the king, and that he could not

give it up; but that as for the death of his child, he would give him a

dagger wherewith to slay him; and so saying, he cast down a dagger from

the rampart in defiance, and added that it would be better he should

kill this son and yet five others, if he had them, than that he should

himself basely yield up a city of the king, his lord, for which he had

done homage. And the Infante Don John, in great fury, caused that child

to be put to death before him. But neither with all this could he take

the city.”[514]

[514] Crónica de D. Sancho el Bravo, Valladolid, 1554, folio, f.

76.

Other accounts add to this atrocious story, that, after casting down

his dagger, Alonso Perez, smothering his grief, sat down to his

noon-day meal with his wife, and that, his people on the walls of the

city witnessing the death of the innocent child and bursting forth into

cries of horror and indignation, he rushed out, but, having heard what

was the cause of the disturbance, returned quietly again to the table,

saying only, “I thought, from their outcry, that the Moors had made

their way into the city.”[515]

[515] Quintana, Vidas de Españoles Célebres, Tom. I., Madrid,

1807, 12mo, p. 51, and the corresponding passage in the play.

Martinez de la Rosa, in his “Isabel de Solís,” describing a real

or an imaginary picture of the death of the young Guzman, gives a

tender turn to the father’s conduct; but the hard old chronicle

is more likely to tell the truth, and the play follows it.

For thus sacrificing his other duties to his loyalty, in a way so well

fitted to excite the imagination of the age in which he lived, Guzman

received an appropriate addition to his armorial bearings, still seen

in the escutcheon of his family, and the surname of “El Bueno,”--the

Good, or the Faithful,--a title rarely forgotten in Spanish history,

whenever he is mentioned.

This is the subject, and, in fact, the substance, of Guevara’s play,

“Mas pesa el Rey que la Sangre,” or King before Kin. A good deal of

skill, however, is shown in putting it into a dramatic form. Thus,

King Sancho, at the opening, is represented as treating his great

vassal, Perez de Guzman, with harshness and injustice, in order that

the faithful devotion of the vassal, at the end of the drama, may be

brought out with so much the more brilliant effect. And again, the

scene in which Guzman goes from the king in anger, but with perfect

submission to the royal authority; the scene between the father and the

son, in which they mutually sustain each other, by the persuasions of

duty and honor, to submit to any thing rather than give up the city;

and the closing scene, in which, after the siege has been abandoned,

Guzman offers the dead body of his child as a proof of his fidelity and

obedience to an unjust sovereign,--are worthy of a place in the best of

the earlier English tragedies, and not unlike some passages in Greene

and Webster. But it was as an expression of boundless loyalty--that

great virtue of the heroic times of Spain--that this drama won

universal admiration, and so became of consequence, not only in the

history of the national stage, but as an illustration of the national

character. Regarded in each of these points of view, it is one of the

most striking and solemn exhibitions of the modern theatre.[516]

[516] The copy I use of this play was printed in 1745. Like most

of the other published dramas of Guevara, it has a good deal of

bombast, and some _Gongorism_. But a lofty tone runs through it,

that always found an echo in the Spanish character.

In most of his other plays, Guevara deviated less from the beaten track

than he did in this deep tragedy. “The Diana of the Mountains,” for

instance, is a poetical picture of the loyalty, dignity, and passionate

force of character of the lower classes of the Spanish people, set

forth in the person of a bold and independent peasant, who marries

the beauty of his mountain region, but has the misfortune immediately

afterwards to find her pursued by the love of a man of rank, from whose

designs she is rescued by the frank and manly appeal of her husband to

Queen Isabella, the royal mistress of the offender.[517] “The Potter

of Ocaña,” too, which, like the last, is an intriguing drama, is quite

within the limits of its class;--and so is “Empire after Death,” a

tragedy full of a melancholy, idyl-like softness, which well harmonizes

with the fate of Inez de Castro, on whose sad story it is founded.

[517] The “Luna de la Sierra” is the first play in the “Flor de

las Mejores Doce Comedias,” 1652.

In Guevara’s religious dramas we have, as usual, the disturbing element

of love adventures, mingled with what ought to be most spiritual and

most separate from the dross of human passion. Thus, in his “Three

Divine Prodigies” we have the whole history of Saint Paul, who yet

first appears on the stage as a lover of Mary Magdalen; and in his

“Satan’s Court” we have a similar history of Jonah, who is announced

as a son of the widow of Sarepta, and lives at the court of Nineveh,

during the reign of Ninus and Semiramis, in the midst of atrocities

which it seems impossible could have been hinted at before any

respectable audience in Christendom.

Once, indeed, Guevara stepped beyond the wide privileges granted to

the Spanish theatre; but his offence was not against the rules of the

drama, but against the authority of the Inquisition. In “The Lawsuit

of the Devil against the Curate of Madrilejos,” which he wrote with

Roxas and Mira de Mescua, he gives an account of the case of a poor mad

girl who was treated as a witch, and escaped death only by confessing

that she was full of demons, who are driven out of her on the stage,

before the audience, by conjurations and exorcisms. The story has every

appearance of being founded in fact, and is curious on account of the

strange details it involves. But the whole subject of witchcraft, its

exhibition and punishment, belonged exclusively to the Holy Office. The

drama of Guevara was, therefore, forbidden to be represented or read,

and soon disappeared quietly from public notice. Such cases, however,

are rare in the history of the Spanish theatre, at any period of its

existence.[518]

[518] The plays last mentioned are found scattered in different

collections,--“The Devil’s Lawsuit” being in the volume just

cited, and “The Devil’s Court” in the twenty-eighth volume of

the Comedias Escogidas. My copy of the “Tres Portentos” is a

pamphlet without date. Fifteen of the plays of Guevara are in the

collection of Comedias Escogidas, to be noticed hereafter.

The most strict, perhaps, of the followers of Lope de Vega was his

biographer and eulogist, Juan Perez de Montalvan. He was a son of the

king’s bookseller at Madrid, and was born in 1602.[519] At the age of

seventeen he was already a licentiate in theology and a successful

writer for the public stage, and at eighteen he contended with

the principal poets of the time at the festival of San Isidro at

Madrid, and gained, with Lope’s assent, one of the prizes that were

there offered.[520] Soon after this, he took the degree of Doctor in

Divinity, and, like his friend and master, joined a fraternity of

priests in Madrid, and received an office in the Inquisition. In 1626,

a princely merchant of Peru, with whom he was in no way connected, and

who had never even seen him, sent him, from the opposite side of the

world, a pension as his private chaplain to pray for him in Madrid; all

out of admiration for his genius and writings.[521]

[519] Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. p. 157;--a good life of

Montalvan.

[520] Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XI. pp. 501, 537, etc.,

and Tom. XII. p. 424.

[521] Para Todos, Alcalá, 1661, 4to, p. 428.

In 1627, he published a small work on “The Life and Purgatory of Saint

Patrick”; a subject popular in his Church, and on which he now wrote,

probably, to satisfy the demands of his ecclesiastical position. But

his nature breaks forth, as it were, in spite of himself, and he has

added to the common legends of Saint Patrick a wild tale, wholly of his

own invention, and yet so interwoven with his principal subject as to

seem to be a part of it, and even to make equal claims on the faith of

the reader.[522]

[522] It went through several editions as a book of

devotion,--the last I have seen being of 1739, 18mo.

In 1632, he says he had composed thirty-six dramas and twelve

sacramental _autos_;[523] and in 1636, soon after Lope’s death, he

published the extravagant panegyric on him which has been already

noticed. This was probably the last work he gave to the press; for,

not long after it appeared, he became hopelessly deranged, from the

excess of his labors, and died on the 25th of June, 1638, when only

thirty-six years old. One of his friends showed the same pious care for

his memory which he had shown for that of his master; and, gathering

together short poems and other eulogies on him by above a hundred and

fifty of the known and unknown authors of his time, published them

under the title of “Panegyrical Tears on the Death of Doctor Juan Perez

de Montalvan”;--a poor collection, in which, though we meet the names

of Antonio de Solís, Gaspar de Avila, Tirso de Molina, Calderon, and

others of note, we find very few lines worthy either of their authors

or of their subject.[524]

[523] Para Todos, 1661, p. 529, (prepared in 1632), where he

speaks also of a picaresque _novela_, “Vida de Malhagas,” and

other works, as ready for the press; but they have never been

printed.

[524] “Lágrimas Panegiricas á la Temprana Muerte del Gran Poeta,

etc., J. Perez de Montalvan,” por Pedro Grande de Terra, Madrid,

1639, 4to, ff. 164. Quevedo, Montalvan’s foe, is the only poet of

note whom I miss.

Montalvan’s life was short, but it was brilliant. He early attached

himself to Lope de Vega with sincere affection, and continued to the

last the most devoted of his admirers; deserving in many ways the title

given him by Valdivielso,--“the first-born of Lope de Vega’s genius.”

Lope, on his side, was sensible to the homage thus frankly offered

him; and not only assisted and encouraged his youthful follower, but

received him almost as a member of his household and family. It has

even been said, that the “Orfeo”--a poem on the subject of Orpheus

and Eurydice, which Montalvan published in August, 1624, in rivalship

with one under the same title published by Jauregui in the June

preceding--was, in fact, the work of Lope himself, who was willing thus

to give his disciple an advantage over a formidable competitor. But

this is probably only the scandal of the next succeeding generation.

The poem itself, which fills about two hundred and thirty octave

stanzas, though as easy and spirited as if it were from Lope’s

hand, bears the marks rather of a young writer than of an old one;

besides which the verses prefixed to it by Lope, and especially his

extravagant praise of it when afterwards speaking of his own drama on

the same subject, render the suggestion that he wrote the work a grave

imputation on his character.[525] But however this may be, Montalvan

and Lope were, as we know from different passages in their works,

constantly together; and the faithful admiration of the disciple was

well returned by the kindness and patronage of the master.

[525] “Orfeo en Lengua Castellana,” por J. P. de Montalvan,

Madrid, 1624, 4to. N. Ant., Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 757, and Lope

de Vega, Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, in the Preface to

which he says the Orfeo of Montalvan “contains whatever can

contribute to its perfection.”

Montalvan’s chief success was on the stage, where his popularity was

so considerable, that the booksellers found it for their interest to

print under his name many plays that were none of his.[526] He himself

prepared for publication two complete volumes of his dramatic works,

which appeared in 1638 and 1639, and were reprinted in 1652; but

besides this, he had earlier inserted several plays in one of his works

of fiction, and printed many more in other ways, making in all about

sixty; the whole of which seem to have been published, as far as they

were published by himself, during the last seven years of his life.[527]

[526] His complaints are as loud as Lope’s or Calderon’s, and

are to be found in the Preface to the first volume of his plays,

Alcalá, 1638, 4to, and in his “Para Todos,” 1661, p. 169.

[527] The date of the first volume is 1639 on the title-page, but

1638 at the end.

If we take the first volume of his collection, which is more likely to

have received his careful revision than the last, and examine it, as

an illustration of his theories and style, we shall easily understand

the character of his drama. Six of the plays contained in it, or

one half of the whole number, are of the class of _capa y espada_,

and rely for their interest on some exhibition of jealousy, or some

intrigue involving the point of honor. They are generally, like the

one entitled “Fulfilment of Duty,” not skilfully put together, though

never uninteresting; and they all contain passages of poetical feeling,

injured in their effect by other passages, in which taste seems to

be set at defiance,--a remark particularly applicable to the play

called “What’s done can’t be helped.” Four of the remaining six are

historical. One of them is on the suppression of the Templars, which

Raynouard, referring to Montalvan, took as a subject for one of the

few successful French tragedies of the first half of the nineteenth

century. Another is on Sejanus, not as he is represented in Tacitus,

but as he appears in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” And yet another

is on Don John of Austria, which has no _dénouement_, except a sketch

of Don John’s life given by himself, and making out above three hundred

lines. A single play of the twelve is an extravagant specimen of the

dramas written to satisfy the requisitions of the Church, and is

founded on the legends relating to San Pedro de Alcántara.[528]

[528] It should perhaps be added, that another religious play of

Montalvan, “El Divino Nazareno Sanson,” containing the history of

Samson from the contest with the lion to the pulling down of the

Philistine temple, is less offensive.

The last drama in the volume, and the only one that has enjoyed a

permanent popularity and been acted and printed ever since it first

appeared, is the one called “The Lovers of Teruel.” It is founded on

a tradition, that, early in the thirteenth century, in the city of

Teruel, in Aragon, there lived two lovers, whose union was prevented by

the lady’s family, on the ground that the fortune of the cavalier was

not so considerable as they ought to claim for her. They, however, gave

him a certain number of years to achieve the position they required

of any one who aspired to her hand. He accepted the offer, and became

a soldier. His exploits were brilliant, but were long unnoticed. At

last he succeeded, and came home in 1217, with fame and fortune. But

he arrived too late. The lady had been reluctantly married to his

rival, the very night he reached Teruel. Desperate with grief and

disappointment, he followed her to the bridal chamber and fell dead at

her feet. The next day the lady was found, apparently asleep, on his

bier in the church, when the officiating priests came to perform the

funeral service. Both had died broken-hearted, and both were buried in

the same grave.[529]

[529] I shall have occasion to recur to this subject when I

notice a long poem published on it by Yague de Salas, in 1616.

The story used by Montalvan is founded on a tradition already

employed for the stage, but with an awkward and somewhat coarse

plot, and a poor versification, by Andres Rey de Artieda, in his

“Amantes,” published in 1581, and by Tirso de Molina, in his

“Amantes de Teruel,” 1635. These two plays, however, had long

been forgotten, when an abstract of the first, and the whole of

the second, appeared in the fifth volume of Aribau’s “Biblioteca”

(Madrid, 1848); a volume which contains thirty-six well-selected

plays of Tirso de Molina, with valuable prefatory discussions

of his life and works. There can be no doubt, from a comparison

of the “Amantes de Teruel” of Tirso with that of Montalvan,

printed three years later, that Montalvan was largely indebted

to his predecessor; but he has added to his drama much that is

beautiful, and given to parts of it a tone of domestic tenderness

that, I doubt not, he drew from his own nature. Aribau,

Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Tom. V. pp. xxxvii. and 690.

A considerable excitement in relation to this story having arisen

in the youth of Montalvan, he seized the tradition on which it was

founded, and wrought it into a drama. His lovers are placed in the

time of Charles the Fifth, in order to connect them with that stirring

period of Spanish history. The first act begins with several scenes,

in which the difficulties and dangers of their situation are made

apparent, and Isabella, the heroine, expresses an attachment which,

after some anxiety and misgiving, becomes a passion so devoted that

it seems of itself to intimate their coming sorrows. Her father,

however, when he learns the truth, consents to their union; but on

condition that, within three years, the young man shall place himself

in a position worthy the claims of such a bride. Both of the lovers

willingly submit, and the act ends with hopes for their happiness.

Nearly the whole of the limited period elapses before we begin the

second act, where we find the hero just landing in Africa for the

well-known assault on the Goleta at Tunis. He has achieved much, but

remains unnoticed and almost broken-hearted with long discouragement.

At this moment, he saves the Emperor’s life; but the next, he is

forgotten again in the rushing crowd. Still he perseveres, sternly

and heroically; and, led on by a passion stronger than death, is the

first to mount the walls of Tunis and enter the city. This time, his

merit is recognized. Even his forgotten achievements are recollected;

and he receives at once the accumulated reward of all his services and

sacrifices.

But when the last act opens, we see that he is destined to a fatal

disappointment. Isabella, who has been artfully persuaded of his death,

is preparing, with sinister forebodings, to fulfil her promise to her

father and marry another. The ceremony takes place,--the guests are

about to depart,--and her lover stands before her. A heart-rending

explanation ensues, and she leaves him, as she thinks, for the last

time. But he follows her to her apartment; and in the agony of his

grief falls dead, while he yet expostulates and struggles with himself

no less than with her. A moment afterwards her husband enters. She

explains to him the scene he witnesses, and, unable any longer to

sustain the cruel conflict, faints and dies broken-hearted on the body

of her lover.

Like nearly all the other pieces of the same class, there is much in

the “Lovers of Teruel” to offend us. The inevitable part of the comic

servant is peculiarly unwelcome; and so are the long speeches, and the

occasionally inflated style. But notwithstanding its blemishes, we

feel that it is written in the true spirit of tragedy. As the story

was believed to be authentic when it was first acted, it produced

the more deep effect; and whether true or not, being a tale of the

simple sorrows of two young and loving hearts, whose dark fate is

the result of no crime on their part, it can never be read or acted

without exciting a sincere interest. Parts of it have a more familiar

and domestic character than we are accustomed to find on the Spanish

stage, particularly the scene where Isabella sits with her women at

her wearisome embroidery, during her lover’s absence; the scene of her

discouragement and misgiving just before her marriage; and portions of

the scene of horror with which the drama closes.

The two lovers are drawn with no little skill. Our interest in them

never falters; and their characters are so set forth and developed,

that the dreadful catastrophe is no surprise. It comes rather like the

foreseen and irresistible fate of the old Greek tragedy, whose dark

shadow is cast over the whole action from its opening.

When Montalvan took historical subjects, he endeavoured, oftener than

his contemporaries, to observe historical truth. In two dramas on the

life of Don Cárlos, he has introduced that prince substantially in the

colors he must at last wear, as an ungoverned madman, dangerous to

his family and to the state; and if, in obedience to the persuasions

of his time, the poet has represented Philip the Second as more noble

and generous than we can regard him to have been, he has not failed to

seize and exhibit in a striking manner the severe wariness and wisdom

that were such prominent attributes in that monarch’s character.[530]

Don John of Austria, too, and Henry the Fourth of France, are happily

depicted and fairly sustained in the plays in which they respectively

appear as leading personages.[531]

[530] “El Principe Don Carlos” is the first play in the

twenty-eighth volume of the Comedias Escogidas, 1667, and gives

an account of the miraculous cure of the Prince from an attack of

insanity; the other, entitled “El Segundo Seneca de España,” is

the first play in his “Para Todos,” and ends with the marriage of

the king to Anne of Austria, and the appointment of Don John as

generalissimo of the League.

[531] Henry IV. is in “El Mariscal de Viron”; Don John in the

play that bears his name.

Montalvan’s _autos_, of which only two or three remain to us, are not

to be spoken of in the same manner. His “Polyphemus,” for instance,

in which the Saviour and a Christian Church are introduced on one

side of the stage, while the principal Cyclops himself comes in as

an allegorical representation of Judaism on the other, is as wild

and extravagant as any thing in the Spanish drama. A similar remark

may be made on the “Escanderbech,” founded on the history of the

half-barbarous, half-chivalrous Iskander Beg, and his conversion to

Christianity in the middle of the fifteenth century. We find it, in

fact, difficult, at the present day, to believe that pieces like

the first of these, in which Polyphemus plays on a guitar, and an

island in the earliest ages of Greek tradition sinks into the sea

amidst a discharge of squibs and rockets, can have been represented

anywhere.[532]

[532] Both of them are in the fifth day’s entertainments of his

“Para Todos.”

But Montalvan followed Lope in every thing, and, like the rest of the

dramatic writers of his age, was safe from such censure as he would

now receive, because he wrote to satisfy the demands of the popular

audiences of Madrid.[533] He made the _novela_, or tale, the chief

basis of interest for his drama, and relied mainly on the passion of

jealousy to give it life and movement.[534] Bowing to the authority

of the court, he avoided, we are told, representing rebellion on the

stage, lest he should seem to encourage it; and was even unwilling to

introduce men of rank in degrading situations, for fear disloyalty

should be implied or imputed. He would gladly, it is added, have

restrained his action to twenty-four hours, and limited each of the

three divisions of his full-length dramas to three hundred lines,

never leaving the stage empty in either of them. But such rules were

not prescribed to him by the popular will, and he wrote too freely and

too fast to be more anxious about observing his own theories than his

master was.[535]

[533] Preface to “Para Todos.”

[534] The story of “El Zeloso Estremeño” is altered from that

of the same name by Cervantes, but is indebted to it largely,

and takes the names of several of its personages. At the end of

the play entitled “De un Castigo dos Venganzas,” a play full of

horrors, Montalvan declares the plot to be--

Historia tan verdadera,

Que no ha cincuenta semanas,

Que sucedió.

Almost all his plays are founded on exciting and interesting

tales.

[535] Pellicer de Tobar, in the “Lágrimas,” etc., _ut supra_,

gives this account of his friend Montalvan’s literary theories,

pp. 146-152. In the more grave parts of his plays, he says,

Montalvan employed _octavas_, _canciones_, and _silvas_; in the

tender parts, _décimas_, _glosas_, and other similar forms; and

_romances_ everywhere; but that he avoided dactyles and blank

verse, as unbecoming and hard. All this, however, is only the

system of Lope, in his “Arte Nuevo,” a little amplified.

His “Most Constant Wife,” one of his plays which is particularly

pleasing, from the firm, yet tender, character of the heroine,

was written, he tells us, in four weeks, prepared by the actors

in eight days, and represented again and again, until the great

religious festival of the spring closed the theatres.[536] His

“Double Vengeance,” with all its horrors, was acted twenty-one days

successively.[537] His “No Life like Honor”--one of his more sober

efforts--appeared many times on both the principal theatres of Madrid

at the same moment;--a distinction to which, it is said, no other play

had then arrived in Spain, and in which none succeeded it till long

afterwards.[538] And, in general, during the period when his dramas

were produced, which was the old age of Lope de Vega, no author was

heard on the stage with more pleasure than Montalvan, except his great

master.

[536] Para Todos, 1661, p. 508.

[537] Ibid., p. 158.

[538] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 202.

He had, indeed, his trials and troubles, as all have whose success

depends on popular favor. Quevedo, the most unsparing satirist of his

time, attacked the less fortunate parts of one of his works of fiction

with a spirit and bitterness all his own; and, on another occasion,

when one of Montalvan’s plays had been hissed, wrote him a letter

which professed to be consolatory, but which is really as little so

as can well be imagined.[539] But, notwithstanding such occasional

discouragements, his course was, on the whole, fortunate, and he is

still to be remembered among the ornaments of the old national drama of

his country.

[539] Quevedo, Obras, Tom. XI., 1794, pp. 125, 163. An indignant

answer was made to Quevedo, in the “Tribunal de la Justa

Venganza,” already noticed.

CHAPTER XXI.

DRAMA, CONTINUED.--TIRSO DE MOLINA.--MIRA DE MESCUA.--VALDIVIELSO.--

ANTONIO DE MENDOZA.--RUIZ DE ALARCON.--LUIS DE BELMONTE, AND OTHERS.--

EL DIABLO PREDICADOR.--OPPOSITION OF LEARNED MEN AND OF THE CHURCH TO

THE POPULAR DRAMA.--A LONG STRUGGLE.--TRIUMPH OF THE DRAMA.

Another of the persons who, at this time, sought popular favor on

the public stage was Gabriel Tellez, an ecclesiastic of rank, better

known as Tirso de Molina,--the name under which he slightly disguised

himself when publishing works of a secular character. Of his life we

know little, except that he was born in Madrid; that he was educated

at Alcalá; that he entered the Church as early as 1613; and that he

died in the convent of Soria, of which he was the head, probably in

February, 1648;--some accounts representing him to have been sixty

years old at the time of his death, and some eighty.[540]

[540] Deleytar Aprovechando, Madrid, 1765, 2 tom., 4to, Prólogo.

Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 267.

In other respects we know more of him. As a writer for the theatre,

we have five volumes of his dramas, published between 1616 and 1636;

besides which, a considerable number of his plays can be found

scattered through his other works, or printed each by itself. His

talent seems to have been decidedly dramatic; but the moral tone

of his plots is lower than common, and many of his plays contain

passages whose indecency has caused them to be so hunted down by the

confessional and the Inquisition, that copies of them are among the

rarest of Spanish books.[541] Not a few of the less offensive, however,

have maintained their place on the stage, and are still familiar, as

popular favorites.

[541] Of these five volumes, containing fifty-nine plays, and

a number of _entremeses_ and ballads, whose titles are given

in Aribau’s Biblioteca, (Madrid, 1848, Tom. V. p. xxxvi.), I

have never seen but four, and have been able with difficulty to

collect between thirty and forty separate plays. Their author

says, however, in the Preface to his “Cigarrales de Toledo,”

(1624), that he had written three hundred; and I believe about

eighty have been printed.

Of these, the best known out of Spain is “El Burlador de Sevilla,”

or The Seville Deceiver,--the earliest distinct exhibition of that

Don Juan who is now seen on every stage in Europe, and known to the

lowest classes of Germany, Italy, and Spain, in puppet-shows and

street-ballads. The first rudiments for this character--which, it

is said, may be traced historically to the great Tenorio family of

Seville--had, indeed, been brought upon the stage by Lope de Vega, in

the second and third acts of “Money makes the Man”; where the hero

shows a similar firmness and wit amidst the most awful visitations of

the unseen world.[542] But in the character as sketched by Lope there

is nothing revolting. Tirso, therefore, is the first who showed it with

all its original undaunted courage united to an unmingled depravity

that asks only for selfish gratifications, and a cold, relentless humor

that continues to jest when surrounded by the terrors of a supernatural

retribution.

[542] There are some details in this part of Lope’s play, such

as the mention of a walking stone statue, which leave no doubt

in my mind that Tirso de Molina used it. Lope’s play is in the

twenty-fourth volume of his Comedias (Zaragoza, 1632); but it is

one of his dramas that have continued to be reprinted and read.

This conception of the character is picturesque, notwithstanding

the moral atrocities it involves. It was, therefore, soon carried

to Naples, and from Naples to Paris, where the Italian actors took

possession of it. The piece thus produced, which was little more than

an Italian translation of Tirso’s, had great success in 1656 on the

boards of that company, then very fashionable at the French court. Two

or three French translations followed, and in 1665 Molière brought

out his “Festin de Pierre,” in which, taking not only the incidents

of Tirso, but often his dialogue, he made the real Spanish fiction

known to Europe as it had not been known before.[543] From this time,

the strange and wild character conceived by the Spanish poet has gone

through the world under the name of Don Juan, followed by a reluctant

and shuddering interest, that at once marks what is most peculiar

in its conception, and confounds all theories of dramatic interest.

Zamora, a writer of the next half-century in Spain, Thomas Corneille in

France, and Lord Byron in England, are the prominent poets to whom it

is most indebted for its fame; though perhaps the genius of Mozart has

done more than any or all of them to reconcile the refined and elegant

to its dark and disgusting horrors.[544]

[543] For the way in which this truly Spanish fiction was

spread through Italy to France, and then, by means of Molière,

throughout the rest of Europe, see Parfaicts, “Histoire du

Théatre François” (Paris, 12mo, Tom. VIII., 1746, p. 255; Tom.

IX., 1746, pp. 3 and 343; and Tom. X., 1747, p. 420); and

Cailhava, “Art de la Comédie” (Paris, 1786, 8vo, Tom. II. p.

175). Shadwell’s “Libertine” (1676) is substantially the same

story, with added atrocities; and, if I mistake not, is the

foundation of the short drama which has often been acted on the

American stage. Shadwell’s own play is too gross to be tolerated

anywhere now-a-days, and besides has no literary merit.

[544] That the popularity of the mere fiction of Don Juan has

been preserved in Spain may be seen from the many recent versions

of it; and especially from the two plays of “Don Juan Tenorio,”

by Zorrilla, (1844), and his two poems, “El Desafío del Diablo,”

and “Un Testigo de Bronce,” (1845), hardly less dramatic than the

plays that had preceded them.

At home, “The Deceiver of Seville” has never been the most favored

of Tirso de Molina’s works. That distinction belongs to “Don Gil in

the Green Pantaloons,” perhaps the most strongly marked specimen of an

intriguing comedy in the language. Doña Juana, its heroine, a lady of

Valladolid, who has been shamefully deserted by her lover, follows him

to Madrid, whither he had gone to arrange for himself a more ambitious

match. In Madrid, during the fortnight the action lasts, she appears

sometimes as a lady named Elvira, and sometimes as a cavalier named Don

Gil; but never once, till the last moment, in her own proper person.

In these two assumed characters, she confounds all the plans and plots

of her faithless lover; makes his new mistress fall in love with her;

writes letters to herself, as a cavalier, from herself as a lady; and

passes herself off, sometimes for her own lover, and sometimes for

other personages merely imaginary.

Her family at Valladolid, meantime, are made to believe she is dead;

and two cavaliers appearing in Madrid, the one from design and the

other by accident, in a green dress like the one she wears, all three

are taken to be one and the same individual, and the confusion becomes

so unintelligible, that her alarmed lover and her own man-servant--the

last of whom had never seen her but in masculine attire at Madrid--are

persuaded it is some spirit come among them in the fated green costume,

to work out a dire revenge for the wrongs it had suffered in the

flesh. At this moment, when the uproar and alarm are at their height,

the relations of the parties are detected, and three matches are made

instead of the one that had been broken off;--the servant, who had been

most frightened, coming in at the instant every thing is settled, with

his hat stuck full of tapers and his clothes covered with pictures

of saints, and crying out, as he scatters holy water in every body’s

face,--

Who prays, who prays for my master’s poor soul,--

His soul now suffering purgatory’s pains

Within those selfsame pantaloons of green?

And when his mistress turns suddenly round and asks him if he is mad,

the servant, horror-struck at seeing a lady, instead of a cavalier,

with the countenance and voice he at once recognizes, exclaims in

horror,--

I do conjure thee by the wounds--of all

Who suffer in the hospital’s worst ward,--

Abrenuntio!--Get thee behind me!

_Juana._ Fool! Don’t you see that I am your Don Gil,

Alive in body, and in mind most sound?--

That I am talking here with all these friends,

And none is frightened but your foolish self?

_Servant._ Well, then, what are you, Sir,--a man or woman?

Just tell me that.

_Juana._ A woman, to be sure.

_Servant._ No more! enough! That word explains the whole;--

Ay, and if thirty worlds were going mad,

It would be reason good for all the uproar.

The chief characteristic of this play is its extremely ingenious and

involved plot. Few foreigners, perhaps not one, ever comprehended all

its intrigue on first reading it, or on first seeing it acted. Yet it

has always been one of the most popular plays on the Spanish stage; and

the commonest and most ignorant in the audiences of the great cities

of Spain do not find its ingenuities and involutions otherwise than

diverting.

Quite different from either of the preceding dramas, and in some

respects better than either, is Tirso’s “Bashful Man at Court,”--a

play often acted, on its first appearance, in Italy, as well as in

Spain, and one in which, as its author tells us, a prince of Castile

once performed the part of the hero. It is not properly historical,

though partly founded on the story of Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who, in

1449, after having been regent of Portugal, was finally despoiled of

his power and defeated in an open rebellion.[545] Tirso supposes him

to have retired to the mountains, and there, disguised as a shepherd,

to have educated a son in complete ignorance of his rank. This son,

under the name of Mireno, is the hero of the piece. Finding himself

possessed of nobler sentiments and higher intelligence than those of

the rustics among whom he lives, he half suspects that he is of noble

origin; and, escaping from his solitude, appears at court, determined

to try his fortune. Accident favors him. He enters the service of the

royal favorite, and wins the love of his daughter, who is as free and

bold, from an excessive knowledge of the world, as her lover is humble

and gentle in his ignorance of it. There his rank is discovered, and

the play ends happily.

[545] Crónica de D. Juan el Segundo, ad ann.

A story like this, even with the usual accompaniment of an underplot,

is too slight and simple to produce much effect. But the character of

the principal personage, and its gradual development, rendered it long

a favorite on the Spanish stage. Nor was this preference unreasonable.

His noble pride, struggling against the humble circumstances in which

he finds himself placed; the suspicion he hardly dares to indulge,

that his real rank is equal to his aspirations,--a suspicion which yet

governs his life; and the modesty which tempers the most ambitious of

his thoughts, form, when taken together, one of the most lofty and

beautiful ideals of the old Castilian character.[546]

[546] The “Vergonzoso en Palacio” was printed as early as 1624,

in the “Cigarrales de Toledo,” (Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 100),

and took its name, I suppose, from a Spanish proverb, “Mozo

vergonzoso no es para palacio.”

Some of Tirso’s secular dramas deal chiefly in recent events and

well-settled history, like his trilogy on the achievements of the

Pizarros in the New World, and their love-adventures at home. Others

are founded on facts, but with a larger admixture of fiction, like the

two on the election and pontificate of Sixtus Quintus. His religious

dramas and _autos_ are as extravagant as those of the other poets of

his time, and could hardly be more so.

His mode of treating his subjects seems to be capricious. Sometimes

he begins his dramas with great naturalness and life, as in one that

opens with the accidents of a bull-fight,[547] and in another, with the

confusion consequent on the upsetting of a coach;[548] while, at other

times, he seems not to care how tedious he is, and once breaks ground

in the first act with a speech above four hundred lines long.[549]

Perhaps the most characteristic of his openings is in his “Love for

Reasons of State,” where we have, at the outset, a scene before a

lady’s balcony, a rope-ladder, and a duel, all full of Castilian

spirit. His more obvious defects are the too great similarity of his

characters and incidents; the too frequent introduction of disguised

ladies to help on the intrigue; and the needless and shameless

indelicacy of some of his stories,--a fault rendered more remarkable

by the circumstance, that he himself was an ecclesiastic of rank, and

honored in Madrid as a public preacher. His more uniform merits are

a most happy power of gay narration; an extraordinary command of his

native Castilian; and a rich and flowing versification in all the many

varieties of metre demanded by the audiences of the capital, who were

become more nice and exacting in this, perhaps, than in any other

single accessory of the drama.

[547] “Todo es dar en una Cosa.”

[548] “Por el Sotano y el Torno.”

[549] “Escarmientos para Cuerdos.”

But however various and capricious were the forms of Tirso’s drama, he

was, in substance, always a follower of Lope de Vega. This he himself

distinctly announces, boasting of the school to which he belongs, and

entering, at the same time, into an ingenious and elaborate defence

of its principles and practice, as opposed to those of the classical

school; a defence which, it is worthy of notice, was published twelve

years before the appearance of Corneille’s “Cid,” and which, therefore,

to a considerable extent, anticipated in Madrid the remarkable

controversy about the unities occasioned by that tragedy in Paris after

1636[550] and subsequently made the foundation of the dramatic schools

of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire.

[550] Cigarrales de Toledo, 1624, pp. 183-188.

Contemporary with these events and discussions lived Antonio Mira de

Mescua, well known from 1602 to 1635 as a writer for the stage, and

much praised by Cervantes and Lope de Vega. He was a native of Guadix

in the kingdom of Granada, and in his youth became archdeacon of its

cathedral; but in 1610 he was at Naples, attached to the poetical court

of the Count de Lemos, and in 1620 he gained a prize in Madrid, where

he seems to have died while in the office of chaplain to Philip the

Fourth. He wrote secular plays, _autos_, and lyrical poetry; but his

works were never collected and are now found with difficulty, though

not a few of his lighter compositions are in nearly all the respectable

selections of the national poetry from his own time to the present.

He, like Tirso de Molina, was an ecclesiastic of rank, but did not

escape the troubles common to writers for the stage. One of his dramas,

“The Unfortunate Rachel,” founded on the fable which represents

Alfonso the Eighth as having nearly sacrificed his crown to his passion

for a Jewess of Toledo, was much altered, by authority, before it

could be acted, though Lope de Vega had been permitted to treat the

same subject at large in the same way, in the nineteenth book of his

“Jerusalem Conquered.” Mira de Mescua, too, was concerned in the drama

of “The Curate of Madrilejos,” which, as we have seen, was forbidden

to be read or acted even after it had been printed. Still, there

is no reason to suppose he did not enjoy the consideration usually

granted to successful writers for the theatre. At least, we know he

was much imitated. His “Slave of the Devil” was not only remodelled

and reproduced by Moreto in “Fall to rise again,” but was freely used

by Calderon in two of his best-known dramas. His “Gallant both Brave

and True” was employed by Alarcon in “The Trial of Husbands.” And his

“Palace in Confusion” is the groundwork of Corneille’s “Don Sancho of

Aragon.”[551]

[551] The notices of Mira de Mescua, or Amescua, as he is

sometimes called, are scattered like his works. He is mentioned

in Roxas, “Viage” (1602); and I have his “Desgraciada Raquel,”

both in a printed copy, where it is attributed to Diamante,

and in an autograph MS., where it is sadly cut up to suit the

ecclesiastical censors, whose permission to represent it is

dated April 10th, 1635. Guevara indicates his birthplace and

ecclesiastical office in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco VI. Antonio

(Bib. Nov., ad verb.) gives him extravagant praise, and says

that his dramas were collected and published together. But this,

I believe, is a mistake. Like his shorter poems, they can be

found only separate, or in collections made for other purposes.

See also, in relation to Mira de Mescua, Montalvan, Para Todos,

the Catalogue at the end; and Pellicer, Biblioteca, Tom. I. p.

89. The story on which the “Raquel” is founded is a fiction, and

therefore need not so much have disturbed the censors of the

theatre. (Castro, Crónica de Sancho el Deseado, Alonso el Octavo,

etc., Madrid, 1665, folio, pp. 90, etc.) Two _autos_ by Mira de

Mescua are to be found in “Navidad y Corpus Christi Festejados,”

Madrid, 1664, 4to.

Joseph de Valdivielso, another ecclesiastic of high condition, was

also a writer for the stage at the same time. He was connected with

the great cathedral of Toledo and with its princely primate, the

Cardinal Infante, but he lived in Madrid, where he was a member of the

same religious congregation with Cervantes and Lope, and where he was

intimately associated with the principal men of letters of his time.

He flourished from about 1607 to about 1633, and can be traced, during

the whole of that period, by his certificates of approbation and by

commendatory verses which were prefixed to the works of his friends as

they successively appeared. His own publications are almost entirely

religious;--those for the stage consisting of a single volume printed

in 1622, and containing twelve _autos_ and two religious plays.

The twelve _autos_ seem, from internal evidence, to have been written

for the city of Toledo, and certainly to have been performed there, as

well as in other cities of Spain. He selected them from a large number,

and they undoubtedly enjoyed, during his lifetime, a wide popularity.

Some, perhaps, deserved it. “The Prodigal Son,” long a tempting subject

wherever religious dramas were known, was treated with more than

usual skill. “Psyche and Cupid,” too, is better managed for Christian

purposes than that mystical fancy commonly was by the poets of the

Spanish theatre. And “The Tree of Life” is a well-sustained allegory,

in which the old theological contest between Divine Justice and Divine

Mercy is carried through in the old theological spirit, beginning with

scenes in Paradise and ending with the appearance of the Saviour. But,

in general, the _autos_ of Valdivielso are not better than those of his

contemporaries.

His two plays are not so good. “The Birth of the Best,” as the Madonna

is often technically called, and “The Guardian Angel,” which is, again,

an allegory, not unlike that of “The Tree of Life,” are both of them

crude and wild compositions, even within the broad limits permitted

to the religious drama. One reason of their success may, perhaps, be

found in the fact, that they have more of the tone of the elder poetry

than almost any of the sacred plays of the time;--a remark that may

be extended to the _autos_ of Valdivielso, in one of which there is a

spirited parody of the well-known ballad on the challenge of Zamora

after the murder of Sancho the Brave. But the social position of their

author, and, perhaps, his quibbles and quaintnesses, which humored the

bad taste of his age, must be taken into consideration before we can

account for the extensive popularity he undoubtedly enjoyed.[552]

[552] Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 821. His dramatic works

which I possess are “Doce Autos Sacramentales y dos Comedias

Divinas,” por el Maestro Joseph de Valdivielso, Toledo, 1622,

4to, 183 leaves. Compare the old ballad, “Ya cabalga Diego

Ordoñez,” which can be traced to the Romancero of 1550-1555,

with the “Crónica del Cid,” c. 66, and the “Cautivos Libres,” f.

25. a. of the Doce Autos. It will show how the old ballads rung

in the ears of all men, and penetrated everywhere into Spanish

poetry. There is a _nacimiento_ of Valdivielso in the “Navidad y

Corpus Christi,” mentioned in the preceding note; but it is very

slight and poor.

Another sort of favor fell to the share of Antonio de Mendoza, who

wrote much for the court between 1623 and 1643. His Works--besides a

number of ballads and short poems addressed to the Duke of Lerma and

other principal persons of the kingdom--contain a Life of Our Lady,

in nearly eight hundred _redondillas_, and five plays, to which two

or three more may be added from different miscellaneous collections.

The poems are of little value; the plays are better. “He deserves most

who loves most” may have contributed materials to Moreto’s “Disdain

met with Disdain,” and is certainly a pleasant drama, with natural

situations and an easy dialogue. “Society changes Manners” is another

real comedy with much life and gayety. And “Love for Love’s Sake,”

which, has been called its author’s happiest effort, enjoyed the

distinction of being acted before the court by the queen’s maids of

honor, who took all the parts,--those of the cavaliers, as well as

those of the women.[553]

[553] His works were not collected till long after his death,

which happened in 1644, and were then printed from a MS. found

in the library of the Archbishop of Lisbon, Luis de Souza, under

the affected title, “El Fenix Castellano, D. Antonio de Mendoza,

renascido,” etc. (Lisboa, 1690, 4to). The only notices of

consequence that I find of him are in Montalvan’s “Para Todos,”

and in Antonio, Bib. Nova, where he is called Antonio Hurtado

de Mendoza; probably a mistake, for he does not seem to have

belonged to the old Santillana family. A second edition of his

works, with trifling additions, appeared at Madrid in 1728, 4to.

Ruiz de Alarcon, who was his contemporary, was less favored during his

lifetime than Mendoza, but has much more merit. He was born in the

province of Tasco, in Mexico, but was descended from a family that

belonged to Alarcon in the mother country. As early as 1622 he was

in Madrid, and assisted in the composition of a play in honor of the

Marquis of Cañete for his victories in Arauco, which was the joint

work of nine persons. In 1628, he published the first volume of his

Dramas, on the title-page of which he calls himself Prolocutor of the

Royal Council for the Indies; a place of both trust and profit. It is

dedicated to the _Público Vulgar_, or the Rabble, in a tone of savage

contempt for the audiences of Madrid, which, if it intimates that he

had been ill-treated on the stage, proves, also, that he felt strong

enough to defy his enemies. To the eight plays contained in this volume

he added twelve more in 1635, with a Preface, which, again, leaves

little doubt that his merit was undervalued, as he says he found it

difficult to vindicate for himself even the authorship of not a few of

the plays he had written. He died in 1639.[554]

[554] Alarcon seems, in consequence of these remonstrances, or

perhaps in consequence of the temper in which they were made, to

have drawn upon himself a series of attacks, from the poets of

the time, Góngora, Lope de Vega, Mendoza, Montalvan, and others.

See Puibusque, Histoire Comparée des Littératures Espagnole et

Française, 2 tom., 8vo, Paris, 1843, Tom. II. pp. 155-164, and

430-437;--a book written with much taste and knowledge of the

subject to which it relates. It gained the prize of 1842.

His “Domingo de Don Blas,” one of the few among his works not found

in the collection printed by himself, is a sketch of the character of

a gentleman sunk into luxury and effeminacy by the possession of a

large fortune suddenly won from the Moors in the time of Alfonso the

Third of Leon; but who, at the call of duty, rouses himself again to

his earlier energy, and shows the old Castilian character in all its

loyalty and generosity. The scene where he refuses to risk his person

in a bull-fight, merely to amuse the Infante, is full of humor, and is

finely contrasted, first, with the scene where he runs all risks in

defence of the same prince, and afterwards, still more finely, with

that where he sacrifices the prince, because he had failed in loyalty

to his father.

“How to gain Friends” gives us another exhibition of the principle

of loyalty in the time of Peter the Cruel, who is here represented

only as a severe, but just, administrator of the law in seasons of

great trouble. His minister and favorite, Pedro de Luna, is one of the

most noble characters offered to us in the whole range of the Spanish

drama;--a character belonging to a class in which Alarcon has several

times succeeded.

A better-known play than either, however, is the “Weaver of Segovia.”

It is in two parts. In the first, its hero, Fernando Ramirez, is

represented as suffering the most cruel injustice at the hands of his

sovereign, who has put his father to death under a false imputation

of treason, and reduced Ramirez himself to the misery of earning his

subsistence, disguised as a weaver. Six years elapse, and, in the

second part, he appears again, stung by new wrongs and associated

with a band of robbers, at whose head, after spreading terror through

the mountain range of the Guadarrama, he renders such service to his

ungrateful king, in the crisis of a battle against the Moors, and

extorts such confessions of his own and his father’s innocence from

their dying enemy, that he is restored to favor, and becomes, in the

Oriental style, the chief person in the kingdom he has rescued. He is,

in fact, another Charles de Mohr, but has the advantage of being placed

in a period of the world and a state of society where such a character

is more possible than in the period assigned to it by Schiller, though

it can never be one fitted for exhibition in a drama that claims to

have a moral purpose.

“Truth itself Suspected” is, on the other hand, obviously written for

such a purpose. It gives us the character of a young man, the son of a

high-minded father, and himself otherwise amiable and interesting, who

comes from the University of Salamanca to begin the world at Madrid,

with an invincible habit of lying. The humor of the drama, which is

really great, consists in the prodigious fluency with which he invents

all sorts of fictions to suit his momentary purposes; the ingenuity

with which he struggles against the true current of facts, which yet

runs every moment more and more strongly against him; and the final

result, when, nobody believing him, he is reduced to the necessity of

telling the truth, and--by a mistake which he now finds it impossible

to persuade any one he has really committed--loses the lady he had won,

and is overwhelmed with shame and disgrace.

Parts of this drama are full of spirit; such as the description of a

student’s life at the university, and that of a brilliant festival

given to a lady on the banks of the Manzanares. These, with the

exhortations of the young man’s father, intended to cure him of his

shameful fault, and not a little of the dialogue between the hero--if

he may be so called--and his servant, are excellent. It is the piece

from which Corneille took the materials for his “Menteur,” and thus,

in 1642, laid the foundations of classical French comedy in a play of

Alarcon, as, six years before, he had laid the foundations for its

tragedy in the “Cid” of Guillen de Castro. Alarcon, however, was then

so little known, that Corneille supposed himself to be using a play of

Lope de Vega; though it should be remembered, that, when, some years

afterwards, he found out his mistake, he did Alarcon the justice to

restore to him his rights, adding that he would gladly give the two

best plays he had ever written to be the author of the one he had so

freely used.

It would not be difficult to find other dramas of Alarcon showing

equal judgment and spirit. Such, in fact, is the one entitled “Walls

have Ears,” which, from its mode of exhibiting the ill consequences

of slander and mischief-making, may be regarded as the counterpart to

“Truth itself Suspected.” And such, too, is the “Trial of Husbands,”

which has had the fortune to pass under the names of Lope de Vega and

Montalvan, as well as of its true author, and would cast no discredit

on either of them. But it is enough to add to what we have already said

of Alarcon, that his style is excellent,--generally better than that

of any but the very best of his contemporaries,--with less richness,

indeed, than that of Tirso de Molina, and adhering more to the old

_redondilla_ measure than that of Lope, but purer in versification than

either of them, more simple and more natural; so that, on the whole, he

is to be ranked with the best Spanish dramatists during the best period

of the national theatre.[555]

[555] Repertorio Americano, Tom. III. p. 61, Tom. IV. p. 93;

Denis, Chroniques de l’Espagne, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. II. p.

231; Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXVIII., 1667, p. 131. Corneille’s

opinion of the “Verdad Sospechosa,” which is often misquoted,

is to be found in his “Examen du Menteur.” I will only add,

in relation to Alarcon, that, in “Nunca mucho costó poco,” he

has given us the character of an imperious old nurse, which is

well drawn, and made effective by the use of picturesque, but

antiquated, words and phrases.

Other writers who devoted themselves to the drama were, however, as

well known at the time they lived as he was, if not always as much

valued. Among them may be mentioned Luis de Belmonte, whose “Renegade

of Valladolid” and “God the best Guardian” are singular mixtures of

what is sacred with what is profane; Jacinto Cordero, whose “Victory

through Love” was long a favorite on the stage; Andres Gil Enriquez,

the author of a pleasant play called “The Net, the Scarf, and the

Picture”; Diego Ximenez de Enciso, who wrote grave historical plays on

the life of Charles the Fifth at San Yuste, and on the death of Don

Carlos; Gerónimo de Villaizan, whose best play is “A Great Remedy for a

Great Wrong”; and many others, such as Felipe Godinez, Miguel Sanchez,

and Rodrigo de Herrera, who shared, in an inferior degree, the favor of

the popular audiences at Madrid.[556]

[556] The plays of these authors are found in the large

collection entitled “Comedias Escogidas,” Madrid, 1652-1704,

4to, with the exception of those of Sanchez and Villaizan,

which I possess separate. Of Belmonte, there are eleven in the

collection, and of Godinez, five. Those of Miguel Sanchez, who

was very famous in his time, and obtained the addition to his

name of _El Divino_, are nearly all lost.

Writers distinguished in other branches of literature were also tempted

by the success of those devoted to the stage to adventure for the

brilliant prizes it scattered on all sides. Salas Barbadillo, who

wrote many pleasant tales and died in 1630, left behind him two dramas,

of which one claims to be in the manner of Terence.[557] Solorzano,

who died ten years later and was known in the same forms of elegant

literature with Barbadillo, is the author of a spirited play, founded

on the story of a lady, who, after having accepted a noble lover

from interested motives, gives him up for the servant of that lover,

put forward in disguise, as if he were possessor of the very estates

for which she had accepted his master.[558] Góngora wrote one play,

and parts of two others, still preserved in the collection of his

works;[559] and Quevedo, to please the great favorite, the Count Duke

Olivares, assisted in the composition of at least a single drama, which

is now lost, if it be not preserved, under another name, in the works

of Antonio de Mendoza.[560] But the circumstances of chief consequence

in relation to all these writers are, that they belonged to the school

of Lope de Vega, and that they bear witness to the vast popularity of

his drama in their time.

[557] The plays of Salas Barbadillo, viz., “Victoria de España y

Francia,” and “El Galan Tramposo y Pobre,” are in his “Coronas

del Parnaso,” left for publication at his death, but not printed

till 1635, Madrid, 12mo.

[558] It is called “El Mayorazgo,” and is found with its _loa_ at

the end of the author’s “Alivios de Casandra,” 1640.

[559] These are, “Las Firmezas de Isabela,” “El Doctor Carlino,”

and “La Comedia Venatoria,”--the last two unfinished, and the

very last allegorical.

[560] The play written to please the Count Duke was by Quevedo

and Antonio de Mendoza, and was entitled “Quien mas miente medra

mas,”--He that lies most will rise most. (C. Pellicer, Orígen del

Teatro, Tom. I. p. 177.) This play is lost, unless, as I suspect,

it is the “Empeños del Mentir” that occurs in Mendoza’s Works,

1690, pp. 254-296. There are also four _entremeses_ of Quevedo in

his Works, 1791, Vol. IX.

Indeed, so attractive was the theatre now become, that ecclesiastics

and the higher nobility, who, from their position in society, did not

wish to be known as dramatic authors, still wrote for the stage,

sending their plays to the actors or to the press anonymously. Such

persons generally announced their dramas as written by “A Wit of

this Court,”--_Un Ingenio de esta Corte_,--and a large collection

of pieces could now be made, which are known only under this mask;

a mask, it may be observed, often significant of the pretensions of

those whom it claims partly to conceal. Even Philip the Fourth, who

was an enlightened lover of the arts and of letters, is said to have

sometimes used it; and there is a tradition that “Giving my Life for

my Lady,” “The Earl of Essex,” and perhaps one or two other plays,

were either entirely his, or that he contributed materially to their

composition.[561]

[561] Philip IV. was a lover of letters. Translations of

Francesco Guicciardini’s “Wars in Italy,” and of the “Description

of the Low Countries,” by his nephew, Luigi Guicciardini, made by

him, and preceded by a well-written Prólogo, are said to be in

the National Library at Madrid. (C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p.

162; Huerta, Teatro Hespañol, Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte I., Tom.

III. p. 159; and Ochoa, Teatro, Paris, 1838, 8vo, Tom. V. p. 98.)

“King Henry the Feeble” is also among the plays most confidently

ascribed to Philip IV., who is said to have often joined in

improvisating dramas, an amusement well known at the court of

Madrid, and at the hardly less splendid court of the Count de

Lemos at Naples. C. Pellicer, Teatro, Tom. I. p. 163, and J. A.

Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. pp. 90-92, where a curious

account, already referred to, is given of one of these Neapolitan

exhibitions, by Estrada, who witnessed it.

One of the most remarkable of these “Comedias de un Ingenio” is that

called “The Devil turned Preacher.” Its scene is laid in Lucca, and

its original purpose seems to have been to glorify Saint Francis, and

to strengthen the influence of his followers. At any rate, in the long

introductory speech of Lucifer, that potentate represents himself as

most happy at having so far triumphed over these his great enemies,

that a poor community of Franciscans, established in Lucca, is likely

to be starved out of the city by the universal ill-will he has excited

against them. But his triumph is short. Saint Michael descends with

the infant Saviour in his arms, and requires Satan himself immediately

to reconvert the same inhabitants whose hearts he had hardened; to

build up the very convent of the holy brotherhood which he had so

nearly overthrown; and to place the poor friars, who were now pelted by

the boys in the streets, upon a foundation of respectability safer than

that from which he had driven them. The humor of the piece consists

in his conduct while executing the unwelcome task thus imposed upon

him. To do it, he takes, at once, the habit of the monks he detests;

he goes round to beg for them; he superintends the erection of an

ampler edifice for their accommodation; he preaches; he prays; he

works miracles;--and all with the greatest earnestness and unction, in

order the sooner to be rid of a business so thoroughly disagreeable to

him, and of which he is constantly complaining in equivocal phrases

and bitter side-speeches, that give him the comfort of expressing a

vexation he cannot entirely control, but dares not openly make known.

At last he succeeds. The hateful work is done. But the agent is not

dismissed with honor. On the contrary, he is obliged, in the closing

scene, to confess who he is, and to avow that nothing, after all,

awaits him but the flames of perdition, into which he visibly sinks,

like another Don Juan, before the edified audience.

The action occupies above five months. It has an intriguing underplot,

which hardly disturbs the course of the main story, and one of whose

personages--the heroine herself--is very gentle and attractive. The

character of the Father Guardian of the Franciscan monks, full of

simplicity, humble, trustful, and submissive, is also finely drawn;

and so is the opposite one,--the _gracioso_ of the piece,--a liar,

a coward, and a glutton; ignorant and cunning; whom Lucifer amuses

himself with teasing, in every possible way, whenever he has a moment

to spare from the grave work he is so anxious to finish.

In some of the early copies, this drama, so characteristic of the age

to which it belongs, is attributed to Luis de Belmonte, and in some

of them to Antonio de Coello. Later, it is declared, though on what

authority we are not told, to have been written by Francisco Damian

de Cornejo, a Franciscan monk. But all this is uncertain. We only

know, that, for a long time after it appeared, it used to be acted

as a devout work, favorable to the interests of the Franciscans, who

then possessed great influence in Spain. In the latter part of the

eighteenth century, however, this state of things was partly changed,

and its public performance, for some reason or other, was forbidden.

About 1800, it reappeared on the stage, and was again acted, with great

profit, all over the country,--the Franciscan monks lending the needful

monastic dresses for an exhibition they thought so honorable to their

order. But in 1804 it was put anew under the ban of the Inquisition,

and so remained until after the political revolution of 1820, which

gave absolute liberty to the theatre.[562]

[562] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 184, note; Suplemento al

Índice, etc., 1805; and an excellent article by Louis de Vieil

Castel, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1840. To these

should be added the pleasant description given by Blanco White,

in his admirable “Doblado’s Letters,” (1822, pp. 163-169), of a

representation he himself witnessed of the “Diablo Predicador,”

in the court-yard of a poor inn, where a cow-house served for the

theatre, or rather the stage, and the spectators, who paid less

than twopence apiece for their places, sat in the open air, under

a bright, starry sky.

* * * * *

The school of Lope, to which all the writers we have just enumerated,

and many more, belonged, was not received with an absolutely universal

applause. Men of learning, from time to time, refused to be reconciled

to it; and severe or captious critics found in its gross irregularities

and extravagances abundant opportunity for the exercise of a spirit

of complaint. Alonso Lopez, commonly called El Pinciano, in his

“Art of Poetry founded on the Doctrines of the Ancients,”--a modest

treatise, which he printed as early as 1596,--shows plainly, in his

discussions on the nature of tragedy and comedy, that he was far from

consenting to the forms of the drama then beginning to prevail in the

theatre. The Argensolas, who, about ten years earlier, had attempted

to introduce another and more classical type, would, of course, be

even less satisfied with the tendency of things in their time; and one

of them, Bartolomé, speaks his opinion very openly in his didactic

satires. Others joined them, among whom were Artieda, in a poetical

epistle to the Marquis of Cuellar; Villegas, the sweet lyrical poet,

in his seventh elegy; and Christóval de Mesa, in different passages

of his minor poems, and in the Preface to his ill-constructed tragedy

of “Pompey.” If to these we add a scientific discussion on the True

Structure of Tragedy and Comedy, in the third and fourth of the

Poetical Tables of Cascales, and a harsh attack on the whole popular

Spanish stage, by Suarez de Figueroa, in which little is noticed but

its follies, we shall have, if not every thing that was said on the

subject, at least every thing that needs now to be remembered. The

whole is of less consequence than the frank admissions of Lope de Vega,

in his “New Art of the Drama.”[563]

[563] El Pinciano, Filosofía Antigua Poética, Madrid, 1596,

4to, p. 381, etc.; Andres Rey de Artieda, Discursos, etc., de

Artemidoro, Çaragoça, 1605, 4to, f. 87; C. de Mesa, Rimas,

Madrid, 1611, 12mo, ff. 94, 145, 218, and his Pompeyo, Madrid,

1618, 12mo, with its _Dedicatoria_; Cascales, Tablas Poéticas,

Murcia, 1616, 4to, Parte II.; C. S. de Figueroa, Pasagero,

Madrid, 1617, 12mo, Alivio tercero; Est. M. de Villegas,

Eróticas, Najera, 1617, 4to, Segunda Parte, f. 27; Los

Argensolas, Rimas, Zaragoza, 1634, 4to, p. 447. I have arranged

them according to their dates, because, in this case, the order

of time is important, and because it should be noticed that all

come within the period of Lope’s success as a dramatist.

The opposition of the Church, more formidable than that of the scholars

of the time, was, in some respects, better founded, since many of

the plays of this period were indecent, and more of them immoral.

The ecclesiastical influence, as we have seen, had, therefore, been

early directed against the theatre, partly on this account and partly

because the secular drama had superseded those representations in the

churches which had so long been among the means used by the priesthood

to sustain their power with the mass of the people. On these grounds,

in fact, the plays of Torres Naharro were suppressed in 1545, and

a petition was sent, in 1548, by the Cortes, to Charles the Fifth,

against the printing and publishing of all indecent farces.[564]

For a long time, however, little was done but to suspend dramatic

representations in seasons of court mourning, and on other occasions of

public sorrow or trouble;--this being, perhaps, thought by the clergy

an exercise of their influence that would, in the course of events,

lead to more important concessions.

[564] D. Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. III. p. 402, note.

But as the theatre rose into importance with the popularity of Lope de

Vega, the discussions on its character and consequences grew graver.

Even just before that time, in 1587, Philip the Second consulted some

of the leading theologians of the kingdom, and was urged to suppress

altogether the acted drama; but, after much deliberation, followed

the milder opinion of Alonso de Mendoza, a professor at Salamanca,

and determined still to tolerate it, but to subject it constantly

to a careful and even strict supervision. In 1590, Mariana, the

historian, in his treatise “De Spectaculis,” written with great fervor

and eloquence, made a bold attack on the whole body of the theatres,

particularly on their costumes and dances, and thus gave a new impulse

to the discussion, which was not wholly lost when, in 1597, Philip

the Second, according to the custom of the time, ordered the public

representations at Madrid to be suspended, in consequence of the

death of his daughter, the Duchess of Savoy. But Philip was now old

and infirm. The opposers of the theatre, among whom was Lupercio de

Argensola, gathered around him.[565] The discussion was renewed with

increased earnestness, and in 1598, not long before he breathed his

last in the Escurial, with his dying eyes fastened on its high altar,

he forbade theatrical representations altogether.

[565] Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. p. 11.

Little, however, was really effected by this struggle on the part of

the Church, except that the dramatic poets were compelled to discover

ingenious modes for evading the authority exercised against them, and

that the character of the actors was degraded by it. To drive the drama

from ground where it was so well intrenched behind the general favor of

the people was impossible. The city of Madrid, already the acknowledged

capital of the country, begged that the theatres might again be opened;

giving, as one reason for their request, that many religious plays

were performed, by some of which both actors and spectators had been

so moved to penitence as to hasten directly from the theatre to enter

religious houses;[566] and as another reason, that the rent paid by

the companies of actors to the hospitals of Madrid was important to the

very existence of those great and beneficent charities.[567]

[566] As a set-off to this alleged religious effect of the

_comedias de santos_, we have, in the Address that opens the

“Tratado de las Comedias,” (1618), by Bisbe y Vidal, an account

of a young girl who was permitted to see the representation of

the “Conversion of Mary Magdalen” several times, as an act of

devotion, and ended her visits to the theatre by falling in love

with the actor that personated the Saviour, and running off with

him, or rather following him to Madrid.

[567] The account, however, was sometimes the other way. Bisbe

y Vidal (f. 98) says that the hospitals made such efforts to

sustain the theatres, in order to get an income from them

afterwards, that they themselves were sometimes impoverished by

the speculations they ventured to make; and adds, that in his

time (c. 1618) there was a person alive, who, as a magistrate of

Valencia, had been the means of such losses to the hospital of

that city, through its investments and advances for the theatre,

that he had entered a religious house, and given his whole

fortune to the hospital, to make up for the injury he had done it.

Moved by such arguments, Philip the Third, in 1600, when the theatres

had been shut hardly two years, summoned a council of ecclesiastics

and four of the principal lay authorities of the kingdom, and laid the

whole subject before them. Under their advice,--which still condemned

in the strongest manner the theatres as they had heretofore existed in

Spain,--he permitted them to be opened anew; diminishing, however, the

number of actors, forbidding all immorality in the plays, and allowing

representations only on Sundays and three other days in the week,

which were required to be Church festivals, if such festivals should

occur. This decision has, on the whole, been hardly yet disturbed,

and the theatre in Spain, with occasional alterations and additions

of privilege, has continued to rest safely on its foundations ever

since;--closed, indeed, sometimes, in seasons of public mourning, as it

was three months on the death of Philip the Third, and again in 1665,

by the bigotry of the queen regent, but never interrupted for any long

period, and never again called to contend for its existence.