the popular Spanish drama was too strong to be subjected either to
classical criticism or to ecclesiastical control. In the “Amusing
Journey” of Roxas, an actor who travelled over much of the country in
1602, visiting Seville, Granada, Toledo, Valladolid, and many other
places, we find plays acted everywhere, even in the smallest villages,
and the drama, in all its forms and arrangements, accommodated to the
public taste far beyond any other popular amusement.[568] In 1632,
Montalvan--the best authority on such a subject--gives us the names
of a crowd of writers for Castile alone; and three years later, Fabio
Franchi, an Italian, who had lived in Spain, published a eulogy on
Lope, which enumerates nearly thirty of the same dramatists, and shows
anew how completely the country was imbued with their influence. There
can, therefore, be no doubt, that, at the time of his death, Lope’s
name was the great poetical name that filled the whole breadth of the
land with its glory, and that the forms of the drama originated by him
were established, beyond the reach of successful opposition, as the
national and popular forms of the drama for all Spain.[569]
[568] Roxas (1602) gives an amusing account of the nicknames and
resources of eight different kinds of strolling companies of
actors, beginning with the _bululu_, which boasted of but one
person, and going up to the full _compañía_, which was required
to have seventeen. (Viage, Madrid, 1614, 12mo, ff. 51-53.) These
nicknames and distinctions were long known in Spain. Four of them
occur in “Estebanillo Gonzalez,” 1646, c. 6.
[569] On the whole subject of the contest between the Church
and the theatre, and the success of Lope and his school, see C.
Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 118-122, and 142-157; Don Quixote,
ed. J. A. Pellicer, Parte II., c. 11, note; Roxas, Viage, 1614,
_passim_ (f. 66, implying that he wrote in 1602); Montalvan, Para
Todos, 1661, p. 543; Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. p.
66; and many other parts of Vols. XX. and XXI.;--all showing the
triumph of Lope and his school. A letter of Francisco Cascales
to Lope de Vega, published in 1634, in defence of plays and
their representation, is the third in the second decade of his
Epistles; but it goes on the untenable ground, that the plays
then represented were liable to no objection on the score of
morals.
CHAPTER XXII.
CALDERON.--HIS LIFE AND VARIOUS WORKS.--DRAMAS FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO
HIM.--HIS SACRAMENTAL AUTOS.--HOW REPRESENTED.--THEIR CHARACTER.--THE
DIVINE ORPHEUS.--GREAT POPULARITY OF SUCH EXHIBITIONS.--HIS FULL-LENGTH
RELIGIOUS PLAYS.--PURGATORY OF SAINT PATRICK.--DEVOTION TO THE
CROSS.--WONDER-WORKING MAGICIAN.--OTHER SIMILAR PLAYS.
Turning from Lope de Vega and his school, we come now to his great
successor and rival, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, who, if he invented
no new form of the drama, was yet so eminently a poet in the national
temper, and had a success so brilliant, that he must necessarily fill
a large space in all inquiries concerning the history of the Spanish
theatre.
He was born at Madrid, on the 17th of January, 1600;[570] and one of
his friends claims kindred for him with nearly all the old kings of the
different Spanish monarchies, and even with most of the crowned heads
of his time, throughout Europe.[571] This is absurd. But it is of
consequence to know that his family was respectable, and its position
in society such as to give him an opportunity for early intellectual
culture;--his father being Secretary to the Treasury Board under Philip
the Second and Philip the Third, and his mother of a noble family, that
came from the Low Countries long before. Perhaps, however, the most
curious circumstance connected with his origin is to be found in the
fact, that, while the two masters of the Spanish drama, Lope de Vega
and Calderon, were both born in Madrid, the families of both are to be
sought for, at an earlier period, in the same little picturesque valley
of Carriedo, where each possessed an ancestral fief.[572]
[570] There has been some discussion, and a general error, about
the date of Calderon’s birth; but in a rare book, entitled
“Obelisco Fúnebre,” published in his honor, by his friend Gaspar
Augustin de Lara, (Madrid, 1684, 4to), written immediately after
Calderon’s death, it is distinctly stated, on the authority of
Calderon himself, that he was born Jan. 17th, 1600. This settles
all doubts. The certificate of baptism given in Baena, “Hijos de
Madrid,” Tom. IV. p. 228, only says that he was baptized Feb.
14th, 1600; but why that ceremony, contrary to custom, was so
long delayed, or why a person in the position of Vera Tassis y
Villarroel, who, like Lara, was a friend of Calderon, should
have placed the poet’s birth on January 1st, we cannot now even
conjecture.
[571] See the learned genealogical introduction to the “Obelisco
Fúnebre,” just cited. The name of _Calderon_, as its author tells
us, came into the family in the thirteenth century, when one of
its number, being prematurely born, was supposed to be dead, but
was ascertained to be alive by being unceremoniously thrown into
a caldron--_calderon_--of warm water. As he proved to be a great
man, and was much favored by St. Ferdinand and Alfonso the Wise,
his nickname became a name of honor, and five _caldrons_ were,
from that time, borne in the family arms. The additional surname
of _Barca_ came in later, with an estate--_solar_--of one of
the house, who afterwards perished, fighting against the Moors;
in consequence of which, a castle, a gauntlet, and the motto,
_Por la fé moriré_, were added to their escutcheon, which, thus
arranged, constituted the not inappropriate arms of the poet in
the seventeenth century.
[572] See the notice of Calderon’s father in Baena, Tom. I.
p. 305; that of Calderon himself, Tom. IV. p. 228; and that
of Lope de Vega, Tom. III. p. 350; but, especially, see the
different facts about Calderon scattered through the dull prose
introduction to the “Obelisco Fúnebre,” and its still more dull
poetry. The biographical sketch of him by his friend Vera Tassis
y Villarroel, originally prefixed to the fifth volume of his
Comedias, and to be found in the first volume of the editions
since, is formal, pedantic, and unsatisfactory, like most notices
of the old Spanish authors.
When only nine years old, he was placed under the Jesuits, and from
them received instructions which, like those Corneille was receiving at
the same moment, in the same way, on the other side of the Pyrenees,
imparted their coloring to the whole of his life, and especially to its
latter years. After leaving the Jesuits, he went to Salamanca, where he
studied with distinction the scholastic theology and philosophy then in
fashion, and the civil and canon law. But when he left the University
in 1619, he was already known as a writer for the theatre; and when he
arrived at Madrid, he seems, probably on this account, to have been at
once noticed by some of those persons about the court who could best
promote his advancement and success.
In 1620, he entered, with the leading spirits of his time, into the
first poetical contest opened by the city of Madrid in honor of San
Isidro, and received for his efforts the public compliment of Lope de
Vega’s praise.[573] In 1622, he appeared at the second and greater
contest proposed by the capital, on the canonization of the same saint;
and gained--all that could be gained by one individual--a single
prize, with still further and more emphatic praises from the presiding
spirit of the show.[574] In the same year, too, when Lope published
a considerable volume containing an account of all these ceremonies
and rejoicings, we find that the youthful Calderon approached him as
a friend, with a few not ungraceful lines, which Lope, to show that
he admitted the claim, prefixed to his book. But, from that time, we
entirely lose sight of Calderon as an author, for ten years, except
that in 1630 he figures in Lope de Vega’s “Laurel of Apollo,” among
the crowd of poets born in Madrid.[575]
[573] His sonnet for this occasion is in Lope de Vega, Obras
Sueltas, Tom. XI. p. 432; and his _octavas_ are at p. 491. Both
are respectable for a youth of twenty. The praises of Lope, which
are unmeaning, are at p. 593 of the same volume. Who obtained the
prizes at this festival of 1620 is not known.
[574] The different pieces offered by Calderon for the festival
of May 17, 1622, are in Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XII.
pp. 181, 239, 303, 363, 384. Speaking of them, Lope (p. 413)
says, a prize was given to “Don Pedro Calderon, who, in his
tender years, earns the laurels which time is wont to produce
only with hoary hairs.” The six or eight poems offered by
Calderon at these two poetical joustings are valuable, not only
as being the oldest of his works that remain to us, but as being
almost the only specimens of his verse that we have, except his
dramas. Cervantes, in his Don Quixote, intimates, that, at these
poetical contests, the first prize was given from personal favor,
or from regard to the rank of the aspirant, and the second with
reference only to the merit of the poem presented. (Parte II. c.
18.) Calderon took, on this occasion, only the _third_ prize for
a _cancion_; the first being given to Lope, and the second to
Zarate.
[575] Silva VII.
Much of this interval seems to have been filled with service in the
armies of his country. At least, he was in the Milanese in 1625, and
afterwards, as we are told, went to Flanders, where a disastrous
war was still carried on with unrelenting hatred, both national and
religious. That he was not a careless observer of men and manners
during his campaigns, we see by the plots of some of his plays, and by
the lively local descriptions with which they abound, as well as by the
characters of his heroes, who often come fresh from these same wars,
and talk of their adventures with an air of reality that leaves no
doubt that they speak of what had absolutely happened. But we soon find
him in the more appropriate career of letters. In 1632, Montalvan tells
us that Calderon was already the author of many dramas, which had been
acted with applause; that he had gained many public prizes; that he had
written a great deal of lyrical verse; and that he had begun a poem on
the General Deluge. His reputation as a poet, therefore, at the age of
thirty-two, was an enviable one, and was fast rising.[576]
[576] Para Todos, ed. 1661, pp. 539, 540. But these sketches were
prepared in 1632.
A dramatic author of such promise could not be overlooked in the reign
of Philip the Fourth, especially when the death of Lope, in 1635, had
left the theatre without a master. In 1636, therefore, Calderon was
formally attached to the court, for the purpose of furnishing dramas to
be represented in the royal theatres, and in 1637, as a further honor,
he was made a knight of the Order of Santiago. His very distinctions,
however, threw him back once more into a military life. When he was
just entering on his brilliant career as a poet, the rebellion excited
by France in Catalonia burst forth with great violence, and all the
members of the four great military orders of the kingdom were required,
in 1640, to appear in the field and sustain the royal authority.
Calderon, like a true knight, presented himself at once to fulfil his
duty. But the king was so anxious to enjoy his services in the palace,
that he was willing to excuse him from the field, and asked from him
yet another drama. In great haste, the poet finished his “Contest of
Love and Jealousy,”[577] and then joined the army; serving loyally
through the campaign in the body of troops commanded by the Count Duke
Olivares in person, and remaining in the field till the rebellion was
quelled.
[577] It has been said that Calderon has given to none of his
dramas the title Vera Tassis assigns to this one, viz., “Certámen
de Amor y Zelos.” But this is a mistake. No play with this
precise title is to be found among his printed works; but it is
the last but one in the list of his plays furnished by Calderon
himself to the Duke of Veraguas, in 1680.
After his return, the king testified his increased regard for
Calderon by giving him a pension of thirty gold crowns a month, and
by employing him in the arrangements for the festivities of the
court, when, in 1649, the new queen, Anna Maria of Austria, made her
entrance into Madrid. From this period, he uniformly enjoyed a high
degree of the royal favor; and, till the death of Philip the Fourth,
he had a controlling influence over whatever related to the drama,
writing secular plays for the theatres and _autos_ for the Church with
uninterrupted applause.
In 1651, he followed the example of Lope de Vega and other men of
letters of his time, by entering a religious brotherhood; and the
king two years afterwards gave him the place of chaplain in a chapel
consecrated to the “New Kings” at Toledo;--a burial-place set apart
for royalty, and richly endowed from the time of Henry of Trastamara.
But it was found that his duties there kept him too much from the
court, to whose entertainment he had become important. In 1663,
therefore, he was created chaplain of honor to the king, who thus
secured his regular presence at Madrid; though, at the same time,
he was permitted to retain his former place, and even had a second
added to it. In the same year, he became a Priest of the Congregation
of Saint Peter, and soon rose to be its head; an office of some
importance, which he held during the last fifteen years of his life,
and exercised with great gentleness and dignity.[578]
[578] “He knew how,” says Augustin de Lara, “to unite, by
humility and prudence, the duties of an obedient child and a
loving father.”
This accumulation of religious benefices, however, did not lead him
to intermit in any degree his dramatic labors. On the contrary, it
was rather intended to stimulate him to further exertion; and his
fame was now so great, that the cathedrals of Toledo, Granada, and
Seville constantly solicited from him religious plays to be performed
on the day of the Corpus Christi,--that great festival, for which,
during nearly thirty-seven years, he furnished similar entertainments
regularly, at the charge of the city of Madrid. For these services, as
well as for his services at court, he was richly rewarded, so that he
accumulated an ample fortune.
After the death of Philip the Fourth, which happened in 1665, he
seems to have enjoyed less of the royal patronage. Charles the Second
had a temper totally different from that of his predecessor; and
Solís, the historian, speaking of Calderon, with reference to these
circumstances, says pointedly, “He died without a Mæcenas.”[579] But
still he continued to write as before for the public theatres, for the
court, and for the churches; and retained, through his whole life, the
extraordinary general popularity of his best years. He died in 1681,
on the 25th of May,--the Feast of the Pentecost,--while all Spain was
ringing with the performance of his _autos_, in the composition of one
more of which he was himself occupied almost to the last moment of his
life.[580]
[579] “Murió sin Mecenas.” Aprobacion to the “Obelisco,” dated
Oct. 30th, 1683. All that relates to Calderon in this very rare
volume is important, because it comes from a friend, and was
written,--at least the poetical part of it,--as the author tells
us, within fifty-three days after Calderon’s death.
[580] “Estava un auto entonces en los fines, como su autor.”
(Obelisco, Canto I., st. 22. See also a sonnet at the end of the
volume.) Solís, the historian, in one of his letters, says, “Our
friend Don Pedro Calderon is just dead, and went off, as they
say the swan does, singing; for he did all he could, even when
he was in immediate danger, to finish the second _auto_ for the
Corpus. But, after all, he went through only a little more than
half of it, and it has been finished in some way or other by Don
Melchior de Leon.” (Cartas de N. Antonio y A. Solís, publicadas
por Mayans y Siscar, Leon de Francia, 1733, 12mo, p. 75.) I cite
three contemporary notices of so small a fact, to show how much
consequence was attached to every thing regarding Calderon and
his _autos_.
The next day, he was borne, as his will required, without any show,
to his grave in the church of San Salvador, by the Priests of the
Congregation over which he had so long presided, and to which he
now left the whole of his fortune. A more gorgeous funeral ceremony
followed a few days later, to satisfy the claims of the popular
admiration; and even at Valencia, Naples, Lisbon, Milan, and Rome,
public notice was taken of his death by his countrymen, as of a
national calamity.[581] A monument to his memory was soon erected in
the church where he was buried; but in 1840 his remains were removed to
the more splendid church of the Atocha, where they now rest.[582]
[581] Lara, in his “Advertencias,” speaks of “the funeral
eulogies _printed_ in Valencia.” Vera Tassis mentions them also,
without adding that they were printed. A copy of them would be
very interesting, as they were the work of “the illustrious
gentlemen” of the household of the Duke of Veraguas, Calderon’s
friend. The substance of the poet’s will is given in the
“Obelisco,” Cant. I., st. 32, 33.
[582] An account of the first monument and its inscription is to
be found in Baena, Tom. IV. p. 231; and an account of the removal
of the poet’s ashes to the convent of “Our Lady of Atocha” is in
the Foreign Quarterly Review, April, 1841, p. 227. An attempt
to do still further honor to the memory of Calderon was made
by the publication of a life of him, and of poems in his honor
by Zamacola, Zorilla, Hartzenbusch, etc., in a folio pamphlet,
Madrid, 1840, as well as by a subscription.
Calderon, we are told, was remarkable for his personal beauty, which
he long preserved by the serenity and cheerfulness of his spirit. The
engraving published soon after his death shows, at least, a strongly
marked and venerable countenance, to which in fancy we may easily
add the brilliant eye and gentle voice given to him by his friendly
eulogist, while, in its ample and finely turned brow, we are reminded
of that with which we are familiar in the portraits of our own great
dramatic poet.[583] His character, throughout, seems to have been
benevolent and kindly. In his old age, we learn that he used to collect
his friends round him on his birthdays, and tell them amusing stories
of his childhood;[584] and during the whole of the active part of his
life, he enjoyed the regard of many of the distinguished persons of his
time, who, like the Count Duke Olivares and the Duke of Veraguas, seem
to have been attracted to him quite as much by the gentleness of his
nature as by his genius and fame.
[583] His fine capacious forehead is noticed by his eulogist,
and is obvious in the print of 1684, which little resembles the
copies made from it by later engravers:--
Considerava de su rostro grave
_Lo capaz de la frente_, la viveza
De los ojos alegres, lo suave
De la voz, etc.
Canto I., st. 41.
[584] Prólogo to the “Obelisco.”
In a life thus extending to above fourscore years, nearly the whole
of which was devoted to letters, Calderon produced a large number of
works. Except, however, a panegyric on the Duke of Medina de Rioseco,
who died in 1647, and a single volume of _autos_, which he printed in
1676, he published hardly any thing of what he wrote;[585] and yet,
besides several longer works,[586] he prepared for the academies of
which he was a member, and for the poetical festivals and joustings
then so common in Spain, a great number of odes, songs, ballads,
and other poems, which gave him not a little of his fame with his
contemporaries.[587] His brother, indeed, printed some of his
full-length dramas between 1640 and 1674;[588] but we are expressly
told that Calderon himself never sent any of them to the press;[589]
and even in the case of the _autos_, where he deviated from his
established custom, he says he did it unwillingly, and only lest their
sacred character should be impaired by imperfect and surreptitious
publications.
[585] The account of the entrance of the new queen into Madrid,
in 1649, written by Calderon, was indeed printed; but it was
under the name of Lorenço Ramirez de Prado, who, assisted by
Calderon, arranged the festivities of the occasion.
[586] The unpublished works of Calderon, as enumerated by Vera
Tassis, Baena, and Lara, are:--
(1.) “Discurso de los Quatro Novísimos”; or what, in the technics
of his theology, are called the four last things to be thought
upon by man: viz., Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Lara
says Calderon read him three hundred octave stanzas of it, and
proposed to complete it in one hundred more. It is, no doubt,
lost.
(2.) “Tratado defendiendo la Nobleza de la Pintura.”
(3.) “Otro tratado, Defensa de la Comedia.”
(4.) “Otro tratado, sobre el Diluvio General.” These three
_tratados_ were probably poems, like the “Discurso.” At least,
that on the Deluge is mentioned as such by Montalvan and by Lara.
(5.) “Lágrimas, que vierte un Alma arrepentida á la Hora de la
Muerte.” This, however, is not unpublished, though so announced
by Vera Tassis. It is a little poem in the ballad measure,
which I detected first in a singular volume, where probably
it first appeared, entitled “Avisos para la Muerte, escritos
por algunos Ingenios de España, á la Devocion de Bernardo de
Obiedo, Secretario de su Majestad, etc., publicados por D. Luis
Arellano,” Valencia, 1634, 18mo, 90 leaves; reprinted, Zaragoza,
1648, and often besides. It consists of the contributions of
thirty poets, among whom are no less personages than Luis Vélez
de Guevara, Juan Perez de Montalvan, and Lope de Vega. The burden
of Calderon’s poem, which is given with his name attached to it,
is “O dulce Jesus mio, no entres, Señor, con vuestro siervo en
juicio!” The two following stanzas are a favorable specimen of
the whole:--
O quanto el nacer, O quanto,
Al morir es parecido!
Pues, si nacimos llorando,
Llorando tambien morimos.
O dulce Jesus mio, etc.
Un gemido la primera
Salva fué que al mundo hizimos,
Y el último vale que
Le hazemos es un gemido.
O dulce Jesus mio, etc.
How much resembles here our birth
The final hour of all!
Weeping at first we see the earth,
And weeping hear Death’s call.
O, spare me, Jesus, spare me, Saviour dear,
Nor meet thy servant as a Judge severe!
When first we entered this dark world,
We hailed it with a moan;
And when we leave its confines dark,
Our farewell is a groan.
O, spare me, Jesus, spare me, Saviour dear,
Nor meet thy servant as a Judge severe!
The whole of the little volume in which it occurs serves
curiously to illustrate Spanish manners, in an age when a
minister of state sought spiritual comfort by such means and in
such sources.
[587] Lara and Vera Tassis, both personal friends of Calderon,
speak of the number of these miscellanies as very great.
[588] There were four volumes in all, and Calderon, in his
Preface to the _Autos_, 1676, seems to admit their genuineness,
though he abstains, with apparent caution, from directly
declaring it, lest he should seem to imply that their publication
had ever been authorized by him.
[589] “All men well know,” says Lara, “that Don Pedro never sent
any of his _comedias_ to the press, and that those which were
printed were printed against his will.” Obelisco, Prólogo.
For forty-five years of his life, however, the press teemed with
dramatic works bearing his name on their titles. As early as 1633,
they began to appear in the popular collections; but many of them were
not his, and the rest were so disfigured by the imperfect manner in
which they had been written down during their representations, that he
says he could often hardly recognize them himself.[590] His editor and
friend, Vera Tassis, gives several lists of plays, amounting in all to
a hundred and fifteen, printed by the cupidity of the booksellers as
Calderon’s, without having any claim whatsoever to that honor; and he
adds, that many others, which Calderon had never seen, were sent from
Seville to the Spanish possessions in America.[591]
[590] The earliest of these fraudulent publications of
Calderon’s plays that I have seen is in the very rare collection
of “Comedias compuestas por Diferentes Autores,” Tom. XXV.,
Zaragoza, 1633, 4to, where is Calderon’s “Astrólogo Fingido,”
given with a recklessness as to omissions and changes that is the
more remarkable, because Escuer, who published the volume, makes
great professions of his editorial care and faithfulness. (See
f. 191. b.) In the larger collection of Comedias, in forty-eight
volumes, begun in 1652, there are fifty-three plays attributed,
in whole or in part, to Calderon, some of which are certainly not
his, and all of them, so far as I have examined, scandalously
corrupted in their text. All of them, too, were printed as
early as 1679; that is, two years before Calderon’s death, and
therefore before there was sufficient authority for publishing
any one of them.
[591] Probably several more may be added to the list of dramas
that are attributed to Calderon, and yet are not his. I have
observed one, entitled “El Garrote mas bien dado,” in “El Mejor
de los Mejores Libros de Comedias Nuevas,” (Madrid, 1653, 4to),
where it is inserted with others that are certainly genuine.
By means like these, the confusion became at last so great, that the
Duke of Veraguas, then the honored head of the family of Columbus, and
Captain-general of the kingdom of Valencia, wrote a letter to Calderon
in 1680, asking for a list of his dramas, by which, as a friend and
admirer, he might venture to make a collection of them for himself.
The reply of the poet, complaining bitterly of the conduct of the
booksellers which had made such a request necessary, is accompanied
by a list of one hundred and eleven full-length dramas and seventy
sacramental _autos_ which he claims as his own.[592] This catalogue
constitutes the proper basis for a knowledge of Calderon’s dramatic
works, down to the present day. All the plays mentioned in it have
not, indeed, been found. Nine are not in the editions of Vera Tassis,
in 1682, and of Apontes, in 1760; but, on the other hand, a few not
in Calderon’s list have been added to theirs upon what has seemed
sufficient authority; so that we have now seventy-three sacramental
_autos_, with their introductory _loas_,[593] and one hundred and eight
_comedias_, on which his reputation as a dramatic poet is hereafter to
rest.[594]
[592] This correspondence, so honorable to Calderon, as well as
to the head of the family of Columbus, who signs himself proudly,
_El Almirante Duque_,--as Columbus himself had required his
descendants always to sign themselves, (Navarrete, Tom. II. p.
229),--is to be found in the “Obelisco,” and again in Huerta,
“Teatro Hespañol” (Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte II. Tom. III.). The
complaints of Calderon about the booksellers are very bitter, as
well they might be; for in 1676, in his Preface to his _Autos_,
he says that their frauds took away from the hospitals and other
charities--which yet received only a small part of the profits of
the theatre--no less than twenty-six thousand ducats annually.
[593] All the _loas_, however, are not Calderon’s; but it is no
longer possible to determine which are not so. “No son todas
suyas” is the phrase applied to them in the Prólogo of the
edition of 1717.
[594] Vera Tassis tells us, indeed, in his Life of Calderon,
that Calderon wrote a hundred _saynetes_, or short farces; about
a hundred _autos sacramentales_; two hundred _loas_; and more
than one hundred and twenty _comedias_. But he collected for
his edition (Madrid, 1682-91, 9 tom., 4to) only the _comedias_
mentioned in the text, and a few more, probably twelve, intended
for an additional volume that never was printed. Nor do any more
appear in the edition by Apontes, Madrid, 1760-63, 11 tom., 4to;
nor in the more correct one published at Leipzig in 1827-30, 4
bände, 8vo, by J. J. Keil, an accomplished Spanish scholar of
that city. It is probable, therefore, that their number will
not hereafter be much increased. And yet we know the names of
nine plays, recognized by Calderon himself, which are not in
any of these collections; and Vera Tassis gives us the names of
eight more, in which he says, Calderon, after the fashion of his
time, wrote a single act. Some of these ought to be recovered.
But though we should be curious to see any of them, we should
be more curious, considering how happy Calderon is in many of
his _graciosos_, to see some of the hundred _saynetes_ Vera
Tassis mentions, of which not one is known to be extant, though
the titles of six or seven are given in Huerta’s catalogue. The
_autos_, being the property of the city of Madrid, and annually
represented, were not permitted to be printed for a long time.
(Lara, Prólogo.) They were first published in 1717, in 6 volumes,
4to, and they fill the same number of volumes in the edition of
Madrid, 1759-60, 4to. These, however, are all the editions of
Calderon’s dramatic works, except a sort of counterfeit of that
of Vera Tassis, printed at Madrid in 1726, and the selections and
single plays printed from time to time both in Spain and in other
countries. Two, however, have been undertaken lately in Spain,
(1846), and one in Havana, (1840), but probably none of them
will be finished. See notices of Calderon, by F. W. V. Schmidt,
in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, Bände XVII., XVIII., and
XIX., 1822, to which I am much indebted, and which deserve to be
printed separately, and preserved.
In examining this large mass of Calderon’s dramatic works, it will be
most convenient to take first, and by themselves, those which are quite
distinct from the rest, and which alone he thought worthy of his care
in publication,--his _autos_ or dramas for the Corpus Christi day. Nor
are they undeserving of this separate notice. There is little in the
dramatic literature of any nation more characteristic of the people
that produced it than this department of the Spanish theatre; and among
the many poets who devoted themselves to it, none had such success as
Calderon.
Of the early character and condition of the _autos_ and their
connection with the Church we have already spoken, when noticing
Juan de la Enzina, Gil Vicente, Lope de Vega, and Valdivielso. They
were, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, among the favorite
amusements of the mass of the people; but at the period at which we
are now arrived, they had gradually risen to be of great importance.
That they were spread through the whole country, even into the small
villages, we may see in the Travels of Augustin Roxas,[595] and in
the Second Part of Don Quixote, where the mad knight is represented
as meeting a car that was carrying the actors for the Festival of the
Sacrament from one hamlet to another.[596] This, it will be remembered,
was all before 1615. During the next thirty years, and especially
during the last portion of Calderon’s life, the number and consequence
of the _autos_ were much increased, and they were represented with
great luxury and at great expense in the streets of all the larger
cities;--so important were they deemed to the influence of the clergy,
and so attractive had they become to all classes of society; to the
noble and the cultivated no less than to the multitude.
[595] Roxas, Viage Entretenido, 1614, ff. 51, 52, and many other
places.
[596] Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, Parte II. c. 11, with the notes.
In 1654, when they were at the height of their success, Aarsens de
Somerdyck, an accomplished Dutch traveller, gives us an account of them
as he witnessed their exhibition at Madrid.[597] In the forenoon of
the festival, he says, a procession occurred such as we have seen was
usual in the time of Lope de Vega, where the king and court appeared
without distinction of rank, preceded by two fantastic figures of
giants, and sometimes by the grotesque form of the _Tarasca_,--one of
which, we are told, in a pleasant story of Santos, passing by night
from a place where it had been exhibited the preceding day to one
where it was to be exhibited the day following, so alarmed a body of
muleteers who accidentally met it, that they roused up the country,
as if a real monster were come among them to lay waste the land.[598]
These misshapen figures and all this strange procession, with music
of hautboys, tambourines, and castanets, with banners, and religious
shows, followed the sacrament through the streets for some hours, and
then returned to the principal church, and were dismissed.
[597] Voyage d’Espagne, Cologne, 1667, 18mo, with Barbier,
Dictionnaire d’Anonymes, Paris, 1824, 8vo, No. 19,281. The _auto_
which the Dutch traveller saw was, no doubt, one of Calderon’s;
since Calderon then, and for a long time before and after,
furnished the _autos_ for the city of Madrid. Madame d’Aulnoy
describes the same gorgeous procession as she saw it in 1679,
(Voyage, ed. 1693, Tom. III. pp. 52-55), with the impertinent
_auto_, as she calls it, that was performed that year.
[598] La Verdad en el Potro, Madrid, 1686, 12mo, pp. 291, 292.
The Dutch traveller had heard the same story, but tells it less
well. (Voyage, p. 121.) The Tarasca was no doubt excessively
ugly. Montalvan (Comedias, Madrid, 4to, 1638, f. 13) alludes to
it for its monstrous deformity.
In the afternoon they assembled again and performed the _autos_, on
that and many successive days, before the houses of the great officers
of state, where the audience stood either in the balconies that would
command a view of the exhibition, or else in the streets. The giants
and the Tarascas were there to make sport for the multitude; the music
came, that all might dance who chose; torches were added to give effect
to the scene, though the performance was only by daylight; and the king
and the royal family enjoyed the exhibition, sitting in state under a
magnificent canopy in front of the stage prepared for the occasion.
As soon as the principal personages were seated, the _loa_ was spoken
or sung; then came a farcical _entremes_; afterwards the _auto_ itself;
and finally, something by way of conclusion that would contribute to
the general amusement, like music or dancing. And this was continued,
in different parts of the city, daily for a month, during which the
theatres were shut and the regular actors were employed in the streets,
in the service of the Church.[599]
[599] C. Pellicer, Orígen de las Comedias, 1804, Tom. I. p. 258.
Of the entertainments of this sort which Calderon furnished for Madrid,
Toledo, and Seville, he has left, as has been said, no less than
seventy-three. They are all allegorical, and all, by the music and show
with which they abounded, are nearer to operas than any other class
of dramas then known in Spain; some of them reminding us, by their
religious extravagance, of the treatment of the gods in the plays of
Aristophanes, and others, by their spirit and richness, of the poetical
masques of Ben Jonson. They are upon a great variety of subjects, and
show, by their structure, that elaborate and costly machinery must have
been used in their representation.
Including the _loa_ that accompanied each, those of Calderon are nearly
or quite as long as the full-length plays which he wrote for the
secular theatre. Some of them indicate their subjects by their titles,
like “The First and Second Isaac,” “God’s Vineyard,” and “Ruth’s
Gleanings.” Others, like “The True God Pan” and “The First Flower
of Carmel,” give no such intimations. All are crowded with shadowy
personages, such as Sin, Death, Mohammedanism, Judaism, Justice, Mercy,
and Charity; and the uniform purpose and end of all is to set forth and
glorify the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The great
Enemy of man, of course, fills a large space in them,--Quevedo says too
large, adding, that, at last, he had grown to be quite a presuming and
vainglorious personage, coming on the stage dressed finely, and talking
as if the theatre were altogether his own.[600]
[600] Quevedo, Obras, 1791, Tom. I. p. 386.
There is necessarily a good deal of sameness in the structure of dramas
like these; but it is wonderful with what ingenuity Calderon has varied
his allegories, sometimes mingling them with the national history,
as in the case of the two _autos_ on Saint Ferdinand; oftener with
incidents and stories from Scripture, like “The Brazen Serpent” and
“The Captivity of the Ark”; and always, where he could, seizing any
popular occasion to produce an effect, as he did after the completion
of the Escurial and of the Buen Retiro, and after the marriage of the
Infanta María Teresa; each of which events contributed materials for a
separate _auto_. Almost all of them have passages of striking lyrical
poetry; and a few, of which “Devotion to the Mass” is the chief, make a
free use of the old ballads.
One of the most characteristic of the collection, and one that has
considerable poetical merit in separate passages, is “The Divine
Orpheus.”[601] It opens with the entrance of a huge black car, in the
shape of a boat, which is drawn along the street toward the stage where
the _auto_ is to be acted, and contains the Prince of Darkness, set
forth as a pirate, and Envy, as his steersman; both supposed to be thus
navigating through a portion of chaos. They hear, at a distance, sweet
music which proceeds from another car, advancing from the opposite
quarter in the form of a celestial globe, covered with the signs of
the planets and constellations, and containing Orpheus, who represents
allegorically the Creator of all things. This is followed by a third
car, setting forth the terrestrial globe, within which are the Seven
Days of the Week, and Human Nature, all asleep. These cars open, so
that the personages they contain can come upon the stage and retire
back again, as if behind the scenes, at their pleasure;--the machines
themselves constituting, in this as in all such representations, an
important part of the scenic arrangements of the exhibition, and, in
the popular estimation, not unfrequently the most important part.
[601] It is in the fourth volume of the edition printed at Madrid
in 1759.
On their arrival at the stage, the Divine Orpheus, with lyric poetry
and music, begins the work of creation, using always language borrowed
from Scripture; and at the suitable moment, as he advances, each Day
presents itself, roused from its ancient sleep and clothed with symbols
indicating the nature of the work that has been accomplished; after
which, Human Nature is, in the same way, summoned forth, and appears
in the form of a beautiful woman, who is the Eurydice of the fable.
Pleasure dwells with her in Paradise; and, in her exuberant happiness,
she sings a hymn in honor of her Creator, founded on the hundred and
thirty-sixth Psalm, the poetical effect of which is destroyed by an
unbecoming scene of allegorical gallantry that immediately follows
between the Divine Orpheus himself and Human Nature.
The temptation and fall succeed; and then the graceful Days, which had
before always accompanied Human Nature and scattered gladness in her
path, disappear one by one, and leave her to her trials and her sins.
She is overwhelmed with remorse, and, endeavouring to escape from the
consequences of her guilt, is conveyed by the bark of Lethe to the
realms of the Prince of Darkness, who, from his first appearance on
the scene, has been laboring, with his coadjutor, Envy, for this very
triumph. But his triumph is short. The Divine Orpheus, who has, for
some time, represented the character of our Saviour, comes upon the
stage, weeping over the fall, and sings a song of love and grief to
the accompaniment of a harp made partly in the form of a cross; after
which, rousing himself in his omnipotence, he enters the realms of
darkness, amidst thunders and earthquakes; overcomes all opposition;
rescues Human Nature from perdition; places her, with the seven
redeemed Days of the Week, on a fourth car, in the form of a ship,
so ornamented as to represent the Christian Church and the mystery
of the Eucharist; and then, as the gorgeous machine sweeps away, the
exhibition ends with the shouts of the actors in the drama, accompanied
by the answering shouts of the spectators on their knees wishing the
good ship a good voyage and a happy arrival at her destined port.
That these Sacramental Acts produced a great effect, there can be
no doubt. Allegory of all kinds, which, from the earliest periods,
had been attractive to the Spanish people, still continued so to an
extraordinary degree; and the imposing show of the _autos_, their
music, and the fact that they were represented in seasons of solemn
leisure, at the expense of the government, and with the sanction of the
Church, gave them claims on the popular favor which were enjoyed by no
other form of popular amusement. They were written and acted everywhere
throughout the country, and by all classes of people, because they
were everywhere demanded. How humble were some of their exhibitions in
the villages and hamlets may be seen in Roxas, who gives an account
of an _auto_ of Cain and Abel, in which two actors performed all the
parts;[602] and from Lope de Vega[603] and Cervantes,[604] who speak
of their being written by barbers and acted by shepherds. On the other
hand, we know that in Madrid no expense was spared to add to their
solemnity and effect, and that everywhere they had the countenance
and support of the public authorities. Nor has their influence even
yet entirely ceased. In 1765, Charles the Third forbade their public
representation; but the popular will and the habits of five centuries
could not be immediately broken down by a royal decree. _Autos_,
therefore, or dramatic religious farces resembling them, are still
heard in some of the remote villages of the country; while, in the
former dependencies of Spain, exhibitions of the same class and nature,
if not precisely of the same form, have never been interfered with.[605]
[602] Viage, 1614, ff. 35-37.
[603] Lope de Vega, Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, f. 133,
El Animal de Ungria.
[604] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. xii.
[605] Doblado’s Letters, 1822, pp. 296, 301, 303-309; Madame
Calderon’s Life in Mexico, London, 1843, Letters 38 and 39;
and Thompson’s Recollections of Mexico, New York, 1846, 8vo,
Chap. 11. How much the _autos_ were valued to the last, even
by respectable ecclesiastics, may be inferred from the grave
admiration bestowed on them by Martin Panzano, chaplain to the
Spanish embassy at Turin, in his Latin treatise, “De Hispanorum
Literatura,” (Mantuæ, 1759, folio), intended as a defence of his
country’s literary claims, in which, speaking of the _autos_ of
Calderon, only a few years before they were forbidden, he says
they were dramas, “in quibus neque in inveniendo acumen, nec in
disponendo ratio, neque in ornando aut venustas, aut nitor, aut
majestas desiderantur.”--p. lxxv.
* * * * *
Of _full-length religious plays and plays of saints_ Calderon wrote,
in all, thirteen or fourteen. This was, no doubt, necessary to his
success; for at one time during his career, such plays were much
demanded. The death of Queen Isabella, in 1644, and of Balthasar, the
heir-apparent, in 1646, caused a suspension of public representations
on the theatres, and revived the question of their lawfulness. New
rules were prescribed about the number of actors and their costumes,
and an attempt was made even to drive from the theatre all plays
involving the passion of love, and especially all the plays of Lope
de Vega. This irritable state of things continued till 1649. But
nothing of consequence followed. The regulations that were made were
not executed in the spirit in which they were conceived. Many plays
were announced and acted as religious which had no claim whatever
to the title; and others, religious in their external framework,
were filled up with an intriguing love-plot, as free as any thing in
the secular drama had been. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the
attempts thus made to constrain the theatre were successfully opposed
or evaded, especially by private representations in the houses of the
nobility;[606] and that, when these attempts were given up, the drama,
with all its old attributes and attractions, broke forth with a greater
extravagance of popularity than ever;[607]--a fact apparent from the
crowd of dramatists that became famous, and from the circumstance
that so many of the clergy, like Tarraga, Mira de Mescua, Montalvan,
Tirso de Molina, and Calderon, to say nothing of Lope de Vega, who
was particularly exact in his duties as a priest, were all successful
writers for the stage.[608]
[606] These representations in private houses had long been
common. Bisbe y Vidal (Tratado, 1618, c. 18) speaks of them as
familiar in Barcelona, and treats them, in his otherwise severe
attack on the theatre, with a gentleness that shows he recognized
their influence.
[607] It is not easy to make out how much the theatre was really
interfered with during these four or five years; but the dramatic
writers seem to have felt themselves constrained in their course,
more or less, for a part of that time, if not the whole of it.
The accounts are to be found in Casiano Pellicer, Orígen, etc.,
de la Comedia, Tom. I. pp. 216-222, and Tom. II. p. 135;--a work
important, but ill digested. Conde, the historian, once told
me, that its materials were furnished chiefly by the author’s
father, the learned editor of Don Quixote, and that the son did
not know how to put them together. A few hints and facts on the
subject of the secular drama of this period may also be found in
Ulloa y Pereira’s defence of it, written apparently to meet the
particular case, but not published till his works appeared in
Madrid, 1674, 4to. He contends that there was never any serious
purpose to break up the theatre, and that even Philip II. meant
only to regulate, not to suppress it. (p. 343.) Don Luis Crespé
de Borja, Bishop of Orihuela and ambassador of Philip IV. at
Rome, who had previously favored the theatre, made, in Lent,
1646, an attack on it in a sermon, which, when published three
years afterwards, excited a considerable sensation, and was
answered by Andres de Avila y Heredia, el Señor de la Garena, and
sustained by Padre Ignacio Camargo. But nothing of this sort much
hindered or helped the progress of the drama in Spain.
[608] The clergy writing loose and immoral plays is only one
exemplification of the unsound state of society so often set
forth in Madame d’Aulnoy’s Travels in Spain, in 1679-80;--a
curious and amusing book, which sometimes throws a strong
light on the nature of the religious spirit that so frequently
surprises us in Spanish literature. Thus, when she is giving
an account of the constant use made of the rosary or chaplet
of beads,--a well-known passion in Spain, connected, perhaps,
with the Mohammedan origin of the rosary, of which the Christian
rosary was made a rival,--she says, “They are going over
their beads constantly when they are in the streets, and in
conversation; when they are playing _ombre_, making love, telling
lies, or talking scandal. In short, they are for ever muttering
over their chaplets; and even in the most ceremonious society it
goes on just the same; how devoutly you may guess. But custom is
very potent in this country.” Ed. 1693, Tom. II. p. 124.
Of the religious plays of Calderon, one of the most remarkable is
“The Purgatory of Saint Patrick.” It is founded on the little volume
by Montalvan, already referred to, in which the old traditions of an
entrance into Purgatory from a cave in an island off the coast of
Ireland, or in Ireland itself, are united to the fictitious history
of Ludovico Enio, a Spaniard, who, except that he is converted by
Saint Patrick and “makes a good ending,” is no better than another
Don Juan.[609] The strange play in which these are principal figures
opens with a shipwreck. Saint Patrick and the godless Enio drift ashore
and find themselves in Ireland,--the sinner being saved from drowning
by the vigorous exertions of the saint. The king of the country, who
immediately appears on the stage, is an atheist, furious against
Christianity; and after an exhibition, which is not without poetry,
of the horrors of savage heathendom, Saint Patrick is sent as a slave
into the interior of the island, to work for this brutal master. The
first act ends with his arrival at his destination, where, in the open
fields, after a fervent prayer, he is comforted by an angel, and warned
of the will of Heaven, that he should convert his oppressors.
[609] The “Vida y Purgatorio del Glorioso San Patricio,” of
which I have a copy, (Madrid, 1739, 18mo), was long a popular
book of devotion, both in Spanish and in French. That Calderon
used it is obvious throughout his play. Wright, however, in his
pleasant work on St. Patrick’s Purgatory, (London, 1844, 12mo,
pp. 156-159), supposes that the French book of devotion was made
up chiefly from Calderon’s play; whereas they resemble each other
only because both were taken from the Spanish prose work of
Montalvan. See _ante_, p. 298.
Before the second act opens, three years elapse, during which Saint
Patrick has visited Rome and been regularly commissioned for his
great work in Ireland, where he now appears, ready to undertake it.
He immediately performs miracles of all kinds, and, among the rest,
raises the dead before the audience; but still the old heathen king
refuses to be converted, unless the very Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise
preached to him are made sure to the senses of some well-known witness.
This, therefore, is Divinely vouchsafed to the intercession of Saint
Patrick. A communication with the unseen world is opened through a dark
and frightful cave. Enio, the godless Spaniard, already converted by
an alarming vision, enters it and witnesses its dread secrets; after
which he returns, and effects the conversion of the king and court by a
long description of what he had seen,--a description which is the only
catastrophe to the play.
Besides its religious story, the Purgatory of Saint Patrick has
a love-plot, such as might become the most secular drama, and a
_gracioso_ as rude and free-spoken as the rudest of his class.[610]
But the whole was intended to produce what was then regarded as a
religious effect; and there is no reason to suppose that it failed of
its purpose. There is, however, much in it that would be grotesque and
unseemly under any system of faith; some wearying metaphysics; and two
speeches of Enio’s, each above three hundred lines long,--the first an
account of his shameful life before his conversion, and the last a
narrative of all he had witnessed in the cave, absurdly citing for its
truth fourteen or fifteen obscure monkish authorities, all of which
belong to a period subsequent to his own.[611] Such as it is, however,
the Purgatory of Saint Patrick is commonly ranked among the best
religious plays of the Spanish theatre in the seventeenth century.
[610] When Enio determines to adventure into the cave of
Purgatory, he gravely urges his servant, who is the _gracioso_ of
the piece, to go with him; to which the servant replies,--
I never heard before, that any man
Took lackey with him when he went to hell!
No,--to my native village will I haste,
Where I can live in something like content;
Or, if the matter must to goblins come,
I think my wife will prove enough of one
For my purgation.
Comedias, 1760, Tom. II. p. 264.
There is, however, a good deal that is solemn in this wild drama.
Enio, when he goes to the infernal world, talks, in the spirit of
Dante himself, of
Treading on the very ghosts of men.
[611] See Chapters 4 and 6 of Montalvan’s “Patricio.”
It is, indeed, on many accounts, less offensive than the more famous
drama, “Devotion to the Cross,” which is founded on the adventures of
a man who, though his life is a tissue of gross and atrocious crimes,
is yet made an object of the especial favor of God, because he shows a
uniform external reverence for whatever has the form of a cross; and
who, dying in a ruffian brawl, as a robber, is yet, in consequence of
this devotion to the cross, miraculously restored to life, that he may
confess his sins, be absolved, and then be transported directly to
heaven. The whole seems to be absolutely an invention of Calderon, and,
from the fervent poetical tone of some of its devotional passages, it
has always been a favorite in Spain, and, what is yet more remarkable,
has found admirers in Protestant Christendom.[612]
[612] It is beautifully translated by A. W. Schlegel. A drama of
Tirso de Molina, “El Condenado por Desconfiado,” goes still more
profoundly into the peculiar religious faith of the age, and may
well be compared with this play of Calderon, which it preceded.
It represents a reverend hermit, Paulo, as losing the favor of
God, simply from want of trust in it; while Enrico, a robber and
assassin, obtains that favor by an exercise of faith and trust
at the last moment of a life which had been filled with the most
revolting crimes.
“The Wonder-working Magician,” founded on the story of Saint
Cyprian,--the same legend on which Milman has founded his “Martyr of
Antioch,”--is, however, more attractive than either of the dramas just
mentioned, and, like “El Joseph de las Mugeres,” reminds us of Goethe’s
“Faust.” It opens--after one of those pleasing descriptions of natural
scenery in which Calderon loves to indulge--with an account by Cyprian,
still unconverted, of his retirement, on a day devoted to the service
of Jupiter, from the bustle and confusion of the city of Antioch, in
order to spend the time in inquiries concerning the existence of One
Supreme Deity. As he seems likely to arrive at conclusions not far
from the truth, Satan, to whom such a result would be particularly
unwelcome, breaks in upon his studies, and, in the dress of a fine
gentleman, announces himself to be a man of learning, who has
accidentally lost his way. In imitation of a fashion not rare among
scholars at European universities, in the poet’s time, this personage
offers to hold a dispute with Cyprian on any subject whatever. Cyprian
naturally chooses the one that then troubled his thoughts; and after a
long, logical discussion, according to the discipline of the schools,
obtains a clear victory,--though not without feeling enough of his
adversary’s power and genius to express a sincere admiration for both.
The evil spirit, however, though defeated, is not discouraged, and goes
away, determined to try the power of temptation.
For this purpose he brings upon the stage Lelius, son of the governor
of Antioch, and Florus,--both friends of Cyprian,--who come to fight
a duel, near the place of his present retirement, concerning a fair
lady named Justina, against whose gentle innocence the Spirit of all
Evil is particularly incensed. Cyprian interferes; the parties refer
their quarrel to him; he visits Justina, who is secretly a Christian,
and supposes herself to be the daughter of a Christian priest; but,
unhappily, Cyprian, instead of executing his commission, falls
desperately in love with her; while, in order to make out the running
parody on the principal action, common in Spanish plays, the two
lackeys of Cyprian are both found to be in love with Justina’s maid.
Now, of course, begins the complication of a truly Spanish intrigue,
for which all that precedes it is only a preparation. That same night,
Lelius and Floras, the two original rivals for the love of Justina, who
favors neither of them, come separately before her window to offer her
a serenade, and while there, Satan deceives them both into a confident
belief that the lady is disgracefully attached to some other person;
for he himself, in the guise of a gallant, descends from her balcony,
before their eyes, by a rope-ladder, and, having reached the bottom,
sinks into the ground between the two. As they did not see each other
till after his disappearance, though both had seen him, each takes the
other to be this favored rival, and a duel ensues on the spot. Cyprian
again opportunely interferes, but, having understood nothing of the
vision or the rope-ladder, is astonished to find that both renounce
Justina, as no longer worthy their regard. And thus ends the first act.
In the other two acts, Satan is still a busy, bustling personage. He
appears in different forms; first, as if just escaped from shipwreck;
and afterwards, as a fashionable gallant; but uniformly for mischief.
The Christians, meantime, through his influence, are persecuted.
Cyprian’s love grows desperate; and he sells his soul to the Spirit
of Evil for the possession of Justina. The temptation of the fair
Christian maiden is then carried on in all possible ways; especially
in a beautiful lyrical allegory, where all things about her--the
birds, the flowers, the balmy air--are made to solicit her to love
with gentle and winning voices. But in every way the temptation fails.
Satan’s utmost power is defied and defeated by the mere spirit of
innocence. Cyprian, too, yields, and becomes a Christian, and with
Justina is immediately brought before the governor, already exasperated
by discovering that his own son is a lover of the fair convert. Both
are ordered to instant execution; the buffoon servants make many poor
jests on the occasion; and the piece ends by the appearance on a dragon
of Satan himself, who is compelled to confess the power of the Supreme
Deity, which, in the first scenes, he had denied, and to proclaim,
amidst thunder and earthquakes, that Cyprian and Justina are already
enjoying the happiness won by their glorious martyrdom.[613]
[613] An interesting, but somewhat too metaphysical, discussion
of the character of this play, with prefatory remarks on the
general merits of Calderon, by Karl Rosenkranz, appeared at
Leipzig in 1829, (12mo), entitled, “Ueber Calderon’s Tragödie vom
wunderthätigen Magus.”
Few pieces contain more that is characteristic of the old Spanish stage
than this one; and fewer still show so plainly how the civil restraints
laid on the theatre were evaded, and the Church was conciliated, while
the popular audiences lost nothing of the forbidden amusement to which
they had been long accustomed from the secular drama.[614] Of such
plays Calderon wrote fifteen, if we include in the number his “Aurora
in Copacabana,” which is on the conquest and conversion of the Indians
in Peru; and his “Origin, Loss, and Recovery of the Virgin of the
Reliquary,”--a strange collection of legends, extending over above four
centuries, full of the spirit of the old ballads, and relating to an
image of the Madonna still devoutly worshipped in the great cathedral
at Toledo.
[614] How completely a light, worldly tone was taken in these
plays may be seen in the following words of the Madonna, when
she personally gives St. Ildefonso a rich vestment,--the
_chasuble_,--in which he is to say mass:--
Receive this robe, that, at my holy feast,
Thou mayst be seen as such a gallant should be.
My taste must be consulted in thy dress,
Like that of any other famous lady.
Comedias, 1760, Tom. VI. p. 113.
The lightness of tone in this passage is the more remarkable,
because the miracle alluded to in it is the crowning glory of the
great cathedral of Toledo, on which volumes have been written,
and on which Murillo has painted one of his greatest and most
solemn pictures.
Figueroa (Pasagero, 1617, ff. 104-106) says, with much truth,
in the midst of his severe remarks on the drama of his time,
that the _comedias de santos_ were so constructed, that the
first act contained the youth of the saint, with his follies and
love-adventures; the second, his conversion and subsequent life;
and the third, his miracles and death; but that they often had
loose and immoral stories to render them attractive. But they
were of all varieties; and it is curious, in such a collection
dramas as the one in forty-eight volumes, extending over the
period from 1652 to 1704, to mark in how many ways the theatre
endeavoured to conciliate the Church; some of the plays being
filled entirely with saints, demons, angels, and allegorical
personages, and deserving the character given to the “Fenix de
España,” (Tom. XLIII., 1678), of being sermons in the shape of
plays; while others are mere intriguing comedies, with an angel
or a saint put in to consecrate their immoralities, like “La
Defensora de la Reyna de Ungria,” by Fernando de Zarate, in Tom.
XXIX., 1668.
In other countries of Christendom besides those in which the
Church of Rome bears sway, this sort of irreverence in relation
to things divine has more or less shown itself among persons
accounting themselves religious. The Puritans of England in the
days of Cromwell, from their belief in the constant interference
of Providence about their affairs, sometimes addressed
supplications to God in a spirit not more truly devout than that
shown by the Spaniards in their _autos_ and their _comedias
de santos_. Both felt themselves to be peculiarly regarded of
Heaven, and entitled to make the most peremptory claims on the
Divine favor and the most free allusions to what they deemed
holy. But no people ever felt themselves to be so absolutely
soldiers of the cross as the Spaniards did, from the time of
their Moorish wars; no people ever trusted so constantly to the
recurrence of miracles in the affairs of their daily life; and
therefore no people ever talked of divine things as of matters in
their nature so familiar and commonplace. Traces of this state of
feeling and character are to be found in Spanish literature on
all sides.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CALDERON, CONTINUED.--HIS SECULAR PLAYS.--DIFFICULTY OF CLASSIFYING
THEM.--THEIR PRINCIPAL INTEREST.--NATURE OF THEIR PLOTS.--LOVE SURVIVES
LIFE.--PHYSICIAN OF HIS OWN HONOR.--PAINTER OF HIS OWN DISHONOR.--NO
MONSTER LIKE JEALOUSY.--FIRM-HEARTED PRINCE.
Passing from the religious plays of Calderon to the secular, we at
once encounter an embarrassment which we have already felt in other
cases,--that of dividing them all into distinct and appropriate
classes. It is even difficult to determine, in every instance,
whether the piece we are considering belongs to one of the religious
subdivisions of his dramas or not; for the “Wonder-working Magician,”
for instance, is hardly less an intriguing play than “First of
all my Lady”; and “Aurora in Copacabana” is as full of spiritual
personages and miracles, as if it were not, in the main, a love-story.
But, even after setting this difficulty aside, as we have done, by
examining separately all the dramas of Calderon that can, in any
way, be accounted religious, it is not possible to make a definite
classification of the remainder.
Some of them, such as “Nothing like Silence,” are absolutely intriguing
comedies, and belong strictly to the school of the _capa y espada_;
others, like “A Friend Loving and Loyal,” are purely heroic, both
in their structure and their tone; and a few others, such as “Love
survives Life,” and “The Physician of his own Honor,” belong to the
most terrible inspirations of genuine tragedy. Twice, in a different
direction, we have operas, which are yet nothing but plays in the
national taste, with music added;[615] and once we have a burlesque
drama,--“Cephalus and Procris,”--in which, using the language of the
populace, he parodies an earlier and successful performance of his
own.[616] But, in the great majority of cases, the boundaries of no
class are respected; and in many of them even more than two forms of
the drama melt imperceptibly into each other. Especially in those
pieces whose subjects are taken from known history, sacred or profane,
or from the recognized fictions of mythology or romance, there is
frequently a confusion that seems as though it were intended to set all
classification at defiance.[617]
[615] “La Púrpura de la Rosa” and “Las Fortunas de Andrómeda
y Perseo” are both of them plays in the national taste, and
yet were sung throughout. The last is taken from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, Lib. IV. and V., and was produced before the court
with a magnificent theatrical apparatus. The first, which was
written in honor of the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta
Maria Teresa, 1660, was also taken from Ovid (Met., Lib. X.); and
in the _loa_ that precedes it we are told expressly, “The play
is to be _wholly_ in music, and is intended to _introduce_ this
style among us, that other nations may see they have competitors
for those distinctions of which they boast.” Operas in Spain,
however, never had any permanent success, though they had in
Portugal.
[616] “Zelos aun del Ayre matan,” which Calderon parodied, is on
the same subject with his “Cephalus and Procris,” to which he
added, not very appropriately, the story of Erostratus and the
burning of the temple of Diana.
[617] For instance, the “Armas de la Hermosura,” on the story of
Coriolanus; and the “Mayor Encanto Amor,” on the story of Ulysses.
Still, in this confusion there was a principle of order, and perhaps
even a dramatic theory. For--if we except “Luis Perez the Galician,”
which is a series of sketches to bring out the character of a notorious
robber, and a few show pieces, presented on particular occasions to
the court with great magnificence--all Calderon’s full-length dramas
depend for their success on the interest excited by an involved plot,
constructed out of surprising incidents.[618] He avows this himself,
when he declares one of them to be--
[618] Calderon was famous for what are called _coups de théâtre_;
so famous, that _lances_ de Calderon became a sort of proverb.
The most surprising tale
Which, in the dramas of Castile, a wit
Acute hath yet traced out, and on the stage
With tasteful skill produced.[619]
[619]
La _novela_ mas notable
Que en Castellanas comedias,
Sutil el ingenio traza
Y gustoso representa.
El Alcayde de sí mismo, Jorn. II.
And again, where he says of another,--
This is a play of Pedro Calderon,
Upon whose scene you never fail to find
A hidden lover or a lady fair
Most cunningly disguised.[620]
[620] No hay Burlas con el Amor, Jorn. II.
But to this principle of making a story which shall sustain an eager
interest throughout Calderon has sacrificed almost as much as Lope de
Vega did. The facts of history and geography are not felt for a moment
as limits or obstacles. Coriolanus is a general who has served under
Romulus; and Veturia, his wife, is one of the ravished Sabines.[621]
The Danube, which must have been almost as well known to a Madrid
audience from the time of Charles the Fifth as the Tagus, is placed
between Russia and Sweden.[622] Jerusalem is on the sea-coast.[623]
Herodotus is made to describe America.[624]
[621] Armas de la Hermosura, Jorn. I., II.
[622] Afectos de Odio y Amor, Jorn. II.
[623] El Mayor Monstruo los Zelos, Jorn. III.
[624] La Vírgen del Sagrario, Jorn. I. The pious bishop who is
here represented as talking of America, on the authority of
Herodotus, is, at the same time, supposed to live seven or eight
centuries before America was discovered.
How absurd all this was Calderon knew as well as any body. Once,
indeed, he makes a jest of it all; for one of his ancient Roman clowns,
who is about to tell a story, begins,--
A friar,--but that ’s not right,--there are no friars
As yet in Rome.[625]
[625]
Un frayle,--mas no es bueno,--
Porque aun no ay en Roma frayles.
Los Dos Amantes del Cielo, Jorn. III.
Nor is the preservation of national or individual character, except
perhaps the Moorish, a matter of any more moment in his eyes. Ulysses
and Circe sit down, as if in a saloon at Madrid, and, gathering an
academy of cavaliers and ladies about them, discuss questions of
metaphysical gallantry. Saint Eugenia does the same thing at Alexandria
in the third century. And Judas Maccabæus, Herod the tetrarch of Judea,
Jupangui the Inca of Peru, and Zenobia, are all, in their general
air, as much Spaniards of the time of Philip the Fourth, as if they
had never lived anywhere except at his court.[626] But we rarely miss
the interest and charm of a dramatic story, sustained by a rich and
flowing versification, and by long narrative passages, in which the
most ingenious turns of phraseology are employed in order to provoke
curiosity and enchain attention.
[626] El Mayor Encanto Amor, Jorn. II.; El Joseph de las Mugeres,
Jorn. III., etc.
No doubt, this is not the dramatic interest to which we are most
accustomed and which we most value. But still it is a dramatic
interest, and dramatic effects are produced by it. We are not to judge
Calderon by the example of Shakspeare, any more than we are to judge
Shakspeare by the example of Sophocles. The “Arabian Nights” are not
the less brilliant because the admirable practical fictions of Miss
Edgeworth are so different. The gallant audiences of Madrid still
give the full measure of an intelligent admiration to the dramas of
Calderon, as their fathers did; and even the poor Alguacil, who sat as
a guard of ceremony on the stage while the “Niña de Gomez Arias” was
acting, was so deluded by the cunning of the scene, that, when a noble
Spanish lady was dragged forward to be sold to the Moors, he sprang,
sword in hand, among the performers to prevent it.[627] It is in vain
to say that dramas which produce such effects are not dramatic. The
testimony of two centuries and of a whole nation proves the contrary.
[627] Huerta, Teatro Hespañol, Parte II., Tom I., Prólogo, p.
vii. La Niña de Gomez Arias, Jorn. III.
Admitting, then, that the plays of Calderon are really dramas, and that
their basis is to be sought in the structure of their plots, we can
examine them in the spirit, at least, in which they were originally
written. And if, while thus inquiring into their character and
merits, we fix our attention on the different degrees in which love,
jealousy, and a lofty and sensitive honor and loyalty enter into their
composition and give life and movement to their respective actions, we
shall hardly fail to form a right estimate of what Calderon did for the
Spanish secular theatre in its highest departments.
Under the first head,--that of the passion of love,--one of the most
prominent of Calderon’s plays occurs early in the collection of his
works, and is entitled “Love survives Life.” It is founded on events
that happened in the rebellion of the Moors of Granada which broke out
in 1568, and though some passages in it bear traces of the history
of Mendoza,[628] yet it is mainly taken from the half fanciful,
half-serious narrative of Hita, where its chief details are recorded
as unquestionable facts.[629] The action occupies about five years,
beginning three years before the absolute outbreak of the insurgents,
and ending with their final overthrow.
[628] Compare the eloquent speeches of El Zaguer, in Mendoza, ed.
1776, Lib. I. p. 29, and Malec, in Calderon, Jorn. I.; or the
description of the Alpujarras, in the same _jornada_, with that
of Mendoza, p. 43, etc.
[629] The story of Tuzani is found in Chapters XXII., XXIII., and
XXIV. of the second volume of Hita’s “Guerras de Granada,” and
is the best part of it. Hita says he had the account from Tuzani
himself, long afterwards, at Madrid, and it is not unlikely that
a great part of it is true. Calderon, though sometimes using its
very words, makes considerable alterations in it, to bring it
within the forms of the drama; but the leading facts are the same
in both cases, and the story belongs to Hita.
The first act passes in the city of Granada, and explains the
intention of the conspirators to throw off the Spanish yoke, which
had become intolerable. Tuzani, the hero, is quickly brought to the
foreground of the piece by his attachment to Clara Malec, whose aged
father, dishonored by a blow from a Spaniard, causes the rebellion
to break out somewhat prematurely. Tuzani at once seeks the haughty
offender. A duel follows, and is described with great spirit; but it is
interrupted,[630] and the parties separate, to renew their quarrel on a
bloodier theatre.
[630] While they are fighting in a room, with locked doors,
suddenly there is a great bustle and calling without. Mendoza,
the Spaniard, asks his adversary,--
What’s to be done?
_Tuzani._ First let one fall, and the survivor then
May open straight the doors.
_Mendoza._ Well said.
The second act opens three years afterwards, in the mountains south
of Granada, where the insurgents are strongly posted, and where they
are attacked by Don John of Austria, represented as coming fresh from
the great victory at Lepanto, which yet happened, as Calderon and
his audience well knew, a year after this rebellion was quelled. The
marriage of Tuzani and Clara is hardly celebrated, when he is hurried
away from her by one of the chances of war; the fortress where the
ceremonies had taken place falling suddenly into the hands of the
Spaniards. Clara, who had remained in it, is murdered in the _mêlée_
by a Spanish soldier, for the sake of her rich bridal jewels; and
though Tuzani arrives in season to witness her death, he is too late to
intercept or recognize the murderer.
From this moment, darkness settles on the scene. Tuzani’s character
changes, or seems to change, in an instant, and his whole Moorish
nature is stirred to its deepest foundations. The surface, it is true,
remains, for a time, as calm as ever. He disguises himself carefully
in Castilian armour, and glides into the enemy’s camp in quest of
vengeance, with that fearfully cool resolution which marks, indeed,
the predominance of one great passion, but shows that all the others
are roused to contribute to its concentrated energy. The ornaments of
Clara enable her lover to trace out the murderer. But he makes himself
perfectly sure of his proper victim by coolly listening to a minute
description of Clara’s beauty and of the circumstances attending her
death; and when the Spaniard ends by saying, “I pierced her heart,”
Tuzani springs upon him like a tiger, crying out, “And was the blow
like this?” and strikes him dead at his feet. The Moor is surrounded,
and is recognized by the Spaniards as the fiercest of their enemies;
but, even from the very presence of Don John of Austria, he cuts his
way through all opposition, and escapes to the mountains. Hita says he
afterwards knew him personally.
The power of this painful tragedy consists in the living impression
it gives us of a pure and elevated love, contrasted with the wild
elements of the age in which it is placed;--the whole being idealized
by passing through Calderon’s excited imagination, but still, in the
main, taken from history and resting on known facts. Regarded in this
light, it is a solemn exhibition of violence, disaster, and hopeless
rebellion, through whose darkening scenes we are led by that burning
love which has marked the Arab wherever he has been found, and by that
proud sense of honor which did not forsake him as he slowly retired,
disheartened and defeated, from the rich empire he had so long enjoyed
in Western Europe. We are even hurried by the course of the drama into
the presence of whatever is most odious in war, and should be revolted,
as we are made to witness, with our own eyes, its guiltiest horrors;
but in the midst of all, the form of Clara rises, a beautiful vision of
womanly love, before whose gentleness the tumults of the conflict seem,
at least, to be hushed; while, from first to last, in the characters of
Don John of Austria, Lope de Figueroa,[631] and Garcés, on one side,
and the venerable Malec and the fiery Tuzani, on the other, we are
dazzled by a show of the times that Calderon brings before us, and of
the passions which deeply marked the two most romantic nations that
were ever brought into a conflict so direct.
[631] This character of Lope de Figueroa may serve as a
specimen of the way in which Calderon gave life and interest
to many of his dramas. Lope is an historical personage, and
figures largely in the second volume of Hita’s “Guerras,” as
well as elsewhere. He was the commander under whom Cervantes
served in Italy, and probably in Portugal, when he was in the
_Tercio de Flándes_,--the Flanders regiment,--one of the best
bodies of troops in the armies of Philip II. Lope de Figueroa
appears again, and still more prominently, in another good play
of Calderon, “El Alcalde de Zalamea,” the last in the common
collection. Its hero is a peasant, finely sketched, partly from
Lope de Vega’s Mendo, in the “Cuerdo en su Casa”; and it is said
at the end that it is a true story, whose scene is laid in 1581,
at the very time Philip II. was advancing toward Lisbon, and when
Cervantes was probably with this regiment at Zalamea.
The play of “Love survives Life,” so far as its plot is concerned,
is founded on the passionate love of Tuzani and Clara, without any
intermixture of the workings of jealousy, or any questions arising, in
the course of that love, from an over-excited feeling of honor. This is
rare in Calderon, whose dramas are almost always complicated in their
intrigue by the addition of one or both of these principles; giving the
story sometimes a tragic and sometimes a happy conclusion.
One of the best-known and most admired of these mixed dramas is “The
Physician of his own Honor,”--a play whose scene is laid in the time
of Peter the Cruel, but one which seems to have no foundation in known
facts, and in which the monarch has an elevation given to his character
not warranted by history.[632] His brother, Henry of Trastamara, is
represented as having been in love with a lady who, notwithstanding
his lofty pretensions, is given in marriage to Don Gutierre de
Solís, a Spanish nobleman of high rank and sensitive honor. She is
sincerely attached to her husband, and true to him. But the prince
is accidentally thrown into her presence. His passion is revived;
he visits her again, contrary to her will; he leaves his dagger, by
chance, in her apartment; and, the suspicions of the husband being
roused, she is anxious to avert any further danger, and begins, for
this purpose, a letter to her lover, which her husband seizes before
it is finished. His decision is instantly taken. Nothing can be more
deep and tender than his love; but his honor is unable to endure the
idea, that his wife, even before her marriage, had been interested
in another, and that, after it, she had seen him privately. When,
therefore, she awakes from the swoon into which she had fallen at the
moment he tore from her the equivocal beginning of her letter, she
finds at her side a note containing only these fearful words:--
[632] About this time, there was a strong disposition shown by
the overweening sensibility of Spanish loyalty to relieve the
memory of Peter the Cruel from the heavy imputations left resting
on it by Pedro de Ayala, of which I have taken notice, (Period
I., chap. 9, note 17), and of which traces may be found in
Moreto, and the other dramatists of the reign of Philip IV. Pedro
appears also in the “Niña de Plata” of Lope de Vega, but with
less strongly marked attributes.
My love adores thee, but my honor hates;
And while the one must strike, the other warns.
Two hours hast thou of life. Thy soul is Christ’s;
O, save it, for thy life thou canst not save![633]
[633]
El amor te adora, el honor te aborrece,
Y así el uno te mata, y el otro te avisa:
Dos horas tienes de vida; Christiana eres;
Salva el alma, que la vida es imposible.
Jorn. III.
At the end of these two fatal hours, Gutierre returns with a surgeon,
whom he brings to the door of the room in which he had left his wife.
_Don Gutierre._ Look in upon this room. What seest thou there?
_Surgeon._ A death-like image, pale and still, I see,
That rests upon a couch. On either side
A taper lit, while right before her stands
The holy crucifix. Who it may be
I cannot say; the face with gauze-like silk
Is covered quite.[634]
[634]
_Don Gutierre._ Assomate á esse aposento;
Que ves en él?
_Lud._ Una imagen
De la muerte, un bulto veo,
Que sobre una cama yaze;
Dos velas tiene a los lados
Y un Crucifixo delante:
Quien es, no puedo decir,
Que con unos tafetanes
El rostro tiene cubierto.
Ibid.
Gutierre, with the most violent threats, requires him to enter the
room and bleed to death the person who has thus laid herself out
for interment. He goes in and accomplishes the will of her husband,
without the least resistance on the part of his victim. But when he is
conducted away, blindfold as he came, he impresses his bloody hand upon
the door of the house, that he may recognize it again, and immediately
reveals to the king the horrors of the scene he has just passed through.
The king rushes to the house of Gutierre, who ascribes the death of
his wife to accident, not from the least desire to conceal the part he
himself had in it, but from an unwillingness to explain his conduct,
by revealing reasons for it which involved his honor. The king makes
no direct reply, but requires him instantly to marry Leonore, a lady
then present, whom Gutierre was bound in honor to have married long
before, and who had already made known to the king her complaints of
his falsehood. Gutierre hesitates, and asks what he should do, if the
prince should visit his wife secretly and she should venture afterwards
to write to him; intending by these intimations to inform the king what
were the real causes of the bloody sacrifice before him, and that he
would not willingly expose himself to their recurrence. But the king is
peremptory, and the drama ends with the following extraordinary scene.
_King._ There is a remedy for every wrong.
_Don Gutierre._ A remedy for such a wrong as this?
_King._ Yes, Gutierre.
_Don Gutierre._ My lord! what is it?
_King._ ’T is of your own invention, Sir!
_Don Gutierre._ But what?
_King._ ’T is blood.
_Don Gutierre._ What mean your royal words, my lord?
_King._ No more but this; cleanse straight your doors,--
A bloody hand is on them.
_Don Gutierre._ My lord, when men
In any business and its duties deal,
They place their arms escutcheoned on their doors.
_I_ deal, my lord, _in honor_, and so place
A bloody hand upon my door to mark
My honor is by blood made good.
_King._ Then give thy hand to Leonore.
I know her virtue hath deserved it long.
_Don Gutierre._ I give it, Sire. But, mark me, Leonore,
It comes all bathed in blood.
_Leonore._ I heed it not;
And neither fear nor wonder at the sight.
_Don Gutierre._ And mark me, too, that, if already once
Unto mine honor I have proved a leech,
I do not mean to lose my skill.
_Leonore._ Nay, rather,
If _my_ life prove tainted, use that same skill
To heal it.
_Don Gutierre._ I give my hand; but give it
On these terms alone.[635]
[635]
_Rey._ Para todo avrá remedio.
_D. Gut._ Posible es que á esto le aya?
_Rey._ Sí, Gutierre.
_D. Gut._ Qual, Señor?
_Rey._ Uno vuestro.
_D. Gut._ Que es?
_Rey._ Sangrarla.
_D. Gut._ Que dices?
_Rey._ Que hagais borrar
Las puertas de vuestra casa,
Que ay mano sangrienta en ellas.
_D. Gut._ Los que de un oficio tratan,
Ponen, Señor, á las puertas
Un escudo de sus armas.
Trato en honor; y assi, pongo
Mi mano en sangre bañada
A la puerta, que el honor
Con sangre, Señor, se laba.
_Rey._ Dadsela, pues, á Leonor,
Que yo sé que su alabanza
La merece.
_D. Gut._ Sí, la doy
Mas mira que va bañada
En sangre, Leonor.
_Leon._ No importa,
Que no me admira, ni espanta.
_D. Gut._ Mira que medico he sido
De mi honra; no está olvidada
La ciencia.
_Leon._ Cura con ella
Mi vida en estando mala.
_D. Gut._ Pues con essa condicion
Te la doy.
Jorn. III.
Undoubtedly such a scene could be acted only on the Spanish stage; but
undoubtedly, too, notwithstanding its violation of every principle of
Christian morality, it is entirely in the national temper, and has been
received with applause down to our own times.[636]
[636] “El Médico de su Honra,” Comedias, Tom. VI.
“The Painter of his own Dishonor” is another of the dramas founded on
love, jealousy, and the point of honor, in which a husband sacrifices
his faithless wife and her lover, and yet receives the thanks of each
of their fathers, who, in the spirit of Spanish chivalry, not only
approve the sacrifice of their own children, but offer their persons to
the injured husband to defend him against any dangers to which he may
be exposed in consequence of the murder he has committed.[637] “For a
Secret Wrong, Secret Revenge,” is yet a third piece, belonging to the
same class, and ending tragically like the two others.[638]
[637] “El Pintor de su Deshonra,” Comedias, Tom. XI.
[638] “A Secreto Agravio, Secreta Venganza,” Comedias, Tom. VI.
Calderon, at the end, vouches for the truth of the shocking
story, which he represents as founded on facts that occurred at
Lisbon just before the embarkation of Don Sebastian for Africa,
in 1578.
But as a specimen of the effects of mere jealousy, and of the power
with which Calderon could bring on the stage its terrible workings,
the drama he has called “No Monster like Jealousy” is to be preferred
to any thing else he has left us.[639] It is founded on the well-known
story, in Josephus, of the cruel jealousy of Herod, tetrarch of Judea,
who twice gave orders to have his wife, Mariamne, destroyed, in case
he himself should not escape alive from the perils to which he was
exposed in his successive contests with Antony and Octavius;--all out
of dread lest, after his death, she should be possessed by another.[640]
[639] “El Mayor Monstruo los Zelos,” Comedias, Tom. V.
[640] Josephus de Bello Judaico, Lib. I. c. 17-22, and Antiq.
Judaicæ, Lib. XV. c. 2, etc. Voltaire has taken the same story
for the subject of his “Mariamne,” first acted in 1724. There
is a pleasant criticism on the play of Calderon in a pamphlet
published at Madrid, by Don A. Duran, without his name, in 1828,
18mo, entitled, “Sobre el Influjo que ha tenido la Crítica
Moderna en la Decadencia del Teatro Antiguo Español,” pp. 106-112.
In the early scenes of Calderon’s drama, we find Herod, with this
passionately cherished wife, alarmed by a prediction that he should
destroy, with his own dagger, what he most loved in the world, and
that Mariamne should be sacrificed to the most formidable of monsters.
At the same time we are informed, that the tetrarch, in the excess
of his passion for his fair and lovely wife, aspires to nothing less
than the mastery of the world,--then in dispute between Antony and
Octavius Cæsar,--an empire which he covets only to be able to lay it
at her feet. To obtain this end, he partly joins his fortunes to those
of Antony, and fails. Octavius, discovering his purpose, summons him
to Egypt to render an account of his government. But among the plunder
which, after the defeat of Antony, fell into the hands of his rival,
is a portrait of Mariamne, with which the Roman becomes so enamoured,
though falsely advised that the original is dead, that, when Herod
arrives in Egypt, he finds the picture of his wife multiplied on all
sides, and Octavius full of love and despair.
Herod’s jealousy is now equal to his unmeasured affection; and, finding
that Octavius is about to move towards Jerusalem, he gives himself up
to its terrible power. In his blind fear and grief, he sends an old
and trusty friend, with written orders to destroy Mariamne in case of
his own death, but adds passionately,--
Let her not know the mandate comes from _me_
That bids her die. Let her not--while she cries
To heaven for vengeance--name _me_ as she falls.
His faithful follower would remonstrate, but Herod interrupts him:--
Be silent. You are right;--
But still I cannot listen to your words;
and then goes off in despair, exclaiming,--
O mighty spheres above! O sun! O moon
And stars! O clouds, with hail and sharp frost charged!
Is there no fiery thunderbolt in store
For such a wretch as I? O mighty Jove!
For what canst thou thy vengeance still reserve,
If now it strike not?[641]
[641]
Calla,
Que sé, que tienes razon,
Pero no puedo escucharla.
· · · · · · · ·
Esferas altas,
Cielo, sol, luna y estrellas,
Nubes, granizos, y escarchas,
No hay un rayo para un triste?
Pues si aora no los gastas,
Para quando, para quando
Son, Jupiter, tus venganzas?
Jorn. II.
But Mariamne obtains secretly a knowledge of his purpose; and, when he
arrives in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, gracefully and successfully
begs his life of Octavius, who is well pleased to do a favor to
the fair original of the portrait he had ignorantly loved, and is
magnanimous enough not to destroy a rival, who had yet by treason
forfeited all right to his forbearance.
As soon, however, as Mariamne has secured the promise of her husband’s
safety, she retires with him to the most private part of her palace,
and there, in her grieved and outraged love, upbraids him with his
design upon her life; announcing, at the same time, her resolution to
shut herself up from that moment, with her women, in widowed solitude
and perpetual mourning. But the same night Octavius gains access
to her retirement, in order to protect her from the violence of her
husband, which he, too, had discovered. She refuses, however, to admit
to _him_ that her husband can have any design against her life; and
defends both her lord and herself with heroic love. She then escapes,
pursued by Octavius, and, at the same instant, her husband enters.
He follows them, and a conflict ensues instantly. The lights are
extinguished, and in the confusion Mariamne falls under a blow from her
husband’s hand, intended for his rival; thus fulfilling the prophecy
at the opening of the play, that she should perish by his dagger and
by the most formidable of monsters, which is now interpreted to be
Jealousy.
The result, though foreseen, is artfully brought about at last, and
produces a great shock on the spectator, and even on the reader.
Indeed, it does not seem as if this fierce and relentless passion could
be carried, on the stage, to a more terrible extremity. Othello’s
jealousy--with which it is most readily compared--is of a lower kind,
and appeals to grosser fears. But that of Herod is admitted, from the
beginning, to be without any foundation, except the dread that his
wife, after his death, should be possessed by a rival, whom, before his
death, she could never have seen;--a transcendental jealousy to which
he is yet willing to sacrifice her innocent life.
Still, different as are the two dramas, there are several points of
accidental coincidence between them. Thus, we have, in the Spanish
play, a night scene, in which her women undress Mariamne, and, while
her thoughts are full of forebodings of her fate, sing to her those
lines of Escriva which are among the choice snatches of old poetry
found in the earliest of the General Cancioneros:--
Come, Death, but gently come and still;--
All sound of thine approach restrain,
Lest joy of thee my heart should fill,
And turn it back to life again;[642]--
[642]
Ven, muerte, tan escondida,
Que no te sienta venir,
Porque el placer del morir
No me buelva á dar la vida.
Jorn. III.
See, also, Calderon’s “Manos Blancas no ofenden,” Jorn. II.,
where he has it again; and Cancionero General, 1573, f. 185.
Lope de Vega made a gloss on it, (Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 256), and
Cervantes repeats it (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 38);--so much was
it admired.
beautiful words, which remind us of the scene immediately preceding
the death of Desdemona, when she is undressing and talks with Emilia,
singing, at the same time, the old song of “Willow, Willow.”
Again, we are reminded of the defence of Othello by Desdemona down to
the instant of her death, in the answer of Mariamne to Octavius, when
he urges her to escape with him from the violence of her husband:--
My lips were dumb, when I beheld thy form;
And now I hear thy words, my breath returns
Only to tell thee, ’t is some traitor foul
And perjured that has dared to fill thy mind
With this abhorred conceit. For, Sire, my husband
Is my husband; and if he slay me,
I am guiltless, which, in the flight you urge,
I could not be. I dwell in safety here,
And you are ill informed about my griefs;
Or, if you are not, and the dagger’s point
Should seek my life, I die not through my fault,
But through my star’s malignant potency,
Preferring in my heart a guiltless death
Before a life held up to vulgar scorn.
If, therefore, you vouchsafe me any grace,
Let me presume the greatest grace would be
That you should straightway leave me.[643]
[643]
El labio mudo
Quedó al veros, y al oiros
Su aliento le restituyo,
Animada para solo
Deciros, que algun perjuro
Aleve, y traydor, en tanto
Malquisto concepto os puso.
Mi esposo es mi esposo; y quando
Me mate algun error suyo,
No me matará mi error,
Y lo será si dél huyo.
Yo estoy segura, y vos mal
Informado en mis disgustos;
Y quando no lo estuviera,
Matandome un puñal duro,
Mi error no me diera muerte,
Sino mi fatal influxo;
Con que viene á importar menos
Morir inocente, juzgo.
Que vivir culpada á vista
De las malicias del vulgo.
Y assi, si alguna fineza
He de deberos, presumo,
Que la mayor es bolveros.
Jorn. III.
Other passages might be adduced; but, though striking, they do not
enter into the essential interest of the drama. This consists in the
exhibition of the heroic character of Herod, broken down by a cruel
jealousy, over which the beautiful innocence of his wife triumphs only
at the moment of her death; while above them both the fatal dagger,
like the unrelenting destiny of the ancient Greek tragedy, hangs
suspended, seen only by the spectators, who witness the unavailing
struggles of its victims to escape from a fate in which, with every
effort, they become more and more involved.
Other dramas of Calderon rely for their success on a high sense of
loyalty, with little or no admixture of love or jealousy. The most
prominent of these is “The Firm-hearted Prince.”[644] Its plot is
founded on the expedition against the Moors in Africa by the Portuguese
Infante Don Ferdinand, in 1438, which ended with the total defeat of
the invaders before Tangier, and the captivity of the prince himself,
who died in a miserable bondage in 1443;--his very bones resting for
thirty years among the misbelievers, till they were at last brought
home to Lisbon and buried with reverence, as those of a saint and
martyr. This story Calderon found in the old and beautiful Portuguese
chronicles of Joam Alvares and Ruy de Pina; but he makes the sufferings
of the prince voluntary, thus adding to Ferdinand’s character the
self-devotion of Regulus, and so fitting it to be the subject of a deep
tragedy, founded on the honor of a Christian patriot.[645]
[644] “El Príncipe Constante,” Comedias, Tom. III. It is
translated into German by A. W. Schlegel, and has been much
admired as an acting play in the theatres of Berlin, Vienna,
Weimar, etc.
[645] Colecçaõ de Livros Ineditos de Hist. Port., Lisboa, folio,
Tom. I., 1790, pp. 290-294; an excellent work, published by the
Portuguese Academy, and edited by the learned Correa de Serra,
formerly Minister of Portugal to the United States. The story
of Don Ferdinand is also told in Mariana, Historia (Tom. II.
p. 345). But the principal resource of Calderon was, no doubt,
a life of the Infante, by his faithful friend and follower,
Joam Alvares, first printed in 1527, of which an abstract, with
long passages from the original, may be found in the “Leben des
standhaften Prinzen,” Berlin, 1827, 8vo. To these may be added,
for the illustration of the Príncipe Constante, a tract by J.
Schulze, entitled “Ueber den standhaften Prinzen,” printed at
Weimar, 1811, 12mo, at a time when Schlegel’s translation of
that drama, brought out under the auspices of Goethe, was in
the midst of its success on the Weimar stage; the part of Don
Ferdinand being acted with great power by Wolf. Schulze is quite
extravagant in his estimate of the poetical worth of the Príncipe
Constante, placing it by the side of the “Divina Commedia”;
but he discusses skilfully its merits as an acting drama, and
explains, in part, its historical elements.
The first scene is one of lyrical beauty, in the gardens of the king
of Fez, whose daughter is introduced as enamoured of Muley Hassan, her
father’s principal general. Immediately afterwards, Hassan enters and
announces the approach of a Christian armament commanded by the two
Portuguese Infantes. He is despatched to prevent their landing, but
fails, and is himself taken prisoner by Don Ferdinand in person. A long
dialogue follows between the captive and his conqueror, entirely formed
by an unfortunate amplification of a beautiful ballad of Góngora, which
is made to explain the attachment of the Moorish general to the king’s
daughter, and the probability--if he continues in captivity--that
she will be compelled to marry the Prince of Morocco. The Portuguese
Infante, with chivalrous generosity, gives up his prisoner without
ransom, but has hardly done so, before he is attacked by a large army
under the Prince of Morocco, and made prisoner himself.
From this moment begins that trial of Don Ferdinand’s patience and
fortitude which gives its title to the drama. At first, indeed, the
king treats him generously, thinking to exchange him for Ceuta, an
important fortress recently won by the Portuguese, and their earliest
foothold in Africa. But this constitutes the great obstacle. The
king of Portugal, who had died of grief on receiving the news of his
brother’s captivity, had, it is true, left an injunction in his will
that Ceuta should be surrendered and the prince ransomed. But when
Henry, one of his brothers, appears on the stage, and announces that he
has come to fulfil this solemn command, Ferdinand suddenly interrupts
him in the offer, and reveals at once the whole of his character:--
Cease, Henry, cease!--no farther shalt thou go;--
For words like these should not alone be deemed
Unworthy of a prince of Portugal,--
A Master of the Order of the Cross,--
But of the meanest serf that sits beneath
The throne, or the barbarian hind whose eyes
Have never seen the light of Christian faith.
No doubt, my brother--who is now with God--
May in his will have placed the words you bring,
But never with a thought they should be read
And carried through to absolute fulfilment;
But only to set forth his strong desire,
That, by all means which peace or war can urge,
My life should be enfranchised. When he says,
“Surrender Ceuta,” he but means to say,
“Work miracles to bring my brother home.”
But that a Catholic and faithful king
Should yield to Moorish and to heathen hands
A city his own blood had dearly bought,
When, with no weapon save a shield and sword,
He raised his country’s standards on its walls,--
It cannot be!--It cannot be![646]
[646]
No prosigas;--cessa,
Cessa, Enrique, porque son
Palabras indignas essas,
No de un Portugués Infante,
De un Maestre, que professa
De Christo la Religion,
Pero aun de un hombre lo fueran
Vil, de un barbaro sin luz
De la Fé de Christo eterna.
Mi hermano, que está en el Cielo,
Si en su testamento dexa
Essa clausula, no es
Para que se cumpla, y lea,
Sino para mostrar solo,
Que mi libertad desea,
Y essa se busque por otros
Medios, y otras conveniencias,
O apacibles, ó crueles;
Porque decir: Dese á Ceuta,
Es decir: Hasta esso haced
Prodigiosas diligencias;
Que un Rey Católico, y justo
Como fuera, como fuera
Possible entregar á un Moro
Una ciudad que le cuesta
Su sangre, pues fué el primero
Que con sola una rodela,
Y una espada, enarboló
Las Quinas en sus almenas?
Jorn. II.
When we read the Príncipe Constante, we seldom remember that this
Don Henry, who is one of its important personages, is the highly
cultivated prince who did so much to promote discoveries in
India.
On this resolute decision, for which the old chronicle gives no
authority, the remainder of the drama rests; its deep enthusiasm being
set forth in a single word of the Infante, in reply to the renewed
question of the Moorish king, “And why not give up Ceuta?” to which
Ferdinand firmly and simply answers,--
Because it is not mine to give.
A Christian city,--it belongs to God.
In consequence of this final determination, he is reduced to the
condition of a common slave; and it is not one of the least moving
incidents of the drama, that he finds the other Portuguese captives
among whom he is sent to work, and who do not recognize him, promising
freedom to themselves from the effort they know his noble nature
will make on their behalf, when the exchange which they consider so
reasonable shall have restored him to his country.
At this point, however, comes in the operation of the Moorish general’s
gratitude. He offers Don Ferdinand the means of escape; but the
king, detecting the connection between them, binds his general to an
honorable fidelity by making him the prince’s only keeper. This leads
Don Ferdinand to a new sacrifice of himself. He not only advises his
generous friend to preserve his loyalty, but assures him, that, even
if foreign means of escape are offered him, he will not take advantage
of them, if, by doing so, his friend’s honor would be endangered. In
the mean time, the sufferings of the unhappy prince are increased
by cruel treatment and unreasonable labor, till his strength is
broken down. Still he does not yield. Ceuta remains in his eyes a
consecrated place, over which religion prevents him from exercising the
control by which his freedom might be restored. The Moorish general
and the king’s daughter, on the other side, intercede for mercy in
vain. The king is inflexible, and Don Ferdinand dies, at length, of
mortification, misery, and want; but with a mind unshaken, and with an
heroic constancy that sustains our interest in his fate to the last
extremity. Just after his death, a Portuguese army, destined to rescue
him, arrives. In a night scene of great dramatic effect, he appears at
their head, clad in the habiliments of the religious and military order
in which he had desired to be buried, and, with a torch in his hand,
beckons them on to victory. They obey the supernatural summons, entire
success follows, and the marvellous conclusion of the whole, by which
his consecrated remains are saved from Moorish contamination, is in
full keeping with the romantic pathos and high-wrought enthusiasm of
the scenes that lead to it.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CALDERON, CONTINUED.--COMEDIAS DE CAPA Y ESPADA.--FIRST OF ALL MY
LADY.--FAIRY LADY.--THE SCARF AND THE FLOWER, AND OTHERS.--HIS
DISREGARD OF HISTORY.--ORIGIN OF THE EXTRAVAGANT IDEAS OF HONOR AND
DOMESTIC RIGHTS IN THE SPANISH DRAMA.--ATTACKS ON CALDERON.--HIS
ALLUSIONS TO PASSING EVENTS.--HIS BRILLIANT STYLE.--HIS LONG AUTHORITY
ON THE STAGE.--AND THE CHARACTER OF HIS POETICAL AND IDEALIZED DRAMA.
We must now turn to some of Calderon’s plays which are more
characteristic of his times, if not of his peculiar genius,--his
_comedias de capa y espada_. He has left us many of this class, and
not a few of them seem to have been the work of his early, but ripe,
manhood, when his faculties were in all their strength, as well as in
all their freshness. Nearly or quite thirty can be enumerated, and
still more may be added, if we take into the account those which,
with varying characteristics, yet belong to this particular division
rather than to any other. Among the more prominent are two, entitled
“It is Worse than it was” and “It is Better than it was,” which,
probably, were translated by Lord Bristol in his lost plays, “Worse
and Worse” and “Better and Better”;[647]--“The Pretended Astrologer,”
which Dryden used in his “Mock Astrologer”;[648]--“Beware of Smooth
Water”;--and “It is ill keeping a House with Two Doors”;--which all
indicate by their names something of the spirit of the entire class to
which they belong, and of which they are favorable examples.
[647] “’T is Better than it was” and “Worse and Worse.” “These
two comedies,” says Downes, (Roscius Anglicanus, London, 1789,
8vo, p. 36), “were made out of Spanish by the Earl of Bristol.”
There can be little doubt that Calderon was the source here
referred to. Tuke’s “Adventures of Five Hours,” in Dodsley’s
Collection, Vol. XII., is from Calderon’s “Empeños de Seis
Horas.” But such instances are rare in the old English drama,
compared with the French.
[648] Dryden took, as he admits, “An Evening’s Love, or the Mock
Astrologer,” from the “Feint Astrologue” of Thomas Corneille.
(Scott’s Dryden, London, 1808, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 229.) Corneille
had it from Calderon’s “Astrólogo Fingido.”
Another of the same division of the drama is entitled “First of all my
Lady.” A young cavalier from Granada arrives at Madrid, and immediately
falls in love with a lady, whose father mistakes him for another
person, who, though intended for his daughter, is already enamoured
elsewhere. Strange confusions are ingeniously multiplied out of this
mistake, and strange jealousies naturally follow. The two gentlemen are
found in the houses of their respective ladies,--a mortal offence to
Spanish dramatic honor,--and things are pushed to the most dangerous
and confounding extremities. The principle on which so many Spanish
dramas turn, that
A sword-thrust heals more quickly than a wound
Inflicted by a word,[649]
[649]
Mas facil sana una herida
Que no una palabra.
And again, in “Amar despues de la Muerte,”--
Una herida mejor
Se sana que una palabra.
Comedias, 1760. Tom. II. p. 352.
is abundantly exemplified. More than once the lady’s secret is
protected rather than the friend of the lover, though the friend is in
mortal danger at the moment;--the circumstance which gives its name to
the drama. At last, the confusion is cleared up by a simple explanation
of the original mistakes of all the parties, and a double marriage
brings a happy ending to the troubled scene, which frequently seemed
quite incapable of it.[650]
[650] “Antes que todo es mi Dama.”
“The Fairy Lady”[651] is another of Calderon’s dramas that is full
of life, spirit, and ingenuity. Its scene is laid on the day of the
baptism of Prince Balthasar, heir-apparent of Philip the Fourth, which,
as we know, occurred on the 4th of November, 1629; and the piece itself
was, therefore, probably written and acted soon afterwards.[652] If we
may judge by the number of times Calderon complacently refers to it, we
cannot doubt that it was a favorite with him; and if we judge by its
intrinsic merits, we may be sure it was a favorite with the public.[653]
[651] “La Dama Duende,” Comedias, Tom. III.
[652]
Oy el bautismo celebra
Del primero Balthasar.
Jorn. I.
[653] I should think he refers to it eight times, perhaps more,
in the course of his plays: e. g. in “Mañanas de Avril y Mayo”;
“Agradecer y no Amar”; “El Joseph de las Mugeres,” etc. I notice
it, because he rarely alludes to his own works, and never, I
think, in the way he does to this one. The Dama Duende is well
known in the French “Répertoire” as the “Esprit Follet” of
Hauteroche.
Doña Angela, the heroine of the intrigue, a widow, young, beautiful,
and rich, lives at Madrid, in the house of her two brothers; but, from
circumstances connected with her affairs, her life there is so retired,
that nothing is known of it abroad. Don Manuel, a friend, arrives in
the city to visit one of these brothers; and, as he approaches the
house, a lady strictly veiled stops him in the street, and conjures
him, if he be a cavalier of honor, to prevent her from being further
pursued by a gentleman already close behind. This lady is Doña Angela,
and the gentleman is her brother, Don Luis, who is pursuing her only
because he observes that she carefully conceals herself from him. The
two cavaliers not being acquainted with each other,--for Don Manuel
had come to visit the other brother,--a dispute is easily excited,
and a duel follows, which is interrupted by the arrival of this other
brother, and an explanation of his friendship for Don Manuel.
Don Manuel is now brought home, and established in the house of the
two cavaliers, with all the courtesy due to a distinguished guest.
His apartments, however, are connected with those of Doña Angela by
a secret door, known only to herself and her confidential maid; and
finding she is thus unexpectedly brought near a person who has risked
his life to save her, she determines to put herself into a mysterious
communication with him.
But Doña Angela is young and thoughtless. When she enters the
stranger’s apartment, she is tempted to be mischievous, and leaves
behind marks of her wild humor that are not to be mistaken. The servant
of Don Manuel thinks it is an evil spirit, or at best a fairy, that
plays such fantastic tricks; disturbing the private papers of his
master, leaving notes on his table, throwing the furniture of the room
into confusion, and--from an accident--once jostling its occupants in
the dark. At last, the master himself is confounded; and though he
once catches a glimpse of the mischievous lady, as she escapes to her
own part of the house, he knows not what to make of the apparition. He
says:--
She glided like a spirit, and her light
Did all fantastic seem. But still her form
Was human; I touched and felt its substance,
And she had mortal fears, and, woman-like,
Shrunk back again with dainty modesty.
At last, like an illusion, all dissolved,
And, like a phantasm, melted quite away.
If, then, to my conjectures I give rein,
By heaven above, I neither know nor guess
What I must doubt or what I may believe.[654]