Como sombra se mostró;
Fantástica su luz fué.
Pero como cosa humana,
Se dexó tocar y ver;
Como mortal se temió,
Rezeló como muger,
Como ilusion se deshizó,
Como fantasma se fué:
Si doy la rienda al discurso,
No sé, vive Dios, no sé,
Ni que tengo de dudar,
Ni que tengo de creer.
Jorn. II.
But the tricksy lady, who has fairly frolicked herself in love with the
handsome young cavalier, is tempted too far by her brilliant successes,
and, being at last detected in the presence of her astonished brothers,
the intrigue, which is one of the most complicated and gay to be found
on any theatre, ends with an explanation of her fairy humors and her
marriage with Don Manuel.
“The Scarf and the Flower,”[655] which, from internal evidence, is
to be placed in the year 1632, is another of the happy specimens of
Calderon’s manner in this class of dramas; but, unlike the last,
love-jealousies constitute the chief complication of its intrigue.[656]
The scene is laid at the court of the Duke of Florence. Two ladies
give the hero of the piece, one a scarf and the other a flower; but
they are both so completely veiled when they do it, that he is unable
to distinguish one of them from the other. The mistakes, which arise
from attributing each of these marks of favor to the wrong lady,
constitute the first series of troubles and suspicions. These are
further aggravated by the conduct of the Grand Duke, who, for his own
princely convenience, requires the hero to show marked attentions to
a third lady; so that the relations of the lover are thrown into the
greatest possible confusion, until a sudden danger to his life brings
out an involuntary expression of the true lady’s attachment, which is
answered with a delight so sincere on his part as to leave no doubt of
his affection. This restores the confidence of the parties, and the
_dénouement_ is of course happy.
[655] “La Vanda y la Flor,” Comedias, Tom. V. It is admirably
translated into German, by A. W. Schlegel.
[656] In Jornada I. there is a full-length description of the
_Jura de Baltasar_,--the act of swearing homage to Prince
Balthasar, as Prince of Asturias, which took place in 1632, and
which Calderon would hardly have introduced on the stage much
later, because the interest in such a ceremony is so short-lived.
There are in this, as in most of the dramas of Calderon belonging to
the same class, great freshness and life, and a tone truly Castilian,
courtly, and graceful. Lisida, who loves Henry, the hero, and gave
him the flower, finds him wearing her rival’s scarf, and, from this
and other circumstances, naturally accuses him of being devoted to
that rival;--an accusation which he denies, and explains the delusive
appearance on the ground, that he approached one lady, as the only
way to reach the other. The dialogue in which he defends himself is
extremely characteristic of the gallant style of the Spanish drama,
especially in that ingenious turn and repetition of the same idea in
different figures of speech, which grows more and more condensed as it
approaches its conclusion.
_Lisida._ But how can you deny the very thing
Which, with my very eyes, I now behold?
_Henry._ By full denial that you see such thing.
_Lisida._ Were you not, like the shadow of her house,
Still ever in the street before it?
_Henry._ I was.
_Lisida._ At each returning dawn, were you not found
A statue on her terrace?
_Henry._ I do confess it.
_Lisida._ Did you not write to her?
_Henry._ I can’t deny
I wrote.
_Lisida._ Served not the murky cloak of night
To hide your stolen loves?
_Henry._ That, under cover
Of the friendly night, I sometimes spoke to her,
I do confess.
_Lisida._ And is not this her scarf?
_Henry._ It was hers once, I think.
_Lisida._ Then what means this?
If seeing, talking, writing, be not making love,--
If wearing on your neck her very scarf,
If following her and watching, be not love,
Pray tell me, Sir, what ’t is you call it?
And let me not in longer doubt be left
Of what can be with so much ease explained.
_Henry._ A timely illustration will make clear
What seems so difficult. The cunning fowler,
As the bird glances by him, watches for
The feathery form he aims at, not where it is,
But on one side; for well he knows that he
Shall fail to reach his fleeting mark, unless
He cheat the wind to give its helpful tribute
To his shot. The careful, hardy sailor,--
He who hath laid a yoke and placed a rein
Upon the fierce and furious sea, curbing
Its wild and monstrous nature,--even he
Steers not right onward to the port he seeks,
But bears away, deludes the opposing waves,
And wins the wished-for haven by his skill.
The warrior, who a fortress would besiege,
First sounds the alarm before a neighbour fort,
Deceives, with military art, the place
He seeks to win, and takes it unawares,
Force yielding up its vantage-ground to craft.
The mine that works its central, winding way
Volcanic, and, built deep by artifice,
Like Mongibello, shows not its effect
In those abysses where its pregnant powers
Lie hid, concealing all their horrors dark
E’en from the fire itself; but _there_ begins
The task which _here_ in ruin ends and woe,--
Lightning beneath and thunderbolts above.--
Now, if my love, amidst the realms of air,
Aim, like the fowler, at its proper quarry;
Or sail a mariner upon the sea,
Tempting a doubtful fortune as it goes;
Or chieftainlike contends in arms,
Nor fails to conquer even baseless jealousy;
Or, like a mine sunk in the bosom’s depths,
Bursts forth above with fury uncontrolled;--
Can it seem strange that _I_ should still conceal
My many loving feelings with false shows?
Let, then, this scarf bear witness to the truth,
That I, a hidden mine, a mariner,
A chieftain, fowler, still in fire and water,
Earth and air, would hit, would reach, would conquer,
And would crush, my game, my port, my fortress,
And my foe.
[_Gives her the scarf._
_Lisida._ You deem, perchance, that, flattered
With such shallow compliment, my injuries
May be passed over in your open folly.
But no, Sir, no!--you do mistake me quite.
I am a woman; I am proud,--so proud,
That I will neither have a love that comes
From pique, from fear of being first cast off,
Nor from contempt that galls the secret heart.
He who wins _me_ must love me for myself,
And seek no other guerdon for his love
But what that love itself will give.[657]
[657]
_Lisid._ Pues como podeis negarme
Lo mismo que yo estoy viendo?
_Enriq._ Negando que vos lo veis.
_Lisid._ No fuisteis en el passeo
Sombra de su casa?
_Enriq._ Sí.
_Lisid._ Estatua de su terrero
No os halló el Alva?
_Enriq._ Es verdad.
_Lisid._ No la escrivisteis?
_Enriq._ No niego,
Que escriví.
_Lisid._ No fué la noche
De amantes delitos vuestros
Capa obscura?
_Enriq._ Que la hablé
Alguna noche os confiesso.
_Lisid._ No es suya essa vanda?
_Enriq._ Suya
Pienso que fué.
_Lisid._ Pues que es esto?
Si ver, si hablar, si escrivir,
Si traer su vanda al cuello,
Si seguir, si desvelar,
No es amar, yo, Enrique, os ruego
Me digais como se llama,
Y no ignore yo mas tiempo
Una cosa que es tan facil.
_Enriq._ Respondaos un argumento:
El astuto cazador,
Que en lo rapido del buelo
Hace á un atomo de pluma
Blanco veloz del acierto,
No adonde la caza está
Pone la mira, advirtiendo,
Que para que el viento peche,
Le importa engañar el viento.
El marinero ingenioso,
Que al mar desbocado, y fiero
Monstruo de naturaleza,
Halló yugo, y puso freno,
No al puerto que solicita
Pone la proa, que haciendo
Puntas al agua, desmiente
Sus iras, y toma puerto.
El capitan que esta fuerza
Intenta ganar, primero
En aquella toca al arma,
Y con marciales estruendos
Engaña á la tierra, que
Mal prevenida del riesgo
La esperaba; assi la fuerza
Le da á partido al ingenio.
La mina, que en las entrañas
De la tierra estrenó el centro,
Artificioso volcan,
Inventado Mongibelo,
No donde preñado oculta
Abismos de horror inmensos
Hace el efecto, porque,
Engañando al mismo fuego,
Aquí concibe, allá aborta;
Allí es rayo, y aquí trueno.
Pues si es cazador mi amor
En las campañas del viento;
Si en el mar de sus fortunas
Inconstante marinero;
Si es caudillo victorioso
En las guerras de sus zelos:
Si fuego mal resistido
En mina de tantos pechos,
Que mucho engañasse en mí
Tantos amantes afectos?
Sea esta vanda testigo;
Porque, volcan, marinero,
Capitan, y cazador;
En fuego, agua, tierra, y viento;
Logre, tenga, alcanze, y tome
Ruina, caza, triunfo, y puerto.
[_Dale la vanda._
_Lisid._ Bien pensareis que mis quexas,
Mal lisonjeadas con esso,
Os remitan de mi agravio
Las sinrazones del vuestro.
No, Enrique, yo soy muger
Tan sobervia, que no quiero
Ser querida por venganza,
Por tema, ni por desprecio.
El que á mí me ha de querer,
Por mí ha de ser; no teniendo
Conveniencias en quererme
Mas que quererme.
Jorn. II.
As may be gathered, perhaps, from what has been said concerning the
few dramas we have examined, the plots of Calderon are almost always
marked with great ingenuity. Extraordinary adventures and unexpected
turns of fortune, disguises, duels, and mistakes of all kinds, are put
in constant requisition, and keep up an eager interest in the concerns
of the personages whom he brings to the foreground of the scene. Yet
many of his stories are not wholly invented by him. Several are taken
from the books of the Old Testament, as is that on the rebellion of
Absalom, which ends with an exhibition of the unhappy prince hanging by
his hair and dying amidst reproaches on his personal beauty. A few are
from Greek and Roman history, like “The Second Scipio” and “Contests of
Love and Loyalty,”--the last being on the story of Alexander the Great.
Still more are from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,”[658] like “Apollo and
Climene” and “The Fortunes of Andromeda.” And occasionally, but rarely,
he seems to have sought, with painstaking care, in obscure sources for
his materials, as in “Zenobia the Great,” where he has used Trebellius
Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus.[659]
[658] I think there are six, at least, of Calderon’s plays
taken from the Metamorphoses; a circumstance worth noting,
because it shows the direction of his taste. He seems to have
used no ancient author, and perhaps no author at all, in his
plays, so much as Ovid, who was a favorite classic in Spain, six
translations of the Metamorphoses having been made there before
the time of Calderon. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV., 1835,
p. 407.
[659] It is possible Calderon may not have gone to the originals,
but found his materials nearer at hand; and yet, on a comparison
of the triumphal entry of Aurelian into Rome, in the third
_jornada_, with the corresponding passages in Trebellius, “De
Triginta Tyrannis,” (c. xxix.), and Vopiscus, “Aurelianus,” (c.
xxxiii., xxxiv., etc.), it seems most likely that he had read
them.
Sometimes Calderon is indebted to his dramatic predecessors.
Thus, his fine play of the “Alcalde de Zalamea” is compounded of
the stories in Lope’s “Fuente Ovejuna” and his “Mejor Alcalde el
Rey.” But I think his obligations of this sort are infrequent.
But, as we have already noticed, Calderon makes every thing bend to his
ideas of dramatic effect; so that what he has borrowed from history
comes forth upon the stage with the brilliant attributes of a masque,
almost as much as what is drawn from the rich resources of his own
imagination. If the subject he has chosen falls naturally into the only
forms he recognizes, he indeed takes the facts much as he finds them.
This is the case with “The Siege of Breda,” which he has set forth with
an approach to statistical accuracy, as it happened in 1624-1625;--all
in honor of the commanding general, Spinola, who may well have
furnished some of the curious details of the piece,[660] and who, no
doubt, witnessed its representation. This is the case, too, with “The
Last Duel in Spain,” founded on the last single combat held there under
royal authority, which was fought at Valladolid, in the presence of
Charles the Fifth, in 1522; and which, by its showy ceremonies and
chivalrous spirit, was admirably adapted to Calderon’s purposes.[661]
[660] For instance, the exact enumeration of the troops at the
opening of the play. Comedias, Tom. III. pp. 142, 149.
[661] It ends with a voluntary anachronism,--the resolution of
the Emperor to apply to Pope Paul III. and to have such duels
abolished by the Council of Trent. By its very last words, it
shows that it was acted before the king, a fact that does not
appear on its title-page. The duel is the one Sandoval describes
with so much minuteness. Hist. de Carlos V., Anvers, 1681, folio,
Lib. XI. §§ 8, 9.
But where the subject he selected was not thus fully fitted, by its
own incidents, to his theory of the drama, he accommodated it to
his end as freely as if it were of imagination all compact. “The
Weapons of Beauty” and “Love the Most Powerful of Enchantments” are
abundant proofs of this;[662] and so is “Hate and Love,” where he has
altered the facts in the life of Christina of Sweden, his whimsical
contemporary, till it is not easy to recognize her,--a remark which
may be extended to the character of Peter of Aragon in his “Tres
Justicias en Uno,” and to the personages in Portuguese history whom
he has so strikingly idealized in his “Weal and Woe,”[663] and in his
“Firm-hearted Prince.” To an English reader, however, the “Cisma de
Inglaterra,” on the fortunes and fate of Anne Boleyn and Cardinal
Wolsey, is probably the most obvious perversion of history; for the
Cardinal, after his fall from power, comes on the stage begging his
bread of Catherine of Aragon, while, at the same time, Henry, repenting
of the religious schism he has countenanced, promises to marry his
daughter Mary to Philip the Second of Spain.[664]
[662] “Las Armas de la Hermosura,” Tom. I., and “El Mayor Encanto
Amor,” Tom. V., are the plays on Coriolanus and Ulysses. They
have been mentioned before.
[663] Good, but somewhat over-refined, remarks on the use
Calderon made of Portuguese history in his “Weal and Woe” are to
be found in the Preface to the second volume of Malsburg’s German
translation of Calderon, Leipzig, 1819, 12mo.
[664] Comedias, 1760, Tom. IV. See, also, Ueber die
Kirchentrennung von England, von F. W. V. Schmidt, Berlin,
1819, 12mo;--a pamphlet full of curious matter, but quite too
laudatory, so far as Calderon’s merit is concerned. Nothing
will show the wide difference between Shakspeare and Calderon
more strikingly than a comparison of this play with the grand
historical drama of “Henry the Eighth.”
Nor is Calderon more careful in matters of morals than in matters
of fact. Duels and homicides occur constantly in his plays, under
the slightest pretences, as if there were no question about their
propriety. The authority of a father or brother to put to death a
daughter or sister who has been guilty of secreting her lover under
her own roof is fully recognized.[665] It is made a ground of glory
for the king, Don Pedro, that he justified Gutierre in the atrocious
murder of his wife; and even the lady Leonore, who is to succeed to
the blood-stained bed, desires, as we have seen, that no other measure
of justice should be applied to herself than had been applied to the
innocent and beautiful victim who lay dead before her. Indeed, it is
impossible to read far in Calderon without perceiving that his object
is mainly to excite a high and feverish interest by his plot and story;
and that to do this, he relies almost constantly upon an exaggerated
sense of honor, which, in its more refined attributes, certainly did
not give its tone to the courts of Philip the Fourth and Charles the
Second, and which, with the wide claims he makes for it, could never
have been the rule of conduct and intercourse anywhere, without shaking
all the foundations of society and poisoning the best and dearest
relations of life.
[665] Of these duels, and his notions about female honor, half
the plays of Calderon may be taken as specimens; but it is only
necessary to refer to “Casa con Dos Puertas” and “El Escondido y
la Tapada.”
Here, therefore, we find pressed upon us the question, What was the
origin of these extravagant ideas of domestic honor and domestic
rights, which are found in the old Spanish drama from the beginning of
the full-length plays in Torres Naharro, and which are thus exhibited
in all their excess in the plays of Calderon?
The question is certainly difficult to answer, as are all like it that
depend on the origin and traditions of national character; but--setting
aside as quite groundless the suggestion sometimes made, that the old
Spanish ideas of domestic authority might be derived from the Arabs--we
find that the ancient Gothic laws, which date back to a period long
before the Moorish invasion, and which fully represented the national
character till they were supplanted by the “Partidas” in the fourteenth
century, recognized the same fearfully cruel system that is found in
the old drama. Every thing relating to domestic honor was left by these
laws, as it is by Calderon, to domestic authority. The father had power
to put to death his wife or daughter who was dishonored under his roof;
and if the father were dead, the same terrible power was transferred to
the brother in relation to his sister, or even to the lover, where the
offending party had been betrothed to him.
No doubt, these wild laws, though formally renewed and reënacted
as late as the reign of Saint Ferdinand, had ceased in the time
of Calderon to have any force; and the infliction of death under
circumstances in which they fully justified it would then have been
murder in Spain, as it would have been in any other civilized country
of Christendom. But, on the other hand, no doubt these laws were in
operation during many more centuries than had elapsed between their
abrogation and the age of Calderon and Philip the Fourth. The tradition
of their power, therefore, was not yet lost on the popular character,
and poetry was permitted to preserve their fearful principles long
after their enactments had ceased to be acknowledged anywhere else.[666]
[666] Fuero Juzgo, ed. de la Academia, Madrid, 1815, folio, Lib.
III. Tít. IV. Leyes 3-5 and 9. It should be remembered, that
these laws were the old Gothic laws of Spain before A. D. 700;
that they were the laws of the Christians who did not fall under
the Arabic authority; and that they are published in the edition
of the Academy as they were consolidated and reënacted by St.
Ferdinand after the conquest of Córdova in 1241.
Similar remarks may be made concerning duels. That duels were of
constant recurrence in Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
as well as earlier, we have abundant proof. But we know, too, that the
last which was countenanced by royal authority occurred in the youth
of Charles the Fifth; and there is no reason to suppose that private
encounters were much more common among the cavaliers at Madrid in
the time of Lope de Vega and Calderon than they were at London and
Paris.[667] But the traditions that had come down from the times when
they prevailed were quite sufficient warrant for a drama which sought
to excite a strong and anxious interest more than any thing else. In
one of the plays of Barrios there are eight, and in another twelve
duels;[668] an exhibition that, on any other supposition, would have
been absurd.
[667] Howell, in 1623, when he had been a year in Madrid, under
circumstances to give him familiar knowledge of its gay society,
and at a time when the drama of Lope was at the height of its
favor, says, “One shall not hear of a duel here in an age.”
Letters, eleventh edition, London, 1754, 8vo, Book I. Sect. 3,
Letter 32.
[668] In “El Canto Junto al Encanto,” and in “Pedir Favor.”
Perhaps the very extravagance of such representations made them
comparatively harmless. It was, in the days of the Austrian dynasty,
so incredible that a brother should put his sister to death merely
because she had been found under his roof with her lover, or that one
cavalier should fight another in the street simply because a lady did
not wish to be followed, that there was no great danger of contagion
from the theatrical example. Still, the immoral tendency of the Spanish
drama was not overlooked, even at the time when Calderon’s fame was
at the highest. Guerra, one of his great admirers, in an _Aprobacion_
prefixed to Calderon’s plays in 1682, praised, not only his friend,
but the great body of the dramas to whose brilliancy that friend had
so much contributed; and the war against the theatre broke out in
consequence, as it had twice before in the time of Lope. Four anonymous
attacks were made on the injudicious remarks of Guerra, and two more
by persons who gave their names,--Puente de Mendoza and Navarro;--the
last, oddly enough, replying in print to a defence of himself by
Guerra, which had then been seen only in manuscript. But the whole
of this discussion proceeded on the authority of the Church and the
Fathers, rather than upon the grounds of public morality and social
order; and therefore it ended, as previous attacks of the same kind had
done, by the triumph of the theatre;[669]--Calderon’s plays and those
of his school being performed and admired quite as much after it as
before.
[669] Things had not been in an easy state, at any time, since
the troubles already noticed in the reigns of Philip II. and
Philip III., as we may see from the Approbation of Thomas de
Avellaneda to Tom. XXII., 1665, of the Comedias Escogidas, where
that personage, a grave and distinguished ecclesiastic, thought
it needful to step aside from his proper object, and defend the
theatre against attacks, which were evidently then common, though
they have not reached us. But the quarrel of 1682-85, which was
a violent and open rupture, can be best found in the “Apelacion
al Tribunal de los Doctos,” Madrid, 1752, 4to, (which is, in
fact, Guerra’s defence of himself written in 1683, but not before
published), and in “Discursos contra los que defienden el Uso de
las Comedias,” por Gonzalo Navarro, Madrid, 1684, 4to, which is a
reply to the last and to other works of the same kind.
Calderon, however, not only relied on the interest he could thus excite
by an extravagant story full of domestic violence and duels, but
often introduced flattering allusions to living persons and passing
events, which he thought would be welcome to his audience, whether of
the court or the city. Thus, in “The Scarf and the Flower,” the hero,
just returned from Madrid, gives his master, the Duke of Florence, a
glowing description, extending through above two hundred lines, of the
ceremony of swearing fealty, in 1632, to Prince Balthasar, as prince of
Asturias; a passage which, from its spirit, as well as its compliments
to the king and the royal family, must have produced no small effect
on the stage.[670] Again, in “El Escondido y la Tapada,” we have a
stirring intimation of the siege of Valencia on the Po, in 1635;[671]
and in “Nothing like Silence,” repeated allusions to the victory over
the Prince of Condé at Fontarabia, in 1639.[672] In “Beware of Smooth
Water,” there is a dazzling account of the public reception of the
second wife of Philip the Fourth at Madrid, in 1649, for a part of
whose pageant, it will be recollected, Calderon was employed to furnish
inscriptions.[673] In “The Blood-stain of the Rose”--founded on the
fable of Venus and Adonis, and written in honor of the Peace of the
Pyrenees and the marriage of the Infanta with Louis the Fourteenth, in
1659--we have whatever was thought proper to be said on such subjects
by a favorite poet, both in the _loa_, which is fortunately preserved,
and in the play itself.[674] But there is no need of multiplying
examples. Calderon nowhere fails to consult the fashionable and
courtly, as well as the truly national, feeling of his time; and in
“The Second Scipio” he stoops even to gross flattery of the poor and
imbecile Charles the Second, declaring him equal to that great patriot
whom Milton pronounces to have been “the height of Rome.”[675]
[670] The description of Philip IV. on horseback, as he passed
through the streets of Madrid, suggests a comparison with
Shakspeare’s Bolingbroke in the streets of London, but it is
wholly against the Spanish poet. (Jorn. I.) That Calderon meant
to be accurate in the descriptions contained in this play can
be seen by reading the official account of the “Juramento
del Príncipe Baltasar,” 1632, prepared by Antonio Hurtado de
Mendoza, of which the second edition was printed by order of the
government, in its printing-office, 1605, 4to.
[671] It is genuine Spanish. The hero says,--
En Italia estaba,
Quando la _loca arrogancia_
Del Frances, sobre Valencia
Del Po, etc.
Jorn. I.
[672] He makes the victory more important than it really was,
but his allusions to it show that it was not thought worth while
to irritate the French interest; so cautious and courtly is
Calderon’s whole tone. It is in Tom. X. of the Comedias.
[673] The account, in “Guárdate de la Agua Mansa,” of the
triumphal arch, for which Calderon furnished the allegorical
ideas and figures, as well as the inscriptions, (both Latin and
Castilian, the play says), is very ample. Jornada III.
[674] Here, again, we have the courtly spirit in Calderon. He
insists most carefully, that the Peace of the Pyrenees and the
marriage of the Infanta are _not_ connected with each other; and
that the marriage is to be regarded “as a _separate_ affair,
treated at the same time, but quite independently.” But his
audience knew better.
From the “Viage del Rey Nuestro Señor D. Felipe IV. el Grande á
la Frontera de Francia,” por Leonardo del Castillo, Madrid, 1667,
4to,--a work of official pretensions, describing the ceremonies
attending both the marriage of the Infanta and the conclusion
of the peace,--it appears, that, wherever Calderon has alluded
to either, he has been true to the facts of history. A similar
remark may be made of the “Tetis y Peleo,” evidently written
for the same occasion, and printed, Comedias Escogidas, Tom.
XXIX., 1668;--a poor drama by an obscure author, Josef de Bolea,
and probably one of several that we know, from Castillo, were
represented to amuse the king and court on their journey.
[675] This flattery of Charles II. is the more disagreeable,
because it was offered in the poet’s old age; for Charles did
not come to the throne till Calderon was seventy-five years old.
But it is, after all, not so shocking as the sort of blasphemous
compliments to Philip IV. and his queen in the strange _auto_
called “El Buen Retiro,” acted on the first Corpus Christi day
after that luxurious palace was finished.
In style and versification, Calderon has high merits, though they are
occasionally mingled with the defects of his age. Brilliancy is one of
his great objects, and he easily attains it. But he frequently falls,
and with apparent willingness, into the showy folly of his time, the
absurd sort of euphuism, which Góngora and his followers called “the
cultivated style.” This is the case, for instance, in his “Love and
Fortune,” and in his “Conflicts of Love and Loyalty.” But in “April
and May Mornings,” on the contrary, and in “No Jesting with Love,” he
ridicules the same style with great severity; and in such charming
plays as “The Lady and the Maid,” and “The Loud Secret,” he wholly
avoids it,--thus adding another to the many instances of distinguished
men who have sometimes accommodated themselves to their age and its
fashions, which at other times they have rebuked and controlled.
Everywhere his verses charm us by their delicious melody; everywhere
he indulges himself in the rich variety of measures which Spanish or
Italian poetry offered him,--octave stanzas, _terza rima_, sonnets,
_silvas_, _liras_, and the different forms of the _redondilla_, with
the ballad _asonantes_ and _consonantes_;--showing a mastery over his
language extraordinary in itself, and one which, while it sometimes
enables him to rise to the loftiest tones of the national drama,
seduces him at other times to seek popular favor by fantastic tricks
that were wholly unworthy of his genius.[676]
[676] I think Calderon never uses blank verse, though Lope does.
But we are not to measure Calderon as his contemporaries did. We stand
at a distance too remote and impartial for such indulgence; and must
neither pass over his failures nor exaggerate his merits. We must look
on the whole mass of his efforts for the theatre, and inquire what
he really effected for its advancement,--or rather what changes it
underwent in his hands, both in its more gay and in its more serious
portions.
Certainly Calderon appeared as a writer for the Spanish stage under
peculiarly favorable circumstances; and, by the preservation of his
faculties to an age beyond that commonly allotted to man, was enabled
long to maintain the ascendency he had early established. His genius
took its direction from the very first, and preserved it to the last.
When he was fourteen years old he had written a piece for the stage,
which, sixty years later, he thought worthy to be put into the list
of dramas that he furnished to the Admiral of Castile.[677] When he
was thirty-five, the death of Lope de Vega left him without a rival.
The next year, he was called to court by Philip the Fourth, the most
munificent patron the Spanish theatre ever knew; and from this time
till his death, the destinies of the drama were in his hands nearly as
much as they had been before in those of Lope. Forty-five of his longer
pieces, and probably more, were acted in magnificent theatres in the
different royal palaces in Madrid and its neighbourhood. Some must have
been exhibited with great pomp and at great expense, like “The Three
Greatest Wonders,” each of whose three acts was represented in the open
air on a separate stage by a different company of performers;[678] and
“Love the Greatest Enchantment,” brought out in a floating theatre
which the wasteful extravagance of the Count Duke Olivares had erected
on the artificial waters in the gardens of the Buen Retiro.[679]
Indeed, every thing shows that the patronage, both of the court and
capital, placed Calderon forward, as the favored dramatic poet of his
time. This rank he maintained for nearly half a century, and wrote
his last drama, “Hado y Devisa,” founded on the brilliant fictions
of Boiardo and Ariosto, when he was eighty-one years of age.[680] He
therefore was not only the successor of Lope de Vega, but enjoyed the
same kind of popular influence. Between them, they held the empire of
the Spanish drama for ninety years; during which, partly by the number
of their imitators and disciples, but chiefly by their own personal
resources, they gave to it all the extent and consideration it ever
possessed.
[677] “El Carro del Cielo,” which Vera Tassis says he wrote at
fourteen, and which we should be not a little pleased to see.
[678] The audience remained in the same seats, but there were
three stages before them. It must have been a very brilliant
exhibition, and is quaintly explained in the _loa_ prefixed to it.
[679] This is stated in the title, and gracefully alluded to at
the end of the piece:--
Fué el agua tan dichosa,
En esta noche felice,
Que merecia ser Teatro.
[680] Vera Tassis makes this statement. See also F. W. V.
Schmidt, Ueber die italienischen Heldengedichte, Berlin, 1820,
12mo, pp. 269-280.
Calderon, however, neither effected nor attempted any great changes
in its forms. Two or three times, indeed, he prepared dramas that
were either wholly sung, or partly sung and partly spoken; but even
these, in their structure, were no more operas than his other plays,
and were only a courtly luxury, which it was attempted to introduce,
in imitation of the genuine opera just brought into France by Louis
the Fourteenth, with whose court that of Spain was now intimately
connected.[681] But this was all. Calderon has added to the stage no
new form of dramatic composition. Nor has he much modified those forms
which had been already arranged and settled by Lope de Vega. But he has
shown more technical exactness in combining his incidents, and arranged
every thing more skilfully for stage-effect.[682] He has given to the
whole a new coloring, and, in some respects, a new physiognomy. His
drama is more poetical in its tone and tendencies, and has less the
air of truth and reality, than that of his great predecessor. In its
more successful portions,--which are rarely objectionable from their
moral tone,--it seems almost as if we were transported to another and
more gorgeous world, where the scenery is lighted up with unknown and
preternatural splendor, and where the motives and passions of the
personages that pass before us are so highly wrought, that we must have
our own feelings not a little stirred and excited before we can take
an earnest interest in what we witness or sympathize in its results.
But even in this he is successful. The buoyancy of life and spirit that
he has infused into the gayer divisions of his drama, and the moving
tenderness that pervades its graver and more tragical portions, lift
us unconsciously to the height where alone his brilliant exhibitions
can prevail with our imaginations,--where alone we can be interested
and deluded, when we find ourselves in the midst, not only of such a
confusion of the different forms of the drama, but of such a confusion
of the proper limits of dramatic and lyrical poetry.
[681] The two decided attempts of Calderon in the opera style
have already been noticed. The “Laurel de Apolo” (Comedias, Tom.
VI.) is called a _Fiesta de Zarzuela_, in which it is said (Jorn.
I.): “Se canta y se representa”;--so that it was probably partly
sung and partly acted. Of the _Zarzuelas_ we must speak when we
come to Candamo.
[682] Goethe had this quality of Calderon’s drama in his mind
when he said to Eckermann, (Gespräche mit Goethe, Leipzig, 1837,
Band I. p. 251), “Seine Stücke sind durchaus bretterrecht, es
ist in ihnen kein Zug, der nicht für die beabsichtigte Wirkung
calculirt wäre, Calderon ist dasjenige Genie, was zugleich den
grössten Verstand hatte.”
To this elevated tone, and to the constant effort necessary in order
to sustain it, we owe much of what distinguishes Calderon from his
predecessors, and nearly all that is most individual and characteristic
in his separate merits and defects. It makes him less easy, graceful,
and natural than Lope. It imparts to his style a mannerism,
which, notwithstanding the marvellous richness and fluency of his
versification, sometimes wearies and sometimes offends us. It leads
him to repeat from himself till many of his personages become standing
characters, and his heroes and their servants, his ladies and their
confidants, his old men and his buffoons,[683] seem to be produced,
like the masked figures of the ancient theatre, to represent, with the
same attributes and in the same costume, the different intrigues of
his various plots. It leads him, in short, to regard the whole of the
Spanish drama as a form, within whose limits his imagination may be
indulged without restraint; and in which Greeks and Romans, heathen
divinities, and the supernatural fictions of Christian tradition, may
be all brought out in Spanish fashions and with Spanish feelings, and
led, through a succession of ingenious and interesting adventures, to
the catastrophes their stories happen to require.
[683] A good many of Calderon’s _graciosos_, or buffoons, are
excellent, as, for instance, those in “La Vida es Sueño,” “El
Alcayde de sí mismo,” “Casa con Dos Puertas,” “La Gran Zenobia,”
“La Dama Duende,” etc.
In carrying out this theory of the Spanish drama, Calderon, as we
have seen, often succeeds, and often fails. But when he succeeds,
his success is sometimes of no common character. He then sets before
us only models of ideal beauty, perfection, and splendor;--a world,
he would have it, into which nothing should enter but the highest
elements of the national genius. There, the fervid, yet grave,
enthusiasm of the old Castilian heroism; the chivalrous adventures
of modern, courtly honor; the generous self-devotion of individual
loyalty; and that reserved, but passionate love, which, in a state of
society where it was so rigorously withdrawn from notice, became a
kind of unacknowledged religion of the heart;--all seem to find their
appropriate home. And when he has once brought us into this land of
enchantment, whose glowing impossibilities his own genius has created,
and has called around him forms of such grace and loveliness as those
of Clara and Doña Angela, or heroic forms like those of Tuzani,
Mariamne, and Don Ferdinand, then he has reached the highest point he
ever attained, or ever proposed to himself;--he has set before us the
grand show of an idealized drama, resting on the purest and noblest
elements of the Spanish national character, and one which, with all
its unquestionable defects, is to be placed among the extraordinary
phenomena of modern poetry.[684]
[684] Calderon, like many other authors of the Spanish theatre,
has, as we have seen, been a magazine of plots for the dramatists
of other nations. Among those who have borrowed the most from
him are the younger Corneille and Gozzi. Thus, Corneille’s
“Engagements du Hasard” is from “Los Empeños de un Acaso”; “Le
Feint Astrologue,” from “El Astrólogo Fingido”; “Le Géolier de
soi même,” from “El Alcayde de sí mismo”; besides which, his
“Circe” and “L’Inconnu” prove that he had well studied Calderon’s
show pieces. Gozzi took his “Pubblico Secreto” from the “Secreto
á Voces”; his “Eco e Narciso” from the play of the same name; and
his “Due Notti Affanose” from “Gustos y Disgustos.” And so of
others.
CHAPTER XXV.
DRAMA AFTER CALDERON.--MORETO.--COMEDIAS DE FIGURON.--ROXAS.--PLAYS
BY MORE THAN ONE AUTHOR.--CUBILLO.--LEYBA.--CANCER.--ENRIQUEZ
GOMEZ.--SIGLER.--ZARATE.--BARRIOS.--DIAMANTE.--HOZ.--MATOS
FRAGOSO.--SOLÍS.--CANDAMO.--ZARZUELAS.--ZAMORA.--CAÑIZARES, AND
OTHERS.--DECLINE OF THE SPANISH DRAMA.
The most brilliant period of the Spanish drama falls within the reign
of Philip the Fourth, which extended from 1621 to 1665, and embraced
the last fourteen years of the life of Lope de Vega and the thirty most
fortunate years of the life of Calderon. But after this period a change
begins to be apparent; for the school of Lope was that of a drama in
the freshness and buoyancy of youth, while the school of Calderon
belongs to the season of its maturity and gradual decay. Not that this
change is strongly marked during Calderon’s life. On the contrary, so
long as he lived, and especially during the reign of his great patron,
there is little visible decline in the dramatic poetry of Spain; though
still, through the crowd of its disciples and amidst the shouts of
admiration that followed it on the stage, the symptoms of its coming
fate may be discerned.
Of those that divided the favor of the public with their great master,
none stood so near to him as Agustin Moreto, of whom we know hardly any
thing, except that he lived retired in a religious house at Toledo
from 1657, and that he died there in 1669.[685] Three volumes of his
plays, however, and a number more never collected into a volume,
were printed between 1654 and 1681, though he himself seems to have
regarded them, during the greater part of that time, only as specious
follies or sins. They are in all the different forms known to the age
to which they belong, and, as in the case of Calderon, each form melts
imperceptibly into the character of some other. But the theatre was
not then so strictly watched as it had been; and the small number of
religious plays Moreto has left us are generally connected with known
events in history, like “The Most Fortunate Brothers,” which contains
the story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, both before they were
inclosed in the cave and when they awoke from their miraculous repose
of two centuries.[686] A few are heroic, such as “The Brave Justiciary
of Castile,”--a drama of spirit and power, on the character of Peter
the Cruel, though, like most other plays in which he appears, not one
in which the truth of history is respected. But, in general, Moreto’s
dramas are of the old cavalier class; and when they are not, they take,
in order to suit the humor of the time, many of the characteristics of
this truly national form.
[685] These few meagre facts, which constitute all we know
about Moreto, are due mainly to Ochoa (Teatro Español, Paris,
1838, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 248); but the suggestion he makes, that
Moreto was probably concerned in the violent death of Medinilla,
mourned by Lope de Vega in an elegy in the first volume of
his Works, seems to rest on no sufficient proof, and to be
quite inconsistent with the regard felt for Moreto by Lope,
Valdivielso, and other intimate friends of Medinilla. As to
Moreto’s works, I possess his Comedias, Tom. I., Madrid, 1677
(of which Antonio notes an edition in 1654); Tom. II., Valencia,
1676; and Tom. III., Madrid, 1681, all in 4to;--besides which I
have about a dozen of his plays, found in none of them. Calderon,
in his “Astrólogo Fingido,” first printed by his brother in 1637,
alludes to Moreto’s “Lindo Don Diego,” so that Moreto must have
been known as early as that date; and in the “Comedias Escogidas
de los Mejores Ingenios,” Tom. XXXVI., Madrid, 1671, we have
the “Santa Rosa del Perú,” the first two acts of which are said
to have been his last work, the remaining act being by Lanini,
but with no intimation when Moreto wrote his part of it. This
old collection of Comedias Escogidas contains forty-six plays
attributed in whole or in part to Moreto.
[686] “Los mas Dichosos Hermanos.” It is the first play in the
third volume; and though it does not correspond in its story
with the beautiful legend as Gibbon gives it, there is a greater
attempt at the preservation of the truth of history in its
accompaniments than is common in the old Spanish drama.
In one point, however, he made, if not a change in the direction of the
drama of his predecessors, yet an advance upon it. He devoted himself
more to character-drawing, and often succeeded better in it than they
had. His first play of this kind was “The Aunt and the Niece,” printed
as early as 1654. The characters are a widow extremely anxious to
be married, but foolishly jealous of the charms of her niece, and a
vaporing, epicurean officer in the army, who cheats the elder lady with
flattery, while he wins the younger. It is curious to observe, however,
that the hint for this drama--which is the oldest of the class called
_figuron_, from the prominence of one not very dignified _figure_ in
it--is yet to be found in Lope de Vega, to whom, as we have seen, is
to be traced, directly or indirectly, almost every form of dramatic
composition that finally succeeded on the Spanish stage.[687]
[687] Comedias de Lope de Vega, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, f. 16.
Moreto’s next attempt of the same sort is even better known, “The
Handsome Don Diego,”--a phrase that has become a national proverb.
It sets forth with great spirit the character of a fop, who believes
every lady he looks upon must fall in love with him. The very first
sketch of him at his morning toilet, and the exhibition of the sincere
contempt he feels for the more sensible lover, who refuses to take such
frivolous care of his person, are full of life and truth; and the whole
ends, with appropriate justice, by his being deluded into a marriage
with a cunning waiting-maid, who is passed off upon him as a rich
countess.
Some of Moreto’s plays, as, for instance, his “Trampa Adelante,”
obtained the name of _gracioso_, because the buffoon is made the
character upon whom the action turns; and in one case, at least, he
wrote a burlesque farce of no value, taking his subject from the
achievements of the Cid. But his general tone is that of the old
intriguing comedy; and though he is sometimes indebted for his plots
to his predecessors, and especially to Lope, yet, in nearly every
instance, and perhaps in every one, he surpassed his model, and the
drama he wrote superseded on the public stage the one he imitated.[688]
[688] “The Aunt and the Niece” is from Lope’s “De quando acá
nos vino,” and “It cannot be” from his “Mayor imposible.” There
are good remarks on these and other of Moreto’s imitations in
Martinez de la Rosa, Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. pp.
443-446. But the excuses there given for him hardly cover such a
plagiarism as his “Valiente Justiciero” is, from Lope’s “Infanzon
de Illescas.” As usual, however, in such cases, Moreto improved
upon his model. Cancer y Velasco, a contemporary poet, in a
little _jeu d’esprit_, represents Moreto as sitting down with a
bundle of old plays to see what he can cunningly steal out of
them, spoiling all he steals. (Obras, Madrid, 1761, 4to, p. 113.)
But in this, Cancer was unjust to Moreto’s talent, if not to his
honesty.
This was the case with the best of all his plays, “Disdain met with
Disdain,” for the idea of which he was indebted to Lope, whose
“Miracles of Contempt” has long been forgotten as an acting play, while
Moreto’s still maintains its place on the Spanish stage, of which it
is one of the brightest ornaments.[689] The plot is remarkably simple
and well contrived. Diana, heiress to the county of Barcelona, laughs
at love and refuses marriage, under whatever form it may be urged
upon her. Her father, whose projects are unreasonably thwarted by such
conduct, induces the best and gayest of the neighbouring princes to
come to his court, and engage in tournaments and other knightly sports,
in order to win her favor. She, however, treats them all with an equal
coldness, and even with a pettish disdain, until, at last, she is
piqued into admiration of the Count of Urgel, by his apparent neglect
of her charms,--a neglect which he skilfully places on the ground of a
contempt like her own for all love, but which, in fact, only conceals a
deep and faithful passion for herself.
[689] In 1664 Molière imitated the “Desden con el Desden” in his
“Princesse d’Élide,” which was represented at Versailles by the
command of Louis XIV., with great splendor, before his queen
and his mother, both Spanish princesses. The compliment, as far
as the king was concerned in it, was a magnificent one;--on
Molière’s part, it was a failure, and his play is now no longer
acted. The original drama of Moreto, however, is known wherever
the Spanish language is spoken, and a good translation of it into
German is common on the German stage.
The charm of the piece consists in the poetical spirit with which this
design is wrought out. The character of the _gracioso_ is well drawn
and well defined, and, as in most Spanish plays, he is his lord’s
confidant, and by his shrewdness materially helps on the action. At the
opening, after having heard from his master the position of affairs and
the humors of the lady, he gives his advice in the following lines,
which embody the entire argument of the drama.
My lord, your case I have discreetly heard,
And find it neither wonderful nor new;--
In short, it is an every-day affair.
Why, look ye, now! In my young boyhood, Sir,--
When the full vintage came and grapes were strewed,
Yea, wasted, on the ground,--I had, be sure,
No appetite at all. But afterwards,
When they were gathered in for winter’s use,
And hung aloft upon the kitchen rafters,
Then nothing looked so tempting half as they;
And, climbing cunningly to reach them there,
I caught a pretty fall and broke my ribs.
Now, this, Sir, is your case,--the very same.[690]
[690]
Atento, Señor, he estado,
Y el successo no me admira,
Porque esso, Señor, es cosa,
Que sucede cada dia.
Mira; siendo yo muchacho,
Auia en mi casa vendimia,
Y por el suelo las ubas
Nunca me dauan codicia.
Passó este tiempo, y despues
Colgaron en la cocina
Las ubas para el Inuierno;
Y yo viendolas arriba,
Rabiaua por comer dellas,
Tanto que, trepando un dia
Por alcançarlas, caí,
Y me quebré las costillas.
Este es el caso, el por el.
Jorn. I.
There is an excellent scene, in which the Count, perceiving he has made
an impression on the lady’s heart, fairly confesses his love, while
she, who is not yet entirely subdued, is able to turn round and treat
him with her accustomed disdain; from all which he recovers himself
with an address greater than her own, protesting his very confession
to have been only a part of the show they were by agreement carrying
on. But this confirms the lady’s passion, which at last becomes
uncontrollable, and the catastrophe immediately follows. She pleads
guilty to a desperate love, and marries him.
Contemporary with Moreto, and nearly as successful as he was among the
earlier writers for the stage, was Francisco de Roxas, who flourished
during the greater part of Calderon’s life, and may have survived him.
He was born in Toledo, and in 1641 was made a knight of the Order of
Santiago, but when he died is not known. Two volumes of his plays
were published in 1640 and 1645, and in the Prologue to the second he
speaks of publishing yet a third, which never appeared; so that we
have still only the twenty-four plays contained in these volumes, and
a few others that at different times were printed separately.[691] He
belongs decidedly to Calderon’s school,--unless, indeed, he began his
career too early to be a mere follower; and in poetical merit, if not
in dramatic skill, takes one of the next places after Moreto. But he
is very careless and unequal. His plays entitled “He who is a King
must not be a Father” and “The Aspics of Cleopatra” are as extravagant
as almost any thing in the Spanish heroic drama; while, on the other
hand, “What Women really are” and “Folly rules here” are among the most
effective of the class of intriguing plays.[692]
[691] Both volumes of the Comedias de Roxas were reprinted,
Madrid, 1680, 4to, and both their _Licencias_ are dated on the
same day; but the publisher of the first, who dedicates it to a
distinguished nobleman, is the same person to whom the second is
dedicated by the printer of both. _Autos_ of Roxas may be found
in “Autos, Loas, etc.,” 1655, and in “Navidad y Corpus Christi
Festejados,” collected by Pedro de Robles, 1664. But they are no
better than those of his contemporaries generally.
[692] His “Persiles y Sigismunda” is from Cervantes’s novel of
the same name. On the other hand, his “Casarse por vengarse” is
plundered, without ceremony, for the story of “Le Mariage de
Vengeance,” (Gil Blas, Liv. IV. c. 4), by Le Sage, who never
neglected a good opportunity of the sort.
His best, however, and one that has always kept its place on the stage,
is called “None below the King.” The scene is laid in the troublesome
times of Alfonso the Eleventh, and is in many respects true to them.
Don Garcia, the hero, is a son of Garci Bermudo, who had conspired
against the father of the reigning monarch, and, in consequence of this
circumstance, Garcia lives concealed as a peasant at Castañar, near
Toledo, very rich, but unsuspected by the government. In a period of
great anxiety, when the king wishes to take Algeziras from the Moors,
and demands, for that purpose, free contributions from his subjects,
those of Garcia are so ample as to attract especial attention. The
king inquires who is this rich and loyal peasant; and his curiosity
being still further excited by the answer, he determines to visit him
at Castañar, _incognito_, accompanied by only two or three favored
courtiers. Garcia, however, is privately advised of the honor that
awaits him, but, from an error in the description, mistakes the person
of one of the attendants for that of the king himself.
On this mistake the plot turns. The courtier whom Garcia wrongly
supposes to be the king falls in love with Blanca, Garcia’s wife; and,
in attempting to enter her apartments by night, when he believes
her husband to be away, is detected by the husband in person. Now,
of course, comes the struggle between Spanish loyalty and Spanish
honor. Garcia can visit no vengeance on a person whom he believes
to be his king; and he has not the slightest suspicion of his wife,
whom he knows to be faithfully and fondly attached to him. But the
remotest appearance of an intrigue demands a bloody satisfaction. He
determines, therefore, at once, on the death of his loving wife. Amidst
his misgivings and delays, however, she escapes, and is carried to
court, whither he himself is, at the same moment, called to receive
the greatest honors that can be conferred on a subject. In the royal
presence, he necessarily discovers his mistake regarding the king’s
person. From this moment, the case becomes perfectly plain to him, and
his course perfectly simple. He passes instantly into the antechamber.
With a single blow his victim is laid at his feet; and he returns,
sheathing his bloody dagger, and offering, as his only and sufficient
defence, an account of all that had happened, and the declaration,
which gives its name to the play, that “none below the king” can be
permitted to stand between him and the claims of his honor.
Few dramas in the Spanish language are more poetical; fewer still, more
national in their tone. The character of Garcia is drawn with great
vigor, and with a sharply defined outline. That of his wife is equally
well designed, but is full of gentleness and patience. Even the clown
is a more than commonly happy specimen of the sort of parody suitable
to his position. Some of the descriptions, too, are excellent. There is
a charming one of rustic life, such as it was fancied to be under the
most favorable circumstances in Spain’s best days; and, at the end of
the second act, there is a scene between Garcia and the courtier, at
the moment the courtier is stealthily entering his wife’s apartment,
in which we have the struggle between Spanish honor and Spanish
loyalty given with a picturesqueness and spirit that leave little
to be desired. In short, if we set aside the best plays of Lope de
Vega and Calderon, it is one of the most effective of the old Spanish
dramas.[693]
[693] “Del Rey abaxo Ninguno” has been sometimes printed with the
name of Calderon, who might well be content to be regarded as its
author; but there is no doubt who wrote it. It is, however, among
the Comedias Sueltas of Roxas, and not in his collected works.
Roxas was well known in France. Thomas Corneille imitated, and almost
translated, one of his plays; and as Scarron, in his “Jodelet,” did
the same with “Where there are real Wrongs there is no Jealousy,”
the second comedy that has kept its place on the French stage is due
to Spain, as the first tragedy and the first comedy had been before
it.[694]
[694] T. Corneille’s play is “Don Bertrand de Cigarral,” (Œuvres,
Paris, 1758, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 209), and his obligations are
avowed in the Dedication. Scarron’s “Jodelet” (Œuvres, Paris,
1752, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 73) is a spirited comedy, desperately
indebted to Roxas. But Scarron constantly borrowed from the
Spanish theatre.
Like many writers for the Spanish theatre, Roxas prepared several of
his plays in conjunction with others. Franchi, in his eulogy on Lope
de Vega, who indulged in this practice as the rest did, complains of
it, and says a drama thus compounded is more like a conspiracy than
a comedy, and that such performances were, in their different parts,
necessarily unequal and dissimilar. But this was not the general
opinion of his age; and that the complaint is not always well founded,
we know, not only from the example of Beaumont and Fletcher, but from
the success that has attended the composition of many dramas in France
in the nineteenth century by more than one person. It should not be
forgotten, also, that in Spain, where, from the very structure of the
national drama, the story was of so much consequence, and where so many
of the characters had standing attributes assigned to them, such joint
partnerships were more easily carried through with success than they
could be on any other stage. At any rate, they were more common there
than they have ever been elsewhere.[695]
[695] Three persons were frequently employed on one drama,
dividing its composition among them, according to its three
regular _jornadas_. In the large collection of Comedias printed
in the latter half of the seventeenth century, in forty-eight
volumes, there are, I think, about thirty such plays. Two are by
six persons each. One, in honor of the Marquis Cañete, is the
work of nine different poets, but it is not in any collection; it
is printed separately, and better than was usual, Madrid, 1622,
4to.
Alvaro Cubillo, who alludes to Moreto as his contemporary, and who
was perhaps known even earlier as a successful dramatist, says, in
1654, that he had already written a hundred plays. But the whole of
this great number, except ten published by himself, and two or three
others that appeared, if we may judge by his complaints, without
his permission, are now lost. Of those he published himself, “The
Thunderbolt of Andalusia,” in two parts, taken from the old ballads
about the Children of Lara, was much admired in his lifetime; but “The
Bracelets of Marcela,” a simple comedy, resting on the first childlike
love of a young girl, has since quite supplanted it. One of his plays,
“El Señor de Noches Buenas,” was early printed as Antonio de Mendoza’s,
but Cubillo at once made good his title to it; and yet, after the
death of both, it was inserted anew in Mendoza’s works;--a striking
proof of the great carelessness long common in Spain on the subject of
authorship.
None of Cubillo’s plays has high poetical merit, though several of
them are pleasant, easy, and natural. The best is “The Perfect Wife,”
in which the gentle and faithful character of the heroine is drawn with
skill, and with a true conception of what is lovely in woman’s nature.
Two of his religious plays, on the other hand, are more than commonly
extravagant and absurd; one of them--“Saint Michael”--containing, in
the first act, the story of Cain and Abel; in the second, that of
Jonah; and in the third, that of the Visigoth king, Bamba, with a sort
of separate conclusion in the form of a vision of the times of Charles
the Fifth and his three successors.[696]
[696] The plays of Cubillo that I have seen are,--ten in his
“Enano de las Musas” (Madrid, 1654, 4to); five in the Comedias
Escogidas, printed as early as 1660; and perhaps two or
three more scattered elsewhere. The “Enano de las Musas” is
a collection of his works, containing many ballads, sonnets,
etc., and an allegorical poem on “The Court of the Lion,” which,
Antonio says, was published as early as 1625, and which seems to
have been liked and to have gone through several editions. But
none of Cubillo’s poetry is so good as his plays. See Prólogo and
Dedication to the Enano, and Montalvan’s list of writers for the
stage at the end of his “Para Todos.”
But the Spanish stage, as we advance in Calderon’s life, becomes more
and more crowded with dramatic authors, all eager in their struggles
for popular favor. One of them was Antonio de Leyba, whose “Mutius
Scævola” is an absurdly constructed and wild historical play; while,
on the contrary, his “Honor the First Thing” and “The Lady President”
are pleasant comedies, enlivened with short stories and apologues,
which he wrote with great naturalness and point.[697] Another dramatist
was Cancer y Velasco, whose poems are better known than his plays,
and whose “Muerte de Baldovinos” runs more into caricature and broad
farce than was commonly tolerated in the court theatre.[698] And
yet others were Antonio Enriquez Gomez, son of a Portuguese Jew, who
inserted in his “Moral Evenings with the Muses”[699] four plays, all of
little value, except “The Duties of Honor”;--Antonio Sigler de Huerta,
who wrote “No Good to Ourselves without Harm to Somebody Else”;--and
Zabaleta, who, though he made a satirical and harsh attack upon the
theatre, could not refuse himself the indulgence of writing for it.[700]
[697] There are a few of Leyba’s plays in Duran’s collection,
and in the Comedias Escogidas, and I possess a few of them in
pamphlets. But I do not know how many he wrote, and I have no
notices of his life. He is sometimes called Francisco de Leyba;
unless, indeed, there were two of the same surname.
[698] Obras de Don Gerónimo Cancer y Velasco, Madrid, 1761, 4to.
The first edition is of 1651, and Antonio sets his death at 1654.
The “Muerte de Baldovinos” is in the Index of the Inquisition,
1790; as is also his “Vandolero de Flandes.” A play, however,
which he wrote in conjunction with Pedro Rosete and Antonio
Martinez, was evidently intended to conciliate the Church,
and well calculated for its purpose. It is called “El Mejor
Representante San Gines,” and is found in Tom. XXIX., 1668, of
the Comedias Escogidas,--San Gines being a Roman actor, converted
to Christianity, and undergoing martyrdom in the presence of
the spectators in consequence of being called on to act a play
written by Polycarp, which was ingeniously constructed so as to
defend the Christians. The tradition is absurd enough certainly,
but the drama may be read with interest throughout, and parts of
it with pleasure. It has a love-intrigue brought in with skill.
Cancer, I believe, wrote plays without assistance only once or
twice. Certainly, twelve written in conjunction with Moreto,
Matos Fragoso, and others, are all by him that are found in the
Comedias Escogidas.
[699] “Academias Morales de las Musas,” Madrid, 4to, 1660; but my
copy was printed at Barcelona, 1704, 4to.
[700] Flor de las Mejores Comedias, Madrid, 1652, 4to. Baena,
Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. p. 227. A considerable number of the
plays of Zabaleta may be seen in the forty-eight volumes of the
Comedias Escogidas, 1652, etc. One of them, “El Hijo de Marco
Aurelio,” on the subject of the Emperor Commodus, was acted in
1644, and, as the author tells us, being received with little
favor, and complaints being made that it was not founded in
truth, he began at once a life of that Emperor, which he calls
a translation from Herodian, but which has claims neither to
fidelity in its version, nor to purity in its style. It remained
long unfinished, until one morning in 1664, waking up and finding
himself struck entirely blind, he began, “as on an elevation,”
to look round for some occupation suited to his solitude and
affliction. His play had been printed in 1658, in the tenth
volume of the Comedias Escogidas, and he now completed the work
that was to justify it, and published it in 1666, announcing
himself on the title-page as a royal chronicler. But it failed,
as his drama had failed before it. In the “Vexámen de Ingenios”
of Cancer, where the failure of another of Zabaleta’s plays is
noticed, (Obras de Cancer, Madrid, 1761, 4to, p. 111), a punning
epigram is inserted on his personal ugliness, the amount of
which is, that, though his play was dear at the price paid for a
ticket, his face would repay the loss to those who should look on
it.
If we now turn from these to a few whose success was more strongly
marked, none presents himself earlier than Fernando de Zarate, a poet
who was occasionally misled by the fashion and bad taste of his time,
and occasionally resisted and rebuked it. Thus, in his best play, “What
Jealousy drives Men to do,” there is no trace of Gongorism, while this
eminently Spanish folly is very obvious in his otherwise good drama,
“He that talks Most does Least,” and even in his “Presumptuous and
Beautiful,” which has continued to be acted down to our own days.[701]
[701] The plays of Zarate are, I believe, easiest found in
the Comedias Escogidas, where twenty-two of them occur;--the
earliest in Tom. XV., 1661; and “La Presumida y la Hermosa,” in
Tom. XXIII., 1666. In the Index Expurgatorius of 1792, p. 288,
it is intimated that Fernando de Zarate is the same person with
Antonio Enriquez Gomez;--a mistake founded, probably, on the
circumstance, that a play of Enriquez Gomez, who was a Jew, was
printed with the name of Zarate attached to it, as others of his
plays were printed with the name of Calderon. Amador de los Rios,
Judios de España, Madrid, 1848, 8vo, p. 575.
Another of the writers for the theatre at this time was Miguel de
Barrios, one of those unhappy children of Israel, who, under the
terrors of the Inquisition, concealed their religion and suffered some
of the worst penalties of unbelief from the jealous intolerance which
everywhere watched them. His family was Portuguese, but he himself was
born in Spain, and served long in the Spanish armies. At last, however,
when he was in Flanders, the temptations to a peaceful conscience were
too strong for him. He escaped to Amsterdam, and died there in the open
profession of the faith of his fathers about the year 1699. His plays
were printed as early as 1665, but the only one worth notice is “The
Spaniard in Oran”; longer than it should be, but not without merit.[702]
[702] His “Coro de las Musas,” at the end of which his plays are
commonly added separately, was printed at Brussels in 1665, 4to,
and in 1672. In my copy, which is of the first edition, and which
once belonged to Mr. Southey, is the following characteristic
note in his handwriting: “Among the Lansdowne MSS. is a volume
of poems by this author, who, being a ‘New Christian,’ was happy
enough to get into a country where he could profess himself
a Jew.” There is a long notice of him in Barbosa, Biblioteca
Lusitana, Tom. III. p. 464, and a still longer one in Amador de
los Rios, Judios de España, Madrid, pp. 608, etc.
Diamante was among those who wrote dramas especially accommodated
to the popular taste, while Calderon was still at the height of his
reputation. Their number is considerable. Two volumes were collected
by him and published in 1670 and 1674, and yet others still remain
in scattered pamphlets and in manuscript.[703] They are in all the
forms, and in all the varieties of tone, then in favor. Some of them,
like “Santa Teresa,” are religious. Others are historical, like “Mary
Stuart.” Others are taken from the old national traditions, like “The
Siege of Zamora,” which is on the same subject with the second part
of Guillen de Castro’s “Cid,” but much less poetical. Others are
_zarzuelas_, or dramas chiefly sung, of which the best specimen by
Diamante is his “Alpheus and Arethusa,” prepared with an amusing _loa_
in honor of the Constable of Castile. There are more in the style of
the _capa y espada_ than in any other. But none of them has any marked
merit. The one that has attracted most attention, out of Spain, is
“The Son honoring his Father”; a play on the quarrel of the Cid with
Count Lozano, which, from a mistake of Voltaire, was long thought to
have been the model of Corneille’s “Cid,” while in fact the reverse is
true; since Diamante’s play was produced above twenty years after the
great French tragedy, and is deeply indebted to it.[704] Like most of
the dramatists of his time, Diamante was a follower of Calderon, and
inclined to the more romantic side of his character and school; and,
like so many Spanish poets of all times, he finished his career in
religious seclusion. Of the precise period of his death no notice has
been found, but it was probably near the end of the century.
[703] The “Comedias de Diamante” are in two volumes, 4to, Madrid,
1670 and 1674; but in the first volume eight plays are paged
together, and for the four others there is a separate paging;
though, as the whole twelve are recognized in the _Tassa_ and in
the table of contents, they are no doubt all his.
[704] The “Cid” of Corneille dates from 1636, and Diamante’s
“Honrador de su Padre” is found earliest in the eleventh volume
of the Comedias Escogidas, licensed 1658. Indeed, it may be well
doubted whether Diamante was a writer for the stage so early as
1636; for I find no play of his printed before 1657. Another
play on the subject of the Cid, partly imitated from this one of
Diamante, and with a similar title,--“Honrador de sus Hijas,”--is
found in the Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXIII., 1662. Its author
is Francisco Polo, of whom I know only that he wrote this drama,
whose merit is very small, and whose subject is the marriage of
the daughters of the Cid with the Counts of Carrion, and their
subsequent ill-treatment by their husbands, etc.
Passing over such writers of plays as Monroy, Monteser, Cuellar, and
not a few others, who flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth
century, we come to a pleasant comedy entitled “The Punishment of
Avarice,” written by Juan de la Hoz, a native of Madrid, who was made a
knight of Santiago in 1653, and Regidor of Burgos in 1657, after which
he rose to good offices about the court, and was living there as late
as 1689. How many plays he wrote, we are not told; but the only one now
remembered is “The Punishment of Avarice.” It is founded on the third
tale of María de Zayas, which bears the same name, and from which its
general outline and all the principal incidents are taken.[705] But the
miser’s character is much more fully and poetically drawn in the drama
than it is in the story. Indeed, the play is one of the best specimens
of character-drawing on the Spanish stage, and may, in many respects,
bear a comparison with the “Aulularia” of Plautus, and the “Avare” of
Molière.
[705] Huerta, who reprints the “Castigo de la Miseria” in the
first volume of his “Teatro Hespañol,” expresses a doubt as to
who is the inventor of the story, Hoz or María de Zayas. But
there is no question about the matter. The “Novelas” were printed
at Zaragoza, 1637, 4to, and their _Aprobacion_ is dated in 1635.
See, also, Baena’s “Hijos de Madrid,” Tom. III. p. 271. In the
Prólogo to Candamo’s plays, (Madrid, Tom. I., 1722), Hoz is said
to have written the third act of Candamo’s “San Bernardo,” left
unfinished at its author’s death in 1704. If this were the case,
Hoz must have lived to a good old age.
The sketch of the miser by one of his acquaintance in the first act,
ending with “He it was who first weakened water,” is excellent;
and, even to the last scene, where he goes to a conjurer to recover
his lost money, the character is consistently maintained and well
developed.[706] He is a miser throughout; and, what is more, he
is a Spanish miser. The moral is better in the prose tale, as the
_intrigante_, who cheats him into a marriage with herself, is there
made a victim of her crimes no less than he is; while in the drama
she profits by them, and comes off with success at last,--a strange
perversion of the original story, which it is not easy to explain. But
in poetical merit there is no comparison between the two.
[706] The first of these scenes is taken, in a good degree, from
the “Novelas,” ed. 1637, p. 86; but the scene with the astrologer
is wholly the poet’s own, and parts of it are worthy of Ben
Jonson. It should be added, however, that the third act of the
play is technically superfluous, as the action really ends with
the second. But we could not afford to part with it, so full is
it of spirit and humor.
Juan de Matos Fragoso, a Portuguese, who lived in Madrid at the same
time with Diamante and Hoz, and died in 1692, enjoyed quite as much
reputation with the public as they did, though he often writes in
the very bad taste of the age. But he never printed more than one
volume of his dramas, so that they are now to be sought chiefly in
separate pamphlets, and in collections made for other purposes than the
claims of the individual authors found in them. Those of his dramas
which are most known are his “Mistaken Experiment,” founded on the
“Impertinent Curiosity” of the first part of Don Quixote; his “Fortune
through Contempt,” a better-managed dramatic fiction; and his “Wise
Man in Retirement and Peasant by his own Fireside,” which is commonly
accounted the best of his works.
“The Captive Redeemer,” however, in which he was assisted by another
well-known author of his time, Sebastian de Villaviciosa, is on many
accounts more picturesque and attractive. It is, he says, a true
story. It is certainly a heart-rending one, founded on an incident not
uncommon during the barbarous wars carried on between the Christians
in Spain and the Moors in Africa,--relics of the fierce hatreds of
a thousand years.[707] A Spanish lady is carried into captivity by
a marauding party, who land on the coast for plunder and instantly
escape with their prey. Her lover, in despair, follows her, and the
drama consists of their adventures till both are found and released.
Mingled with this sad story, there is a sort of underplot, which gives
its name to the piece, and is very characteristic of the state of the
theatre and the demands of the public, or at least of the Church. A
large bronze statue of the Saviour is discovered to be in the hands of
the infidels. The captive Christians immediately offer the money, sent
as the price of their own freedom, to rescue it from such sacrilege;
and, at last, the Moors agree to give it up for its weight in gold;
but when the value of the thirty pieces of silver, originally paid for
the person of the Saviour himself, has been counted into one scale, it
is found to outweigh the massive statue in the other, and enough is
still left to purchase the freedom of the captives, who, in offering
their ransoms, had, in fact, as they supposed, offered their own lives.
With this triumphant miracle the piece ends. Like the other dramas
of Fragoso, it is written in a great variety of measures, which are
managed with skill and are full of sweetness.[708]
[707] I have already noticed plays of Lope and Cervantes that set
forth the cruel condition of Christian Spaniards in Algiers, and
must hereafter notice the great influence this state of things
had on Spanish romantic fiction. But it should be remembered
here, that many dramas were founded on it, besides those I
have had occasion to mention. One of the most striking is by
Moreto, which has some points of resemblance to the one spoken
of in the text. It is called “El Azote de su Patria,” (Comedias
Escogidas, Tom. XXXIV., 1670),--and is filled with the cruelties
of a Valencian renegade, who seems to have been an historical
personage.
[708] In the Comedias Escogidas, there are, at least, twenty-five
plays written wholly or in part by Matos, the earliest of which
is in Tom. V., 1653. From the conclusion of his “Pocos bastan si
son Buenos,” (Tom. XXXIV., 1670), and, indeed, from the local
descriptions in other parts of it, there can be no doubt that
Matos Fragoso was at one time in Italy, and very little that
this drama was written at Naples, and acted before the Spanish
Viceroy there. One volume of the plays of Matos Fragoso, called
the first, was printed at Madrid, 1658, 4to. Other separate plays
are in Duran’s collection, but not, I think, the best of them.
Villaviciosa wrote a part of “Solo el Piadoso es mi Hijo,” of “El
Letrado del Cielo,” of “El Redentor Cautivo,” etc. The apologue
of the barber, in the second act of the last, is, I think, taken
from one of Leyba’s plays, but I have it not now by me to refer
to, and such things were too common at the time on a much larger
scale to deserve notice, except as incidental illustrations of a
well-known state of literary morals in Spain. Fragoso’s life is
in Barbosa, Tom. II. pp. 695-697. I have eighteen of his plays in
separate pamphlets, besides those in the Comedias Escogidas.
The last of the good writers for the Spanish stage with its old
attributes is Antonio de Solís, the historian of Mexico. He was born
on the 18th of July, 1610, in Alcalá de Henares, and completed his
studies at the University of Salamanca, where, when only seventeen
years old, he wrote a drama. Five years later he had given to the
theatre his “Gitanilla” or “The Pretty Gypsy Girl,” founded on the
story of Cervantes, or rather on a play of Montalvan borrowed from
that story;--a graceful fiction, which has been constantly reproduced
in one shape or another, ever since it first appeared from the hand of
the great master. “One Fool makes a Hundred”--a pleasant _figuron_ play
of Solís, which was soon afterwards acted before the court--has less
merit, and is somewhat indebted to the “Don Diego” of Moreto. But, on
the other hand, his “Love à la Mode,” which is all his own, is among
the good plays of the Spanish stage, and furnished materials for one of
the best of Thomas Corneille’s.
In 1642, Solís prepared, for a festival at Pamplona, a dramatic
entertainment on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the tone
of the Spanish national theatre is fantastically confounded with the
genius of the old Grecian mythology, even more than was common in
similar cases; but the whole ends, quite contrary to all poetical
tradition, by the rescue of Eurydice from the infernal regions, with
an intimation that a second part would follow, whose conclusion would
be tragical;--a promise which, like so many others of the same sort in
Spanish literature, was never fulfilled.
As his reputation increased, Solís was made one of the royal
secretaries, and, while acting in this capacity, wrote an allegorical
drama, partly resembling a morality of the elder period, and partly
a modern masque, in honor of the birth of one of the princes, which
was acted in the palace of the Buen Retiro. The title of this wild,
but not unpoetical, opera is “Triumphs of Love and Fortune”; and
Diana and Endymion, Psyche and Venus, Happiness and Adversity, are
among its dramatic personages; though a tone of honor and gallantry
is as consistently maintained in it, as if its scene were laid at
Madrid, and its characters taken from the audience that witnessed the
performance. It is the more curious, however, from the circumstance,
that the _loa_, the _entremeses_, and the _saynete_, with which it was
originally accompanied, are still attached to it, all written by Solís
himself.[709]
[709] The “Triunfos de Amor y Fortuna” appeared as early as 1660,
in Tom. XIII. of the Comedias Escogidas.
In this way he continued, during the greater part of his life, one of
the favored writers for the private theatre of the king and the public
theatres of the capital; the dramas he produced being almost uniformly
marked by a skilful complication of their plots, which were not always
original, and by a purity of style and harmony of versification which
were quite his own. But at last, like many other Spanish poets, he
began to think such occupations sinful; and, after much deliberation,
he resolved on a life of religious retirement, and submitted to the
tonsure. From this time he renounced the theatre. He even refused to
write _autos sacramentales_, when he was applied to, in the hope that
he might be willing to become a successor to the fame and fortunes
of his great master; and, giving up his mind to devout meditation
and historical studies, seems to have lived contentedly, though in
seclusion and poverty, till his death, which happened in 1686. A volume
of his minor poems, published afterwards, which are in all the forms
then fashionable, has little value, except in a few short dramatic
entertainments, several of which are characteristic and amusing.[710]
[710] The “Varias Poesías” of Solís were edited by Juan de
Goyeneche, who prefixed to them an ill-written life of their
author, and published them at Madrid, 1692 (4to). His Comedias
were first printed in Madrid, 1681, as Tom. XLVII. of the
Comedias Escogidas. The “Gitanilla,” of which I have said that
it has been occasionally reproduced from Cervantes, is to be
found in the “Spanish Gypsy” of Rowley and Middleton; in the
“Preciosa,” a pleasant German play by P. A. Wolff; and in Victor
Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris”; besides which certain resemblances
to it in the “Spanish Student” of Professor Longfellow are
noticed by the author.
Later than Solís, but still partly his contemporary, was Francisco
Banzes Candamo. He was a gentleman of ancient family, and was born in
1662, in Asturias,--that true soil of the old Spanish cavaliers. His
education was careful, if not wise; and he was early sent to court,
where he received, first a pension, and afterwards several important
offices in the financial administration, whose duties, it is said, he
fulfilled with good faith and efficiency. But at last the favor of the
court deserted him; and he died in 1704, under circumstances of so much
wretchedness, that he was buried at the charge of a religious society
in the place to which he had been sent in disgrace.
His plays, or rather two volumes of them, were printed in 1722; but
in relation to his other poems, a large mass of which he left to the
Duke of Alva, we only know, that, long after their author’s death, a
bundle of them was sold for a few pence, and that an inconsiderable
collection of such of them as could be picked up from different
sources was printed in a small volume in 1729.[711] Of his plays,
those which he most valued are on historical subjects,[712] such as
“The Recovery of Buda” and “For his King and his Lady.” He wrote for
the theatre, however, in other forms, and several of his dramas are
curious, from the circumstance that they are tricked out with the
_loas_ and _entremeses_ which served originally to render them more
attractive to the multitude. Nearly all his plots are ingenious, and,
though involved, are more regular in their structure than was common
at the time. But his style is swollen and presumptuous, and there is,
notwithstanding their ingenuity, a want of life and movement in most of
his plays that prevented them from being effective on the stage.
[711] Candamo’s plays, entitled “Poesías Cómicas, Obras
Póstumas,” were printed at Madrid, in 1722, in 2 vols., 4to.
His miscellaneous poems, “Poesías Lyricas,” were published in
Madrid, in 18mo, but without a date on the title-page, while
the Dedication is of 1729, the _Licencias_ of 1720, and the _Fe
de Erratas_, which ought to be the latest of all, is of 1710.
This, however, is a specimen of the confusion of such matters
in Spanish books; a confusion which, in the present instance,
is carried into the contents of the volume itself, the whole of
which is entitled “Poesías Lyricas,” though it contains idyls,
epistles, ballads, and part of _three_ cantos of an epic on the
expedition of Charles V. against Tunis; _nine_ cantos having been
among the papers left by its author to the Duke of Alva. The life
of Candamo, prefixed to the whole, is very poorly written. Huerta
(Teatro, Parte III. Tom. II. p. 196) says he himself bought a
large mass of Candamo’s poetry, including _six_ cantos of this
epic, for two rials; no doubt, a part of the manuscripts left to
the Duke.
[712] He boasts of it in the opening of his “Cesar Africano.”
Candamo, however, should be noted as having given a decisive
impulse to a form of the drama which was known before his time,
and which served at last to introduce the genuine opera; I mean
the _zarzuela_, which took its name from that of one of the royal
residences near Madrid, where they were represented with great splendor
for the amusement of Philip the Fourth, by command of his brother
Ferdinand.[713] They are, in fact, plays of various kinds,--shorter or
longer; _entremeses_ or full-length comedies;--but all in the national
tone, and yet all accompanied with music.
[713] At first, only airs were introduced into the play, but
gradually the whole was sung. (Ponz, Viage de España, Madrid,
12mo, Tom. VI., 1782, p 152. Signorelli, Storia dei Teatri,
Napoli, 1813, 8vo, Tom. IX. p. 194.) One of these _zarzuelas_,
in which the portions that were sung are distinguished from the
rest, is to be found in the “Ocios de Ignacio Alvarez Pellicer
de Toledo,” s. l. 1635, 4to, p. 26. Its tendency to approach
the Italian opera is apparent in its subject, which is “The
Vengeance of Diana,” as well as in the treatment of the story, in
the theatrical machinery, etc.; but it has no poetical merit. A
small volume, by Andres Dávila y Heredia, (Valencia, 1676, 12mo),
called “Comedia sin Música,” seems intended, by its title, to
ridicule the beginnings of the opera in Spain; but it is a prose
satire, of little consequence in any respect. See _ante_, pp.
160, 237, 361, 399.
The first attempt to introduce dramatic performances with music was
made, as we have seen, about 1630, by Lope de Vega, whose eclogue
“Selva sin Amor,” wholly sung, was played before the court, with
a showy apparatus of scenery prepared by Cosmo Lotti, an Italian
architect, and “was a thing,” says the poet, “new in Spain.” Short
pieces followed soon afterward, _entremeses_, that were sung in place
of the ballads between the acts of the plays, and of which Benavente
was the most successful composer before 1645, when his works were first
published. But the earliest of the full-length plays that was ever
sung was Calderon’s “Púrpura de la Rosa,” which was produced before
the court in 1659, on occasion of the marriage of Louis the Fourteenth
with the Infanta Maria Theresa,--a compliment to the distinguished
personages of France who had come to Spain in honor of that great
solemnity, and whom it was thought no more than gallant to amuse with
something like the operas of Quinault and Lulli, which were then the
most admired entertainments of the court of France.
From this time, as was natural, there was a tendency to introduce
singing on the Spanish stage, both in full-length comedies and in
farces of all kinds;--a tendency which is apparent in Matos Fragoso, in
Solís, and in most of the other writers contemporary with the latter
part of Calderon’s career. At last, under the management of Diamante
and Candamo, a separate form of the drama grew up, the subjects for
which were generally taken from ancient mythology, like those of
the “Circe” and “Arethusa”; and when they were not so taken, as in
Diamante’s “Birth of Christ,” they were still treated in a manner much
like that observed in the treatment of their fabulous predecessors.
From this form of the drama to that of the proper Italian opera
was but a step, and one the more easily taken, as, from the period
when the Bourbon family succeeded the Austrian on the throne, the
national characteristics heretofore demanded in whatever appeared on
the Spanish stage had ceased to enjoy the favor of the court and the
higher classes. As early as 1705, therefore, something like an Italian
opera was established at Madrid, where, with occasional intervals
of suspension and neglect, it has ever since maintained a doubtful
existence, and where, of course, the old _zarzuelas_ and their kindred
musical farces have been more and more discountenanced, until, in their
original forms, at least, they have ceased to be heard.[714]
[714] See “Selva sin Amor,” with its Preface, printed by Lope
de Vega at the end of his “Laurel de Apolo,” Madrid, 1630,
4to;--Benavente, Joco-Seria, 1645, and Valladolid, 1653, 12mo,
where such pieces are called _entremeses cantados_;--Calderon’s
Púrpura de la Rosa;--Luzan, Poética, Lib. III. c. 1;--Diamante’s
Labyrinto de Creta, printed as early as 1667, in the Comedias
Escogidas, Tom. XXVII.;--Parra, El Teatro Español, Poema Lírico,
s. l. 1802, 8vo, _notas_, p. 295;--C. Pellicer, Orígen del
Teatro, Tom. I. p. 268;--and Stefano Arteaga, Teatro Musicale
Italiano, Bologna, 8vo, Tom. I., 1785, p. 241. The last is an
excellent book, written by one of the Jesuits driven from Spain
by Charles III., and who died at Paris in 1799. The second
edition, 1783-88, is the amplest and best.
Another of the poets who lived at this time and wrote dramas that mark
the decline of the Spanish theatre is Antonio de Zamora, who seems
originally to have been an actor; who was afterwards in the office
of the Indies and in the royal household; and whose dramatic career
begins before the year 1700, though he did not die till after 1730, and
probably had his principal success in the reign of Philip the Fifth,
before whom his plays were occasionally performed in the Buen Retiro,
as late as 1744.
Two volumes of his dramas were collected and published, with a solemn
dedication and consecration of them to their author’s memory, on the
ground of rendering unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s. They
are only sixteen in number, each longer than had been common on the
Spanish stage in its best days, and, in general, very heavy. Those
that are on religious subjects sink into farce, with the exception of
“Judas Iscariot,” which is too full of wild horrors to permit it to be
amusing. The best of the whole number is, probably, the one entitled
“All Debts must be paid at Last,” which is an alteration of Tirso de
Molina’s “Don Juan,” skilfully made;--a remarkable drama, in which the
tread of the marble statue is heard with more solemn effect than it is
in any other of the many plays on the same subject.
But notwithstanding the merit of this and two or three others, it
must be admitted that Zamora’s plays--of which above forty are extant,
and of which many were acted at the court with applause--are very
wearisome. They are crowded with long directions to the actors, and
imply the use of much imperfect machinery;--both of them unwelcome
symptoms of a declining dramatic literature. Still, Zamora writes with
facility, and shows, that, under favorable circumstances, he might
have trodden with more success in the footsteps of Calderon, whom he
plainly took for his model. But he came too late, and, while striving
to imitate the old masters, fell into their faults and extravagances,
without giving token of the fresh spirit and marvellous invention in
which their peculiar power resides.[715]
[715] Comedias de Antonio de Zamora, Madrid, 1744, 2 tom., 4to.
The royal authority to print the plays gives also a right to
print the lyrical works, but I think they never appeared. His
life is in Baena, Tom. I. p. 177, and notices of him in L. F.
Moratin, Obras, ed. Acad., Tom. II., Prólogo, pp. v.-viii.
Others followed the same direction with even less success, like Pedro
Francisco Lanini, Antonio Martinez, Pedro de Rosete, and Francisco de
Villegas;[716] but the person who continued longest in the paths opened
by Lope and Calderon was Joseph de Cañizares, a poet of Madrid, born
in 1676, who began to write for the stage when he was only fourteen
years old,--who was known as one of its more favored authors for above
forty years, pushing his success far into the eighteenth century,--and
who died in 1750. His plays are in all the old forms.[717] A few of
those on historical subjects are not without interest, such as “The
Tales of the Great Captain,” “Charles the Fifth at Tunis,” and “The
Suit of Fernando Cortés.” The best of his efforts in this class is,
however, “El Picarillo en España,” on the adventures of a sort of
Falconbridge, Frederic de Bracamonte, who, in the reign of John the
Second, discovered the Canaries, and held them for some time, as if he
were their king. But Cañizares, on the whole, had most success in plays
founded on character-drawing, introduced a little before his time by
Moreto and Roxas, and commonly called, as we have noticed, “Comedias
de Figuron.” His happiest specimens in this class are “The Famous
Kitchen-Wench,” taken from the story of Cervantes, “The Mountaineer at
Court,” and “Dómine Lucas,” where he drew from the life about him, and
selected his subjects from the poor, presumptuous, decayed nobility,
with which the court of Madrid was then infested.[718]
[716] These and many others, now entirely forgotten, are found in
the old collection of Comedias Escogidas, published between 1652
and 1704, where they occur in the later volumes; e. g. of Lanini,
nine plays; of Martinez, eighteen; and of Rosete and Villegas,
eleven each. I am not aware that any one of them deserves to be
rescued from the oblivion in which they are all sunk.
[717] Two volumes of the plays of Cañizares were collected, but
more can still be found separate, and many are lost. In Moratin’s
list, the titles of above seventy are brought together. Notices
of his life are in Baena, Tom. III. p. 69, and in Huerta, Teatro,
Parte I. Tom. II. p. 347.
[718] The “Dómine Lucas” of Cañizares has no resemblance to
the lively play with the same title by Lope de Vega, in the
seventeenth volume of his Comedias, 1621, which, he says in
the Dedication, is founded on fact, and which was reprinted in
Madrid, 1841, 8vo, with a Preface, attacking, not only Cañizares,
but several of the author’s contemporaries, in a most truculent
manner. The “Dómine Lucas” of Cañizares, however, is worth
reading, particularly in an edition where it is accompanied by
its two _entremeses_, improperly called _saynetes_;--the whole
newly arranged for representation in the Buen Retiro, on occasion
of the marriage of the Infanta María Luisa with the Archduke
Peter Leopold, in 1765.
Still, with this partial success as a poet, and with a popularity that
made him of consequence to the actors, Cañizares shows more distinctly
than any of his predecessors or contemporaries the marks of a declining
drama. As we turn over the seventy or eighty plays he has left us,
we are constantly reminded of the towers and temples of the South
of Europe, which, during the Middle Ages, were built from fragments
of the nobler edifices that had preceded them, proving at once the
magnificence of the age in which the original structures were reared,
and the decay of that of which such relics and fragments were the chief
glory. The plots, intrigues, and situations in the dramas of Cañizares
are generally taken from Lope, Calderon, Moreto, Matos Fragoso, and
his other distinguished predecessors, to whom, not without the warrant
of many examples on the Spanish stage, he resorted as to rich and
ancient monuments, which could still yield to the demands of his age
materials such as the age itself could no longer furnish from its own
resources.[719]
[719] The habit of using too freely the works of their
predecessors was common on the Spanish stage from an early
period. Cervantes says, in 1617, (Persiles, Lib. III. c. 2), that
some companies kept poets expressly to new-vamp old plays; and so
many had done it before him, that Cañizares seems to have escaped
censure, though nobody, certainly, had gone so far.
It would be easy to add the names of not a few other writers for the
Spanish stage who were contemporary with Cañizares, and, like him,
shared in the common decline of the national drama, or contributed to
it. Such were Juan de Vera y Villarroel, Inez de la Cruz, Melchior
Fernandez de Leon, Antonio Tellez de Azevedo, and others yet less
distinguished while they lived, and long ago forgotten. But writers
like these had no real influence on the character of the theatre to
which they attached themselves. This, in its proper outlines, always
remained as it was left by Lope de Vega and Calderon, who, by a
remarkable concurrence of circumstances, maintained, as far as it was
in secular hands, an almost unquestioned control over it, while they
lived, and, at their death, left a character impressed upon it which it
never lost, till it ceased to exist altogether.[720]
[720] See Appendix (F).
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHARACTER OF THE SPANISH DRAMA.--THE AUTOR, OR MANAGER.--THE
WRITERS FOR THE STAGE.--THE ACTORS, THEIR NUMBER, SUCCESS,
AND CONDITION.--PERFORMANCES BY DAYLIGHT.--THE STAGE.--THE
COURT-YARD, MOSQUETEROS, GRADAS, CAZUELA, AND APOSENTOS.--THE
AUDIENCES.--PLAY-BILLS, AND TITLES OF PLAYS.--REPRESENTATIONS, BALLADS,
LOAS, JORNADAS, ENTREMESES, SAYNETES, AND DANCES.--BALLADS DANCED AND
SUNG.--XACARAS, ZARABANDAS, AND ALEMANAS.--POPULAR CHARACTER OF THE
WHOLE.--GREAT NUMBER OF WRITERS AND PLAYS.
The most prominent, if not the most important, characteristic of
the Spanish drama, at the period of its widest success, was its
nationality. In all its various forms, including the religious plays,
and in all its manifold subsidiary attractions, down to the recitation
of old ballads and the exhibition of popular dances, it addressed
itself more to the whole people of the country which produced it
than any other theatre of modern times. The Church, as we have seen,
occasionally interfered, and endeavoured to silence or to restrict it.
But the drama was too deeply seated in the general favor, to be much
modified, even by a power that overshadowed nearly every thing else
in the state; and during the whole of the seventeenth century,--the
century which immediately followed the severe legislation of Philip the
Second and his attempts to control the character of the stage,--the
Spanish drama was really in the hands of the mass of the people, and
its writers and actors were such as the popular will required them to
be.[721]
[721] Mariana, in his treatise “De Spectaculis,” Cap. VII.,
(Tractatus Septem, Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1609, folio), earnestly
insists that actors of the low and gross character he gives to
them should not be permitted to perform in the churches, or to
represent sacred plays anywhere; and that the theatres should be
closed on Sundays. But he produced no effect against the popular
passion.
At the head of each company of actors was their _Autor_. The name
descended from the time of Lope de Rueda, when the writer of the rude
farces then in favor collected about him a body of players to perform
what should rather be called his dramatic dialogues than his proper
dramas, in the public squares;--a practice soon imitated in France,
where Hardy, the “Author,” as he styled himself, of his own company,
produced, between 1600 and 1630, about five hundred rude plays and
farces, often taken from Lope de Vega, and whatever was most popular
at the same period in Spain.[722] But while Hardy was at the height
of his success and preparing the way for Corneille, the canon in Don
Quixote had already recognized in Spain the existence of two kinds of
authors;--the authors who wrote, and the authors who acted;[723]--a
distinction familiar from the time when Lope de Vega appeared, and
one that was never afterwards overlooked. At any rate, from that time
actors and managers were quite as rarely writers for the stage in Spain
as in other countries.[724]
[722] For Hardy and his extraordinary career, which was almost
entirely founded on the Spanish theatre, see the “Parfaits,” or
any other history of the French stage. Corneille, in his “Remarks
on Mélite,” says, that, when he began, he had no guide but a
little common sense and the example of Hardy, and a few others
no more regular than he was. The example of Hardy led Corneille
directly to Spain for materials.
[723] D. Quixote, Parte I. c. 48. The _Primera Dama_, or the
actress of first parts, was sometimes called the _Autora_. Diablo
Cojuelo, Tranco V.
[724] Villegas was one of the last of the authors who were
managers. He wrote, we are told, fifty-four plays, and died about
1600. (Roxas, Viage, 1614, f. 21.) After this, the next example
of any prominence is Diamante, who was an actor before he wrote
for the stage, and died about 1700. The managing _autor_ was
sometimes the object of ridicule in the play his own company
performed, as he is in the “Tres Edades del Mundo” of Luis Vélez
de Guevara, where he is the _gracioso_. Comedias Escogidas, Tom.
XXXVIII., 1672.
The relations between the dramatic poets and the managers and actors
were not more agreeable in Spain than elsewhere. Figueroa, who was
familiar with the subject, says that the writers for the theatre
were obliged to flatter the heads of companies, in order to obtain
a hearing from the public, and that they were often treated with
coarseness and contempt, especially when their plays were read and
adapted to the stage in presence of the actors who were to perform
them.[725] Solorzano--himself a dramatist--gives similar accounts,
and adds the story of a poet, who was not only rudely, but cruelly,
abused by a company of players, to whose humors their _autor_ or
manager had abandoned him.[726] And even Lope de Vega and Calderon, the
master-spirits of the time, complain bitterly of the way in which they
were trifled with and defrauded of their rights and reputation, both
by the managers and by the booksellers.[727] At the end of the drama,
its author therefore sometimes announced his name, and, with more or
less of affected humility, claimed the work as his own.[728] But this
was not a custom. Almost uniformly, however, when the audience was
addressed at all,--and that was seldom neglected at the conclusion of a
drama,--it was saluted with the grave and flattering title of “Senate.”
[725] Pasagero, 1617, ff. 112-116.
[726] “Garduña de Sevilla,” near the end, and the “Bachiller
Trapaza,” c. 15. Cervantes, just as he is finishing his “Coloquio
de los Perros,” tells a story somewhat similar; so that authors
were early ill-treated by the actors.
[727] See the Preface and Dedication of the “Arcadia,” by Lope,
as well as other passages, noted in his Life;--the letter of
Calderon to the Duke of Veraguas;--his Life by Vera Tassis, etc.
[728] Thus, Mira de Mescua, at the conclusion of “The Death of
St. Lazarus,” (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. IX., 1657, p. 167),
says:--
Here ends the play
Whose wondrous tale Mira de Mescua wrote
To warn the many. Pray forgive our faults.
And Francisco de Leyba finishes his “Amadis y Niquea” (Comedias
Escogidas, Tom. XL., 1675, f. 118) with these words:--
Don Francis Leyba humbly bows himself,
And at your feet asks,--not a victor shout,--
But rather pardon for his many faults.
In general, however, as in the “Mayor Venganza” of Alvaro
Cubillo, and in the “Caer para levantarse” of Matos, Cancer,
and Moreto, the annunciation is simple, and made, apparently,
to protect the rights of the author, which, in the seventeenth
century, were so little respected.
Nor does the condition of the actors seem to have been one which
could be envied by the poets who wrote for them. Their numbers and
influence, indeed, soon became imposing under the great impulse given
to the drama in the beginning of the seventeenth century. When Lope de
Vega first appeared as a dramatic writer at Madrid, the only theatres
he found were two unsheltered court-yards, which depended on such
strolling companies of players as occasionally deemed it for their
interest to visit the capital. Before he died, there were, besides the
court-yards in Madrid, several theatres of great magnificence in the
royal palaces, and multitudinous bodies of actors, comprehending in all
above a thousand persons.[729] And half a century later, at the time of
Calderon’s death, when the Spanish drama had taken all its attributes,
the passion for its representations had spread into every part of the
kingdom, until there was hardly a village, we are told, that did not
possess some kind of a theatre.[730] Nay, so pervading and uncontrolled
was the eagerness for dramatic exhibitions, that, notwithstanding the
scandal it excited, secular comedies of a very equivocal complexion
were represented by performers from the public theatres in some of the
principal monasteries of the kingdom.[731]
[729] Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, 1797, Tom. IV. p. 110, note.
One account says there were three hundred companies of actors
in Spain about 1636; but this seems incredible, if it means
companies of persons who lived by acting. Pantoja, Sobre
Comedias, Murcia, 1814, 4to, Tom. I. p. 28.
[730] Pellicer, Orígen de las Comedias, 1804, Tom. I. p. 185.
[731] Ibid., pp. 226-228. When Philip III. visited Lisbon
in 1619, the Jesuits performed a play before him, partly
in Latin and partly in Portuguese, at their College of San
Antonio;--an account of which is given in the “Relacion de la
Real Tragicomedia con que los Padres de la Compañía de Jesus
recibieron á la Magestad Católica,” etc., por Juan Sardina
Mimoso, etc., Lisboa, 1620, 4to,--its author being, I believe,
Antonio de Sousa. Add to this that Mariana (De Spectaculis, c.
7) says that the _entremeses_ and other exhibitions between the
acts of the plays, performed in the most holy religious houses,
were often of a gross and shameless character,--a statement which
he repeats, partly in the same words, in his treatise “De Rege,”
Lib. III. c. 16.
Of course, out of so large a body of actors, all struggling for public
favor, some became famous. Among the more distinguished were Agustin
de Roxas, who wrote the gay travels of a company of comedians; Roque
de Figueroa and Rios, Lope’s favorites; Pinedo, much praised by Tirso
de Molina; Alonso de Olmedo and Sebastian Prado, who were rivals for
public applause in the time of Calderon; Juan Rana, who was the best
comic actor during the reigns of Philip the Third and Philip the
Fourth, and amused the audiences by his own extemporaneous wit; the two
Morales and Josefa Vaca, wife of the elder of them; Barbara Coronel,
the Amazon, who preferred to appear as a man; María de Córdoba, praised
by Quevedo and the Count Villamediana; and María Calderon, who, as the
mother of the second Don John of Austria, figured in affairs of state,
as well as in those of the stage. These and some others enjoyed, no
doubt, that ephemeral, but brilliant, reputation which is generally the
only reward of the best of their class; and enjoyed it to as high a
degree, perhaps, as any persons that have appeared on the stage in more
modern times.[732]
[732] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. II., _passim_, and Mad. d’Aulnoy,
Voyage en Espagne, ed. 1693, Tom. I. p. 97. One of the best-known
actors of the time was Sebastian Prado, mentioned above, the
head of a company that went to France after the marriage of
Louis XIV. with María Teresa, in 1659, and performed there some
time for the pleasure of the new queen;--one of the many proofs
of the spread and fashion of Spanish literature at this period.
(C. Pellicer, Tom. I. p. 39.) María de Córdoba is mentioned with
admiration, not only by the authors I have cited, but by Calderon
in the opening of the “Dama Duende,” as Amarilis. For the names
of other actors in the seventeenth century, see Don Quixote, ed.
Clemencin, Parte II. c. 11, note.
But, regarded as a body, the Spanish actors seem to have been any
thing but respectable. In general, they were of a low and vulgar
caste in society,--so low, that, for this reason, they were at one
period forbidden to have women associated with them.[733] The rabble,
indeed, sympathized with them, and sometimes, when their conduct
called for punishment, protected them by force from the arm of the law;
but, between 1644 and 1649, when their number in the metropolis had
become very great, and they constituted no less than forty companies,
full of disorderly persons and vagabonds, their character did more
than any thing else to endanger the privileges of the drama, which
with difficulty evaded the restrictions their riotous lives brought
upon it.[734] One proof of their gross conduct is to be found in its
results. Many of them, filled with compunction at their own shocking
excesses, took refuge at last in a religious life, like Prado, who
became a devout priest, and Francisca Baltasara, who died a hermit,
almost in the odor of sanctity, and was afterwards made the subject of
a religious play.[735]
[733] Alonso, Mozo de Muchos Amos, Parte I., Barcelona, 1625, f.
141. A little earlier, viz. 1618, Bisbe y Vidal speaks of women
on the stage frequently taking the parts of men (Tratado de
Comedias, f. 50); and from the directions to the players in the
“Amadis y Niquea” of Leyba, (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XL., 1675),
it appears that the part of Amadis was expected to be played
always by a woman.
[734] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 183, Tom. II. p. 29; and
Navarro Castellanos, Cartas Apologéticas contra las Comedias,
Madrid, 1684, 4to, pp. 256-258. “Take my advice,” says Sancho to
his master, after their unlucky encounter with the players of the
_Auto Sacramental_,--“take my advice and never pick a quarrel
with play-actors: they are privileged people. I have known one of
them sent to prison for two murders, and get off scot-free. For
mark, your worship, as they are gay fellows, full of fun, every
body favors them; every body defends, helps, and likes them;
especially if they belong to the royal and privileged companies,
where all or most of them dress as if they were real princes.”
Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 11, with the note of Clemencin.
[735] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. II. p. 53, and elsewhere
throughout the volume.
They had, besides, many trials. They were obliged to learn a great
number of pieces to satisfy the demands for novelty, which were more
exacting on the Spanish stage than on any other; their rehearsals were
severe, and their audiences rude. Cervantes says that their life was as
hard as that of the Gypsies;[736] and Roxas, who knew all there was to
be known on the subject, says that slaves in Algiers were better off
than they were.[737]
[736] In the tale of the “Licenciado Vidriera.”
[737] Roxas, Viage, 1614, f. 138. The necessities of the actors
were so pressing, that they were paid their wages every night, as
soon as the acting was over.
Un Representante cobra
Cada noche lo que gana.
Y el Autor paga, aunque
No hay dinero en la Caxa.
El Mejor Representante, Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXIX., 1668, p.
199.
The Actor gets his wages every night;
For the poor Manager must pay him up,
Although his treasure-chest is clear of coin.
To all this we must add that they were poorly paid, and that their
managers were almost always in debt. But, like other forms of vagabond
life, its freedom from restraints made it attractive to not a few
loose persons, in a country like Spain, where it was difficult to find
liberty of any sort. This attraction, however, did not last long. The
drama fell in its consequence and popularity as rapidly as it had
risen. Long before the end of the century, it ceased to encourage or
protect such numbers of idlers as were at one time needed to sustain
its success;[738] and in the reign of Charles the Second it was not
easy to collect three companies for the festivities occasioned by his
marriage.[739] Half a century earlier, twenty would have striven for
the honor.
[738] “Pondus iners reipublicæ, atque inutile,” said Mariana, De
Spectaculis, c. 9.
[739] Hugalde y Parra, Orígen del Teatro, p. 312.
During the whole of the successful period of the drama in Spain,
its exhibitions took place in the day-time. On the stages of the
different palaces, where, when Howell was in Madrid, in 1623,[740]
there were representations once a week, it was sometimes otherwise;
but the religious plays and _autos_, with all that were intended to
be really popular, were represented in broad daylight,--in the winter
at two, and in the summer at three, in the afternoon, every day in
the week.[741] Till near the middle of the seventeenth century, the
scenery and general arrangements of the theatre were probably as good
as they were in France when Corneille appeared, or perhaps better; but
in the latter part of it, the French stage was undoubtedly in advance
of that at Madrid, and Madame d’Aulnoy makes herself merry by telling
her friends that the Spanish sun was made of oiled paper, and that in
the play of “Alcina” she saw the devils quietly climbing ladders out of
the infernal regions, to reach their places on the stage.[742] Plays
that required more elaborate arrangements and machinery were called
_comedias de ruido_,--noisy or showy dramas,--and are treated with
little respect by Figueroa and Luis Vélez de Guevara, because it was
thought unworthy of a poetical spirit to depend for success on means so
mechanical.[743]
[740] Familiar Letters, London, 1754, 8vo, Book I. Sect. 3,
Letter 18.
[741] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 220. Aarsens, Voyage, 1667,
p. 29.
[742] Relation du Voyage d’Espagne, par Madame la Contesse
d’Aulnoy, La Haye, 1693, 18mo, Tom. III. p. 21,--the same who
wrote beautiful fairy tales. She was there in 1679-80; but
Aarsens gives a similar account of things fifteen years earlier.
Voyage, 1667, p. 59.
[743] Figueroa, Pasagero, and Guevara, Diablo Cojuelo.
The stage itself, in the two principal theatres of Madrid, was raised
only a little from the ground of the court-yard where it was erected,
and there was no attempt at a separate orchestra,--the musicians coming
to the forepart of the scene whenever they were wanted. Immediately
in front of the stage were a few benches, which afforded the best
places for those who bought single tickets, and behind them was the
unencumbered portion of the court-yard, where the common file were
obliged to stand in the open air. The crowd there was generally great,
and the persons composing it were called, from their standing posture
and their rude bearing, _mosqueteros_, or infantry. They constituted
the most formidable and disorderly part of the audience, and were the
portion that generally determined the success of new plays.[744]
One of their body, a shoemaker, who in 1680 reigned supreme in the
court-yard over the opinions of those around him, reminds us at once of
the critical trunk-maker in Addison.[745] Another, who was offered a
hundred rials to favor a play about to be acted, answered proudly that
he would first see whether it was good or not, and, after all, hissed
it.[746] Sometimes the author himself addressed them at the end of his
play, and stooped to ask the applause of this lowest portion of the
audience. But this was rare.[747]
[744] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 53, 55, 63, 68.
[745] Mad. d’Aulnoy, Voyage, Tom. III. p. 21. Spectator, No. 235.
[746] Aarsens, Relation, at the end of his Voyage, 1667, p. 60.
[747] Manuel Morchon, at the end of his “Vitoria del Amor,”
(Comedias Escogidas, Tom. IX., 1657, p. 242), says:--
Most honorable Mosqueteros, here
Don Manuel Morchon, in gentlest form,
Beseeches you to give him, as an alms,
A victor shout;--if not for this his play,
At least for the good-will it shows to please you.
In the same way, Antonio de Huerta, speaking of his “Cinco
Blancas de Juan Espera en Dios,” (Ibid., Tom. XXXII., 1669, p.
179), addresses them:--
And should it now a victor cry deserve,
Señores Mosqueteros, you will here,
In charity, vouchsafe to give me one;--
That is, in case the play has pleased you well.
Perhaps we should not have expected of such a condescension from
Solís, but he stooped to it. At the conclusion of his well-known
“Doctor Carlino,” (Comedias, 1716, p. 262), he turns to them,
saying:--
And here expires my play. If it has pleased,
Let the Señores Mosqueteros cry a victor
At its burial.
Every thing, indeed, that we know about the _mosqueteros_ shows
that their influence was great at the theatre in the theatre’s
best days. In the eighteenth century we shall find it governing
every thing.