CHAPTER XIV.
Drama continued. — Juan de la Enzina. — His Life and Works. — His Representaciones, and their Character. — First Secular Dramas acted in Spain. — Some Religious in their Tone, and some not. — Gil Vicente, a Portuguese. — His Spanish Dramas. — Auto of Cassandra. — Comedia of the Widower. — His Influence on the Spanish Drama.
The “Celestina,” as has been intimated, produced little or no immediate effect on the rude beginnings of the Spanish drama; perhaps not so much as the dialogues of “Mingo Revulgo,” and “Love and the Old Man.” But the three taken together unquestionably lead us to the true founder of the secular theatre in Spain, Juan de la Enzina,[433] who was probably born in the village whose name he bears, in 1468 or 1469, and was educated at the neighbouring University of Salamanca, where he had the good fortune to enjoy the patronage of its chancellor, then one of the rising family of Alva. Soon afterwards he was at court; and at the age of twenty-five, we find him in the household of Fadrique de Toledo, first Duke of Alva, to whom and to his duchess Enzina addressed much of his poetry. In 1496, he published the earliest edition of his works, divided into four parts, which are successively dedicated to Ferdinand and Isabella, to the Duke and Duchess of Alva, to Prince John, and to Don Garcia de Toledo, son of his patron.
Somewhat later, Enzina went to Rome, where he became a priest, and, from his skill in music, rose to be head of Leo the Tenth’s chapel; the highest honor the world then offered to his art. In the course of the year 1519, he made a pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem with Fadrique Afan de Ribera, Marquis of Tarifa; and on his return, published, in 1521, a poor poetical account of his devout adventures, accompanied with great praises of the Marquis, and ending with an expression of his happiness at living in Rome.[434] At a more advanced age, however, having received a priory in Leon as a reward for his services, he returned to his native country, and died, in 1534, at Salamanca, in whose cathedral his monument is probably still to be seen.[435]
Of his collected works six editions at least were published between 1496 and 1516; showing, that, for the period in which he lived, he enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity. They contain a good deal of pleasant lyrical poetry, songs, and villancicos, in the old popular Spanish style; and two or three descriptive poems, particularly “A Vision of the Temple of Fame and the Glories of Castile,” in which Ferdinand and Isabella receive great eulogy and are treated as if they were his patrons. But most of his shorter poems were slight contributions of his talent offered on particular occasions; and by far the most important works he has left us are the dramatic compositions which fill the fourth division of his Cancionero.
These compositions are called by Enzina himself “Representaciones”; and in the edition of 1496 there are nine of them, while in the last two editions there are eleven, one of which contains the date of 1498. They are in the nature of eclogues, though one of them, it is difficult to tell why, is called an “Auto”;[436] and they were represented before the Duke and Duchess of Alva, the Prince Don John, the Duke of Infantado, and other distinguished personages enumerated in the notices prefixed to them. All are in some form of the old Spanish verse; in all there is singing; and in one there is a dance. They have, therefore, several of the elements of the proper secular Spanish drama, whose origin we can trace no farther back by any authentic monument now existing.
Two things, however, should be noted, when considering these dramatic efforts of Juan de la Enzina as the foundation of the Spanish drama. The first is their internal structure and essential character. They are eclogues only in form and name, not in substance and spirit. Enzina, whose poetical account of his travels in Palestine proves him to have had scholarlike knowledge, began by translating, or rather paraphrasing, the ten Eclogues of Virgil, accommodating some of them to events in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, or to passages in the fortunes of the house of Alva.[437] From these, he easily passed to the preparation of eclogues to be represented before his patrons and their courtly friends. But, in doing this, he was naturally reminded of the religious exhibitions, which had been popular in Spain from the time of Alfonso the Tenth, and had always been given at the great festivals of the Church. Six, therefore, of his eclogues, to meet the demands of ancient custom, are, in fact, dialogues of the simplest kind, represented at Christmas and Easter, or during Carnival and Lent; in one of which the manger at Bethlehem is introduced, and in another a sepulchral monument, setting forth the burial of the Saviour, while all of them seem to have been enacted in the chapel of the Duke of Alva, though two certainly are not very religious in their tone and character.
The remaining five are altogether secular; three of them having a sort of romantic story, the fourth introducing a shepherd so desperate with love that he kills himself, and the fifth exhibiting a market-day farce and riot between sundry country people and students, the materials for which Enzina may well enough have gathered during his own life at Salamanca. These five eclogues, therefore, connect themselves with the coming secular drama of Spain in a manner not to be mistaken, just as the first six look back towards the old religious exhibitions of the country.
The other circumstance that should be noted in relation to them, as proof that they constitute the commencement of the Spanish secular drama, is, that they were really acted. Nearly all of them speak in their titles of this fact, mentioning sometimes the personages who were present, and in more than one instance alluding to Enzina himself, as if he had performed some of the parts in person. Rojas, a great authority in whatever relates to the theatre, declares the same thing expressly, coupling the fall of Granada and the achievements of Columbus with the establishment of the theatre in Spain by Enzina; events which, in the true spirit of his profession as an actor, he seems to consider of nearly equal importance.[438] The precise year when this happened is given by a learned antiquary of the time of Philip the Fourth, who says, “In 1492, companies began to represent publicly in Castile plays by Juan de la Enzina.”[439] From this year, then, the great year of the discovery of America, we may safely date the foundation of the Spanish secular theatre.
It must not, however, be supposed that the “Representations,” as he calls them, of Juan de la Enzina have much dramatic merit. On the contrary, they are rude and slight. Some have only two or three interlocutors, and no pretension to a plot; and none has more than six personages, nor any thing that can be considered a proper dramatic structure. In one of those prepared for the Nativity, the four shepherds are, in fact, the four Evangelists;—Saint John, at the same time, shadowing forth the person of the poet. He enters first, and discourses, in rather a vainglorious way, of himself as a poet; not forgetting, however, to compliment the Duke of Alva, his patron, as a person feared in France and in Portugal, with which countries the political relations of Spain were then unsettled. Matthew, who follows, rebukes John for this vanity, telling him that “all his works are not worth two straws”; to which John replies, that, in pastorals and graver poetry, he defies competition, and intimates, that, in the course of the next May, he shall publish what will prove him to be something even more than bucolic. They both agree that the Duke and Duchess are excellent masters, and Matthew wishes that he, too, were in their service. At this point of the dialogue, Luke and Mark come in, and, with slight preface, announce the birth of the Saviour as the last news. All four then talk upon that event at large, alluding to John’s Gospel as if already known, and end with a determination to go to Bethlehem, after singing a villancico or rustic song, which is much too light in its tone to be religious.[440] The whole eclogue is short and comprised in less than forty rhymed stanzas of nine lines each, including a wild lyric at the end, which has a chorus to every stanza, and is not without the spirit of poetry.[441]
This belongs to the class of Enzina’s religious dramas. One, on the other hand, which was represented at the conclusion of the Carnival, during the period then called popularly at Salamanca Antruejo, seems rather to savor of heathenism, as the festival itself did.[442] It is merely a rude dialogue between four shepherds. It begins with a description of one of those mummings, common at the period when Enzina lived, which, in this case, consisted of a mock battle in the village between Carnival and Lent, ending with the discomfiture of Carnival; but the general matter of the scene presented is a somewhat free frolic of eating and drinking among the four shepherds, ending, like the rest of the eclogues, with a villancico, in which Antruejo, it is not easy to tell why, is treated as a saint.[443]
Quite opposite to both of the pieces already noticed is the Representation for Good Friday, between two hermits, Saint Veronica, and an angel. It opens with the meeting and salutation of the two hermits, the elder of whom, as they walk along, tells the younger, with great grief, that the Saviour has been crucified that very day, and agrees with him to visit the sepulchre. In the midst of their talk, Saint Veronica joins them, and gives an account of the crucifixion, not without touches of a simple pathos; showing, at the same time, the napkin on which the portrait of the Saviour had been miraculously impressed, as she wiped from his face the sweat of his agony. Arrived at the sepulchre,—which was some kind of a monument for the Corpus Christi in the Duke of Alva’s chapel, where the representation took place,—they kneel; an angel whom they find there explains to them the mystery of the Saviour’s death; and then, in a villancico in which all join, they praise God, and take comfort with the promise of the resurrection.[444]
But the nearest approach to a dramatic composition made by Juan de la Enzina is to be found in two eclogues between “The Esquire that turns Shepherd,” and “The Shepherds that turn Courtiers”; both of which should be taken together and examined as one whole, though, in his simplicity, the poet makes them separate and independent of each other.[445] In the first, a shepherdess, who is a coquette, shows herself well disposed to receive Mingo, one of the shepherds, for her lover, till a certain gay esquire presents himself, whom, after a fair discussion, she prefers to accept, on condition he will turn shepherd;—an unceremonious transformation, with which, and the customary villancico, the piece concludes. The second eclogue, however, at its opening, shows the esquire already tired of his pastoral life, and busy in persuading all the shepherds, somewhat in the tone of Touchstone in “As you like it,” to go to court, and become courtly. In the dialogue that follows, an opportunity occurs, which is not neglected, for a satire on court manners, and for natural and graceful praise of life in the country. But the esquire carries his point. They change their dresses, and set forth gayly upon their adventures, singing, by way of finale, a spirited villancico in honor of the power of Love, that can thus transform shepherds to courtiers, and courtiers to shepherds.
The most poetical passage in the two eclogues is one in which Mingo, the best of the shepherds, still unpersuaded to give up his accustomed happy life in the country, describes its cheerful pleasures and resources, with more of natural feeling, and more of a pastoral air, than are found anywhere else in these singular dialogues.
But look ye, Gil, at morning dawn,
How fresh and fragrant are the fields;
And then what savory coolness yields
The cabin’s shade upon the lawn.
And he that knows what ’t is to rest
Amidst his flocks the livelong night,
Sure he can never find delight
In courts, by courtly ways oppressed.
O, what a pleasure ’t is to hear
The cricket’s cheerful, piercing cry!
And who can tell the melody
His pipe affords the shepherd’s ear?
Thou know’st what luxury ’t is to drink,
As shepherds do, when worn with heat,
From the still fount, its waters sweet,
With lips that gently touch their brink;
Or else, where, hurrying on, they rush
And frolic down their pebbly bed,
O, what delight to stoop the head,
And drink from out their merry gush![446]
Both pieces, like the preceding translation, are in double redondillas forming octave stanzas of eight-syllable verses; and as the two together contain about four hundred and fifty lines, their amount is sufficient to show the direction Enzina’s talent naturally took, as well as the height to which it rose.
Enzina, however, is to be regarded not only as the founder of the Spanish theatre, but as the founder of the Portuguese, whose first attempts were so completely imitated from his, and had in their turn so considerable an effect on the Spanish stage, that they necessarily become a part of its history. These attempts were made by Gil Vicente, a gentleman of good family, who was bred to the law, but left that profession early and devoted himself to dramatic compositions, chiefly for the entertainment of the families of Manuel the Great and John the Third. When he was born is not known, but he died in 1557. As a writer for the stage he flourished from 1502 to 1536,[447] and produced, in all, forty-two pieces, arranged as works of devotion, comedies, tragicomedies, and farces; but most of them, whatever be their names, are in fact short, lively dramas, or religious pastorals. Taken together, they are better than any thing else in Portuguese dramatic literature.
The first thing, however, that strikes us in relation to them is, that their air is so Spanish, and that so many of them are written in the Spanish language. Of the whole number, ten are in Castilian, fifteen partly or chiefly so, and seventeen entirely in Portuguese. Why this is the case, it is not easy to determine. The languages are, no doubt, very nearly akin to each other; and the writers of each nation, but especially those of Portugal, have not unfrequently distinguished themselves in the use of both. But the Portuguese have never, at any period, admitted their language to be less rich or less fitted for all kinds of composition than that of their prouder rivals. Perhaps, therefore, in the case of Vicente, it was, that the courts of the two countries had been lately much connected by intermarriages; that King Manuel had been accustomed to have Castilians about his person to amuse him;[448] that the queen was a Spaniard;[449] or that, in language as in other things, he found it convenient thus to follow the leading of his master, Juan de la Enzina;—but, whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that Vicente, though he was born and lived in Portugal, is to be numbered among Spanish authors as well as among Portuguese.
His earliest effort was made in 1502, on occasion of the birth of Prince John, afterwards John the Third.[450] It is a monologue in Spanish, a little more than a hundred lines long, spoken before the king, the king’s mother, and the Duchess of Braganza, probably by Vicente himself, in the person of a herdsman, who enters the royal chambers, and, after addressing the queen mother, is followed by a number of shepherds, bringing presents to the new-born prince. The poetry is simple, fresh, and spirited, and expresses the feelings of wonder and admiration that would naturally rise in the mind of such a rustic, on first entering a royal residence. Regarded as a courtly compliment, the attempt succeeded. In a modest notice, attached to it by the son of Vicente, we are told, that, being the first of his father’s compositions, and the first dramatic representation ever made in Portugal, it pleased the queen mother so much, as to lead her to ask its author to repeat it at Christmas, adapting it to the birth of the Saviour.
Vicente, however, understood that the queen desired to have such an entertainment as she had been accustomed to enjoy at the court of Castile, when John de la Enzina brought his contributions to the Christmas festivities. He therefore prepared for Christmas morning what he called an “Auto Pastoril,” or Pastoral Act;—a dialogue in which four shepherds with Luke and Matthew are the interlocutors, and in which not only the eclogue forms of Enzina are used, and the manger of Bethlehem is introduced, just as that poet had introduced it, but in which his verses are freely imitated. This effort, too, pleased the queen, and again, on the authority of his son, we are told she asked Vicente for another composition, to be represented on Twelfth Night, 1503. Her request was not one to be slighted; and in the same way four other pastorals followed for similar devout occasions, making, when taken together, six; all of which being in Spanish, and all religious pastorals, represented with singing and dancing before King Manuel, his queen, and other distinguished personages, they are to be regarded throughout as imitations of Juan de la Enzina’s eclogues.[451]
Of these six pieces, three of which, we know, were written in 1502 and 1503, and the rest, probably, soon afterwards, the most curious and characteristic is the one called “The Auto of the Sibyl Cassandra,” which was represented in the rich old monastery of Enxobregas, on a Christmas morning, before the queen mother. It is an eclogue in Spanish, above eight hundred lines long, and is written in the stanzas most used by Enzina. Cassandra, the heroine, devoted to a pastoral life, yet supposed to be a sort of lay prophetess who has had intimations of the approaching birth of the Saviour, enters at once on the scene, where she remains to the end, the central point, round which the other seven personages are not inartificially grouped. She has hardly avowed her resolution not to be married, when Solomon appears making love to her, and telling her, with great simplicity, that he has arranged every thing with her aunts, to marry her in three days. Cassandra, nothing daunted at the annunciation, persists in the purpose of celibacy; and he, in consequence, goes out to summon these aunts to his assistance. During his absence, she sings the following song:
They say, “’T is time, go, marry! go!”
But I’ll no husband! not I! no!
For I would live all carelessly,
Amidst these hills, a maiden free,
And never ask, nor anxious be,
Of wedded weal or woe.
Yet still they say, “Go, marry! go!”
But I’ll no husband! not I! no!
So, mother, think not I shall wed,
And through a tiresome life be led,
Or use, in folly’s ways instead,
What grace the heavens bestow.
Yet still they say, “Go, marry! go!”
But I’ll no husband! not I! no!
The man has not been born, I ween,
Who as my husband shall be seen;
And since what frequent tricks have been
Undoubtingly I know,
In vain they say, “Go, marry! go!”
For I’ll no husband! not I! no![452]
The aunts, named Cimeria, Peresica, and Erutea, who are, in fact, the Cumæan, Persian, and Erythræan Sibyls, now come in with King Solomon and endeavour to persuade Cassandra to consent to his love; setting forth his merits and pretensions, his good looks, his good temper, and his good estate. But, as they do not succeed, Solomon, in despair, goes for her three uncles, Moses, Abraham, and Isaiah, with whom he instantly returns, all four dancing a sort of mad dance as they enter, and singing,—
She is wild! She is wild!
Who shall speak to the child?
On the hills pass her hours,
As a shepherdess free;
She is fair as the flowers,
She is wild as the sea!
She is wild! She is wild!
Who shall speak to the child?[453]
The three uncles first endeavour to bribe their niece into a more teachable temper; but, failing in that, Moses undertakes to show her, from his own history of the creation, that marriage is an honorable sacrament and that she ought to enter into it. Cassandra replies, and, in the course of a rather jesting discussion with Abraham about good-tempered husbands, intimates that she is aware the Saviour is soon to be born of a virgin; an augury which the three Sibyls, her aunts, prophetically confirm, and to which Cassandra then adds that she herself has hopes to be this Saviour’s mother. The uncles, shocked at the intimation, treat her as a crazed woman, and a theological and mystical discussion follows, which is carried on by all present, till a curtain is suddenly withdrawn, and the manger of Bethlehem and the child are discovered, with four angels, who sing a hymn in honor of his birth. The rest of the drama is taken up with devotions suited to the occasion, and it ends with the following graceful cancion to the Madonna, sung and danced by the author, as well as the other performers:—
The maid is gracious all and fair;
How beautiful beyond compare!
Say, sailor bold and free,
That dwell’st upon the sea,
If ships or sail or star
So winning are.
And say, thou gallant knight,
That donn’st thine armour bright,
If steed or arms or war
So winning are.
And say, thou shepherd hind,
That bravest storm and wind,
If flocks or vales or hill afar
So winning are.[454]
And so ends this incongruous drama;[455] a strange union of the spirit of an ancient mystery and of a modern vaudeville, but not without poetry, and not more incongruous or more indecorous than the similar dramas which, at the same period, and in other countries, found a place in the princely halls of the most cultivated, and were listened to with edification in monasteries and cathedrals by the most religious.
Vicente, however, did not stop here. He took counsel of his success, and wrote dramas which, without skill in the construction of their plots, and without any idea of conforming to rules of propriety or taste, are yet quite in advance of what was known on the Spanish or Portuguese theatre at the time. Such is the “Comedia,” as it is called, of “The Widower,”—O Viudo,—which was acted before the court in 1514.[456] It opens with the grief of the widower, a merchant of Burgos, on the loss of an affectionate and faithful wife, for which he is consoled, first by a friar, who uses religious considerations, and afterwards by a gossiping neighbour, who, being married to a shrew, assures his friend, that, after all, it is not probable his loss is very great. The two daughters of the disconsolate widower, however, join earnestly with their father in his mourning; but their sorrows are mitigated by the appearance of a noble lover who conceals himself in the disguise of a herdsman, in order to be able to approach them. His love is very sincere and loyal; but, unhappily, he loves them both, and hardly addresses either separately. His trouble is much increased and brought to a crisis by the father, who comes in and announces that one of his daughters is to be married immediately, and the other probably in the course of a week. In his despair, the noble lover calls on death; but insists, that, as long as he lives, he will continue to serve them both faithfully and truly. At this juncture, and without any warning, as it is impossible that he should marry both, he proposes to the two ladies to draw lots for him; a proposition which they modify by begging the Prince John, then a child twelve years old and among the audience, to make a decision on their behalf. The prince decides in favor of the elder, which seems to threaten new anxieties and troubles, till a brother of the disguised lover appears and consents to marry the remaining lady. Their father, at first disconcerted, soon gladly accedes to the double arrangement, and the drama ends with the two weddings and the exhortations of the priest who performs the ceremony.
This, indeed, is not a plot, but it is an approach to one. The “Rubena,” acted in 1521, comes still nearer,[457] and so do “Don Duardos,” founded on the romance of “Palmerin,” and “Amadis of Gaul,”[458] founded on the romance of the same name, both of which bring a large number of personages on the stage, and, if they have not a proper dramatic action, yet give, in much of their structure, intimations of the Spanish heroic drama, as it was arranged half a century later. On the other hand, the “Templo d’ Apollo,”[459] acted in 1526, in honor of the marriage of the Portuguese princess to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, belongs to the same class with the allegorical plays subsequently produced in Spain; the three Autos on the three ships that carried souls to Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, evidently gave Lope de Vega the idea and some of the materials for one of his early moral plays;[460] and the Auto in which Faith explains to the shepherds the origin and mysteries of Christianity[461] might, with slight alterations, have served for one of the processions of the Corpus Christi at Madrid, in the time of Calderon. All of them, it is true, are extremely rude; but nearly all contain elements of the coming drama, and some of them, like “Don Duardos,” which is longer than a full-length play ordinarily is, are quite long enough to show what was their dramatic tendency. But the real power of Gil Vicente does not lie in the structure or the interest of his stories. It lies in his poetry, of which, especially in the lyrical portions of his dramas, there is much.[462]