CHAPTER XXI.
Drama, continued. — Tirso de Molina. — Mira de Mescua. — Valdivielso. — Antonio de Mendoza. — Ruiz de Alarcon. — Luis de Belmonte, and Others. — El Diablo Predicador. — Opposition of Learned Men and of the Church to the Popular Drama. — A Long Struggle. — Triumph of the Drama.
Another of the persons who, at this time, sought popular favor on the public stage was Gabriel Tellez, an ecclesiastic of rank, better known as Tirso de Molina,—the name under which he slightly disguised himself when publishing works of a secular character. Of his life we know little, except that he was born in Madrid; that he was educated at Alcalá; that he entered the Church as early as 1613; and that he died in the convent of Soria, of which he was the head, probably in February, 1648;—some accounts representing him to have been sixty years old at the time of his death, and some eighty.[540]
In other respects we know more of him. As a writer for the theatre, we have five volumes of his dramas, published between 1616 and 1636; besides which, a considerable number of his plays can be found scattered through his other works, or printed each by itself. His talent seems to have been decidedly dramatic; but the moral tone of his plots is lower than common, and many of his plays contain passages whose indecency has caused them to be so hunted down by the confessional and the Inquisition, that copies of them are among the rarest of Spanish books.[541] Not a few of the less offensive, however, have maintained their place on the stage, and are still familiar, as popular favorites.
Of these, the best known out of Spain is “El Burlador de Sevilla,” or The Seville Deceiver,—the earliest distinct exhibition of that Don Juan who is now seen on every stage in Europe, and known to the lowest classes of Germany, Italy, and Spain, in puppet-shows and street-ballads. The first rudiments for this character—which, it is said, may be traced historically to the great Tenorio family of Seville—had, indeed, been brought upon the stage by Lope de Vega, in the second and third acts of “Money makes the Man”; where the hero shows a similar firmness and wit amidst the most awful visitations of the unseen world.[542] But in the character as sketched by Lope there is nothing revolting. Tirso, therefore, is the first who showed it with all its original undaunted courage united to an unmingled depravity that asks only for selfish gratifications, and a cold, relentless humor that continues to jest when surrounded by the terrors of a supernatural retribution.
This conception of the character is picturesque, notwithstanding the moral atrocities it involves. It was, therefore, soon carried to Naples, and from Naples to Paris, where the Italian actors took possession of it. The piece thus produced, which was little more than an Italian translation of Tirso’s, had great success in 1656 on the boards of that company, then very fashionable at the French court. Two or three French translations followed, and in 1665 Molière brought out his “Festin de Pierre,” in which, taking not only the incidents of Tirso, but often his dialogue, he made the real Spanish fiction known to Europe as it had not been known before.[543] From this time, the strange and wild character conceived by the Spanish poet has gone through the world under the name of Don Juan, followed by a reluctant and shuddering interest, that at once marks what is most peculiar in its conception, and confounds all theories of dramatic interest. Zamora, a writer of the next half-century in Spain, Thomas Corneille in France, and Lord Byron in England, are the prominent poets to whom it is most indebted for its fame; though perhaps the genius of Mozart has done more than any or all of them to reconcile the refined and elegant to its dark and disgusting horrors.[544]
At home, “The Deceiver of Seville” has never been the most favored of Tirso de Molina’s works. That distinction belongs to “Don Gil in the Green Pantaloons,” perhaps the most strongly marked specimen of an intriguing comedy in the language. Doña Juana, its heroine, a lady of Valladolid, who has been shamefully deserted by her lover, follows him to Madrid, whither he had gone to arrange for himself a more ambitious match. In Madrid, during the fortnight the action lasts, she appears sometimes as a lady named Elvira, and sometimes as a cavalier named Don Gil; but never once, till the last moment, in her own proper person. In these two assumed characters, she confounds all the plans and plots of her faithless lover; makes his new mistress fall in love with her; writes letters to herself, as a cavalier, from herself as a lady; and passes herself off, sometimes for her own lover, and sometimes for other personages merely imaginary.
Her family at Valladolid, meantime, are made to believe she is dead; and two cavaliers appearing in Madrid, the one from design and the other by accident, in a green dress like the one she wears, all three are taken to be one and the same individual, and the confusion becomes so unintelligible, that her alarmed lover and her own man-servant—the last of whom had never seen her but in masculine attire at Madrid—are persuaded it is some spirit come among them in the fated green costume, to work out a dire revenge for the wrongs it had suffered in the flesh. At this moment, when the uproar and alarm are at their height, the relations of the parties are detected, and three matches are made instead of the one that had been broken off;—the servant, who had been most frightened, coming in at the instant every thing is settled, with his hat stuck full of tapers and his clothes covered with pictures of saints, and crying out, as he scatters holy water in every body’s face,—
Who prays, who prays for my master’s poor soul,—
His soul now suffering purgatory’s pains
Within those selfsame pantaloons of green?
And when his mistress turns suddenly round and asks him if he is mad, the servant, horror-struck at seeing a lady, instead of a cavalier, with the countenance and voice he at once recognizes, exclaims in horror,—
I do conjure thee by the wounds—of all
Who suffer in the hospital’s worst ward,—
Abrenuntio!—Get thee behind me!
Juana.
Fool! Don’t you see that I am your Don Gil,
Alive in body, and in mind most sound?—
That I am talking here with all these friends,
And none is frightened but your foolish self?
Servant.
Well, then, what are you, Sir,—a man or woman?
Just tell me that.
Juana.
A woman, to be sure.
Servant.
No more! enough! That word explains the whole;—
Ay, and if thirty worlds were going mad,
It would be reason good for all the uproar.
The chief characteristic of this play is its extremely ingenious and involved plot. Few foreigners, perhaps not one, ever comprehended all its intrigue on first reading it, or on first seeing it acted. Yet it has always been one of the most popular plays on the Spanish stage; and the commonest and most ignorant in the audiences of the great cities of Spain do not find its ingenuities and involutions otherwise than diverting.
Quite different from either of the preceding dramas, and in some respects better than either, is Tirso’s “Bashful Man at Court,”—a play often acted, on its first appearance, in Italy, as well as in Spain, and one in which, as its author tells us, a prince of Castile once performed the part of the hero. It is not properly historical, though partly founded on the story of Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who, in 1449, after having been regent of Portugal, was finally despoiled of his power and defeated in an open rebellion.[545] Tirso supposes him to have retired to the mountains, and there, disguised as a shepherd, to have educated a son in complete ignorance of his rank. This son, under the name of Mireno, is the hero of the piece. Finding himself possessed of nobler sentiments and higher intelligence than those of the rustics among whom he lives, he half suspects that he is of noble origin; and, escaping from his solitude, appears at court, determined to try his fortune. Accident favors him. He enters the service of the royal favorite, and wins the love of his daughter, who is as free and bold, from an excessive knowledge of the world, as her lover is humble and gentle in his ignorance of it. There his rank is discovered, and the play ends happily.
A story like this, even with the usual accompaniment of an underplot, is too slight and simple to produce much effect. But the character of the principal personage, and its gradual development, rendered it long a favorite on the Spanish stage. Nor was this preference unreasonable. His noble pride, struggling against the humble circumstances in which he finds himself placed; the suspicion he hardly dares to indulge, that his real rank is equal to his aspirations,—a suspicion which yet governs his life; and the modesty which tempers the most ambitious of his thoughts, form, when taken together, one of the most lofty and beautiful ideals of the old Castilian character.[546]
Some of Tirso’s secular dramas deal chiefly in recent events and well-settled history, like his trilogy on the achievements of the Pizarros in the New World, and their love-adventures at home. Others are founded on facts, but with a larger admixture of fiction, like the two on the election and pontificate of Sixtus Quintus. His religious dramas and autos are as extravagant as those of the other poets of his time, and could hardly be more so.
His mode of treating his subjects seems to be capricious. Sometimes he begins his dramas with great naturalness and life, as in one that opens with the accidents of a bull-fight,[547] and in another, with the confusion consequent on the upsetting of a coach;[548] while, at other times, he seems not to care how tedious he is, and once breaks ground in the first act with a speech above four hundred lines long.[549] Perhaps the most characteristic of his openings is in his “Love for Reasons of State,” where we have, at the outset, a scene before a lady’s balcony, a rope-ladder, and a duel, all full of Castilian spirit. His more obvious defects are the too great similarity of his characters and incidents; the too frequent introduction of disguised ladies to help on the intrigue; and the needless and shameless indelicacy of some of his stories,—a fault rendered more remarkable by the circumstance, that he himself was an ecclesiastic of rank, and honored in Madrid as a public preacher. His more uniform merits are a most happy power of gay narration; an extraordinary command of his native Castilian; and a rich and flowing versification in all the many varieties of metre demanded by the audiences of the capital, who were become more nice and exacting in this, perhaps, than in any other single accessory of the drama.
But however various and capricious were the forms of Tirso’s drama, he was, in substance, always a follower of Lope de Vega. This he himself distinctly announces, boasting of the school to which he belongs, and entering, at the same time, into an ingenious and elaborate defence of its principles and practice, as opposed to those of the classical school; a defence which, it is worthy of notice, was published twelve years before the appearance of Corneille’s “Cid,” and which, therefore, to a considerable extent, anticipated in Madrid the remarkable controversy about the unities occasioned by that tragedy in Paris after 1636[550] and subsequently made the foundation of the dramatic schools of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire.
Contemporary with these events and discussions lived Antonio Mira de Mescua, well known from 1602 to 1635 as a writer for the stage, and much praised by Cervantes and Lope de Vega. He was a native of Guadix in the kingdom of Granada, and in his youth became archdeacon of its cathedral; but in 1610 he was at Naples, attached to the poetical court of the Count de Lemos, and in 1620 he gained a prize in Madrid, where he seems to have died while in the office of chaplain to Philip the Fourth. He wrote secular plays, autos, and lyrical poetry; but his works were never collected and are now found with difficulty, though not a few of his lighter compositions are in nearly all the respectable selections of the national poetry from his own time to the present.
He, like Tirso de Molina, was an ecclesiastic of rank, but did not escape the troubles common to writers for the stage. One of his dramas, “The Unfortunate Rachel,” founded on the fable which represents Alfonso the Eighth as having nearly sacrificed his crown to his passion for a Jewess of Toledo, was much altered, by authority, before it could be acted, though Lope de Vega had been permitted to treat the same subject at large in the same way, in the nineteenth book of his “Jerusalem Conquered.” Mira de Mescua, too, was concerned in the drama of “The Curate of Madrilejos,” which, as we have seen, was forbidden to be read or acted even after it had been printed. Still, there is no reason to suppose he did not enjoy the consideration usually granted to successful writers for the theatre. At least, we know he was much imitated. His “Slave of the Devil” was not only remodelled and reproduced by Moreto in “Fall to rise again,” but was freely used by Calderon in two of his best-known dramas. His “Gallant both Brave and True” was employed by Alarcon in “The Trial of Husbands.” And his “Palace in Confusion” is the groundwork of Corneille’s “Don Sancho of Aragon.”[551]
Joseph de Valdivielso, another ecclesiastic of high condition, was also a writer for the stage at the same time. He was connected with the great cathedral of Toledo and with its princely primate, the Cardinal Infante, but he lived in Madrid, where he was a member of the same religious congregation with Cervantes and Lope, and where he was intimately associated with the principal men of letters of his time. He flourished from about 1607 to about 1633, and can be traced, during the whole of that period, by his certificates of approbation and by commendatory verses which were prefixed to the works of his friends as they successively appeared. His own publications are almost entirely religious;—those for the stage consisting of a single volume printed in 1622, and containing twelve autos and two religious plays.
The twelve autos seem, from internal evidence, to have been written for the city of Toledo, and certainly to have been performed there, as well as in other cities of Spain. He selected them from a large number, and they undoubtedly enjoyed, during his lifetime, a wide popularity. Some, perhaps, deserved it. “The Prodigal Son,” long a tempting subject wherever religious dramas were known, was treated with more than usual skill. “Psyche and Cupid,” too, is better managed for Christian purposes than that mystical fancy commonly was by the poets of the Spanish theatre. And “The Tree of Life” is a well-sustained allegory, in which the old theological contest between Divine Justice and Divine Mercy is carried through in the old theological spirit, beginning with scenes in Paradise and ending with the appearance of the Saviour. But, in general, the autos of Valdivielso are not better than those of his contemporaries.
His two plays are not so good. “The Birth of the Best,” as the Madonna is often technically called, and “The Guardian Angel,” which is, again, an allegory, not unlike that of “The Tree of Life,” are both of them crude and wild compositions, even within the broad limits permitted to the religious drama. One reason of their success may, perhaps, be found in the fact, that they have more of the tone of the elder poetry than almost any of the sacred plays of the time;—a remark that may be extended to the autos of Valdivielso, in one of which there is a spirited parody of the well-known ballad on the challenge of Zamora after the murder of Sancho the Brave. But the social position of their author, and, perhaps, his quibbles and quaintnesses, which humored the bad taste of his age, must be taken into consideration before we can account for the extensive popularity he undoubtedly enjoyed.[552]
Another sort of favor fell to the share of Antonio de Mendoza, who wrote much for the court between 1623 and 1643. His Works—besides a number of ballads and short poems addressed to the Duke of Lerma and other principal persons of the kingdom—contain a Life of Our Lady, in nearly eight hundred redondillas, and five plays, to which two or three more may be added from different miscellaneous collections. The poems are of little value; the plays are better. “He deserves most who loves most” may have contributed materials to Moreto’s “Disdain met with Disdain,” and is certainly a pleasant drama, with natural situations and an easy dialogue. “Society changes Manners” is another real comedy with much life and gayety. And “Love for Love’s Sake,” which, has been called its author’s happiest effort, enjoyed the distinction of being acted before the court by the queen’s maids of honor, who took all the parts,—those of the cavaliers, as well as those of the women.[553]
Ruiz de Alarcon, who was his contemporary, was less favored during his lifetime than Mendoza, but has much more merit. He was born in the province of Tasco, in Mexico, but was descended from a family that belonged to Alarcon in the mother country. As early as 1622 he was in Madrid, and assisted in the composition of a play in honor of the Marquis of Cañete for his victories in Arauco, which was the joint work of nine persons. In 1628, he published the first volume of his Dramas, on the title-page of which he calls himself Prolocutor of the Royal Council for the Indies; a place of both trust and profit. It is dedicated to the Público Vulgar, or the Rabble, in a tone of savage contempt for the audiences of Madrid, which, if it intimates that he had been ill-treated on the stage, proves, also, that he felt strong enough to defy his enemies. To the eight plays contained in this volume he added twelve more in 1635, with a Preface, which, again, leaves little doubt that his merit was undervalued, as he says he found it difficult to vindicate for himself even the authorship of not a few of the plays he had written. He died in 1639.[554]
His “Domingo de Don Blas,” one of the few among his works not found in the collection printed by himself, is a sketch of the character of a gentleman sunk into luxury and effeminacy by the possession of a large fortune suddenly won from the Moors in the time of Alfonso the Third of Leon; but who, at the call of duty, rouses himself again to his earlier energy, and shows the old Castilian character in all its loyalty and generosity. The scene where he refuses to risk his person in a bull-fight, merely to amuse the Infante, is full of humor, and is finely contrasted, first, with the scene where he runs all risks in defence of the same prince, and afterwards, still more finely, with that where he sacrifices the prince, because he had failed in loyalty to his father.
“How to gain Friends” gives us another exhibition of the principle of loyalty in the time of Peter the Cruel, who is here represented only as a severe, but just, administrator of the law in seasons of great trouble. His minister and favorite, Pedro de Luna, is one of the most noble characters offered to us in the whole range of the Spanish drama;—a character belonging to a class in which Alarcon has several times succeeded.
A better-known play than either, however, is the “Weaver of Segovia.” It is in two parts. In the first, its hero, Fernando Ramirez, is represented as suffering the most cruel injustice at the hands of his sovereign, who has put his father to death under a false imputation of treason, and reduced Ramirez himself to the misery of earning his subsistence, disguised as a weaver. Six years elapse, and, in the second part, he appears again, stung by new wrongs and associated with a band of robbers, at whose head, after spreading terror through the mountain range of the Guadarrama, he renders such service to his ungrateful king, in the crisis of a battle against the Moors, and extorts such confessions of his own and his father’s innocence from their dying enemy, that he is restored to favor, and becomes, in the Oriental style, the chief person in the kingdom he has rescued. He is, in fact, another Charles de Mohr, but has the advantage of being placed in a period of the world and a state of society where such a character is more possible than in the period assigned to it by Schiller, though it can never be one fitted for exhibition in a drama that claims to have a moral purpose.
“Truth itself Suspected” is, on the other hand, obviously written for such a purpose. It gives us the character of a young man, the son of a high-minded father, and himself otherwise amiable and interesting, who comes from the University of Salamanca to begin the world at Madrid, with an invincible habit of lying. The humor of the drama, which is really great, consists in the prodigious fluency with which he invents all sorts of fictions to suit his momentary purposes; the ingenuity with which he struggles against the true current of facts, which yet runs every moment more and more strongly against him; and the final result, when, nobody believing him, he is reduced to the necessity of telling the truth, and—by a mistake which he now finds it impossible to persuade any one he has really committed—loses the lady he had won, and is overwhelmed with shame and disgrace.
Parts of this drama are full of spirit; such as the description of a student’s life at the university, and that of a brilliant festival given to a lady on the banks of the Manzanares. These, with the exhortations of the young man’s father, intended to cure him of his shameful fault, and not a little of the dialogue between the hero—if he may be so called—and his servant, are excellent. It is the piece from which Corneille took the materials for his “Menteur,” and thus, in 1642, laid the foundations of classical French comedy in a play of Alarcon, as, six years before, he had laid the foundations for its tragedy in the “Cid” of Guillen de Castro. Alarcon, however, was then so little known, that Corneille supposed himself to be using a play of Lope de Vega; though it should be remembered, that, when, some years afterwards, he found out his mistake, he did Alarcon the justice to restore to him his rights, adding that he would gladly give the two best plays he had ever written to be the author of the one he had so freely used.
It would not be difficult to find other dramas of Alarcon showing equal judgment and spirit. Such, in fact, is the one entitled “Walls have Ears,” which, from its mode of exhibiting the ill consequences of slander and mischief-making, may be regarded as the counterpart to “Truth itself Suspected.” And such, too, is the “Trial of Husbands,” which has had the fortune to pass under the names of Lope de Vega and Montalvan, as well as of its true author, and would cast no discredit on either of them. But it is enough to add to what we have already said of Alarcon, that his style is excellent,—generally better than that of any but the very best of his contemporaries,—with less richness, indeed, than that of Tirso de Molina, and adhering more to the old redondilla measure than that of Lope, but purer in versification than either of them, more simple and more natural; so that, on the whole, he is to be ranked with the best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the national theatre.[555]
Other writers who devoted themselves to the drama were, however, as well known at the time they lived as he was, if not always as much valued. Among them may be mentioned Luis de Belmonte, whose “Renegade of Valladolid” and “God the best Guardian” are singular mixtures of what is sacred with what is profane; Jacinto Cordero, whose “Victory through Love” was long a favorite on the stage; Andres Gil Enriquez, the author of a pleasant play called “The Net, the Scarf, and the Picture”; Diego Ximenez de Enciso, who wrote grave historical plays on the life of Charles the Fifth at San Yuste, and on the death of Don Carlos; Gerónimo de Villaizan, whose best play is “A Great Remedy for a Great Wrong”; and many others, such as Felipe Godinez, Miguel Sanchez, and Rodrigo de Herrera, who shared, in an inferior degree, the favor of the popular audiences at Madrid.[556]
Writers distinguished in other branches of literature were also tempted by the success of those devoted to the stage to adventure for the brilliant prizes it scattered on all sides. Salas Barbadillo, who wrote many pleasant tales and died in 1630, left behind him two dramas, of which one claims to be in the manner of Terence.[557] Solorzano, who died ten years later and was known in the same forms of elegant literature with Barbadillo, is the author of a spirited play, founded on the story of a lady, who, after having accepted a noble lover from interested motives, gives him up for the servant of that lover, put forward in disguise, as if he were possessor of the very estates for which she had accepted his master.[558] Góngora wrote one play, and parts of two others, still preserved in the collection of his works;[559] and Quevedo, to please the great favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, assisted in the composition of at least a single drama, which is now lost, if it be not preserved, under another name, in the works of Antonio de Mendoza.[560] But the circumstances of chief consequence in relation to all these writers are, that they belonged to the school of Lope de Vega, and that they bear witness to the vast popularity of his drama in their time.
Indeed, so attractive was the theatre now become, that ecclesiastics and the higher nobility, who, from their position in society, did not wish to be known as dramatic authors, still wrote for the stage, sending their plays to the actors or to the press anonymously. Such persons generally announced their dramas as written by “A Wit of this Court,”—Un Ingenio de esta Corte,—and a large collection of pieces could now be made, which are known only under this mask; a mask, it may be observed, often significant of the pretensions of those whom it claims partly to conceal. Even Philip the Fourth, who was an enlightened lover of the arts and of letters, is said to have sometimes used it; and there is a tradition that “Giving my Life for my Lady,” “The Earl of Essex,” and perhaps one or two other plays, were either entirely his, or that he contributed materially to their composition.[561]
One of the most remarkable of these “Comedias de un Ingenio” is that called “The Devil turned Preacher.” Its scene is laid in Lucca, and its original purpose seems to have been to glorify Saint Francis, and to strengthen the influence of his followers. At any rate, in the long introductory speech of Lucifer, that potentate represents himself as most happy at having so far triumphed over these his great enemies, that a poor community of Franciscans, established in Lucca, is likely to be starved out of the city by the universal ill-will he has excited against them. But his triumph is short. Saint Michael descends with the infant Saviour in his arms, and requires Satan himself immediately to reconvert the same inhabitants whose hearts he had hardened; to build up the very convent of the holy brotherhood which he had so nearly overthrown; and to place the poor friars, who were now pelted by the boys in the streets, upon a foundation of respectability safer than that from which he had driven them. The humor of the piece consists in his conduct while executing the unwelcome task thus imposed upon him. To do it, he takes, at once, the habit of the monks he detests; he goes round to beg for them; he superintends the erection of an ampler edifice for their accommodation; he preaches; he prays; he works miracles;—and all with the greatest earnestness and unction, in order the sooner to be rid of a business so thoroughly disagreeable to him, and of which he is constantly complaining in equivocal phrases and bitter side-speeches, that give him the comfort of expressing a vexation he cannot entirely control, but dares not openly make known. At last he succeeds. The hateful work is done. But the agent is not dismissed with honor. On the contrary, he is obliged, in the closing scene, to confess who he is, and to avow that nothing, after all, awaits him but the flames of perdition, into which he visibly sinks, like another Don Juan, before the edified audience.
The action occupies above five months. It has an intriguing underplot, which hardly disturbs the course of the main story, and one of whose personages—the heroine herself—is very gentle and attractive. The character of the Father Guardian of the Franciscan monks, full of simplicity, humble, trustful, and submissive, is also finely drawn; and so is the opposite one,—the gracioso of the piece,—a liar, a coward, and a glutton; ignorant and cunning; whom Lucifer amuses himself with teasing, in every possible way, whenever he has a moment to spare from the grave work he is so anxious to finish.
In some of the early copies, this drama, so characteristic of the age to which it belongs, is attributed to Luis de Belmonte, and in some of them to Antonio de Coello. Later, it is declared, though on what authority we are not told, to have been written by Francisco Damian de Cornejo, a Franciscan monk. But all this is uncertain. We only know, that, for a long time after it appeared, it used to be acted as a devout work, favorable to the interests of the Franciscans, who then possessed great influence in Spain. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, however, this state of things was partly changed, and its public performance, for some reason or other, was forbidden. About 1800, it reappeared on the stage, and was again acted, with great profit, all over the country,—the Franciscan monks lending the needful monastic dresses for an exhibition they thought so honorable to their order. But in 1804 it was put anew under the ban of the Inquisition, and so remained until after the political revolution of 1820, which gave absolute liberty to the theatre.[562]
The school of Lope, to which all the writers we have just enumerated, and many more, belonged, was not received with an absolutely universal applause. Men of learning, from time to time, refused to be reconciled to it; and severe or captious critics found in its gross irregularities and extravagances abundant opportunity for the exercise of a spirit of complaint. Alonso Lopez, commonly called El Pinciano, in his “Art of Poetry founded on the Doctrines of the Ancients,”—a modest treatise, which he printed as early as 1596,—shows plainly, in his discussions on the nature of tragedy and comedy, that he was far from consenting to the forms of the drama then beginning to prevail in the theatre. The Argensolas, who, about ten years earlier, had attempted to introduce another and more classical type, would, of course, be even less satisfied with the tendency of things in their time; and one of them, Bartolomé, speaks his opinion very openly in his didactic satires. Others joined them, among whom were Artieda, in a poetical epistle to the Marquis of Cuellar; Villegas, the sweet lyrical poet, in his seventh elegy; and Christóval de Mesa, in different passages of his minor poems, and in the Preface to his ill-constructed tragedy of “Pompey.” If to these we add a scientific discussion on the True Structure of Tragedy and Comedy, in the third and fourth of the Poetical Tables of Cascales, and a harsh attack on the whole popular Spanish stage, by Suarez de Figueroa, in which little is noticed but its follies, we shall have, if not every thing that was said on the subject, at least every thing that needs now to be remembered. The whole is of less consequence than the frank admissions of Lope de Vega, in his “New Art of the Drama.”[563]
The opposition of the Church, more formidable than that of the scholars of the time, was, in some respects, better founded, since many of the plays of this period were indecent, and more of them immoral. The ecclesiastical influence, as we have seen, had, therefore, been early directed against the theatre, partly on this account and partly because the secular drama had superseded those representations in the churches which had so long been among the means used by the priesthood to sustain their power with the mass of the people. On these grounds, in fact, the plays of Torres Naharro were suppressed in 1545, and a petition was sent, in 1548, by the Cortes, to Charles the Fifth, against the printing and publishing of all indecent farces.[564] For a long time, however, little was done but to suspend dramatic representations in seasons of court mourning, and on other occasions of public sorrow or trouble;—this being, perhaps, thought by the clergy an exercise of their influence that would, in the course of events, lead to more important concessions.
But as the theatre rose into importance with the popularity of Lope de Vega, the discussions on its character and consequences grew graver. Even just before that time, in 1587, Philip the Second consulted some of the leading theologians of the kingdom, and was urged to suppress altogether the acted drama; but, after much deliberation, followed the milder opinion of Alonso de Mendoza, a professor at Salamanca, and determined still to tolerate it, but to subject it constantly to a careful and even strict supervision. In 1590, Mariana, the historian, in his treatise “De Spectaculis,” written with great fervor and eloquence, made a bold attack on the whole body of the theatres, particularly on their costumes and dances, and thus gave a new impulse to the discussion, which was not wholly lost when, in 1597, Philip the Second, according to the custom of the time, ordered the public representations at Madrid to be suspended, in consequence of the death of his daughter, the Duchess of Savoy. But Philip was now old and infirm. The opposers of the theatre, among whom was Lupercio de Argensola, gathered around him.[565] The discussion was renewed with increased earnestness, and in 1598, not long before he breathed his last in the Escurial, with his dying eyes fastened on its high altar, he forbade theatrical representations altogether.
Little, however, was really effected by this struggle on the part of the Church, except that the dramatic poets were compelled to discover ingenious modes for evading the authority exercised against them, and that the character of the actors was degraded by it. To drive the drama from ground where it was so well intrenched behind the general favor of the people was impossible. The city of Madrid, already the acknowledged capital of the country, begged that the theatres might again be opened; giving, as one reason for their request, that many religious plays were performed, by some of which both actors and spectators had been so moved to penitence as to hasten directly from the theatre to enter religious houses;[566] and as another reason, that the rent paid by the companies of actors to the hospitals of Madrid was important to the very existence of those great and beneficent charities.[567]
Moved by such arguments, Philip the Third, in 1600, when the theatres had been shut hardly two years, summoned a council of ecclesiastics and four of the principal lay authorities of the kingdom, and laid the whole subject before them. Under their advice,—which still condemned in the strongest manner the theatres as they had heretofore existed in Spain,—he permitted them to be opened anew; diminishing, however, the number of actors, forbidding all immorality in the plays, and allowing representations only on Sundays and three other days in the week, which were required to be Church festivals, if such festivals should occur. This decision has, on the whole, been hardly yet disturbed, and the theatre in Spain, with occasional alterations and additions of privilege, has continued to rest safely on its foundations ever since;—closed, indeed, sometimes, in seasons of public mourning, as it was three months on the death of Philip the Third, and again in 1665, by the bigotry of the queen regent, but never interrupted for any long period, and never again called to contend for its existence.
The truth is, that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the popular Spanish drama was too strong to be subjected either to classical criticism or to ecclesiastical control. In the “Amusing Journey” of Roxas, an actor who travelled over much of the country in 1602, visiting Seville, Granada, Toledo, Valladolid, and many other places, we find plays acted everywhere, even in the smallest villages, and the drama, in all its forms and arrangements, accommodated to the public taste far beyond any other popular amusement.[568] In 1632, Montalvan—the best authority on such a subject—gives us the names of a crowd of writers for Castile alone; and three years later, Fabio Franchi, an Italian, who had lived in Spain, published a eulogy on Lope, which enumerates nearly thirty of the same dramatists, and shows anew how completely the country was imbued with their influence. There can, therefore, be no doubt, that, at the time of his death, Lope’s name was the great poetical name that filled the whole breadth of the land with its glory, and that the forms of the drama originated by him were established, beyond the reach of successful opposition, as the national and popular forms of the drama for all Spain.[569]