CHAPTER XXIII.
Calderon, continued. — His Secular Plays. — Difficulty of classifying them. — Their Principal Interest. — Nature of their Plots. — Love survives Life. — Physician of his own Honor. — Painter of his own Dishonor. — No Monster like Jealousy. — Firm-hearted Prince.
Passing from the religious plays of Calderon to the secular, we at once encounter an embarrassment which we have already felt in other cases,—that of dividing them all into distinct and appropriate classes. It is even difficult to determine, in every instance, whether the piece we are considering belongs to one of the religious subdivisions of his dramas or not; for the “Wonder-working Magician,” for instance, is hardly less an intriguing play than “First of all my Lady”; and “Aurora in Copacabana” is as full of spiritual personages and miracles, as if it were not, in the main, a love-story. But, even after setting this difficulty aside, as we have done, by examining separately all the dramas of Calderon that can, in any way, be accounted religious, it is not possible to make a definite classification of the remainder.
Some of them, such as “Nothing like Silence,” are absolutely intriguing comedies, and belong strictly to the school of the capa y espada; others, like “A Friend Loving and Loyal,” are purely heroic, both in their structure and their tone; and a few others, such as “Love survives Life,” and “The Physician of his own Honor,” belong to the most terrible inspirations of genuine tragedy. Twice, in a different direction, we have operas, which are yet nothing but plays in the national taste, with music added;[615] and once we have a burlesque drama,—“Cephalus and Procris,”—in which, using the language of the populace, he parodies an earlier and successful performance of his own.[616] But, in the great majority of cases, the boundaries of no class are respected; and in many of them even more than two forms of the drama melt imperceptibly into each other. Especially in those pieces whose subjects are taken from known history, sacred or profane, or from the recognized fictions of mythology or romance, there is frequently a confusion that seems as though it were intended to set all classification at defiance.[617]
Still, in this confusion there was a principle of order, and perhaps even a dramatic theory. For—if we except “Luis Perez the Galician,” which is a series of sketches to bring out the character of a notorious robber, and a few show pieces, presented on particular occasions to the court with great magnificence—all Calderon’s full-length dramas depend for their success on the interest excited by an involved plot, constructed out of surprising incidents.[618] He avows this himself, when he declares one of them to be—
The most surprising tale
Which, in the dramas of Castile, a wit
Acute hath yet traced out, and on the stage
With tasteful skill produced.[619]
And again, where he says of another,—
This is a play of Pedro Calderon,
Upon whose scene you never fail to find
A hidden lover or a lady fair
Most cunningly disguised.[620]
But to this principle of making a story which shall sustain an eager interest throughout Calderon has sacrificed almost as much as Lope de Vega did. The facts of history and geography are not felt for a moment as limits or obstacles. Coriolanus is a general who has served under Romulus; and Veturia, his wife, is one of the ravished Sabines.[621] The Danube, which must have been almost as well known to a Madrid audience from the time of Charles the Fifth as the Tagus, is placed between Russia and Sweden.[622] Jerusalem is on the sea-coast.[623] Herodotus is made to describe America.[624]
How absurd all this was Calderon knew as well as any body. Once, indeed, he makes a jest of it all; for one of his ancient Roman clowns, who is about to tell a story, begins,—
A friar,—but that ’s not right,—there are no friars
As yet in Rome.[625]
Nor is the preservation of national or individual character, except perhaps the Moorish, a matter of any more moment in his eyes. Ulysses and Circe sit down, as if in a saloon at Madrid, and, gathering an academy of cavaliers and ladies about them, discuss questions of metaphysical gallantry. Saint Eugenia does the same thing at Alexandria in the third century. And Judas Maccabæus, Herod the tetrarch of Judea, Jupangui the Inca of Peru, and Zenobia, are all, in their general air, as much Spaniards of the time of Philip the Fourth, as if they had never lived anywhere except at his court.[626] But we rarely miss the interest and charm of a dramatic story, sustained by a rich and flowing versification, and by long narrative passages, in which the most ingenious turns of phraseology are employed in order to provoke curiosity and enchain attention.
No doubt, this is not the dramatic interest to which we are most accustomed and which we most value. But still it is a dramatic interest, and dramatic effects are produced by it. We are not to judge Calderon by the example of Shakspeare, any more than we are to judge Shakspeare by the example of Sophocles. The “Arabian Nights” are not the less brilliant because the admirable practical fictions of Miss Edgeworth are so different. The gallant audiences of Madrid still give the full measure of an intelligent admiration to the dramas of Calderon, as their fathers did; and even the poor Alguacil, who sat as a guard of ceremony on the stage while the “Niña de Gomez Arias” was acting, was so deluded by the cunning of the scene, that, when a noble Spanish lady was dragged forward to be sold to the Moors, he sprang, sword in hand, among the performers to prevent it.[627] It is in vain to say that dramas which produce such effects are not dramatic. The testimony of two centuries and of a whole nation proves the contrary.
Admitting, then, that the plays of Calderon are really dramas, and that their basis is to be sought in the structure of their plots, we can examine them in the spirit, at least, in which they were originally written. And if, while thus inquiring into their character and merits, we fix our attention on the different degrees in which love, jealousy, and a lofty and sensitive honor and loyalty enter into their composition and give life and movement to their respective actions, we shall hardly fail to form a right estimate of what Calderon did for the Spanish secular theatre in its highest departments.
Under the first head,—that of the passion of love,—one of the most prominent of Calderon’s plays occurs early in the collection of his works, and is entitled “Love survives Life.” It is founded on events that happened in the rebellion of the Moors of Granada which broke out in 1568, and though some passages in it bear traces of the history of Mendoza,[628] yet it is mainly taken from the half fanciful, half-serious narrative of Hita, where its chief details are recorded as unquestionable facts.[629] The action occupies about five years, beginning three years before the absolute outbreak of the insurgents, and ending with their final overthrow.
The first act passes in the city of Granada, and explains the intention of the conspirators to throw off the Spanish yoke, which had become intolerable. Tuzani, the hero, is quickly brought to the foreground of the piece by his attachment to Clara Malec, whose aged father, dishonored by a blow from a Spaniard, causes the rebellion to break out somewhat prematurely. Tuzani at once seeks the haughty offender. A duel follows, and is described with great spirit; but it is interrupted,[630] and the parties separate, to renew their quarrel on a bloodier theatre.
The second act opens three years afterwards, in the mountains south of Granada, where the insurgents are strongly posted, and where they are attacked by Don John of Austria, represented as coming fresh from the great victory at Lepanto, which yet happened, as Calderon and his audience well knew, a year after this rebellion was quelled. The marriage of Tuzani and Clara is hardly celebrated, when he is hurried away from her by one of the chances of war; the fortress where the ceremonies had taken place falling suddenly into the hands of the Spaniards. Clara, who had remained in it, is murdered in the mêlée by a Spanish soldier, for the sake of her rich bridal jewels; and though Tuzani arrives in season to witness her death, he is too late to intercept or recognize the murderer.
From this moment, darkness settles on the scene. Tuzani’s character changes, or seems to change, in an instant, and his whole Moorish nature is stirred to its deepest foundations. The surface, it is true, remains, for a time, as calm as ever. He disguises himself carefully in Castilian armour, and glides into the enemy’s camp in quest of vengeance, with that fearfully cool resolution which marks, indeed, the predominance of one great passion, but shows that all the others are roused to contribute to its concentrated energy. The ornaments of Clara enable her lover to trace out the murderer. But he makes himself perfectly sure of his proper victim by coolly listening to a minute description of Clara’s beauty and of the circumstances attending her death; and when the Spaniard ends by saying, “I pierced her heart,” Tuzani springs upon him like a tiger, crying out, “And was the blow like this?” and strikes him dead at his feet. The Moor is surrounded, and is recognized by the Spaniards as the fiercest of their enemies; but, even from the very presence of Don John of Austria, he cuts his way through all opposition, and escapes to the mountains. Hita says he afterwards knew him personally.
The power of this painful tragedy consists in the living impression it gives us of a pure and elevated love, contrasted with the wild elements of the age in which it is placed;—the whole being idealized by passing through Calderon’s excited imagination, but still, in the main, taken from history and resting on known facts. Regarded in this light, it is a solemn exhibition of violence, disaster, and hopeless rebellion, through whose darkening scenes we are led by that burning love which has marked the Arab wherever he has been found, and by that proud sense of honor which did not forsake him as he slowly retired, disheartened and defeated, from the rich empire he had so long enjoyed in Western Europe. We are even hurried by the course of the drama into the presence of whatever is most odious in war, and should be revolted, as we are made to witness, with our own eyes, its guiltiest horrors; but in the midst of all, the form of Clara rises, a beautiful vision of womanly love, before whose gentleness the tumults of the conflict seem, at least, to be hushed; while, from first to last, in the characters of Don John of Austria, Lope de Figueroa,[631] and Garcés, on one side, and the venerable Malec and the fiery Tuzani, on the other, we are dazzled by a show of the times that Calderon brings before us, and of the passions which deeply marked the two most romantic nations that were ever brought into a conflict so direct.
The play of “Love survives Life,” so far as its plot is concerned, is founded on the passionate love of Tuzani and Clara, without any intermixture of the workings of jealousy, or any questions arising, in the course of that love, from an over-excited feeling of honor. This is rare in Calderon, whose dramas are almost always complicated in their intrigue by the addition of one or both of these principles; giving the story sometimes a tragic and sometimes a happy conclusion.
One of the best-known and most admired of these mixed dramas is “The Physician of his own Honor,”—a play whose scene is laid in the time of Peter the Cruel, but one which seems to have no foundation in known facts, and in which the monarch has an elevation given to his character not warranted by history.[632] His brother, Henry of Trastamara, is represented as having been in love with a lady who, notwithstanding his lofty pretensions, is given in marriage to Don Gutierre de Solís, a Spanish nobleman of high rank and sensitive honor. She is sincerely attached to her husband, and true to him. But the prince is accidentally thrown into her presence. His passion is revived; he visits her again, contrary to her will; he leaves his dagger, by chance, in her apartment; and, the suspicions of the husband being roused, she is anxious to avert any further danger, and begins, for this purpose, a letter to her lover, which her husband seizes before it is finished. His decision is instantly taken. Nothing can be more deep and tender than his love; but his honor is unable to endure the idea, that his wife, even before her marriage, had been interested in another, and that, after it, she had seen him privately. When, therefore, she awakes from the swoon into which she had fallen at the moment he tore from her the equivocal beginning of her letter, she finds at her side a note containing only these fearful words:—
My love adores thee, but my honor hates;
And while the one must strike, the other warns.
Two hours hast thou of life. Thy soul is Christ’s;
O, save it, for thy life thou canst not save![633]
At the end of these two fatal hours, Gutierre returns with a surgeon, whom he brings to the door of the room in which he had left his wife.
Don Gutierre.
Look in upon this room. What seest thou there?
Surgeon.
A death-like image, pale and still, I see,
That rests upon a couch. On either side
A taper lit, while right before her stands
The holy crucifix. Who it may be
I cannot say; the face with gauze-like silk
Is covered quite.[634]
Gutierre, with the most violent threats, requires him to enter the room and bleed to death the person who has thus laid herself out for interment. He goes in and accomplishes the will of her husband, without the least resistance on the part of his victim. But when he is conducted away, blindfold as he came, he impresses his bloody hand upon the door of the house, that he may recognize it again, and immediately reveals to the king the horrors of the scene he has just passed through.
The king rushes to the house of Gutierre, who ascribes the death of his wife to accident, not from the least desire to conceal the part he himself had in it, but from an unwillingness to explain his conduct, by revealing reasons for it which involved his honor. The king makes no direct reply, but requires him instantly to marry Leonore, a lady then present, whom Gutierre was bound in honor to have married long before, and who had already made known to the king her complaints of his falsehood. Gutierre hesitates, and asks what he should do, if the prince should visit his wife secretly and she should venture afterwards to write to him; intending by these intimations to inform the king what were the real causes of the bloody sacrifice before him, and that he would not willingly expose himself to their recurrence. But the king is peremptory, and the drama ends with the following extraordinary scene.
King.
There is a remedy for every wrong.
Don Gutierre.
A remedy for such a wrong as this?
King.
Yes, Gutierre.
Don Gutierre.
My lord! what is it?
King.
’T is of your own invention, Sir!
Don Gutierre.
But what?
King.
’T is blood.
Don Gutierre.
What mean your royal words, my lord?
King.
No more but this; cleanse straight your doors,—
A bloody hand is on them.
Don Gutierre.
My lord, when men
In any business and its duties deal,
They place their arms escutcheoned on their doors.
I deal, my lord, in honor, and so place
A bloody hand upon my door to mark
My honor is by blood made good.
King.
Then give thy hand to Leonore.
I know her virtue hath deserved it long.
Don Gutierre.
I give it, Sire. But, mark me, Leonore,
It comes all bathed in blood.
Leonore.
I heed it not;
And neither fear nor wonder at the sight.
Don Gutierre.
And mark me, too, that, if already once
Unto mine honor I have proved a leech,
I do not mean to lose my skill.
Leonore.
Nay, rather,
If my life prove tainted, use that same skill
To heal it.
Don Gutierre.
I give my hand; but give it
On these terms alone.[635]
Undoubtedly such a scene could be acted only on the Spanish stage; but undoubtedly, too, notwithstanding its violation of every principle of Christian morality, it is entirely in the national temper, and has been received with applause down to our own times.[636]
“The Painter of his own Dishonor” is another of the dramas founded on love, jealousy, and the point of honor, in which a husband sacrifices his faithless wife and her lover, and yet receives the thanks of each of their fathers, who, in the spirit of Spanish chivalry, not only approve the sacrifice of their own children, but offer their persons to the injured husband to defend him against any dangers to which he may be exposed in consequence of the murder he has committed.[637] “For a Secret Wrong, Secret Revenge,” is yet a third piece, belonging to the same class, and ending tragically like the two others.[638]
But as a specimen of the effects of mere jealousy, and of the power with which Calderon could bring on the stage its terrible workings, the drama he has called “No Monster like Jealousy” is to be preferred to any thing else he has left us.[639] It is founded on the well-known story, in Josephus, of the cruel jealousy of Herod, tetrarch of Judea, who twice gave orders to have his wife, Mariamne, destroyed, in case he himself should not escape alive from the perils to which he was exposed in his successive contests with Antony and Octavius;—all out of dread lest, after his death, she should be possessed by another.[640]
In the early scenes of Calderon’s drama, we find Herod, with this passionately cherished wife, alarmed by a prediction that he should destroy, with his own dagger, what he most loved in the world, and that Mariamne should be sacrificed to the most formidable of monsters. At the same time we are informed, that the tetrarch, in the excess of his passion for his fair and lovely wife, aspires to nothing less than the mastery of the world,—then in dispute between Antony and Octavius Cæsar,—an empire which he covets only to be able to lay it at her feet. To obtain this end, he partly joins his fortunes to those of Antony, and fails. Octavius, discovering his purpose, summons him to Egypt to render an account of his government. But among the plunder which, after the defeat of Antony, fell into the hands of his rival, is a portrait of Mariamne, with which the Roman becomes so enamoured, though falsely advised that the original is dead, that, when Herod arrives in Egypt, he finds the picture of his wife multiplied on all sides, and Octavius full of love and despair.
Herod’s jealousy is now equal to his unmeasured affection; and, finding that Octavius is about to move towards Jerusalem, he gives himself up to its terrible power. In his blind fear and grief, he sends an old and trusty friend, with written orders to destroy Mariamne in case of his own death, but adds passionately,—
Let her not know the mandate comes from me
That bids her die. Let her not—while she cries
To heaven for vengeance—name me as she falls.
His faithful follower would remonstrate, but Herod interrupts him:—
Be silent. You are right;—
But still I cannot listen to your words;
and then goes off in despair, exclaiming,—
O mighty spheres above! O sun! O moon
And stars! O clouds, with hail and sharp frost charged!
Is there no fiery thunderbolt in store
For such a wretch as I? O mighty Jove!
For what canst thou thy vengeance still reserve,
If now it strike not?[641]
But Mariamne obtains secretly a knowledge of his purpose; and, when he arrives in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, gracefully and successfully begs his life of Octavius, who is well pleased to do a favor to the fair original of the portrait he had ignorantly loved, and is magnanimous enough not to destroy a rival, who had yet by treason forfeited all right to his forbearance.
As soon, however, as Mariamne has secured the promise of her husband’s safety, she retires with him to the most private part of her palace, and there, in her grieved and outraged love, upbraids him with his design upon her life; announcing, at the same time, her resolution to shut herself up from that moment, with her women, in widowed solitude and perpetual mourning. But the same night Octavius gains access to her retirement, in order to protect her from the violence of her husband, which he, too, had discovered. She refuses, however, to admit to him that her husband can have any design against her life; and defends both her lord and herself with heroic love. She then escapes, pursued by Octavius, and, at the same instant, her husband enters. He follows them, and a conflict ensues instantly. The lights are extinguished, and in the confusion Mariamne falls under a blow from her husband’s hand, intended for his rival; thus fulfilling the prophecy at the opening of the play, that she should perish by his dagger and by the most formidable of monsters, which is now interpreted to be Jealousy.
The result, though foreseen, is artfully brought about at last, and produces a great shock on the spectator, and even on the reader. Indeed, it does not seem as if this fierce and relentless passion could be carried, on the stage, to a more terrible extremity. Othello’s jealousy—with which it is most readily compared—is of a lower kind, and appeals to grosser fears. But that of Herod is admitted, from the beginning, to be without any foundation, except the dread that his wife, after his death, should be possessed by a rival, whom, before his death, she could never have seen;—a transcendental jealousy to which he is yet willing to sacrifice her innocent life.
Still, different as are the two dramas, there are several points of accidental coincidence between them. Thus, we have, in the Spanish play, a night scene, in which her women undress Mariamne, and, while her thoughts are full of forebodings of her fate, sing to her those lines of Escriva which are among the choice snatches of old poetry found in the earliest of the General Cancioneros:—
Come, Death, but gently come and still;—
All sound of thine approach restrain,
Lest joy of thee my heart should fill,
And turn it back to life again;[642]—
beautiful words, which remind us of the scene immediately preceding the death of Desdemona, when she is undressing and talks with Emilia, singing, at the same time, the old song of “Willow, Willow.”
Again, we are reminded of the defence of Othello by Desdemona down to the instant of her death, in the answer of Mariamne to Octavius, when he urges her to escape with him from the violence of her husband:—
My lips were dumb, when I beheld thy form;
And now I hear thy words, my breath returns
Only to tell thee, ’t is some traitor foul
And perjured that has dared to fill thy mind
With this abhorred conceit. For, Sire, my husband
Is my husband; and if he slay me,
I am guiltless, which, in the flight you urge,
I could not be. I dwell in safety here,
And you are ill informed about my griefs;
Or, if you are not, and the dagger’s point
Should seek my life, I die not through my fault,
But through my star’s malignant potency,
Preferring in my heart a guiltless death
Before a life held up to vulgar scorn.
If, therefore, you vouchsafe me any grace,
Let me presume the greatest grace would be
That you should straightway leave me.[643]
Other passages might be adduced; but, though striking, they do not enter into the essential interest of the drama. This consists in the exhibition of the heroic character of Herod, broken down by a cruel jealousy, over which the beautiful innocence of his wife triumphs only at the moment of her death; while above them both the fatal dagger, like the unrelenting destiny of the ancient Greek tragedy, hangs suspended, seen only by the spectators, who witness the unavailing struggles of its victims to escape from a fate in which, with every effort, they become more and more involved.
Other dramas of Calderon rely for their success on a high sense of loyalty, with little or no admixture of love or jealousy. The most prominent of these is “The Firm-hearted Prince.”[644] Its plot is founded on the expedition against the Moors in Africa by the Portuguese Infante Don Ferdinand, in 1438, which ended with the total defeat of the invaders before Tangier, and the captivity of the prince himself, who died in a miserable bondage in 1443;—his very bones resting for thirty years among the misbelievers, till they were at last brought home to Lisbon and buried with reverence, as those of a saint and martyr. This story Calderon found in the old and beautiful Portuguese chronicles of Joam Alvares and Ruy de Pina; but he makes the sufferings of the prince voluntary, thus adding to Ferdinand’s character the self-devotion of Regulus, and so fitting it to be the subject of a deep tragedy, founded on the honor of a Christian patriot.[645]
The first scene is one of lyrical beauty, in the gardens of the king of Fez, whose daughter is introduced as enamoured of Muley Hassan, her father’s principal general. Immediately afterwards, Hassan enters and announces the approach of a Christian armament commanded by the two Portuguese Infantes. He is despatched to prevent their landing, but fails, and is himself taken prisoner by Don Ferdinand in person. A long dialogue follows between the captive and his conqueror, entirely formed by an unfortunate amplification of a beautiful ballad of Góngora, which is made to explain the attachment of the Moorish general to the king’s daughter, and the probability—if he continues in captivity—that she will be compelled to marry the Prince of Morocco. The Portuguese Infante, with chivalrous generosity, gives up his prisoner without ransom, but has hardly done so, before he is attacked by a large army under the Prince of Morocco, and made prisoner himself.
From this moment begins that trial of Don Ferdinand’s patience and fortitude which gives its title to the drama. At first, indeed, the king treats him generously, thinking to exchange him for Ceuta, an important fortress recently won by the Portuguese, and their earliest foothold in Africa. But this constitutes the great obstacle. The king of Portugal, who had died of grief on receiving the news of his brother’s captivity, had, it is true, left an injunction in his will that Ceuta should be surrendered and the prince ransomed. But when Henry, one of his brothers, appears on the stage, and announces that he has come to fulfil this solemn command, Ferdinand suddenly interrupts him in the offer, and reveals at once the whole of his character:—
Cease, Henry, cease!—no farther shalt thou go;—
For words like these should not alone be deemed
Unworthy of a prince of Portugal,—
A Master of the Order of the Cross,—
But of the meanest serf that sits beneath
The throne, or the barbarian hind whose eyes
Have never seen the light of Christian faith.
No doubt, my brother—who is now with God—
May in his will have placed the words you bring,
But never with a thought they should be read
And carried through to absolute fulfilment;
But only to set forth his strong desire,
That, by all means which peace or war can urge,
My life should be enfranchised. When he says,
“Surrender Ceuta,” he but means to say,
“Work miracles to bring my brother home.”
But that a Catholic and faithful king
Should yield to Moorish and to heathen hands
A city his own blood had dearly bought,
When, with no weapon save a shield and sword,
He raised his country’s standards on its walls,—
It cannot be!—It cannot be![646]
On this resolute decision, for which the old chronicle gives no authority, the remainder of the drama rests; its deep enthusiasm being set forth in a single word of the Infante, in reply to the renewed question of the Moorish king, “And why not give up Ceuta?” to which Ferdinand firmly and simply answers,—
Because it is not mine to give.
A Christian city,—it belongs to God.
In consequence of this final determination, he is reduced to the condition of a common slave; and it is not one of the least moving incidents of the drama, that he finds the other Portuguese captives among whom he is sent to work, and who do not recognize him, promising freedom to themselves from the effort they know his noble nature will make on their behalf, when the exchange which they consider so reasonable shall have restored him to his country.
At this point, however, comes in the operation of the Moorish general’s gratitude. He offers Don Ferdinand the means of escape; but the king, detecting the connection between them, binds his general to an honorable fidelity by making him the prince’s only keeper. This leads Don Ferdinand to a new sacrifice of himself. He not only advises his generous friend to preserve his loyalty, but assures him, that, even if foreign means of escape are offered him, he will not take advantage of them, if, by doing so, his friend’s honor would be endangered. In the mean time, the sufferings of the unhappy prince are increased by cruel treatment and unreasonable labor, till his strength is broken down. Still he does not yield. Ceuta remains in his eyes a consecrated place, over which religion prevents him from exercising the control by which his freedom might be restored. The Moorish general and the king’s daughter, on the other side, intercede for mercy in vain. The king is inflexible, and Don Ferdinand dies, at length, of mortification, misery, and want; but with a mind unshaken, and with an heroic constancy that sustains our interest in his fate to the last extremity. Just after his death, a Portuguese army, destined to rescue him, arrives. In a night scene of great dramatic effect, he appears at their head, clad in the habiliments of the religious and military order in which he had desired to be buried, and, with a torch in his hand, beckons them on to victory. They obey the supernatural summons, entire success follows, and the marvellous conclusion of the whole, by which his consecrated remains are saved from Moorish contamination, is in full keeping with the romantic pathos and high-wrought enthusiasm of the scenes that lead to it.