CHAPTER XXVI.
Character of the Spanish Drama. — The Autor, or Manager. — The Writers for the Stage. — The Actors, their Number, Success, and Condition. — Performances by Daylight. — The Stage. — The Court-yard, Mosqueteros, Gradas, Cazuela, and Aposentos. — The Audiences. — Play-bills, and Titles of Plays. — Representations, Ballads, Loas, Jornadas, Entremeses, Saynetes, and Dances. — Ballads danced and sung. — Xacaras, Zarabandas, and Alemanas. — Popular Character of the Whole. — Great Number of Writers and Plays.
The most prominent, if not the most important, characteristic of the Spanish drama, at the period of its widest success, was its nationality. In all its various forms, including the religious plays, and in all its manifold subsidiary attractions, down to the recitation of old ballads and the exhibition of popular dances, it addressed itself more to the whole people of the country which produced it than any other theatre of modern times. The Church, as we have seen, occasionally interfered, and endeavoured to silence or to restrict it. But the drama was too deeply seated in the general favor, to be much modified, even by a power that overshadowed nearly every thing else in the state; and during the whole of the seventeenth century,—the century which immediately followed the severe legislation of Philip the Second and his attempts to control the character of the stage,—the Spanish drama was really in the hands of the mass of the people, and its writers and actors were such as the popular will required them to be.[721]
At the head of each company of actors was their Autor. The name descended from the time of Lope de Rueda, when the writer of the rude farces then in favor collected about him a body of players to perform what should rather be called his dramatic dialogues than his proper dramas, in the public squares;—a practice soon imitated in France, where Hardy, the “Author,” as he styled himself, of his own company, produced, between 1600 and 1630, about five hundred rude plays and farces, often taken from Lope de Vega, and whatever was most popular at the same period in Spain.[722] But while Hardy was at the height of his success and preparing the way for Corneille, the canon in Don Quixote had already recognized in Spain the existence of two kinds of authors;—the authors who wrote, and the authors who acted;[723]—a distinction familiar from the time when Lope de Vega appeared, and one that was never afterwards overlooked. At any rate, from that time actors and managers were quite as rarely writers for the stage in Spain as in other countries.[724]
The relations between the dramatic poets and the managers and actors were not more agreeable in Spain than elsewhere. Figueroa, who was familiar with the subject, says that the writers for the theatre were obliged to flatter the heads of companies, in order to obtain a hearing from the public, and that they were often treated with coarseness and contempt, especially when their plays were read and adapted to the stage in presence of the actors who were to perform them.[725] Solorzano—himself a dramatist—gives similar accounts, and adds the story of a poet, who was not only rudely, but cruelly, abused by a company of players, to whose humors their autor or manager had abandoned him.[726] And even Lope de Vega and Calderon, the master-spirits of the time, complain bitterly of the way in which they were trifled with and defrauded of their rights and reputation, both by the managers and by the booksellers.[727] At the end of the drama, its author therefore sometimes announced his name, and, with more or less of affected humility, claimed the work as his own.[728] But this was not a custom. Almost uniformly, however, when the audience was addressed at all,—and that was seldom neglected at the conclusion of a drama,—it was saluted with the grave and flattering title of “Senate.”
Nor does the condition of the actors seem to have been one which could be envied by the poets who wrote for them. Their numbers and influence, indeed, soon became imposing under the great impulse given to the drama in the beginning of the seventeenth century. When Lope de Vega first appeared as a dramatic writer at Madrid, the only theatres he found were two unsheltered court-yards, which depended on such strolling companies of players as occasionally deemed it for their interest to visit the capital. Before he died, there were, besides the court-yards in Madrid, several theatres of great magnificence in the royal palaces, and multitudinous bodies of actors, comprehending in all above a thousand persons.[729] And half a century later, at the time of Calderon’s death, when the Spanish drama had taken all its attributes, the passion for its representations had spread into every part of the kingdom, until there was hardly a village, we are told, that did not possess some kind of a theatre.[730] Nay, so pervading and uncontrolled was the eagerness for dramatic exhibitions, that, notwithstanding the scandal it excited, secular comedies of a very equivocal complexion were represented by performers from the public theatres in some of the principal monasteries of the kingdom.[731]
Of course, out of so large a body of actors, all struggling for public favor, some became famous. Among the more distinguished were Agustin de Roxas, who wrote the gay travels of a company of comedians; Roque de Figueroa and Rios, Lope’s favorites; Pinedo, much praised by Tirso de Molina; Alonso de Olmedo and Sebastian Prado, who were rivals for public applause in the time of Calderon; Juan Rana, who was the best comic actor during the reigns of Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth, and amused the audiences by his own extemporaneous wit; the two Morales and Josefa Vaca, wife of the elder of them; Barbara Coronel, the Amazon, who preferred to appear as a man; María de Córdoba, praised by Quevedo and the Count Villamediana; and María Calderon, who, as the mother of the second Don John of Austria, figured in affairs of state, as well as in those of the stage. These and some others enjoyed, no doubt, that ephemeral, but brilliant, reputation which is generally the only reward of the best of their class; and enjoyed it to as high a degree, perhaps, as any persons that have appeared on the stage in more modern times.[732]
But, regarded as a body, the Spanish actors seem to have been any thing but respectable. In general, they were of a low and vulgar caste in society,—so low, that, for this reason, they were at one period forbidden to have women associated with them.[733] The rabble, indeed, sympathized with them, and sometimes, when their conduct called for punishment, protected them by force from the arm of the law; but, between 1644 and 1649, when their number in the metropolis had become very great, and they constituted no less than forty companies, full of disorderly persons and vagabonds, their character did more than any thing else to endanger the privileges of the drama, which with difficulty evaded the restrictions their riotous lives brought upon it.[734] One proof of their gross conduct is to be found in its results. Many of them, filled with compunction at their own shocking excesses, took refuge at last in a religious life, like Prado, who became a devout priest, and Francisca Baltasara, who died a hermit, almost in the odor of sanctity, and was afterwards made the subject of a religious play.[735]
They had, besides, many trials. They were obliged to learn a great number of pieces to satisfy the demands for novelty, which were more exacting on the Spanish stage than on any other; their rehearsals were severe, and their audiences rude. Cervantes says that their life was as hard as that of the Gypsies;[736] and Roxas, who knew all there was to be known on the subject, says that slaves in Algiers were better off than they were.[737]
To all this we must add that they were poorly paid, and that their managers were almost always in debt. But, like other forms of vagabond life, its freedom from restraints made it attractive to not a few loose persons, in a country like Spain, where it was difficult to find liberty of any sort. This attraction, however, did not last long. The drama fell in its consequence and popularity as rapidly as it had risen. Long before the end of the century, it ceased to encourage or protect such numbers of idlers as were at one time needed to sustain its success;[738] and in the reign of Charles the Second it was not easy to collect three companies for the festivities occasioned by his marriage.[739] Half a century earlier, twenty would have striven for the honor.
During the whole of the successful period of the drama in Spain, its exhibitions took place in the day-time. On the stages of the different palaces, where, when Howell was in Madrid, in 1623,[740] there were representations once a week, it was sometimes otherwise; but the religious plays and autos, with all that were intended to be really popular, were represented in broad daylight,—in the winter at two, and in the summer at three, in the afternoon, every day in the week.[741] Till near the middle of the seventeenth century, the scenery and general arrangements of the theatre were probably as good as they were in France when Corneille appeared, or perhaps better; but in the latter part of it, the French stage was undoubtedly in advance of that at Madrid, and Madame d’Aulnoy makes herself merry by telling her friends that the Spanish sun was made of oiled paper, and that in the play of “Alcina” she saw the devils quietly climbing ladders out of the infernal regions, to reach their places on the stage.[742] Plays that required more elaborate arrangements and machinery were called comedias de ruido,—noisy or showy dramas,—and are treated with little respect by Figueroa and Luis Vélez de Guevara, because it was thought unworthy of a poetical spirit to depend for success on means so mechanical.[743]
The stage itself, in the two principal theatres of Madrid, was raised only a little from the ground of the court-yard where it was erected, and there was no attempt at a separate orchestra,—the musicians coming to the forepart of the scene whenever they were wanted. Immediately in front of the stage were a few benches, which afforded the best places for those who bought single tickets, and behind them was the unencumbered portion of the court-yard, where the common file were obliged to stand in the open air. The crowd there was generally great, and the persons composing it were called, from their standing posture and their rude bearing, mosqueteros, or infantry. They constituted the most formidable and disorderly part of the audience, and were the portion that generally determined the success of new plays.[744] One of their body, a shoemaker, who in 1680 reigned supreme in the court-yard over the opinions of those around him, reminds us at once of the critical trunk-maker in Addison.[745] Another, who was offered a hundred rials to favor a play about to be acted, answered proudly that he would first see whether it was good or not, and, after all, hissed it.[746] Sometimes the author himself addressed them at the end of his play, and stooped to ask the applause of this lowest portion of the audience. But this was rare.[747]
Behind the sturdy mosqueteros were the gradas, or rising seats, for the men, and the cazuela, or “stewpan,” where the women were strictly inclosed, and sat crowded together by themselves. Above all these different classes were the desvanes and aposentos, or balconies and rooms, whose open, shop-like windows extended round three sides of the court-yard in different stories, and were filled by those persons of both sexes who could afford such a luxury, and who not unfrequently thought it one of so much consequence, that they held it as an heirloom from generation to generation.[748] The aposentos were, in fact, commodious rooms, and the ladies who resorted to them generally went masked, as neither the actors nor the audience were always so decent that the ladylike modesty of the more courtly portion of society might be willing to countenance them.[749]
It was deemed a distinction to have free access to the theatre; and persons who cared little about the price of a ticket struggled hard to obtain it.[750] Those who paid at all paid twice,—at the outer door, where the manager sometimes collected his claims in person, and at the inner one, where an ecclesiastic collected what belonged to the hospitals, under the gentler name of alms.[751] The audiences were often noisy and unjust. Cervantes intimates this, and Lope directly complains of it. Suarez de Figueroa says, that rattles, crackers, bells, whistles, and keys were all put in requisition, when it was desired to make an uproar; and Benavente, in a loa spoken at the opening of a theatrical campaign at Madrid by Roque, the friend of Lope de Vega, deprecates the ill-humor of all the various classes of his audience, from the fashionable world in the aposentos to the mosqueteros in the court-yard; though, he adds, with some mock dignity, that he little fears the hisses which he is aware must follow such a defiance.[752] When the audience meant to applaud, they cried “Victor!” and were no less tumultuous and unruly than when they hissed.[753] In Cervantes’s time, after the play was over, if it had been successful, the author stood at the door to receive the congratulations of the crowd as they came out; and, later, his name was placarded and paraded at the corners of the streets with an annunciation of his triumph.[754]
Cosmé de Oviedo, a well-known manager at Granada, was the first who used advertisements for announcing the play that was to be acted. This was about the year 1600. Half a century afterwards, the condition of such persons was still so humble, that one of the best of them went round the city and posted his play-bills himself, which were, probably, written, and not printed.[755] From an early period they seem to have given to acted plays the title which full-length Spanish dramas almost uniformly bore during the seventeenth century and even afterwards,—that of comedia famosa;—though we must except from this remark the case of Tirso de Molina, who amused himself with calling more than one of his successful performances “Comedia sin fama,”[756]—a play without repute. But this was, in truth, a matter of mere form, soon understood by the public, who needed no especial excitement to bring them to theatrical entertainments, for which they were constitutionally eager. Some of the audience went early to secure good places, and amused themselves with the fruit and confectionery carried round the court-yard for sale, or with watching the movements of the laughing dames who were inclosed within the balustrade of the cazuela, and who were but too ready to flirt with all in their neighbourhood. Others came late; and if they were persons of authority or consequence, the actors waited for their appearance till the disorderly murmurs of the groundlings compelled them to begin.[757]
At last, though not always till the rabble had been composed by the recitation of a favorite ballad or by some popular air on the guitars, one of the more respectable actors, and often the manager himself, appeared on the stage, and, in the technical phrase, “threw out the loa” or compliment,[758]—a peculiarly Spanish form of the prologue, of which we have abundant specimens from the time of Naharro, who calls them intróytos, or overtures, down to the final fall of the old drama. They are prefixed to all the autos of Lope and Calderon; and though, in the case of the multitudinous secular plays of the Spanish theatre, the appropriate loas are no longer found regularly attached to each, yet we have them occasionally with the dramas of Tirso de Molina, Calderon, Antonio de Mendoza, and not a few others.
The best are those of Agustin de Roxas, whose “Amusing Travels” are full of them, and those of Quiñones de Benavente, found among his “Jests in Earnest.” They were in different forms, dramatic, narrative, and lyrical, and on very various subjects and in very various measures. One of Tirso’s is in praise of the beautiful ladies who were present at its representation;[759]—one of Mendoza’s is in honor of the capture of Breda, and flatters the national vanity upon the recent successes of the Marquis of Spinola;[760]—one by Roxas is on the glories of Seville, where he made it serve as a conciliatory introduction for himself and his company, when they were about to act there;[761]—one by Sanchez is a jesting account of the actors who were to perform in the play that was to follow it;[762]—and one by Benavente was spoken by Roque de Figueroa, when he began a series of representations at court, and is devoted to a pleasant exposition of the strength of his company, and a boastful announcement of the new dramas they were able to produce.[763]
Gradually, however, the loas, whose grand object was to conciliate the audience, took more and more the popular dramatic form; and at last, like several by Roxas, Mira de Mescua, Moreto, and Lope de Vega,[764] differed little from the farces that followed them.[765] Indeed, they were almost always fitted to the particular occasions that called them forth, or to the known demands of the audience;—some of them being accompanied with singing and dancing, and others ending with rude practical jests.[766] They are, therefore, as various in their tone as they are in their forms; and, from this circumstance, as well as from their easy national humor, they became at last an important part of all dramatic representations.
The first jornada or act of the principal performance followed the loa, almost as a matter of course, though, in some instances, a dance was interposed; and in others, Figueroa complains, that he had been obliged still to listen to a ballad before he was permitted to reach the regular drama which he had come to hear;[767]—so importunate were the audience for what was lightest and most amusing. At the end of the first act, though perhaps preceded by another dance, came the first of the two entremeses,—a sort of “crutches,” as the editor of Benavente well calls them, “that were given to the heavy comedias to keep them from falling.”
Nothing can well be gayer or more free than these favorite entertainments, which were generally written in the genuine Castilian idiom and spirit.[768] At first, they were farces, or parts of farces, taken from Lope de Rueda and his school; but afterwards, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and the other writers for the theatre composed entremeses better suited to the changed character of the dramas in their times.[769] Their subjects were generally chosen from the adventures of the lower classes of society, whose manners and follies they ridiculed; many of the earlier of the sort ending, as one of the Dogs in Cervantes’s dialogue complains that they did too often, with vulgar scuffles and blows.[770] But later, they became more poetical, and were mingled with allegory, song, and dance; taking, in fact, whatever forms and tone were deemed most attractive. They seldom exceeded a few minutes in length, and never had any other purpose than to relieve the attention of the audience, which it was supposed might have been taxed too much by the graver action that had preceded them.[771] With this action they had, properly, nothing to do;—though in one instance Calderon has ingeniously made his entremes serve as a graceful conclusion to one of the acts of the principal drama.[772]
The second act was followed by a similar entremes, music, and dancing;[773] and after the third, the poetical part of the entertainment was ended with a saynete or bonne bouche, first so called by Benavente, but differing from the entremeses only in name, and written best by Cancer, Deza y Avila, and Benavente himself,—in short, by those who best succeeded in the entremeses.[774] Last of all came a national dance, which never failed to delight the audience of all classes, and served to send them home in good-humor when the entertainment was over.[775]
Dancing, indeed, was very early an important part of theatrical exhibitions in Spain, even of the religious, and its importance has continued down to the present day. This was natural. From the first intimations of history and tradition in antiquity, dancing was the favorite amusement of the rude inhabitants of the country;[776] and, so far as modern times are concerned, dancing has been to Spain what music has been to Italy, a passion with the whole population. In consequence of this, it finds a place in the dramas of Enzina, Vicente, and Naharro; and, from the time of Lope de Rueda and Lope de Vega, appears in some part, and often in several parts, of all theatrical exhibitions. An amusing instance of the slight grounds on which it was introduced may be found in “The Grand Sultana” of Lope de Vega, where one of the actors says,—
There ne’er was born a Spanish woman yet
But she was born to dance;
and a specimen is immediately given in proof of the assertion.[777]
Many of these dances, and probably nearly all of them that were introduced on the stage, were accompanied with words, and were what Cervantes calls “recited dances.”[778] Such were the well-known “Xacaras,”—roystering ballads, in the dialect of the rogues,—which took their name from the bullies who sung them, and were at one time rivals for favor with the regular entremeses.[779] Such, too, were the more famous “Zarabandas”; graceful, but voluptuous dances, that were known from about 1588, and, as Mariana says, received their name from a devil in woman’s shape at Seville, though elsewhere they are said to have derived it from a similar personage found at Guayaquil in America.[780] Another dance, full of a mad revelry, in which the audience were ready sometimes to join, was called “Alemana,” probably from its German origin, and was one of those whose discontinuance Lope, himself a great lover of dancing, always regretted.[781] Another was “Don Alonso el Bueno,” so named from the ballad that accompanied it; and yet others were called “El Caballero,” “La Carretería,” “Las Gambetas,” “Hermano Bartolo,” and “La Zapateta.”[782]
Most of them were free or licentious in their tendency. Guevara says that the Devil invented them all; and Cervantes, in one of his farces, admits that the Zarabanda, which was the most obnoxious to censure, could, indeed, have had no better origin.[783] Lope, however, was not so severe in his judgment. He declares that the dances accompanied by singing were better than the entremeses, which, he adds disparagingly, dealt only in hungry men, thieves, and brawlers.[784] But whatever may have been individual opinions about them, they occasioned great scandal, and, in 1621, kept their place on the theatre only by a vigorous exertion of the popular will in opposition to the will of the government. As it was, they were for a time restrained and modified; but still no one of them was absolutely exiled, except the licentious Zarabanda,—many of the crowds that thronged the court-yards thinking, with one of their leaders, that the dances were the salt of the plays, and that the theatre would be good for nothing without them.[785]
Indeed, in all its forms, and in all its subsidiary attractions of ballads, entremeses and saynetes, music, and dancing, the old Spanish drama was essentially a popular entertainment, governed by the popular will. In any other country, under the same circumstances, it would hardly have risen above the condition in which it was left by Lope de Rueda, when it was the amusement of the lowest classes of the populace. But the Spaniards have always been a poetical people. There is a romance in their early history, and a picturesqueness in their very costume and manners, that cannot be mistaken. A deep enthusiasm runs, like a vein of pure and rich ore, at the bottom of their character, and the workings of strong passions and an original imagination are everywhere visible among the wild elements that break out on its surface. The same energy, the same fancy, the same excited feelings, which, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, produced the most various and rich popular ballads of modern times, were not yet stilled or quenched in the seventeenth. The same national character, which, under Saint Ferdinand and his successors, drove the Moorish crescent through the plains of Andalusia, and found utterance for its exultation in poetry of such remarkable sweetness and power, was still active under the Philips, and called forth, directed, and controlled a dramatic literature which grew out of the national genius and the condition of the mass of the people, and which, therefore, in all its forms and varieties, is essentially and peculiarly Spanish.
Under an impulse so wide and deep, the number of dramatic authors would naturally be great. As early as 1605, when the theatre, such as it had been constituted by Lope de Vega, had existed hardly more than fifteen years, we can easily see, by the discussions in the first part of Don Quixote, that it already filled a large space in the interests of the time; and from the Prólogo prefixed by Cervantes to his plays in 1615, it is quite plain that its character and success were already settled, and that no inconsiderable number of its best authors had already appeared. Even as early as this, dramas were composed in the lower classes of society. Villegas tells us of a tailor of Toledo who wrote many; Guevara gives a similar account of a sheep-shearer at Ecija; and Figueroa, of a well-known tradesman of Seville;—all in full accordance with the representations made in Don Quixote concerning the shepherd Chrisóstomo, and the whole current of the story and conversations of the actors in the “Journey” of Roxas.[786] In this state of things, the number of writers for the theatre went on increasing out of all proportion to their increase in other countries, as appears from the lists given by Lope de Vega, in 1630; by Montalvan, in 1632, when we find seventy-six dramatic poets living in Castile alone; and by Antonio, about 1660. During the whole of this century, therefore, we may regard the theatre as a part of the popular character in Spain, and as having become, in the proper sense of the word, more truly a national theatre than any other that has been produced in modern times.
It might naturally have been foreseen, that, upon a movement like this, imparted and sustained by all the force of the national genius, any accidents of patronage or opposition would produce little effect. And so in fact it proved. The ecclesiastical authorities always frowned upon it, and sometimes placed themselves so as directly to resist its progress; but its sway and impulse were so heavy, that it passed over their opposition, in every instance, as over a slight obstacle. Nor was it more affected by the seductions of patronage. Philip the Fourth, for above forty years, favored and supported it with princely munificence. He built splendid saloons for it in his palaces; he wrote for it; he acted in improvisated dramas. The reigning favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, to flatter the royal taste, invented new dramatic luxuries, such as that of magnificent floating theatres on the stream of the Tormés, and on the sheets of water in the gardens of the Buen Retiro. All royal entertainments seemed, in fact, for a time, to take a dramatic tone, or tend to it. But still the popular character of the theatre itself was unchecked and unaffected;—still the plays acted in the royal theatres, before the principal persons in the kingdom, were the same with those performed before the populace in the court-yards of Madrid;—and when other times and other princes came, the old Spanish drama left the halls and palaces, where it had been so long flattered, with as little of a courtly air as that with which it had originally entered them.[787]
The same impulse that made it so powerful in other respects filled the old Spanish theatre with an almost incredible number of cavalier and heroic dramas, dramas for saints, sacramental autos, entremeses, and farces of all names. Their whole amount, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, has been estimated to exceed thirty thousand, of which four thousand eight hundred by unknown authors had been, at one time, collected by a single person in Madrid.[788] Their character and merit were, as we have seen, very various. Still, the circumstance, that they were all written substantially for one object and under one system of opinions, gave them a stronger air of general resemblance than might otherwise have been anticipated. For it should never be forgotten, that the Spanish drama in its highest and most heroic forms was still a popular entertainment, just as it was in its farces and ballads. Its purpose was, not only to please all classes, but to please all equally;—those who paid three maravedís, and stood crowded together under a hot sun in the court-yard, as well as the rank and fashion, that lounged in their costly apartments above, and amused themselves hardly less with the picturesque scene of the audiences in the patio than with that of the actors on the stage. Whether the story this mass of people saw enacted were probable or not was to them a matter of small consequence. But it was necessary that it should be interesting. Above all, it was necessary that it should be Spanish; and therefore, though its subject might be Greek or Roman, Oriental or mythological, the characters represented were always Castilian, and Castilian after the fashion of the seventeenth century,—governed by Castilian notions of gallantry and the Castilian point of honor.
It was the same with their costumes. Coriolanus was dressed like Don John of Austria; Aristotle came on the stage with a curled periwig and buckles in his shoes, like a Spanish Abbé; and Madame d’Aulnoy says, the Devil she saw was dressed like any other Castilian gentleman, except that his stockings were flame-colored and he wore horns.[789] But however the actors might be dressed, or however the play might confound geography and history, or degrade heroism by caricature, still, in a great majority of cases, dramatic situations are skilfully produced; the story, full of bustle and incident, grows more and more urgent as it advances; and the result of the whole is, that, though we may sometimes have been much offended, we are sorry we have reached the conclusion, and find on looking back that we have almost always been excited, and often pleased.
The Spanish theatre, in many of its attributes and characteristics, stands, therefore, by itself. It takes no cognizance of ancient example; for the spirit of antiquity could have little in common with materials so modern, Christian, and romantic. It borrowed nothing from the drama of France or of Italy; for it was in advance of both when its final character was not only developed, but settled. And as for England, though Shakspeare and Lope were contemporaries, and there are points of resemblance between them which it is pleasant to trace and difficult to explain, still they and their schools, undoubtedly, had not the least influence on each other. The Spanish drama is, therefore, entirely national. Many of its best subjects are taken from the chronicles and traditions familiar to the audience that listened to them, and its prevalent versification reminded the hearers, by its sweetness and power, of what had so often moved their hearts in the earliest outpourings of the national genius. With all its faults, then, this old Spanish drama, founded on the great traits of the national character, maintained itself in the popular favor as long as that character existed in its original attributes; and even now it remains one of the most striking and one of the most interesting portions of modern literature.