APPENDIX, F.
ON THE EARLY COLLECTIONS OF OLD SPANISH PLAYS.
(See Vol. II. p. 429.)
Two large collections of plays, and several small ones, much resembling each other, both in the character of their contents and the form of their publication, appeared in different parts of Spain during the seventeenth century, just as the ballads had appeared a century before; and they should be noticed with some care, because they exhibit the peculiar physiognomy of the Spanish national drama with much distinctness, and furnish materials of consequence for its history.
Of the first collection, whose prevailing title seems to have been “Comedias de Diferentes Autores,” it would, I suppose, be impossible now to form a complete set, or one even approaching to completeness. I possess only three volumes of it, and have seen satisfactory notices of only two more. The first of the five is the twenty-fifth volume of the collection itself, and was printed at Saragossa, in 1633, by Pedro Escuer. As is usual with such volumes of the old Spanish dramatists, it is in small quarto and contains twelve plays, seven of which are attributed to Montalvan, then at the height of his success as a living author, and one to Calderon, who was just rising to his great fame; but one of the seven plays of Montalvan belongs to his master, Lope de Vega, and the only one taken from Calderon is printed from a text grossly corrupted. The twenty-ninth volume was printed at Valencia, in 1636, and the thirty-second at Saragossa, in 1640; but I have seen neither of them. In the thirty-first, printed at Barcelona, in 1638, all the twelve plays are given without the names of their authors, though the persons who wrote most of them are still known; and the forty-third volume was printed at Saragossa, in 1650, containing plays by Calderon, Moreto, and Solís, with enough by more obscure authors to make up the regular number of twelve. It is no doubt singular, that, of a collection like this, extending to at least forty-three volumes, so little should now be known. But such is the fact. The Inquisition and the confessional were very busy in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when, under the imbecile Charles the Second, the theatre had fallen from its high estate; and in this way the oldest large collection of plays published in Spain, and the one we should now be most desirous to possess, was hunted down and nearly exterminated.
The next, which is the collection commonly known under the title of “Comedias Nuevas Escogidas de los Mejores Autores,”—a title by no means strictly adhered to in its successive volumes,—was more fortunate. Still it is very rare. I have never seen a set of it absolutely complete; but I possess in all forty-one volumes out of the forty-eight, of which such a set should consist, and have sufficiently accurate notices of the remaining seven.
The first of these volumes was published in 1652, the last in 1704; but, in the latter part of the period embraced between these dates, the theatre so declined, that, though at first two or three volumes came out every year, none was issued during the twenty-three years that followed the death of Calderon in 1681, except the very last in the collection, the forty-eighth. Taken together, they contain five hundred and seventy-four comedias, in all the forms and with all the characteristics of the old Spanish drama; their appropriate loas and entremeses being connected with a very small number of them. Thirty-seven of these comedias are given as anonymous, and the remaining five hundred and thirty-seven are distributed among one hundred and thirty-eight different authors.
The distribution, however, as might be anticipated, is very unequal. Calderon, who was far the most successful writer of the period he illustrated, has fifty-three plays assigned to him, in whole or in part, of which it is certain not one was printed with his permission, and not one, so far as I have compared them with the authentic editions of his works, from a text properly corrected. Moreto, the dramatic writer next in popularity after Calderon, has forty-six pieces given to him in the same way; all probably without his assent, since he renounced the stage as sinful, and retired to a monastery in 1657. Matos Fragoso, who was a little later, has thirty-three; Fernando de Zarate, twenty-two; Antonio Martinez, eighteen; Mira de Mescua, eighteen; Zavaleta, sixteen; Roxas, sixteen; Luis Velez de Guevara, fifteen; Cancer, fourteen; Solís, twelve; Lope de Vega, twelve; Diamante, twelve; Pedro de Rosete, eleven; Belmonte, eleven; and Francisco de Villegas, eleven. Many others have smaller numbers assigned to them; and sixty-nine authors, nearly all of whose names are otherwise unknown, and some of them, probably, not genuine, have but one each.
That the dramas in this collection all belong to the authors to whom it ascribes them, or that it is even so far accurate in its designations as to be taken for a sufficient general authority, is not for a moment to be supposed. Thirteen at least of the plays it contains, that bear the name of Calderon, are not his; one known to be his, “La Banda y la Flor,” is printed as anonymous in the thirtieth volume, with the title of “Hazer del Amor Agravio”; and another, “Amigo Amante y Leal,” is twice inserted,—once in the fourth volume, 1653, and once in the eighteenth volume, 1662,—each differing considerably from the other, and neither taken from a genuine text.
Of its carelessness in relation to other authors similar remarks might be made. Several of the plays of Solís are printed twice, and one three times; and in two successive volumes, the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth, we have the “Lorenzo me llamo” of Matos Fragoso, a well-known and, in its time, a popular play. On all accounts, therefore, this collection, like its predecessor, is to be regarded as a mere bookseller’s speculation, carried on without the consent of the authors whose works were plundered for the purpose, and sometimes, as we know, in disregard of their complaints and remonstrances. How recklessly and scandalously this was done may be gathered from the facts already stated, and from the further one, that the “Vencimiento de Turno,” in the twelfth volume, which is boldly ascribed to Calderon on its title, is yet given to its true author, Manuel del Campo, in the very lines with which it is ended.
Still, these large collections, with the single volumes that, from time to time, were sent forth in the same way by the booksellers,—such as those published by Mateo de la Bastida, in 1652; by Manuel Lopez, in 1653; by Juan de Valdes, in 1655; by Robles, in 1664; and by Zabra and Fernandez, in 1675, all of which have been used in the account of the theatre in the text,—give us a living and faithful impression of the acted Spanish drama in the seventeenth century; for the plays they contain are those that were everywhere performed on the national stage, and they are here presented to us, not so often in the form given them by their authors, as in the form in which they were fitted for the stage by the managers, and plundered from the prompter’s manuscripts, or noted down in the theatres, by piratical booksellers.