CHAPTER VI.
Theatre in the Eighteenth Century. — Translations from the French. — Original Plays. — Operas. — National Theatre. — Castro. — Añorbe. — Imitations of the French Theatre. — Montiano. — Moratin the Elder. — Cadahalso. — Sebastian y Latre. — Trigueros. — Yriarte. — Ayala. — Huerta. — Jovellanos. — Autos forbidden. — Public Theatres and their Parties. — Ramon de la Cruz, Sedano, Cortés, Cienfuegos, and others. — Huerta’s Collection of Old Plays. — Discussions. — Valladares. — Zavala. — Comella. — Moratin the Younger. — State of the Drama at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century.
The most considerable literary movement of the eighteenth century in Spain, and the one that best marks the poetical character of the entire period, is that relating to the theatre, which it was earnestly attempted to subject to the rules then prevailing on the French stage. Intimations of such a design are found in the reign of Philip the Fifth, as soon as the War of the Succession was closed. The Marquis of San Juan began, in 1713, with a translation of the “Cinna” of Corneille;—the first tragedy under the French rules that appeared in the Spanish language, and one that was probably selected for this distinction, because it was well suited to the condition of a country, that had so much reason to seek the clemency of its prince in favor of many distinguished persons, whom the civil war had led to resist his power.[365] But it was never represented, and was soon forgotten. Cañizares, the last of the elder race of dramatists that showed any of the old spirit, yielded more than once to the new school of taste, and regarded his “Sacrifice of Iphigenia”—an absurd play, for which the “Iphigénie” of Racine is very little responsible—as an imitation of the French school.[366] Neither these, however, nor plays of an irregular and often vulgar cast, like those written by Diego de Torres, professor of natural philosophy, by Lobo, the military officer, and by Salvo, the tailor, obtained any permanent favor, or were able to constitute foundations on which to reconstruct a national drama. As far as any thing was heard on the public stage worthy of its pretensions, it was the works of the old masters and of their poor imitators, Cañizares and Zamora.[367]
The Spanish theatre, in fact, was now at its lowest ebb, and wholly in the hands of the populace, from whom it had always received much of its character, and who had been its faithful friends in the days of its trial and adversity. Nor could its present condition fairly claim a higher patronage. All Spanish plays acted for public amusement in Madrid were still represented, as they had been in the seventeenth century, in open court-yards, with galleries or corridors that surrounded them. To these court-yards there was no covering except in case of a shower, and then the awning stretched over them was so imperfect, that, if the rain continued, and those of the spectators who were always compelled to stand during the performance were too numerous to find shelter under the projecting seats of the corridors, the exhibition was broken up for the day, and the crowd driven home. There was hardly any pretence of scenery; the performance always took place in the day-time; and the price of admission, which was collected in money at the door, did not exceed a few farthings for each spectator.
The second queen of Philip the Fifth, Isabel Farnese, who had been used to the enjoyment of all kinds of scenic exhibitions in Italy, was not satisfied with this state of things. Finding an ill-arranged theatre, in which an Italian company had sometimes acted, she caused material additions to be made to it, and required regular operas to be brought out for her amusement from 1737. The change was an important one. The two old court-yards took the alarm. First one and then the other began to erect a new and more commodious structure for theatrical entertainments; and as they had been each other’s rivals for a century and a half in the awkwardness of their arrangements, no less than in their claims for public patronage, so now they became rivals in a struggle for improvement. Under such impulses, the new “Theatre of the Cross” was finished in 1743, and that of “The Prince,” in 1745.
But, in most respects, there was little change. True to the traditions of their origin, the new structures were still called court-yards, and their boxes, rooms;—the cazuela, or “stewpan,” was still kept for the women, who sat there veiled like nuns, but acting very little as if they were such;—the Alcalde de Corte, or Judge of the Municipality, still appeared in the proscenium, with his two clerks behind him, to keep the peace or bear record to its breach;—Semiramis wore a hooped petticoat and high-heeled shoes, and Julius Cæsar was assassinated in a curled periwig and velvet court coat, with a feathered Spanish hat under his arm. The old spirit, therefore, it is plain, prevailed, however great might be the improvements made in the external arrangements and architecture of the theatres.
One cause of this was the exclusive favor shown to the opera by two Italian queens, and encouraged by the new political relations of Spain with Italy. The theatre of the Buen Retiro, where Calderon had so often triumphed, was fitted up with unwonted magnificence, by Farinelli, the first singer of his time, who had been brought to the Spanish court in order to soothe the melancholy of Philip the Fifth, and who still continued there, enjoying the especial protection of Ferdinand the Sixth. Luzan translated Metastasio’s “Clemency of Titus” for the opening of the new and gorgeous saloon in 1747; and both then, and for a considerable period afterwards, all that the resources of the court could command in poetry and music, or in the show and pomp of theatrical machinery, was lavished on an exotic, which at last failed to take healthy root in the soil of the country.[368]
Meantime the national theatre, neglected by the court and the higher classes, was given up to such writers as Francisco de Castro, an actor who sought the applause of the lowest part of his audience by vulgar farces,[369] and Thomas de Añorbe, the chaplain of a nunnery at Madrid, whose “Paolino,” announced as “in the French fashion,” provoked the just ridicule of Luzan, and whose “Virtue conquers Fate,” if no less extravagant, has the merit of being an attack on astrology and a belief in planetary influences.[370] With the success of such absurdities, however, scholars and men of taste seem to have grown desperate. Montiano, a Biscayan gentleman, high in office at court, and a member of the Academy of Good Taste, that met at the house of the Countess of Lemos, led the way in an attack upon them. He began, in 1750, with a tragedy on the Roman story of Virginia, which he intended should be a model for Spanish serious theatrical compositions, and which he accompanied with a long and well-written discourse, showing how far Bermudez, Cueva, Virues, and a few more of the old masters, had been willing to be governed by doctrines similar to his own.
The tragedy itself, which comes like a sort of appendix to this discussion, and seems intended to illustrate and enforce its opinions, is entirely after the model of the French school, and especially after Racine;—all the rules, as they are technically called, including that which requires the stage never to be left vacant during the continuance of an act, being rigorously observed. But the “Virginia” is no less cold than it is regular, and, like the waters of the Alps, its very purity betrays the frozen region from which it has descended. Its versification, which consists of unrhymed iambics, is as far as possible removed from the warmth and freedom of the ballad style in the elder drama; its whole movement is languid; and the catastrophe, from the fear of shocking the spectator by a show of blood on the stage, turns out, in fact, to be no catastrophe at all. No effort, it is believed, was made to bring it upon the stage, and as a printed poem it produced no real effect on public opinion.
Montiano, however, was not discouraged. In 1753 he published another critical discourse and another tragedy, with similar merits and similar defects, taking for its subject the reign and death of Athaulpho, the Goth, as they are found in the old chronicles. But this, too, like its predecessor, was never acted, and both are now rarely read.[371]
The earliest comedy within the French rules that appeared in the Spanish language was the translation of Lachaussée’s “Préjugé à la Mode” by Luzan, which was printed in 1751.[372] It judiciously preserved the national asonantes, or imperfect rhymes, throughout, and was followed, in 1754, by the “Athalie” of Racine, rendered with much taste, principally into blank verse, by Llaguno y Amirola, Secretary of the Academy of History. But the first original Spanish comedy formed on French models was the “Petimetra,” or the Female Fribble, by Moratin the elder. It was printed in 1762, and was preceded by a dissertation, in which, while the merits of the schools of Lope and Calderon are imperfectly acknowledged, their defects are exhibited in the strongest relief, and the impression left, in relation to the old masters, is of the most unfavorable character.
In the play itself, a similar kind of deference is shown to the popular prejudices and feelings, which adhered faithfully to the old drama and to the miserable imitations of it that continued to be produced. It is divided into the three jornadas to which the public had so long been wonted, and is written in the national manner, sometimes with full rhymes, and sometimes only with asonantes. But the compromise was not accepted by those to whom it was offered. The principal character, Doña Gerónima, is feebly drawn; and, though the versification and style are always easy, and sometimes beautiful, the attempt to reconcile the irregular genius of the elder comedy with what Moratin, on his title-page, calls “the rigor of art” was a failure. A corresponding effort which he made the next year in tragedy, taking the story of Lucretia for his subject, and adopting even more fully the French conventions, was not more successful. Neither of them obtained the distinction of being publicly represented.
That honor, however, was gained in 1770, with much difficulty, by Moratin’s “Hormesinda,” the first original drama, under the canons that governed Corneille and Racine, which ever appeared in a public theatre in Spain. It is founded on events connected with the Arab invasion and the achievements of Pelayo, and is written, like the “Lucretia,” in that irregular verse, partly rhymed and partly not, which in Spanish poetry is called silva, and is intended to have, more than any other, the air of improvisation.
The partial success of this drama, which, notwithstanding an improbable plot, deserved all the favor it received, induced its author, in 1777, to write his third tragedy, “Guzman the True,” dedicating it to his patron, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, who was a descendant of that famous nobleman, and who, a few years before, had himself translated the “Iphigénie” of Racine into Spanish. The well-known character of the hero, who chose rather to have his son sacrificed by the Moors than to surrender the fortress of Tarifa, if it is not drawn with the vigor of the old Castilian chronicles or of the drama of Guevara, is exhibited, at least, with a well-sustained consistency, that gives token of more poetical power than any thing else produced by its author for the theatre. But this is its only real merit; and the last tragedy of Moratin was, on the whole, no more successful, and no more deserving of success, than the first.
Cadahalso, the friend whom we have already noticed as much under the influence of Moratin, went one step further in his imitation of the French masters. His “Don Sancho Garcia,” a regular, but feeble, tragedy, printed in 1771 and afterwards acted, is written in long lines and rhymed couplets; an innovation which could hardly fail to be accounted monotonous on a stage, one of whose chief luxuries had so long been a wild variety of measures. Nor did more favor follow an attempt of Sebastian y Latre to adjust to the theories of the time two old dramas, still often represented,—the one by Roxas and the other by Moreto,—which he forced within the pale of the three unities, and for the public representations of one of which, Aranda, the minister of state, paid the charges. Like the subsequent attempts of Trigueros to accommodate some of Lope de Vega’s plays to the same system of opinions, it was entirely unsuccessful. The difference between the two different schools was so great, and the effort to force them together so violent, that enough of the spirit and grace of the originals could not be found in these modernized imitations to satisfy the demands of any audience that could be collected to listen to them.[373]
Yriarte, better known as a didactic poet and fabulist, enjoys the distinction of having produced the first regular original comedy that was publicly represented in Spain. He began very young, with a play which he did not afterwards think fit to place among his collected works; and, beside translations from Voltaire and Destouches, and three or four attempts of less consequence, he wrote two full-length original comedies, which were better than any thing previously produced by the school to which he belonged. One of them, called “The Flattered Youth,” appeared in 1778, and the other, “The Ill-bred Miss,” ten years later;—the first being on the subject of a son spoiled by a foolishly indulgent mother, and the second on the daughter of a rich man equally spoiled by the carelessness and neglect of her father. Both are divided into three acts, and written in the imperfect rhyme and short verses always grateful to Castilian ears; and both are marked by good character-drawing and a pleasant, easy manner, not abounding in wit nor sensibly deficient in it. But, except these plays of Yriarte and Moratin, and an unfortunate one by Melendez Valdes in 1784,—founded on Camacho’s wedding, in “Don Quixote,” and containing occasionally gentle and pleasing pastoral poetry which ill agrees with the rude jesting of Sancho,—nothing that deserves notice was done for comedy in the latter part of the reign of Charles the Third.[374]
Tragedy fared still worse. The “Numantia Destroyed,” written by Ayala, a man of learning and the regular censor of the public theatres of Madrid, was acted in 1775. Its subject is the same with that of the “Numantia” by Cervantes; but the horrors of the siege it describes are not brought home to the sympathies of the reader by instances of individual suffering, as they are in the elder dramatist, and therefore produce much less effect. As an acting drama, however, it is not without merit. Its versification, which is, again, an attempt at a compromise with the public by giving alternate asonantes, but attaching them to the long-drawn lines of the French theatre, is not, indeed, fortunate; but the style is otherwise rich and vigorous, and the tone elevated. Perhaps its ardent expressions of patriotic feeling, and its fierce denunciations of foreign oppression, have done as much to keep it on the stage as its intrinsic poetical merits.
The “Raquel” of Huerta, printed in 1778, three years after the “Numantia,” is not so creditable to the author, and produced a less lasting impression on the public. The story—that of the Jewess of Toledo, which has been so often treated by Spanish poets—is taken too freely from a play of Diamante; and though Huerta has, in some respects, given the materials he found there a better arrangement, and a more grave and sonorous versification, he has diminished the spirit and naturalness of the action by constraining it within the hard conventions he prescribed to himself, and has rendered the whole drama so uninteresting, that, notwithstanding its considerable reputation at first, it was soon forgotten.[375]
The first real success of any thing in the French style on the Spanish stage, though not in the classical forms prescribed by Boileau and Racine, was obtained by Jovellanos. Early in life he had ventured a tragedy, entitled “Pelayo,” in the same measure with Ayala’s “Numantia,” and on nearly the same subject with the “Hormesinda” of the elder Moratin. But the philosophical statesman, though he wrote good lyric verse, was not a tragic poet. He was, however, something better;—he was a really good man, and his philanthropy led him, in 1773, to write his “Honored Culprit,” a play, intended to rebuke the cruel and unavailing severity of the laws of his country against duelling, as they then existed. It is a sentimental comedy in the manner of Diderot’s “Natural Son”; and, beside that it has the honor of being the first attempt of the kind on the Spanish stage, it has that of being more fortunate than any of its successors. The story on which it is founded is that of a gentleman, who, after repeatedly refusing a challenge, kills, in a secret duel, the infamous husband of the lady he afterwards marries; and, being subsequently led to confess his crime in order to save a friend, who is arrested as the guilty party, he is condemned to death by a rigorous judge, who unexpectedly turns out to be his own father, and is saved from execution, but not from severe punishment, only by the royal clemency.
How many opportunities for scenes of the most painful interest such a story affords is obvious at the first glance. Jovellanos has used them skilfully, because he has done it in the simplest and most direct manner, with great warmth of kindly feeling, and in a style whose idiomatic purity is not the least of its attractions. “The Honored Culprit,” therefore, was at once successful, and when well acted, though its poetical power is small, it can hardly be listened to without tears. It was first produced in one of the royal theatres, without the knowledge of its author; then, spreading throughout Spain, it was acted at Cadiz at the same time both in French and Spanish, and, at last, became familiar on the stages of France and Germany. Such wide success had long been unknown to any thing in Spanish literature.[376]
But from the time when the first attempt was made to introduce regular plays in the French manner upon the Spanish stage, an active contest had been going on, which, though the advantage had of late been on the side of the innovators, did not seem likely to be soon determined. In 1762, Moratin the elder published what he called “The Truth told about the Spanish Stage”;—three spirited pamphlets, in which he attacked the old drama generally, but above all the autos sacramentales, not denying the poetical merit of those by Calderon, but declaring that such wild, coarse, and blasphemous exhibitions, as they generally were, ought not to be tolerated in a civilized and religious community. So far as the autos were concerned, Moratin was successful. They were prohibited by a royal edict, June 17, 1765; and though, even in the nineteenth century, it can hardly be said that they have been entirely driven out of the villages, where they have been the delight of the mass of the people from a period before that of Alfonso the Wise, yet in Madrid and the larger cities of Spain they have never been heard since they were first forbidden.[377]
But this was as far as Moratin could prevail. In the public secular theatre, generally, his poetry and wit produced no effect. There, two riotous parties in the two audiences of Madrid—distinguishing themselves by favors worn in their hats and led on by vulgar friars and rude mechanics, making up in spirit what they wanted in decency, and readily uniting to urge an open war against all further innovations—effectually prevented any of the regular dramas that were written from being represented in their presence, until 1770. The old masters they partly tolerated; especially Calderon, Moreto, and the dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century; but the popular favorites were Ibañez, Lobera, Vicente Guerrero, a play-actor, Julian de Castro, who wrote ballads for the street beggars and died in a hospital, and others of the same class; all as vulgar as the populace they delighted.
After Aranda ceased to be minister, in 1773, this state of things was somewhat modified, without being materially improved. Under his administration, the theatres in the royal residences had been opened for tragedy and comedy; and translations from the French had been acted before the court in a manner suited to their subjects. The two popular theatres of the capital, too, had not escaped his regard, and under his influence had been provided with better scenery; and, from 1768, gave representations in the evening.[378]
Still, every thing was in a very low state. A blacksmith was the reigning critic to be consulted by those who sought a hearing on either stage, and the more regular plays, whether translations that had been acted with success at court, or tragedies and comedies of the poets already noticed, made a strange confusion with those of the old masters, which were still sometimes heard, and those of the favorites of the mob, whose works prevailed over all others in the theatrical repertories and in the general regard. But, whatever might be produced and performed, the intervals between the acts, and much time before and after the principal piece, were filled up with tonadillas, seguidillas, ballads, and all the forms of entremeses, saynetes, and dances, that had been common in the last century or invented in the present one,—an act in a serious and poetical play being sometimes divided, in order to give place to one or another of them, and gratify an audience that seemed to grow more and more impatient of every thing except popular farce.[379]
In this confusion of the old and the new,—of what was stiff, formal, and foreign with what was rudest and most lawless in the national drama at home,—a single writer appeared, who, from the mere force of natural talent, fell instinctively into a tone not unworthy of the theatre, and yet one that obtained for him a degree of favor long denied to persons of more poetical accomplishments. This was Ramon de la Cruz, a gentleman of family and an officer of the government at Madrid, who was born in 1731, and from 1765 to the time of his death, at the end of the century, constantly amused the audiences of the capital with dramas, written in any form likely to please at the palace, on the public stages of the city, or in the houses of the nobility, who, like the Duchess of Ossuna, or Aranda, the minister of state, were able to indulge in such a luxury at home.
In the whole, he wrote about three hundred dramatic compositions, but printed less than a third of that number; most of those he published being farces designed to produce a merely popular effect. They fill ten volumes, and are all in the short, national measure of the old drama, mingled occasionally, though rarely, with other forms of verse. They bear, however, very different names; some of them characteristic and some of them not. A few he calls “Dramatic Caprices”; apparently because no more definite title would be suited to their undefined character. Some he calls “Saynetes to be sung,” and some “Burlesque Tragedies.” Others have no names at all, not even for their personages, except those of the actors who represented the different parts. While yet others pass under the old designations of loas, entremeses, and zarzuelas, though often with a character which it would have been impossible for the early representations bearing the same names to assume. Occasionally, as in the case of the “Clementina,” he takes pains to observe all the rules of the French drama; but they sit very uneasily upon him, and he seldom submits to them. His great merit is almost entirely confined to his short farces; and therefore, when Duran, to whom the Spanish theatre owes so much, undertook to publish what was best of the works of La Cruz, he rejected all the rest, and, taking his materials both from manuscript sources and from what had been already published, gives us merely a hundred and ten proper “Saynetes.”
Their subjects are various, and they are very unequal in length; but, amidst all their varieties, one principle gave them a prevailing character and insured their success. They are founded on the manners of the middling and lower classes of the city, which they reflect freshly and faithfully, whether their materials are sought in the tertulias or evening parties of persons in a decent condition of life, where the demure Abate and the authorized lover of the mistress of the house contend for influence; or in the trim walks of the Prado, and among the loungers of the Puerta del Sol, where the fashion of the court is jostled by the humors of the people; or in the Lavapies and the Maravillas, where the lowest classes, with their picturesque dresses and unchanging manners, reign supreme and unquestioned. But, under all circumstances and in all situations, Ramon de la Cruz, in this class of his dramas, is attractive and amusing; and, though there is seldom any thought of dramatic skill in his combinations, and often no attempt at a catastrophe,—though his style is any thing but correct, and he is wholly careless of finish in his versification,—yet his farces so abound in wit and faithful delineations of character, they are so true to the manners they intend to represent, and so entirely national in their tone, that they seem expressly made for a pleasant and appropriate accompaniment to the longer dramas of Lope and Calderon, in whose popular spirit they are most successfully written.[380]
Meanwhile the press was not so inactive as it had been. Sedano published his “Jael,” taken from the story in the book of Judges; Lassala his “Iphigenia”; Trigueros his “Tradesmen of Madrid”; and Cortés his “Atahualpa”; the last two having been written, and successful, at the same festivities of 1784 for which Melendez composed his “Marriage of Camacho,” and failed. Cienfuegos, too, a poet of more original power than either of them, wrote his “Pitaco,” which opened for him the doors of the Spanish Academy; his “Idomeneo,” from which, in imitation of Alfieri, he excluded the passion of love; and his “Countess of Castile,” and his “Zoraida,” taken from the old traditions of his country’s wars and feuds; each giving proof of talent, but of talent rather lyric than dramatic, and each showing too anxious an adherence to Greek models, which were particularly unsuitable for the Zoraida, whose scene is laid in the gardens of the Alhambra.[381] But all of them—so far at least as the public stage is concerned—have been long since forgotten.
On the other hand, La Huerta, in 1785, published fourteen volumes of the old full-length plays, and one volume of the old “Entremeses”; a work intended to vindicate the national theatre of Spain in the preceding century, and to place it as high as that of the rest of Europe, or higher. But he was ill fitted for his task. A selection, designed to illustrate the great masters of the Spanish stage, which, to say nothing of other mistakes, wholly omitted Lope de Vega, began with a capital defect; and this circumstance, together with the arrogant tone of the editor in his Prefaces, and the contradiction to his present opinions afforded by the example of his own “Raquel,” which is entirely in the French manner, and to his translations of the “Electra” of Sophocles and the “Zaïre” of Voltaire, which were obviously made to defend the French school, prevented his “Teatro Hespañol” from producing the effect that might otherwise have followed its not ill-timed appearance. Still it was a work of consequence, and was afterwards acknowledged to be such by the public.[382]
The discussions it provoked were of more direct importance, and tended to infuse new life into the theatre itself. Such discussions had been begun immediately after the publication of the first tragedy by Montiano, in 1750,—a date which may be regarded as the dividing point in the history of the Spanish stage during the eighteenth century,—and they were now resumed with great activity, partly in consequence of the increasing interest in the national drama generally, and partly in consequence of the personal temper of La Huerta himself. One immediate result of this state of things was a great increase in the number of plays, of which at least ten times more were written in the last half of the century than in the first; and if there were less improvement in the condition of the theatre than might have been anticipated from such competition, still, as we have seen, poets and men of genius, like Ramon de la Cruz, were stirred by the movement, and far-sighted spirits, like Jovellanos, augured well for the future.[383]
The great obstacle to the success of better dramas lay in a number of writers, who pandered to the bad taste of the low and vulgar audiences of their time. Among the more prominent and successful of these were Valladares and Zavala. The first wrote above a hundred dramas on all kinds of subjects, tragic and comic, prefixing to his “Emperor Albert” a discourse in the spirit of Huerta, to defend the Spanish drama from the attacks of its French neighbours. The other, Zavala, wrote about half as many, some of which, like his “Victims of Love,” are in the sentimental style, while others, like three on the history of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, are as extravagant as any thing in the worst of the dramatists he sought to imitate. Both used the old versification, and intended to humor the public taste in its demands for a vulgar and extravagant drama; though occasionally, as in “The Triumphs of Love and Friendship,” by Zavala, they wrote in prose; and occasionally, as in “The Defence of Virtue,” they showed themselves willing to submit to the rules of the French stage. In fact, they had neither poetical principles nor poetical talent, and wrote only to amuse a populace more ignorant and rude than themselves.
Somewhat better than either of these last, and certainly more successful than either with the better classes of his contemporaries, was Comella. Like Valladares, his fertility was great; and the ease with which he wrote, and the ingenuity with which he invented new and striking situations, seemed to have the same charm for his audiences which they had had for the audiences of Lope and Calderon. But, unhappily, Comella had not the genius of the old masters. His plots are as involved, and sometimes as interesting, as theirs; but, generally, they are, to a most extravagant degree, wild and absurd. Even when he deals with subjects as well known as Christina of Sweden, Louis the Fourteenth, and Frederic the Great, he seems to have no regard for truth, probability, or consistency. His versification, too, is unfortunate. In form it is, indeed, such as had always been insisted on where the popular voice of Castile has borne sway; but it lacks variety, as well as richness and strength. Still, his romances in dialogue were found so interesting, and there was so much of tender and honorable feeling in the tone of his sentiments and the incidents of his plots, that above a hundred of his wild dramas—some of them in prose, but more in verse, some on historical subjects, but many made out of love-stories of his own invention—were received with applause, and proved more profitable to the theatres of Madrid than any thing else they could offer to the multitude on whom they depended for their existence.[384]
But while Comella was at the height of his reputation, a formidable antagonist, both to himself and to the whole class of writers he represented, appeared in the person of Moratin the younger, son of that poet who first produced on the Spanish stage an original drama written according to the French doctrines. He was born in 1760. To insure for the child a subsistence he had with difficulty earned for himself, his father placed him as an apprentice to a jeweller, at whose trade the young man continued to work till he was twenty-three years old,—the latter part of the time in order to support his mother, who had been left a widow.
But his natural disposition for poetry was too strong to be controlled by the hard circumstances of his situation. When seven years old he had written verses, and at eighteen he obtained the second prize offered by the Royal Spanish Academy for a poem to commemorate the taking of Granada,—a circumstance which astonished nobody more than it did his own family, for he had written it secretly, and presented it under a feigned name. Another success of the same sort, two years later, attracted more attention to the poor young jeweller; and at last, in 1787, by the kind intervention of Jovellanos, he was made secretary to the Spanish embassy at Paris, and accompanied the ambassador, Count Cabarrus, to that capital. There he remained two years, and, during that time, became acquainted with Goldoni, and entered into relations with other men of letters, that determined the direction of his life and the character of his drama.
On his return to Madrid, he obtained the patronage of Don Manuel Godoy, afterwards the all-powerful Prince of the Peace; and from this moment his fortune seemed certain. He was sent, at the public charge, to study the theatres of Germany and England, as well as those of Italy and France; he had pensions and places given him at home; and, while an honorable occupation in the department of Foreign Affairs, which awaited his return, insured him a distinguished position in society, he had still leisure left for that cultivation of letters which he prized above all his prosperity and all his official honors.
This happy state of things continued till the French invasion of 1808. His public relations then became a misfortune. The flood of events swept him from his place, as it did his patron; and, without becoming in any degree false to the interests of his country, he was so far implicated in those of the new government, that, when Ferdinand the Seventh was restored to the throne, Moratin was treated for a time with great rigor. But this, too, passed away, and he was again protected and favored. Still he suffered. His friends were in exile, and he felt solitary without them. He went back to France, and, though once afterwards he returned with a fond longing to the land of his birth, he found every thing so changed by the triumphant despotism, that it was no longer Spain to him, and he established himself finally at Paris, where he died in 1828. He was buried near Molière, whom in life he had honored and imitated.
When Moratin began his career as a dramatic poet, he found obstacles to his success on every side. His father’s tragedy of “Hormesinda” had been produced on the stage only in consequence of the ministerial protection of the Count of Aranda, and in opposition to the judgment and fears of the actors.[385] Cienfuegos, who had followed his example, was able with difficulty to obtain a hearing for two out of his five dramas;—one of them being listened to with partial favor because it was on a subject familiar to all Spaniards from the days of the old ballads, and always welcome to their hearts. Quintana, whose name was early respected and his influence uniformly great, had failed with “The Duke of Viseo.” Others were discouraged by such examples, and made no effort to obtain the public notice where there was so little prospect of success.
This was the condition of the stage, when the younger Moratin appeared as a candidate before the audiences of Madrid. The new school had gained some ground, and the living representatives of the old one were none of them more distinguished than Comella; but the taste of the public was not changed, and the managers of the theatre were obliged, as well as inclined, to yield to its authority and humor its fancies.
Moratin determined, however, to tread in the footsteps of his father, for whose example and memory he always felt the sincerest reverence. He therefore wrote his first comedy, “The Old Husband and the Young Wife,” quite within the rules, finishing every part of it with the greatest exactness, but dividing it, as the old Spanish plays were divided, into three acts, and using throughout the old short verse which was always popular. But when, in 1786, he offered his comedy for representation, the simplicity of the action, so unlike the involved plots on which the common people still loved to exercise their extraordinary ingenuity, and the very quietness and decorum that reigned throughout it, made the actors alarmed for its success. Objections were made, and these, with other untoward circumstances, prevented it from being brought out for four years. When it finally appeared, it was received with a moderate applause, which satisfied neither of the extreme parties into which the audiences at Madrid were then divided, and yet was not perhaps unjust to the comedy, whose action is somewhat cold and languid, though its poetical merits, in other respects, are far from being inconsiderable.
But, whatever may have been the effect on the public, the effect on its author was decisive. He had been heard. His merit had been, in part at least, acknowledged; and he now determined to bring the pretensions of the popular dramatists, who were disgracing the stage, to the test of a public trial on the stage itself. For this purpose, he wrote his “New Play,” as he called it, which is an exposition of the motives of a penniless author for composing one of the noisy, extravagant dramas then constantly acted with applause, and an account of its first representation;—the whole related by the author himself and his friends, in a coffee-house contiguous to the theatre, at the very moment the fatal representation is supposed to be going on.
It is in two acts; and the catastrophe—which consists of the confusion of the author and his family at the failure of his performance—is brought on with skill, and with an effect much greater than the simplicity of the action had promised. The piece, therefore, was received with a favor which even Moratin and his friends had not anticipated. The poet, who is its victim, was recognized at once to be Comella. Some of the inferior characters, whether justly or not, were appropriated to other persons who figured at the time, and the “New Play” was acknowledged to be a brilliant satire;—severe indeed, but well merited and happily applied. From this time, therefore, which was 1792, Moratin, notwithstanding the exasperated opposition of the adherents of the old school, had secured for himself a permanent place on the national stage, and, what is more remarkable, this little drama, almost without a regular action and founded on interests purely local, was, for the sake of its wit and originality, translated and successfully represented both in France and Italy.[386]
“The Baron,” which is in two acts and in verse, was at first prepared to be sung; and, without the permission of the author, was altered to an acting drama and performed in public during his absence from Spain. On his return, he improved it by material additions, and produced it again in 1803. It is the least effective of his theatrical performances; but it triumphed over a cabal, which supported a drama written on the same subject and represented at the same time, in order to interfere with its success.
At the moment Moratin was making arrangements for bringing out “The Baron,” he was occupied with the careful preparation of another comedy in verse, that was destined still further to increase his reputation. This was “The Female Hypocrite,” which was written as early as 1791, and was soon afterwards represented in private, but which was not finished and acted publicly till 1804. It is an excellent specimen of character-drawing; the two principal personages being a girl, made, by the severity of her family, to assume the appearance of being very religious, while her cousin, who is well contrasted with her, is rendered frank and winning by an opposite treatment. The very subject, however, was one that brought Moratin upon dangerous ground, and his play was forbidden by the Inquisition. But that once formidable body was now little more than an engine of state; so that the authority of the Prince of the Peace was not only sufficient to prevent any disagreeable consequences to Moratin himself, but was able soon afterwards to indulge the public in a pleasure for which they were only the more eager, because it had for a time been interdicted.
Moratin’s last original effort on the stage was a full-length prose comedy in three acts, which he called the “Little Girl’s Consent,” and which was acted in 1806. Its general movement is extremely natural, and yet it is enlivened with a little of the intrigue and bustle that were always so much liked on the Spanish theatre. A young girl, while in the course of her education at a convent, becomes attached to a handsome officer of dragoons. Her mother, ignorant of this, undertakes to bring her home and marry her to an excellent, benevolent old gentleman, whom the daughter has never seen, but whom, out of mere weakness, she has been unable to refuse. At an inn on the road, where the younger lover falls in with them on purpose to break up this match, they all meet; and he discovers, to his dismay, that his rival is an uncle to whom he is sincerely attached, and to whom he owes many obligations. The mistakes and intrigues of the night they pass together at this inn give great life to the action, and are full of humor; while the disinterested attachment of the young lovers to each other, and the benevolence of the uncle, add to the conflicting claims and relations of the different parties a charm quite original in itself, and very effective in its exhibition. The play ends by the discovery of the real state of the daughter’s heart, and the renunciation of all the pretensions of the uncle, who makes his nephew his heir.
Nothing on the Spanish stage had been so well received for a long period. It was acted twenty-six nights successively to audiences who were in the habit of demanding novelties constantly; and then it was stopped only because Lent came to shut up the theatres. No criticism appeared except to praise it. The triumph of Moratin was complete.
But he was not destined long to enjoy it. The troubles of his country were already begun, and in three years the French were its temporary masters. He prepared, indeed, afterwards two spirited translations from Molière, with alterations that made them more attractive to his countrymen; one from the “École des Maris,” which was acted in 1812, and the other from the “Médecin Malgré Lui,” which was acted in 1814; but, except these and an unfortunate prose version of Shakspeare’s “Hamlet,” which was printed in 1798, but never performed, he wrote nothing for the theatre except the five comedies already noticed. These, if they form no very broad foundation for his fame, seem yet to constitute one on which it may rest safely; and, if they have failed to educate a school strong enough to drive out the bad imitations of the old masters that have constantly pressed upon them, have yet been able to keep their own place, little disturbed by the changes of the times.[387]
That the Spanish drama, during the century which elapsed between the establishment of the House of Bourbon on the throne and the temporary expulsion of that house from Spain by the arms of Bonaparte, had, in some respects, made progress, cannot be doubted. More convenient and suitable structures for its exhibitions had been erected, not only in the capital, but in all the principal cities of the kingdom. New and various forms of dramatic composition had been introduced, which, if not always consistent with the demands of the national genius, nor often encouraged by the general favor, had still been welcome to the greater part of the more cultivated classes, and served both to excite attention to the fallen state of the theatre generally, and to stir the thoughts of men for its restoration. Actors, too, of extraordinary merit had from time to time appeared, like Damian de Castro, for whom Zamora and Cañizares wrote parts; Maria L’ Advenant, who delighted Signorelli in the higher characters of Calderon and Moreto; the Tirana, whose tragic powers astonished the practised taste of Cumberland, the English dramatist; and Maiquez, who enjoyed the friendship and admiration of nearly all the Spanish men of letters in his time.[388]
But still the old spirit and life of the drama of the seventeenth century were not there. The audiences, who were as unlike those of the cavalier times of Philip the Fourth as were the rude exhibitions they preferred to witness, did as much to degrade the theatre as was done by the poets they patronized and the actors they applauded. The two schools were in presence of each other continually struggling for the victory, and the multitude seemed rather to rejoice in the uproar, than desire so to use it as to promote changes beneficial to the theatre. On the one side, extravagant and absurd dramas in great numbers, full of noise, show, and low buffoonery, were offered with success. On the other, meagre sentimental comedies, and stiff, cold translations from the French, were forced, in almost equal numbers, upon the actors by the voices of those from whose authority or support they could not entirely emancipate themselves. And between the two, and with the consent of all, the Inquisition and the censors forbade the representation of hundreds of the dramas of the old masters, and among them not a few which still give reputation to Calderon and Lope. The eighteenth century, therefore, so far as the Spanish theatre is concerned, is entirely a period of revolution and change; and while, at its conclusion, we perceive that the old national drama can hardly hope to be restored to its ancient rights, it is equally plain that a drama founded on the doctrines taught by Luzan, and practised by the Moratins, is not destined to take its place.[389]