JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCON.
The author of this play was Alarcon, that thoughtful writer who, on the Spanish stage, ranks with Lope, Calderon, Moreto, and Tirso. Strange as it may appear to those who doubt whether any good can come out of Mexico, he was born and bred in that mysterious country. What his countrymen do not know of their great artist, Cabrera, they are able to tell of their chief literary glory—namely, the place and date of his baptism. Documents found in the royal university of Mexico established the several facts that Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza was baptized in that city on the 2d day of October, 1572, and received the grade of licentiate or lawyer from the university. It was for some time asserted that he was born at Tasco (for whose church Cabrera is said to have painted extraordinary works); but Chalco, not far from the capital, has also laid claim to the honor of his birth. He is represented as short, ugly, and humpbacked. To improve his fortunes, he sought the literary life of Madrid, but his first efforts were deemed of little importance. By the year 1621 he had written eight acted comedies, of which Las Paredes Oyen (The Walls Hear) is esteemed the best, as also one of the finest in any language. In spite of his physical imperfections his genius won him admirers, socially as well as otherwise. In 1628, he became clerk to the Council of the Indies, and held his office till his death in 1639; so that it seems our author was a contemporary of Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, and other great lights of the English drama. His comedies are lauded as forming a system of practical philosophy, inasmuch as they give a delightful verification of the proverbial wisdom of his time, and preach capital sermons from common texts. "Luck and Labor," "The World's Favors," "No Evil that does not come for Good," "Before you Marry see what you are about," "The Truth made Suspicious," are the suggestive titles of some of his dramas, which appear to have lost nothing of their peculiar excellence by pointing morals. It was Alarcon who said:
To kill an enemy is argument
Of fearing him; but to despise and spare him
Is greater chastisement, for while he lives
He is a witness of his own defeat.
He that kills, victory abbreviates,
And he that pardons makes it the more great,
As meanwhile that the conquered lives
The conqueror goes on conquering.
To give to comedy a conscience and a purpose is the distinguishing design of Alarcon; but, while the public of Madrid never failed to perceive the moral of his humor, they could yet heartily laugh at the wit of his dialogues and the genuine comicality of his situations. In his plays cool reason walked hand in hand with sentiment and pleasantry, as they do in some of the most admired comedies of our own stage. The delight with which the Mexicans witnessed La Verdad Sospechosa proved that to Alarcon belonged not merely the ingenuity by which men are amused, but something of that magic by which their own wit and humor are excited. Alarcon could give logic to a whim, a fancy, or a passion. In the Prueba de las Promesas his lover expostulates:
If Beauty's faithful lover I have been,
Esteeming though despised; loving, abhorred;
What law allows to thee, what text approves
That thou shouldst hate me because I do love thee?
An apology for woman made by a servant in Todo es Ventura (Luck is Everything) may be translated thus:
What is it that we most condemn in maids?
Inconstancy of mind? We taught them so.
The love of money? It's a thing in taste—
Or let that righteous fellow throw a stone
Who is not guilty of the self-same fault.
Of being easy? Well, what must they do,
If no man perseveres and all get tired
At the fourth day of trying? Of being hard?
Why do we thus complain when we, too, all
Run to extremes? If difficult our suit
We hate it, and if easy we despise.
In Ganar Amigos (To Gain Friends) Don Fernando has killed the brother of Don Fadrique, and seeks and obtains refuge with the latter, who, however, does not know him. Don Fadrique, though at length made aware of the truth, faithfully keeps the pledge he has given the slayer of his brother. Seeing this, Don Fernando gratefully exclaims:
The earth whereon thou stand'st shall be my altar.
Fadrique. Rise, sir; give me no thanks, as do I not
This deed for you, but for my honor's self,
For I have plighted unto you my word.
In the comedy of Mudarse por Mejorarse (To Change for the Better; or, more literally, to Change in order to Better One's Self), a certain Don Garcia, who was to marry Doña Clara, falls in love with her niece Leonor; whence this dialogue:
Leonor. Is it, perchance, Don Garcia,
The custom in Madrid to fall in love
With niece and aunt at one and the same time?
Garcia. At least, if so divine a niece comes there
As you, the custom is to leave the aunt.
Leonor. A bad one, then.
Garcia.It is not to be called
Bad, if such matter be the occasion.
Leonor. How can a reason be for changefulness?
Garcia. One's self to better is the best of reasons.
Leonor. Well, there's a law of constancy: to what
Doth it oblige, whereunto doth it reach,
If it be right one beauty to forswear
For a greater? Constancy's not to love
Unchangeably the love more beautiful;
To love the best what firmness do we need?
He constant is who doth despise the more
Happy occasion.
Garcia.I confess, sweet lady
That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.
Leonor. Then cannot you in one who'd be discreet
Have confidence, as change is to be excused
By gain of fairer subject?
Garcia.It is clear.
Leonor. Well, be it so; and for I think thee, sir,
A man judicious, and thou leav'st my aunt
To make thyself the better so by me,
Pray do excuse me of thy love, since must
I give thy suit resistance till I know
If I've another and a fairer niece.
The discreet Leonor, compromised by the entangling suit of Don Garcia, is compelled to admit the attentions of a gallant and rich marquis, with whom at last she falls in love. The following passage explains the rest:
Garcia.How, cruel one,
Hast changed so soon?
Leonor.Yes, for the better.
Mencia (aside). She gave't him, then, with his own flower.
Garcia. Ungrateful, is not thy disdain enough
Without the aggravation—making him,
The marquis, better?
Leonor.Wilt deny the improvement?
Although in blood thou'rt equal, yet between
Little and ample fortune, and between
Your worship and your lordship—?
Garcia.Yea, I grant:
But what effect hast given thy words,
Thy promise, tyrant, if thou hast all changed
By taking better subject? Where's constancy
If thou hast liked me only when thou couldst not
Better thyself? She only constant is
Who doth despise the opportunity.
Leonor. I do confess to thee, Don Garcia,
That's to be constant, but it's to be foolish.
Here is the "retort courteous" in its most charming humor. The gallant grace and wit of these dialogues are evidence of the original art with which Alarcon could make his comedy a study of life, and compel his auditors to think somewhat after they ceased to laugh. This is the function of eminent high comedy, though we may not ask that it shall elaborate a severe or intrusive moral, and though we admit its possession, as in Shakespeare, of the liveliest poetic qualities. Another passage, this time from the famous Verdad Sospechosa, wherein Don Beltran reprimands his son, Don Garcia, for the vice of habitual lying, will further elucidate the method of Alarcon:
Beltran. Are you a gentleman, Garcia?
Garcia.—I believe
I am your son.
Beltran.—And is it, then, enough,
To be my son to be a gentleman?
Garcia. I think so, sir.
Beltran.—What a mistaken thought!
Consists in acting like a gentleman
To be one. What gave birth to noble houses!
The illustrious deeds of their first authors, sir.
Without consideration of their births, the deeds
Of humble men honored their heirs. 'Tis doing
Good or ill makes gentleman or villain.
Garcia. That deeds give nobleness I'll not deny,
But who will say birth does not also give it?
Beltran. Well, then, if honor can be gained by him
Who was born without it, is't not certain that,
Vice versa, he can lose it who was born
With it?
Garcia.—'Tis true.
Beltran.—Then if you basely act,
Although my son, no longer you will be
A gentleman. So if your habits shame
You here in town, an ancient crest will not
Signify, nor noble ancestors serve.
What is't report says to me? That your lies
Are all the talk of Salamanca. Now,
If't affronts noble or plebeian but
To tell him that he lies, what is't to lie
Itself? If honorless I live the while
On him who gave the lie I take not full
Revenge—is your sword long enough or breast
So stout that you esteem yourself all able
To have revenge when all the city says
You lie? Is't possible a man can have
Such abject thoughts that unto vice he can
Live subject without pleasure, without gain?
A morbid pleasure have the sensual,
The power of money draws the covetous;
The taste of viands have the gluttonous;
A purpose and a pastime hath the gambler;
The homicide his hate, the thief his aim;
Fame with ambition cheers the warrior;
In short, doth every vice some pleasure give
Or profit—but for lying, what remains
But infamy and contempt?
Who could preach with more wit a brief sermon like this than Alarcon? It is no small honor to the dramatist born in Mexico that the great Corneille, who, if we may credit the biographers of Alarcon, partly translated and partly imitated La Verdad Sospechosa in his famous Menteur, could avow that he would give two of his best plays to have invented the happy argument of the Spanish original. Molière and Voltaire were also among the admirers of the Spanish comedy, which Corneille at first judged to be the work of Lope de Vega. Of the general merits of Alarcon, the following estimate by his German critic, Schack, which we find in a Mexican notice of the dramatist, will doubtless suffice: "Happy in painting comic characters in order to chastise vice, as in the invention and development of heroes to make virtue adorable; rapid in action, sober in ornament; inferior to Lope in tender respect of feminine creations, to Moreto in liveliest comedy, to Firso in travesty, to Calderon in grandeur and stage effect, he excelled all of them in the variety and perfection of his figures, in the tact of managing them, in equality of style, in carefulness of versification, in correctness of language." To this large and discriminating praise we may add George Ticknor's comprehensive dictum: "On the whole, he is to be ranked with the very best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the National Theatre."