LOPE DE VEGA.
A prolific playwright, a popular poet, a voluminous romance writer, an author whose fecundity is equalled only by the elder Dumas, the contemporary of Shakspere, the friend of Cervantes, the intimate and guide of Calderon, the founder of the Spanish national drama—Lope de Vega was all these, and yet today he is carefully forgotten. His biography even remains unwritten. The attempt, it is true, has been made, with more or less success, in England by Lord Holland, in America by Mr. Ticknor, and in France by M. Damas-Hinard. None is fully satisfactory; all three are too prejudiced, the first two against him, the last in his favor. Mr. Ticknor’s is the fairest and the ablest. But the space in a history of literature which can be assigned to any one author is necessarily too limited to permit the introduction of a full-length portrait; with a slight sketch, or a kit-cat at best, we must content ourselves. The articles in the various encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries are either scant or in great part taken from Lord Holland’s book. Much biographical material exists, scattered here and there, and needing only judicious gleaning. But a few months after his death La Fama Postuma, a eulogy containing many curious details of his manner of life, was published by his friend and follower, Montalvan, whom Valdivielso calls the “first-born of Lope de Vega’s genius.” The allusions to him in the works of his contemporaries are copious; but his bare biography can be condensed into a few lines.
Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born at Madrid, November 25, 1562. He was a precocious child, reading Latin as well as Spanish at the age of five, and at eleven he wrote his first plays. Left alone in the world at the age of fourteen by the death of his father, also a poet, he travelled as far as Segovia with a school-fellow. Their money gave out, and when they attempted to sell a gold chain to pay their way back they were arrested. The corregidor before whom they were brought, seeing that they were but school-boys, kindly sent them back to Madrid in care of an alguacil. At fifteen Lope was a soldier warring in Portugal and Africa. At sixteen he was the page and secretary of Geronimo Manrique, Bishop of Avila, and also studied and took the degree of Bachelor at the University of Alcala. While in the bishop’s house he wrote a few eclogues and a pastoral comedy. Then he became the secretary of Antonio, the grandson of the great Duke of Alva; his Arcadia, written then, is more or less an account of the gallant adventures of his patron. Returning to the bishop, he was about to become a priest when he fell in love, and in 1584 he married Doña Isabella d’Urbina. Quarrelling with a hidalgo of little reputation, he was arrested, by the aid of Claudio Conde released from prison, and exiled; he lived two years in Valencia, and there he first regularly wrote for the stage. Shortly after his return to Madrid his wife died, and in conjugal despair he embarked on the famous Armada, finding time to write a poem, “The Beauty of Angelica,” a continuation of the Orlando Furioso, before the dispersion and destruction of the great fleet by Drake. After travelling in Italy he returned to Spain and became the secretary of the Marquis of Sarria. In 1597 he married Doña Juana de Guardio. For nearly ten years Lope de Vega seems to have been quietly happy, devoting himself to the care of his son Carlos, but in 1607 or 1608 both his wife and his son died, leaving him an infant daughter. During these years he had been writing steadily for the stage; in 1609 he delivered his Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias, and in the same year he became a priest. He was also a Familiar of the Inquisition—an honorary distinction, attesting the purity of his Catholic blood, and conferring the privilege of being called into the service of the institution. In 1625, according to Mr. Ticknor, “he entered the congregation of the native priesthood of Madrid, and was so faithful and exact in the performance of his duties that in 1628 he was elected to be its chief chaplain.” After working for the theatre for forty years, in 1630 he definitely renounced dramatic authorship. In 1628 the pope, Urban VIII., wrote him an autograph letter, conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity and naming him a Knight of the Order of Malta. For more than twenty-five years he daily devoted some portion of his time to the service of the church; on the title-page of his plays he calls himself Frey Lope de Vega, Familiar of the Inquisition, and the last important work he published was Dorotea, a long prose romance in dialogue, probably slightly autobiographical. Finally, on August 27, 1635, at the age of seventy-three, Lope Felix de Vega Carpio died. The funeral ceremonies, lasting nine days, were magnificent; the eulogistic poems published in Spain and Italy would fill several volumes; and “most solemn of all,” says Mr. Ticknor, generally disposed to underrate Lope de Vega’s popularity and ability, “was the mourning of the multitude, from whose dense mass audible sobs burst forth as his remains slowly descended from their sight into the house appointed for all living.”
For forty years the works of Lope de Vega had filled the theatres not only of Spain but of all Europe. There were but two dramatic companies in Madrid when he began to write; there were forty when he ceased. He composed over fifteen hundred dramas and an unknown number of lighter pieces, in addition to his non-theatrical works. He was as popular as he was prolific. Not only in Europe but in America were his plays performed. One of his comedies, the Fuerza Lastimosa, was even exhibited within the seraglio at Constantinople. His merit was so universally recognized that to call anything a Lope was to stamp it as being sterling; it was sufficient to say es de Lope. When the king and queen of Spain met him in the street they caused their carriage to stop, that they might better see the illustrious man. The Spanish dramatists of his own and the succeeding age did not hesitate to call him their master. Tirso de Molina, Alarcon, Calderon, and Guillen de Castro hail him as their chief. And he was as popular a man as he was an author; he was personally beloved by nearly all his contemporaries; he had few enemies and many friends. A gentleman by birth, breeding, and education, he had a kind word for all. He was handsome and agile. He wittily declared that he disliked only those who ask a person’s age without matrimonial intentions, those who take snuff in the presence of their superiors, those old men who dye their locks, those churchmen who consult gypsies, and those men who, though born of woman, yet speak ill of the sex.
Although it is as a playwright that he is best known, yet he was the author of many other works. He wrote two heroic, four mythological, four historical poems (among which was La Dragontea, devoted to the abuse of Sir Francis Drake), one burlesque (La Gatomachia, describing the loves and rivalries of two cats), many descriptive and didactic verses, and a multitude of sonnets and epistles. He was also the author of eight almost interminable prose novels. His plays, however, are the noblest monument of his genius, although he himself thought otherwise. He declared that his autos (a sort of revival of the mysteries and moralities of the middle ages) were his best works, and regretted that he had not devoted his whole life to religious poetry.
His dramas (the Spanish word comedias meaning merely plays) may be roughly divided into three classes:
1. Comedies of common life, or domestic dramas;
2. Heroic dramas, which perhaps might sometimes be called tragedies; and
3. Comedies of intrigue, or comedias de capa y espada (comedies of Cloak and Sword, as the Spanish call them, from those frequently-used “properties”).
He also wrote religious plays, some, like the autos, resembling the mysteries and moralities, others more infused with a modern and secular spirit. He often chose Scriptural subjects for his plays, and in some of his heroic dramas the heroes are holy men and saints. But it is especially in the comedias de capa y espada that he excelled. They were interesting stories thrown into dramatic shape and written with the view of exciting surprise and curiosity. Only those ignorant of the Spanish habits and the Spanish customs of that day will reproach him for his frequent use of duels and disguises. He faithfully transcribed the romantic existence of the time. A rigid examiner may declare that his most successful pieces were comedies of intrigue rather than comedies of manners. They please by their plot, always ingenious and almost always original; by their interest, always sustained and exciting. Lope de Vega was a thorough master of stage effect. He weaves and reweaves the web and woof of his story, gaining and retaining the attention of the spectator by the growing interest. We are carried rapidly along by the skill of the dramatist, sometimes in spite of ourselves. Even in the best of his plays the incidents are often improbable, but in our enjoyment we can readily pardon this. When Shakspere has called Bohemia a desert country by the sea, and Beaumont and Fletcher speak of Naples as though it were an island, it would indeed be strange if Lope were exempt from such errors. In one play we find Adam and Eve “dressed very gallantly after the French fashion”; in another Nero sings a serenade in the streets of Rome. The American Indians discourse of Diana and Phœbus; Cyrus the Great, after his ascension to the throne, marries a shepherdess; Job, David, Jeremias, and St. John the Baptist are introduced in one play; and in “The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus,” among the dramatis personæ are Providence, Imagination, The Christian Religion, Idolatry, and a Demon. Haste is hardly an excuse for this, and De Vega worked in haste. The elder Dumas wrote a novel in seventy-six consecutive hours. For fifteen days De Vega wrote an act a day, and more than one hundred of his plays were written within twenty-four hours each. At least this seems to be the meaning of
“Pues mas de ciento en horas veinticuatro
Pasaron de las musas al teatro.”
Mr. Ticknor, however, reads these lines to mean that more than a hundred were performed within twenty-four hours after their completion. Perhaps this interpretation is accurate, but to any one acquainted with the difficulties attending the mounting and rehearsing of a modern comedy it seems, to say the least, improbable; and, at any rate, De Vega’s facility of composition was so great that many writers rashly assert that he could compose a play in three or four hours! Montalvan tells a pleasant anecdote illustrating the rapidity of his work. To oblige a manager Lope and Montalvan agreed to write a piece together. The first two acts of the Tercera Orden de San Francisco were divided between them, each writing an act a day. The third act was to be halved into eight leaves each. Montalvan continues, to quote Lord Holland’s version: “As it was bad weather, I remained in his house that night, and, knowing that I could not equal him in the execution, I had a fancy to beat him in the despatch of the business. For this purpose I got up at two o’clock, and at eleven had completed my share of the work. I immediately went out to look for him, and found him very deeply occupied with an orange-tree that had been frost-bitten in the night. Upon my asking him how he had gone on with his task he answered: ‘I set about it at five, but I finished the act an hour ago, took a bit of ham for breakfast, wrote an epistle of fifty triplets, and have watered the whole of the garden—which has not a little fatigued me.’ Then, taking out the papers, he read me the eight leaves and the triplets—a circumstance that would have astonished me had I not known the fertility of his genius and the dominion he had over the rhymes of our language.” At this period Lope was nearly seventy years old, or such a trifle would scarcely have tired him.
Schlegel draws a brilliant comparison between Lope de Vega and Shakspere, or rather between the Spanish and the English stage. Any such method of measurement injures the Spaniard; it is only in the management of his plots that he is able to rival the Englishman. It is curious, however, to note that each great writer was surrounded by minor lights—set, as it were, with glittering but inferior gems. Shakspere shone in the midst of a glorious company containing Jonson, Ford, Fletcher, Beaumont, Greene, Nash, Marlowe, Massinger, and Webster. Lope de Vega, following Lope de Rueda, was surrounded by a brilliant throng of friendly rivals—Cervantes, Calderon, Montalvan, Moreto, Alarcon, Matos-Fragoso, and Guillen de Castro. It is also remarkable to find that England and Spain, then the possessors of a great drama, are now barren fields; while France, once but the empty echo of the classic muse, is to-day the chief country in possession of a living dramatic literature. For this literature France owes largely to England and Spain; French tragedy and French comedy are directly indebted to Lope’s influence. From a play of Guillen de Castro, one of Lope’s followers, Corneille derived his Cid, the greatest French tragedy; and from a play of Alarcon, another of Lope’s followers (and the first of American dramatic authors, for by birth and education he was a Mexican), Corneille took his Menteur, the earliest of French comedies. In a letter to Boileau Molière said: “I owe much to the Menteur. At the time it appeared I desired to write, but I was uncertain as to what I should write. My ideas were confused; this work came and defined them. Without the Menteur, no doubt, I should have written some such comedies of intrigue as the Etourdi and the Dépit Amoureux, but perhaps I should never have written the Misanthrope.”
The dramatis personæ of Lope’s plays are not character studies, finely and fully polished, like those of Molière; they are rather off-hand sketches, fresh and original. Although they often disclose haste, they always show the firm though rapid touch of a master; and however wanting in completeness of detail, they never lack boldness of outline. The people who walk and talk in Lope de Vega’s comedies are living men and women, speaking and acting like human beings, and true to human nature as it was in Spain in those adventurous times; they were not lay figures, mere puppets, pulled hither and thither by visible wires. He rarely created an eccentric character, never an impossible one.
He did not allow himself Molière’s privilege of taking his material wherever he found it. Only once is it known that he used the work of another: his Esclavos in Argel is based on Cervantes’ Trato de Argel. He was an originator—copied, not copying; and if at times his characters seem to lack novelty, it is perhaps in part because we live in the nineteenth century and he wrote in the sixteenth. For two centuries and a half the playwrights of the world have been pillaging him until his people and his plots have become public property. Calderon copied him; Molière and Corneille carried Calderon to France; the English stole from all three; so it is small wonder that what Lope de Vega transcribed from nature is now typical and traditional. He was first in the field; others have stolen his pressed flowers.
A full exposition of De Vega’s ideas of dramatic art can best be found in his own essay on the subject, the Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias. It would seem from this essay that in Lope’s time Spain was slowly freeing herself from the fetters of the unities, first riveted by Aristotle. England had set the example; Spain was fast following. In these two countries the fierce fight was then fought that two centuries and a half later was to agitate France. Spain then had her battle between the Romantics and the Classics, and Lope de Vega, while ironically deferential to the ancient laws, fought foremost on the side of freedom. As in France Victor Hugo in 1830, so in Spain Lope de Vega in 1600. Both were leaders; both have written essays on dramatic art. It is curious to compare the Spanish writer’s Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias with the French author’s elaborate and scientific discussion of dramatic effect contained in the celebrated preface to his never-acted Cromwell.
The Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias was written in 1609 at the request of one of those numerous academies then existing in Spain, and founded in imitation of the Italian Della Cruscans. It contains internal evidence of haste in its construction; although he knew better, Lope carelessly mistakes Terence for Plautus. Capable of composing a comedy in a day, he may easily have dashed off this little essay in a very few hours. It is written in blank verse, only the last two lines of each stanza rhyming. The stanzas, also, are of unequal length. Although the essay seems almost an improvisation, it is extremely interesting not only to the student of his plays but also to the casual reader, as it gives a view of the state of the Spanish stage at the time not elsewhere to be found. The following unabridged English rendering of the essay has been made from the excellent French version of M. Damas-Hinard:
“Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias.
(The New Art of Writing Plays.)
“Noble minds, flower of Spain, who, in this illustrious academy, will soon have surpassed not only those academies of Italy which Cicero, emulating Greece, established in the land where sleep the waters of Avernus, but even that school of Plato in which Athens saw so rare an assembly of philosophers come together, you order me to write you an essay on dramatic art in accordance with the public taste to-day. This task seems easy, and, indeed, it would be to him among you who has worked the least for the stage, and who therefore better knows the rules; but it must be done by me, who have never composed except contrary to the rules of the art. It is not, thank Heaven! that I do not know them: these theories were familiar to me when I was yet a school-boy, and when the sun had not ten times passed from Taurus to Pisces; but at the time when I chose this career I found the stage filled with works very different from those which the first inventors of the art left as models, and such, indeed, as were composed by the barbarians, who had accustomed the vulgar to their crudities. And they have so thoroughly established themselves in this fashion that he who would now write for the theatre according to the precepts of the art dies without glory and without reward; for among those who lack the enlightenment of a superior mind custom always carries the day.
“Several times, it is true, I have written following these principles, which but few people know; but as soon as I see these monstrous compositions appear, full of magical apparitions, to which rush the crowds and the women, always worshipping such absurdities, then I return to my barbarian habits. And when I have a comedy to write I lock up the rules behind triple bolts; I cast Plautus and Terence out of my study for fear of hearing their cries, for truth calls aloud in these dumb books; and I then write according to the art invented by those who wished to gain the applause of the crowd. After all, as it is the public who pays for these absurdities, ’tis but just that it be served to its taste.
“True comedy has one aim, as has every kind of poem, and this aim is to imitate the action of men and to paint the manners of the age in which they lived. Now, every poetical imitation is composed of three things: dialogue, versification, harmony or melody. Comedy and tragedy agree in this; but they differ, inasmuch as the former represents the action of the lower orders, and the latter only concerns itself with kings and high personages. Judge from that how much may be said against our comedies.
“At first our pieces were called autos, because they confined themselves to the imitation of common actions and interests. Among us Lope de Rueda was the model of this style; his comedies, which have been printed, are in prose, and of an order so low that he has introduced artisans and traces the loves of a blacksmith’s daughter. To-day we call them interludes, these antique works in which the rules of art are carefully observed, in which the action is simple and takes place among the middle classes—for an interlude was never seen in which kings figured. And this explains how plays little by little fell into deep discredit because of the lowness of style, and how they put kings and princes into comedy, to the great satisfaction of the ignorant.
“In the beginning of his Ars Poetica Aristotle relates, in a manner quite obscure, it is true, the debate which took place between Athens and Megara touching the originator of the theatre—the Megarians attributing this glory to Epicharmus, while the Athenians claimed it for Magnes. Donat traces back the first attempts to the ancient sacrifices, and, in this respect following Horace, he attributes the origin of tragedy to Thespis, and that of comedy to Aristophanes. The Odyssey of Homer is the result of a comic inspiration, but the Iliad was the noble model of tragedy. It is in imitation of this poem that is composed my Jerusalem, which I have called a tragic epic. They commonly call by the name of comedy the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso of the celebrated poet Dante Alighieri, and Manetti gives the reasons for this in the preface to that poem.
“All the world knows that comedy, falling into disrepute, was condemned to silence for a time; that after that came the satyres, which, being still more cruel, passed away more promptly; and that then the new comedy was born.
“In the beginning dramatic works consisted but of choruses. Soon there was added a certain number of characters. But Menander, followed in this by Terence, rejected the choruses as tedious. This latter was a most scrupulous observer of the precepts; never did he raise the style of comedy to a tragic loftiness, wiser in that respect than Plautus, whom they have so much reproached for this fault.
“Tragedy is founded on fact, comedy on fiction, and the latter was called ‘flat-footed’ because it was played without cothurnus or scenery, and because it took its plots from the humblest classes. Yet then, as now, there were several kinds of comedy: there were pallium comedies and toga comedies, and pantomimes, and fabulæ atellanæ and tabernariæ.
“The Athenians, who gave prizes to their dramatic poets and to their actors, in their comedies rebuked wickedness and vice with antique elegance. This is why Cicero called comedy the mirror of manners, the image of truth—sublime attribute which raises Thalia to the rank of history, and which shows us how much she merits esteem and honor.
“But already it seems to me that you draw back, saying: ‘What use is this translating of books and this fatiguing show of erudition?’ Believe me, it is not without motive that I recalled to your memory all these things; I wished to let you see that you have asked me for an essay on dramatic art in Spain, where all plays are written contrary to art, and I wished to declare that our pieces are not according to right or the ancient rules. But let us leave this; you have recourse to my experience, and not to what I may have been able to learn of an art which tells us the truth, but to which the vulgar prefer the false.
“If, then, you asked me for the rules of the art, I should refer you to the wise and learned Rebortelo, and you would see explained in his book on Aristotle or on comedy what otherwise is scattered in a crowd of works without order and without light. But since you ask the opinion of those now in possession of the stage, acknowledging that the public has the right to establish the incongruous laws of our dramatic prodigy, I will tell you my idea, and your command must excuse my temerity. I should like, since the public is in error, to deck this error with agreeable colors; I should like, since it is no longer possible to follow the ancient rules, to find a mean between the two extremes.
“First choose the subject of your comedy, and, in spite of the old precepts, do not disquiet yourself whether there be or be not kings among your characters. I ought not to conceal, however, that our king and lord, Philip the Prudent, was angry every time he beheld a king on the stage, either because he saw in that a violation of the rules of the art, or because he thought that even in fiction the royal authority should not be presented too near the gaze of the people.
“Besides, in this we draw near to the ancient comedy, in which Plautus did not fear to place even gods, as the part he gives Jupiter in the Amphitryon proves. Heaven knows it is difficult for me to approve of this. Even Plutarch, in speaking of Menander, formally blames ancient comedy; but since we in Spain have renounced the rules of the art and treat it cavalierly, this time the classicists are silenced.
“In mingling the tragic and the comic, and Terence with Seneca (from which results a species of monster like the Minotaur), you will have one part of the piece serious and the other farcical. But this variety pleases very much. Nature herself gives us the example of it, and it is from such contrasts that she gains her beauty.
“Take care only that your subject presents but one action; take care that your story is not overcharged with episodes (that is to say, with things which lead away from the main idea), and that no part can be detached without overthrowing the whole edifice. Do not trouble yourself about confining all the action within the space of one day, although it is the rule of Aristotle; we have already rejected his authority in mingling tragedy and comedy. Let us content ourselves with reducing the time as much as may be possible, unless the poet composes a story the action of which extends over several years, and in this case he could place the intervals of time in the ‘waits’—as, for instance, if one of his characters has a journey to take. These liberties, I know, disgust the critics. Well, the critics may stay away from our pieces.
“How many of these fellows cross themselves in horror, seeing several years given to an action which ought to be accomplished in the space of an artificial day—for they would not even accord us the twenty-four hours! For my part, considering that the eager curiosity of a Spaniard seated at the play cannot be satisfied even by showing him all the events from Genesis to the day of the Last Judgment in two hours, I think that, if our duty is to please the spectators, it is right that we should do all that is necessary to gain this end.
“The subject once chosen, write your piece in prose, and divide it into three acts, doing your best that each act, if it is possible, embrace but the space of one day. Captain Viruès, an illustrious writer, first put comedy in three acts, which before had gone on all fours like a child; and truly it was then in its infancy. I myself, at the age of from eleven to twelve years, wrote in four acts and four sheets, for each act was contained in a sheet of paper. In those days they played three little interludes in the intervals of the acts, and now it is much if they play even one, which is immediately followed by a dance. Dancing, however, fits so well into comedy that Aristotle approves of it, and Atheneus, Plato, and Xenophon do not blame it, except when it is not decent,[[164]] like that of Callipedes. The dance seems to me to replace amongst us the chorus of the ancients.
“The subject being treated in two ways, let them from the start be joined and well connected together until the end of the piece, so that one can divine the dénouement but at the last scene; for when the spectators know it they turn their faces to the door and their backs to the actors, to whom they have listened for three hours with interest, and of whom they think no more when they no longer need them to know what will be the result.
“Let the stage rarely remain empty. These delays make the spectator impatient and uselessly prolong the play; and besides being a great fault, to avoid it is to add art and grace to the work.
“Then begin to versify, and in your language, always choice, use neither brilliant thoughts nor witty remarks when you treat of domestic affairs; it suffices in such a case to imitate the conversation of two or three persons. But when you bring upon the stage a character who exhorts, counsels, or dissuades, you can allow yourself the use of fine language and striking ideas, and in this you will imitate nature; for when we give advice, when we wish to encourage or deter, we speak in a manner totally different from familiar chat. In this regard we follow the opinion of the rhetorician Aristides, who desires that the language of comedy should be clear, pure, and easy, like that of ordinary conversation, adding also that it should differ essentially from the tragic style, where we may use expressions pompous, sonorous, and glittering.
“Never quote Scripture, and take care never to offend taste by an affected erudition; to imitate the language of conversation you need name neither hippogriffs nor centaurs, nor the other mythological entities.
“If you make a king discourse, let it be with the dignity proper to the royal majesty; let the old man express himself with sententious gravity; let the conversation of lovers be replete with such lively sentiments as to move those who hear. In monologues let the character be totally changed; by this transformation let him force the spectators to identify themselves with him; let him speak and reply to himself in a natural manner; and if he bemoans a lover’s lot, let him not forget the respect due to the fair sex. Under all circumstances let the ladies preserve the modesty they ought to have; and if they don male attire (which is always very agreeable to the public), let this change of costume have a reasonable motive. In short, never paint impossible things, for the first maxim is that art can only imitate the possible.
“Let not a servant treat too lofty subjects, and take care not to put into his mouth those witty sayings which we have seen in some foreign comedies.
“Let your characters never forget their nature; let them remember at the end what they have said at first, lest we make the same reproach to them as was made to the Œdipus of Sophocles—that he had forgotten his fight with Laïus.
“Adorn the end of your scenes with some swelling phrase, with some joke, with lines more carefully polished, so that the actor at his exit does not leave the audience in ill-humor.
“In the first act lay the foundation; in the second let the complications commence, and contrive in such a way that until half through the third act no one can foresee the end. Always deceive the curiosity of the spectator by showing him, as though possible, a result entirely different from that to which the incidents seem to point.
“Let the versification be tastefully appropriate to the subject you treat. Decasyllabic lines suit lamentations; the sonnet is well placed in a monologue; descriptions demand the romantic stanza, although they are as brilliant as possible in octosyllabic metre. Triple-rhymed lines are reserved for grave affairs, and the redondillas[[165]] for lovers’ conversations.”
The sound sense of this little essay shows how thoroughly De Vega understood his subject. Writing to please the populace, not the learned and possibly hyper-critical, he had studied the playgoer and knew all his peculiarities—how to please him and how to take liberties with impunity. His comedies of Cloak and Sword are the least careless and the most admirable of his plays, and they were the most successful. The involved and complicated plots, the duels and disguises, the hurry and the vigor of this class of plays are seen to best advantage in Lope de Vega’s works. He had founded the school, and the bent of his genius fitted him to be its master. His works and those of his scholars went at once to all parts of Europe. In England Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, Farquhar, Congreve, Wycherly, Holcroft, were his followers, copyists, plagiarists. Not only did others pillage him, but, like almost all prolific authors, he plagiarized from himself. Over thirty or forty times has he treated one subject: a lady and a knight forced to leave the court in disguise because of the persecutions of the king, and taking refuge in a village, where, after many mishaps and adventures, they are finally married. Of course in each of these twoscore plays the situations vary, but the central idea is the same in all. To an author of such facility the great difficulty was in the discovery of a subject. That was all he needed; its dramatic dressing was an easy task. Hardly one of the picturesque points of Spanish history did he neglect. His lighter plays were often historical. Generally they were not. His Perro del Hortelano (“Dog in the Manger”) is, for instance, an original invention. It contains a delightful sketch of a woman absorbed by jealousy, and yet unable to make up her mind to marry the loved one because of his inferior birth. Both lovers are drawn with delicious vigor—a vigor suggesting, perhaps remotely, Thackeray. This charming comedy shows of what things Lope was capable in this line had he so willed. It is somewhat in the style of Scribe at his best. Indeed, in many respects he was the precursor of Scribe, who greatly resembled him in fecundity, facility, and felicity of execution. More than one of his plays, if modernized, might pass for the work of the brilliant French dramatist.
But the best of Lope’s work is many degrees above the best of Scribe’s. In ingenuity and in originality, and in the conduct of the business of the stage, the Spaniard is at least the equal of the Frenchman, while in the depicting of passion he is by far the superior. Scribe was incapable of anything at all approaching the sombre and inevitable conclusion of the Star of Seville, appalling with the inexorable logic of fate. Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble has produced a spirited English play suggested by it, of which Lord Holland has given a long analysis with translated extracts. As he justly remarks, no mere relation of the plots of Lope’s plays would give a sufficient idea of the attractions they possess, “nor can they be collected from a mere perusal of detached passages. The chief merit of his plays is a certain spirit and animation which pervades the whole, but which is not to be preserved in disjointed limbs of the composition.”
It is easy to find the reason for Lope de Vega’s theatrical activity. He was poor, and play-writing was profitable. He says somewhere that poverty and himself formed a copartnership to work for the stage. At the close of the sixteenth century Spain was divided into several almost independent provinces, and there was no interprovincial copyright; the bookseller of Castile could reprint and sell for his own profit the successful work first published in Leon. An author in those days could not even get pay for advance-sheets. Under these circumstances publishers naturally paid authors little or nothing. Literature was a labor of love. The dramatic taste, however, of the Spanish people was increasing. The two companies of actors gradually grew to forty, and the forty audiences asked for novelty. The managers endeavoring to satisfy this demand, the consumption of comedies was something enormous. There was a uniform price fixed in advance: a comedy was worth five hundred reals, equivalent to about forty or fifty dollars of our money. The reward was not great, but the labor was light—at least to Lope. Dramatic work paid; other literature did not. Lope would have been certainly justified in devoting himself exclusively to the drama. He might labor in other fields; on the stage he ruled. What is done quickly may die quickly, and few of Lope’s plays hold the stage to-day even in Spain. But if his plays are not seen, his influence is visible in the drama of France, of England, of Germany, and of Spain, his own country, of the literature of which he and Calderon and Cervantes are the greatest glories. Calderon was his follower and Cervantes was his friend. Although it has been said they were at enmity, it is known that Lope de Vega praised Cervantes, and the author of Don Quixote generously eulogized his more successful rival thus: “At last appeared that prodigy of nature, the great Lope de Vega, and established his monarchy on the stage. He conquered and reduced under his jurisdiction every actor and author in the kingdom.... And though there have been many who have attempted the same career, all their works together would not equal in quantity what this single man has composed.”
And Cervantes wrote these lines almost twenty years before Lope de Vega’s death, almost twenty years before he had ceased composing. It is with the following brilliant paragraph that Mr. Ticknor, always strongly prejudiced in favor of Cervantes, begins his historical criticism of Lope’s life and labor, and with it we end: “It is impossible to speak of Cervantes as the great genius of the Spanish nation without recalling Lope de Vega, the rival who far surpassed him in contemporary popularity, and rose, during the lifetime of both, to a degree of fame which no Spaniard had yet attained, and which has since been reached by few of any country.”