Madrid: an historical description and handbook of the Spanish capital

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Calderon was of noble blood, and found influential patronage in Madrid. We read that Philip IV. gave him the order of Santiago, and appointed him director of the theatre and public entertainments. Pedro Calderon entered the church at the age of fifty-two. He died in the year 1681.

At number fifteen Calle de Cervantes there is a memorial tablet to Lope de Vega, with the inscription that the writer set upon his house: “A small possession of one’s own is great; a great possession of another is small.”

Lope de Vega was born in Madrid in 1562. For a time he was secretary to the Duke of Alba, but, after wounding an opponent in a duel, he fled from the city. His power of production was marvellous, and it is said that he wrote a play of three acts, in verse, in twenty-four hours. He died in 1631.

Cervantes was intimately associated with Madrid, though Alcalá de Henares is claimed as his birthplace. The greatest author of Spain came to the capital in his youth, to study for one of the learned professions, and here he lived under the tutelage of Juan Lopez de Hoyos.

After serving as chamberlain in Rome to Cardinal Aquaviva, Cervantes, at the age of twenty-four, joined the expedition against Turkey, and for several years he passed an adventurous life on sea and land. Returning to Madrid, he lived with relatives, and began to apply his mind seriously to study, and to the cultivation of his literary gift. In Madrid he wrote a number of comedies and novels, but he left the city for Seville, where he obtained more lucrative employment as a government official. The first part of the masterpiece “Don Quixote” was published in Madrid in 1605.

Cervantes died in 1616 from dropsy, and his body was laid to rest in Madrid. In the Plaza de las Cortes is a memorial in bronze to the greatest of the romance writers of Spain. It was designed by Antonio Sola, and set up in 1835. There are reliefs on the pedestal of the monument depicting episodes from “Don Quixote.”

The Church of San Francisco el Grande, the National Pantheon, was built in 1784 on the site of a convent; but it was not established as a mausoleum until 1869. It has been decorated at great expense and with much taste, and is not altogether an unworthy repository for the ashes of the illustrious dead. Here are supposed to rest the remains of Guzman, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Velazquez, but the tombs have not been identified. In 1869 the ashes of Morales, Juan Mena, Quevedo, Calderon, the Great Captain, and other illustrious Spaniards were placed here, but all of these have since been restored to their original resting-places.

The Italian opera was introduced into Spain by Charles III. The country has not produced any very eminent operatic composers, though opera is a popular entertainment. In the drama Spain excelled at one period above all other countries. The plays of the nation were exceedingly numerous in the palmy days, ranging from sacred representations, or miracle dramas, to farce. Many of the subjects were historical; but with the decline of taste, the drama lost its Greek simplicity, and became the vehicle of complicated intrigues and artificial plots. Cervantes, as dramatist, endeavoured to check this corruption of taste, but the pressure of poverty forced him to follow the conventions of the hour, and to write on a level with the intelligence of his audiences.

Lope de Vega wrote about eighteen hundred plays. Much of his work is hasty, extravagant and bombastic. Calderon wrote with more directness and simplicity of style, and spent far more pains upon his compositions. Augustin Moreto produced thirty-six plays, which rank high from the literary point of view. De Castro, de Roscas, and de Solis are three of the more esteemed comedy authors of a later period, whose pieces were played in Madrid.

Galdos, who is the author of several novels and plays, resides in Madrid, in the Paseo de Areneros. Doña Emilia Pardo de Bazan, the most powerful of the women writers of Spain, says: “The life of the playwright in Madrid is more active, agitated, and arduous than other branches of the literary career, which languish and sleep for want of stimulus.” Most of the dramatists of the nation live in Madrid, or spend part of the year there. Among them are José Echegaray, now the leading playwright, Guimerá, Eugenio Sellés, Dicenta, Vital Aza, Abati Ricardo de la Vega, Garcia, and Paso.