The Auto Sacramental is very Spanish, very remote from us. These mysteries were performed during the month containing the feast of Corpus Christi in the streets, not in the theatres, which were shut at this time, but they were acted by professional actors. “Andar en los carros”—to go in the cars—was the regular phrase used by the actors for this form of their work. The cars were elaborate structures, covered, but capable of being opened to show scenes, and of letting down drawbridges which served as the stage. They were taken to different parts of the town, so that performances might be given in the squares, or before the houses of distinguished people.
The True God Pan may represent for us what the Auto Sacramental had become in Calderon’s hands when his genius was at its fullest development.[36] Calderon was fond of taking classical myths for his autos, and treating them as symbols of things to come since fulfilled. He used the story of Psyche and Cupid, and also the Andromeda. The application of the myth of Pan to Christianity was not uncommon in the Renaissance. Pan in Spanish means “bread,” and the auto was especially meant to set forth the mystery of the Sacrament. This play on words is the key to the whole auto. If the reader thinks the conceit puerile, and of more than dubious taste, he must remember that he is asked to look not at what would please us, but at what did please the Spaniards,—what was accepted by their still mediæval simplicity of piety, and was in keeping with their love for playing on words. |The loa.| First came the loa, or praise. This was an introductory piece, sometimes delivered by a single speaker, sometimes containing a little action. It was common on the secular stage, but had no necessary connection with the piece to follow, being only part of the surroundings and dependencies of the comedia. Calderon’s loa was a regular introduction to the auto. In The True God Pan there are five personages in the loa—History, Poetry, Fable, Music, and Truth. History, the dama, begins by announcing that in this time of general joy it becomes her to speak, since she by the mouth of Paul and John has told how the Bread (Pan) became flesh, and the Word had become flesh. She calls in Music and the other personages. A forfeit dance takes place—that is to say, all sing as they dance, and each who makes a fault is called upon to pay a small forfeit. This was, and is, a form of amusement in Spain. The songs all refer to the mystery of the Sacrament, and the faults are the successive departures of Music, Poetry, and the others from the Catholic truth. Fable promises to pay her forfeit by telling one of her stories, and beginning with the Spanish once upon a time—“Érase que se era”—gives an allegorised version of the myth of Pan. Poetry promises an auto on the same subject, to show that the heathen had foreknowledge of our pure truths, but being blind, without the light of Faith, applied them to their own False Gods. The auto shall be on the True God Pan. With a loyal address to Charles the Consoler—the unhappy Carlos II., then a small boy, before whom the auto was performed—the loa ends.
El Verdadero Dios Pan.
The personages of the auto are—Pan, Night, the Moon, the World, Judaism, Synagogue, Heathenism, Idolatry, Apostasy, Malice, Simplicity, the Fiend, Faith, a child, shepherds, shepherdesses, with musicians and attendants. Pan comes out of a tent, and begins by a lyric appeal to Night. Night comes, and Pan explains that his birth was at Bethlehem, which in Hebrew means house of grain, and from that point goes on to allegorise, in a fashion which it is difficult to interpret, out of its own proper language of piety and poetry, without offence. He asks Night to lead him to the Moon, and then again allegorises, explaining that she is Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpine in hell, therefore the type of human nature, which dwells on earth, aspires to heaven, and can sink to the infernal regions. Night refuses, telling him that all the country is ravaged by a monster of whom Paul, Chrysostom, and Saint Augustine speak. Here we have an example of those “impertinences” which excited the ridicule of Madame D’Aulnoy, who would, no doubt, have found Ben Jonson’s masques “impertinent.” Pan recognises the monster as “Sin,” and announces that he will retire to the desert while the Gentiles sing to their false gods. The last words are taken up by a chorus, and we have now a scene at the altar of the Moon. Judaism, Heathenism, Synagogue, and the others appear, only to quarrel and debate. The auto goes on, with constant interludes of singing and dancing. The monster “Sin” is heard of, ravaging the flocks. All prove hireling shepherds except Pan, who appears to help Luna in her distress. There is a scene of defiance between him and the Fiend, quite in the style of the comedia when galan is opposed to galan. The Fiend flies, leaving the trunk of a tree with which he meant to strike down Pan. The comic element is not wanting. Judaism takes up the weapon which the Fiend has dropped, and threatens Pan with it, but he only succeeds in knocking down, and killing, Synagogue. Then he carries off the body, saying in an aside that though all the world knows Synagogue is dead, yet he will always consider him as alive. Judaism rejects Pan, and Apostasy will not be persuaded that Flesh can be Bread. Apostasy, of course, stands for the heretics who will not accept the doctrine of transubstantiation. But Heathenism is persuaded, and Luna, typifying human nature, believes. Pan takes her as “spouse,” and both ascend to the celestial mansions.
Los Dos Habladores.
The entremes—interlude or farce—was by nature a slight thing. In the Dos Habladores—‘The Two Chatterers’—of Cervantes we have the simple story of a gentleman who is plagued in the streets by a ragged gabbler of insufferable fluency. He makes several attempts to shake him off without success, but at last sees how to make use of him. Sarmiento, the pestered gentleman, has a talkative wife. He takes the bore home, introduces him as a poor relation, and sets him at her. Roldan the chatterer drives the woman frantic by torrents of talk which leave her no chance to speak. The merit of the piece on the stage lay no doubt in the opportunity it presented for “patter” and comic acting. Yet the entremeses—not this one only, but the whole class—have great literary interest as storehouses of vivid, richly coloured, familiar Castilian.
A drama which flowered for a century, and was so productive as the Spanish, cannot be fully illustrated by six examples. Yet these may serve to show the reader what he may expect to find there. Much he will not find, or will find only in passing indications. Perfection of poetic form in the verse is too rare; the more than human beauty of the Elizabethan lyric, the “mighty line,” whether of Marlowe, Shakespeare, or Corneille, the accomplishment of Molière or Racine, are wanting. The personages are constantly recurring types, with here and there a humour. The Juan Crespo of Calderon’s Alcalde de Zalamea stands almost alone among the characters of the Spanish stage as a being of the real world fixed for us by the poet. What has been called the au delà of Molière, and what is found in the very greatest masters—the something which transcends the mere action before us, and is immortally true of all human nature—is not on the Spanish stage. But there is much good verse, easy, with a careless grace, and spirited in Lope, or stately with a peculiar Spanish dignity in Calderon; there is a fine wind of romance blowing all through, and there is ingenious, unresting, yet lucid action. If it never reaches the highest level of our Elizabethan drama, neither does it fall to the vacant horseplay which is to be found side by side with the tragedy of Marlowe or Middleton. And though this essentially theatrical drama cannot be said to have held the mirror up to nature, yet it does give a picture of the time and the people, adapted and coloured for the boards, but still preserving the likeness of the original. This may be said to be its weakness. Spanish dramatic literature is so much a thing of Spain, and of the seventeenth century, that it must needs appeal the less on that account to other peoples and later times. None the less the spectacle is picturesque in itself, while the great theatrical dexterity of the Spanish playwrights will always make their work interesting to all who care for more than the purely literary qualities of drama. The religion of the Spaniard is conspicuous in his plays. It has been said that Calderon was the poet of the Inquisition, and if this is not said as mere blame, it conveys a truth. That solution of the riddle of the painful earth which A. W. Schlegel professed to have found in him, is no doubt only the teaching of the mediæval Church. We may on this account decline very properly to receive him as a deeper thinker than Shakespeare, but that teaching of the Church, to which the Inquisition strove to confine all Spaniards, had been the guide and consolation of all civilised Europe. To have given it a lofty poetical expression for the second time, as Dante had for the first, was no contemptible feat.