If flocks or vales or hill afar
So winning are.[454]
And so ends this incongruous drama;[455] a strange union of the spirit of an ancient mystery and of a modern vaudeville, but not without poetry, and not more incongruous or more indecorous than the similar dramas which, at the same period, and in other countries, found a place in the princely halls of the most cultivated, and were listened to with edification in monasteries and cathedrals by the most religious.
Vicente, however, did not stop here. He took counsel of his success, and wrote dramas which, without skill in the construction of their plots, and without any idea of conforming to rules of propriety or taste, are yet quite in advance of what was known on the Spanish or Portuguese theatre at the time. Such is the “Comedia,” as it is called, of “The Widower,”—O Viudo,—which was acted before the court in 1514.[456] It opens with the grief of the widower, a merchant of Burgos, on the loss of an affectionate and faithful wife, for which he is consoled, first by a friar, who uses religious considerations, and afterwards by a gossiping neighbour, who, being married to a shrew, assures his friend, that, after all, it is not probable his loss is very great. The two daughters of the disconsolate widower, however, join earnestly with their father in his mourning; but their sorrows are mitigated by the appearance of a noble lover who conceals himself in the disguise of a herdsman, in order to be able to approach them. His love is very sincere and loyal; but, unhappily, he loves them both, and hardly addresses either separately. His trouble is much increased and brought to a crisis by the father, who comes in and announces that one of his daughters is to be married immediately, and the other probably in the course of a week. In his despair, the noble lover calls on death; but insists, that, as long as he lives, he will continue to serve them both faithfully and truly. At this juncture, and without any warning, as it is impossible that he should marry both, he proposes to the two ladies to draw lots for him; a proposition which they modify by begging the Prince John, then a child twelve years old and among the audience, to make a decision on their behalf. The prince decides in favor of the elder, which seems to threaten new anxieties and troubles, till a brother of the disguised lover appears and consents to marry the remaining lady. Their father, at first disconcerted, soon gladly accedes to the double arrangement, and the drama ends with the two weddings and the exhortations of the priest who performs the ceremony.
This, indeed, is not a plot, but it is an approach to one. The “Rubena,” acted in 1521, comes still nearer,[457] and so do “Don Duardos,” founded on the romance of “Palmerin,” and “Amadis of Gaul,”[458] founded on the romance of the same name, both of which bring a large number of personages on the stage, and, if they have not a proper dramatic action, yet give, in much of their structure, intimations of the Spanish heroic drama, as it was arranged half a century later. On the other hand, the “Templo d’ Apollo,”[459] acted in 1526, in honor of the marriage of the Portuguese princess to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, belongs to the same class with the allegorical plays subsequently produced in Spain; the three Autos on the three ships that carried souls to Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, evidently gave Lope de Vega the idea and some of the materials for one of his early moral plays;[460] and the Auto in which Faith explains to the shepherds the origin and mysteries of Christianity[461] might, with slight alterations, have served for one of the processions of the Corpus Christi at Madrid, in the time of Calderon. All of them, it is true, are extremely rude; but nearly all contain elements of the coming drama, and some of them, like “Don Duardos,” which is longer than a full-length play ordinarily is, are quite long enough to show what was their dramatic tendency. But the real power of Gil Vicente does not lie in the structure or the interest of his stories. It lies in his poetry, of which, especially in the lyrical portions of his dramas, there is much.[462]
CHAPTER XV.
Drama continued. — Escriva. — Villalobos. — Question de Amor. — Torres Naharro, in Italy. — His Eight Plays. — His Dramatic Theory. — Division of his Plays, and their Plots. — The Trofea. — The Hymenea. — Intriguing Drama. — Buffoon. — Character and Probable Effects of Naharro’s Plays. — State of the Theatre at the End of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.
While Vicente, in Portugal, was thus giving an impulse to Spanish dramatic literature, which, considering the intimate connection of the two countries and their courts, can hardly have been unfelt in Spain at the time, and was certainly recognized there afterwards, scarcely any thing was done in Spain itself. During the five-and-twenty years that followed the first appearance of Juan de la Enzina, no other dramatic poet seems to have been encouraged or demanded. He was sufficient to satisfy the rare wants of his royal and princely patrons; and, as we have seen, in both countries, the drama continued to be a courtly amusement, confined to a few persons of the highest rank. The commander Escriva, who lived at this time and is the author of a few beautiful verses found in the oldest Cancioneros,[463] wrote, indeed, a dialogue, partly in prose and partly in verse, in which he introduces several interlocutors and brings a complaint to the god of Love against his lady. But the whole is an allegory, occasionally graceful and winning from its style, but obviously not susceptible of representation; so that there is no reason to suppose it had any influence on a class of compositions already somewhat advanced. A similar remark may be added about a translation of the “Amphitryon” of Plautus, made into terse Spanish prose by Francisco de Villalobos, physician to Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles the Fifth, which was first printed in 1515, but which it is not at all probable was ever acted.[464] These, however, are the only attempts made in Spain or Portugal before 1517, except those of Enzina and Vicente, which need to be referred to at all.
But in 1517, or a little earlier, a new movement was felt in the difficult beginnings of the Spanish drama; and it is somewhat singular, that, as the last came from Portugal, the present one came from Italy. It came, however, from two Spaniards. The first of them is the anonymous author of the “Question of Love,” a fiction to be noticed hereafter, which was finished at Ferrara in 1512, and which contains an eclogue of respectable poetical merit, that seems undoubtedly to have been represented before the court of Naples.[465]