And where ’s your jacket red and tight?
And such a brow why do you bear,
And come abroad, this dawning mild,
With all your hair in elf-locks wild?
Pray, are you broken down with care?[415]
Revulgo replies, that the state of the flock, governed by so unfit a shepherd, is the cause of his squalid condition; and then, under this allegory, they urge a coarse, but efficient, satire against the measures of the government, against the base, cowardly character of the king and his scandalous, passion for his Portuguese mistress, and against the ruinous carelessness and indifference of the people, ending with praises of the contentment found in a middle condition of life. The whole dialogue consists of only thirty-two stanzas of nine lines each; but it produced a great effect at the time, was often printed in the next century, and was twice elucidated by a grave commentary.[416]
Its author wisely concealed his name, and has never been absolutely ascertained.[417] The earlier editions generally suppose him to have been Rodrigo Cota, the elder, of Toledo, to whom also is attributed “A Dialogue between Love and an Old Man,” which dates from the same period, and is no less spirited and even more dramatic. It opens with a representation of an old man retired into a poor hut, which stands in the midst of a neglected and decayed garden. Suddenly Love appears before him, and he exclaims, “My door is shut; what do you want? Where did you enter? Tell me how, robber-like, you leaped the walls of my garden. Age and reason had freed me from you; leave, therefore, my heart, retired into its poor corner, to think only of the past.” He goes on giving a sad account of his own condition, and a still more sad description of Love; to which Love replies, with great coolness, “Your discourse shows that you have not been well acquainted with me.” A discussion follows, in which Love, of course, gains the advantage. The old man is promised that his garden shall be restored and his youth renewed; but when he has surrendered at discretion, he is only treated with the gayest ridicule by his conqueror, for thinking that at his age he can again make himself attractive in the ways of love. The whole is in a light tone and managed with a good deal of ingenuity; but though susceptible, like other poetical eclogues, of being represented, it is not certain that it ever was. It is, however, as well as the Couplets of Revulgo, so much like the pastorals which we know were publicly exhibited as dramas a few years later, that we may reasonably suppose it had some influence in preparing the way for them.[418]
The next contribution to the foundations of the Spanish theatre is the “Celestina,” a dramatic story, contemporary with the poems just noticed, and probably, in part, the work of the same hands. It is a prose composition, in twenty-one acts, or parts, originally called, “The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibœa”; and though, from its length, and, indeed, from its very structure, it can never have been represented, its dramatic spirit and movement have left traces, that are not to to be mistaken,[419] of their influence on the national drama ever since.
The first act, which is much the longest, was probably written by Rodrigo Cota, of Toledo, and in that case we may safely assume that it was produced about 1480.[420] It opens in the environs of a city, which is not named,[421] with a scene between Calisto, a young man of rank, and Melibœa, a maiden of birth and qualities still more noble than his own. He finds her in her father’s garden, where he had accidentally followed his bird in hawking, and she receives him as a Spanish lady of condition in that age would be likely to receive a stranger who begins his acquaintance by making love to her. The result is, that the presumptuous young man goes home full of mortification and despair, and shuts himself up in his darkened chamber. Sempronio, a confidential servant, understanding the cause of his master’s trouble, advises him to apply to an old woman, with whom the unprincipled valet is secretly in league, and who is half a pretender to witchcraft and half a dealer in love philters. This personage is Celestina. Her character, the first hint of which may have been taken from the Archpriest of Hita’s sketch of one with not dissimilar pretensions, is at once revealed in all its power. She boldly promises Calisto that he shall obtain possession of Melibœa, and from that moment secures to herself a complete control over him, and over all who are about him.[422]
Thus far Cota had proceeded in his outline, when, from some unknown reason, he stopped short. The fragment he had written was, however, circulated and admired, and Fernando de Rojas of Montalvan, a bachelor of laws living at Salamanca, took it up, at the request of some of his friends, and, as he himself tells us, wrote the remainder in a fortnight of his vacations; the twenty acts or scenes which he added for this purpose constituting about seven eighths of the whole composition.[423] That the conclusion he thus arranged was such as the original inventor of the story intended is not to be imagined. Rojas was even uncertain who this first author was, and evidently knew nothing about his plans or purposes; besides which, he says, the portion that came into his hands was a comedy, while the remainder is so violent and bloody in its course, that he calls his completed work a tragicomedy; a name which it has generally borne since, and which he perhaps invented to suit this particular case. One circumstance, however, connected with it should not be overlooked. It is, that the different portions attributed to the two authors are so similar in style and finish, as to have led to the conjecture, that, after all, the whole might have been the work of Rojas, who, for reasons, perhaps, arising out of his ecclesiastical position in society, was unwilling to take the responsibility of being the sole author of it.[424]