History of Spanish Literature, vol. 1 (of 3)

by George Ticknor

The “Celestina,” as has been intimated, produced little or no immediate effect on the rude beginnings of the Spanish drama; perhaps not so much as the dialogues of “Mingo Revulgo,” and “Love and the Old Man.” But the three taken together unquestionably lead us to the true founder of the secular theatre in Spain, Juan de la Enzina,[433] who was probably born in the village whose name he bears, in 1468 or 1469, and was educated at the neighbouring University of Salamanca, where he had the good fortune to enjoy the patronage of its chancellor, then one of the rising family of Alva. Soon afterwards he was at court; and at the age of twenty-five, we find him in the household of Fadrique de Toledo, first Duke of Alva, to whom and to his duchess Enzina addressed much of his poetry. In 1496, he published the earliest edition of his works, divided into four parts, which are successively dedicated to Ferdinand and Isabella, to the Duke and Duchess of Alva, to Prince John, and to Don Garcia de Toledo, son of his patron.

Somewhat later, Enzina went to Rome, where he became a priest, and, from his skill in music, rose to be head of Leo the Tenth’s chapel; the highest honor the world then offered to his art. In the course of the year 1519, he made a pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem with Fadrique Afan de Ribera, Marquis of Tarifa; and on his return, published, in 1521, a poor poetical account of his devout adventures, accompanied with great praises of the Marquis, and ending with an expression of his happiness at living in Rome.[434] At a more advanced age, however, having received a priory in Leon as a reward for his services, he returned to his native country, and died, in 1534, at Salamanca, in whose cathedral his monument is probably still to be seen.[435]

Of his collected works six editions at least were published between 1496 and 1516; showing, that, for the period in which he lived, he enjoyed a remarkable degree of popularity. They contain a good deal of pleasant lyrical poetry, songs, and villancicos, in the old popular Spanish style; and two or three descriptive poems, particularly “A Vision of the Temple of Fame and the Glories of Castile,” in which Ferdinand and Isabella receive great eulogy and are treated as if they were his patrons. But most of his shorter poems were slight contributions of his talent offered on particular occasions; and by far the most important works he has left us are the dramatic compositions which fill the fourth division of his Cancionero.

These compositions are called by Enzina himself “Representaciones”; and in the edition of 1496 there are nine of them, while in the last two editions there are eleven, one of which contains the date of 1498. They are in the nature of eclogues, though one of them, it is difficult to tell why, is called an “Auto”;[436] and they were represented before the Duke and Duchess of Alva, the Prince Don John, the Duke of Infantado, and other distinguished personages enumerated in the notices prefixed to them. All are in some form of the old Spanish verse; in all there is singing; and in one there is a dance. They have, therefore, several of the elements of the proper secular Spanish drama, whose origin we can trace no farther back by any authentic monument now existing.

Two things, however, should be noted, when considering these dramatic efforts of Juan de la Enzina as the foundation of the Spanish drama. The first is their internal structure and essential character. They are eclogues only in form and name, not in substance and spirit. Enzina, whose poetical account of his travels in Palestine proves him to have had scholarlike knowledge, began by translating, or rather paraphrasing, the ten Eclogues of Virgil, accommodating some of them to events in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, or to passages in the fortunes of the house of Alva.[437] From these, he easily passed to the preparation of eclogues to be represented before his patrons and their courtly friends. But, in doing this, he was naturally reminded of the religious exhibitions, which had been popular in Spain from the time of Alfonso the Tenth, and had always been given at the great festivals of the Church. Six, therefore, of his eclogues, to meet the demands of ancient custom, are, in fact, dialogues of the simplest kind, represented at Christmas and Easter, or during Carnival and Lent; in one of which the manger at Bethlehem is introduced, and in another a sepulchral monument, setting forth the burial of the Saviour, while all of them seem to have been enacted in the chapel of the Duke of Alva, though two certainly are not very religious in their tone and character.

The remaining five are altogether secular; three of them having a sort of romantic story, the fourth introducing a shepherd so desperate with love that he kills himself, and the fifth exhibiting a market-day farce and riot between sundry country people and students, the materials for which Enzina may well enough have gathered during his own life at Salamanca. These five eclogues, therefore, connect themselves with the coming secular drama of Spain in a manner not to be mistaken, just as the first six look back towards the old religious exhibitions of the country.

The other circumstance that should be noted in relation to them, as proof that they constitute the commencement of the Spanish secular drama, is, that they were really acted. Nearly all of them speak in their titles of this fact, mentioning sometimes the personages who were present, and in more than one instance alluding to Enzina himself, as if he had performed some of the parts in person. Rojas, a great authority in whatever relates to the theatre, declares the same thing expressly, coupling the fall of Granada and the achievements of Columbus with the establishment of the theatre in Spain by Enzina; events which, in the true spirit of his profession as an actor, he seems to consider of nearly equal importance.[438] The precise year when this happened is given by a learned antiquary of the time of Philip the Fourth, who says, “In 1492, companies began to represent publicly in Castile plays by Juan de la Enzina.”[439] From this year, then, the great year of the discovery of America, we may safely date the foundation of the Spanish secular theatre.

It must not, however, be supposed that the “Representations,” as he calls them, of Juan de la Enzina have much dramatic merit. On the contrary, they are rude and slight. Some have only two or three interlocutors, and no pretension to a plot; and none has more than six personages, nor any thing that can be considered a proper dramatic structure. In one of those prepared for the Nativity, the four shepherds are, in fact, the four Evangelists;—Saint John, at the same time, shadowing forth the person of the poet. He enters first, and discourses, in rather a vainglorious way, of himself as a poet; not forgetting, however, to compliment the Duke of Alva, his patron, as a person feared in France and in Portugal, with which countries the political relations of Spain were then unsettled. Matthew, who follows, rebukes John for this vanity, telling him that “all his works are not worth two straws”; to which John replies, that, in pastorals and graver poetry, he defies competition, and intimates, that, in the course of the next May, he shall publish what will prove him to be something even more than bucolic. They both agree that the Duke and Duchess are excellent masters, and Matthew wishes that he, too, were in their service. At this point of the dialogue, Luke and Mark come in, and, with slight preface, announce the birth of the Saviour as the last news. All four then talk upon that event at large, alluding to John’s Gospel as if already known, and end with a determination to go to Bethlehem, after singing a villancico or rustic song, which is much too light in its tone to be religious.[440] The whole eclogue is short and comprised in less than forty rhymed stanzas of nine lines each, including a wild lyric at the end, which has a chorus to every stanza, and is not without the spirit of poetry.[441]

This belongs to the class of Enzina’s religious dramas. One, on the other hand, which was represented at the conclusion of the Carnival, during the period then called popularly at Salamanca Antruejo, seems rather to savor of heathenism, as the festival itself did.[442] It is merely a rude dialogue between four shepherds. It begins with a description of one of those mummings, common at the period when Enzina lived, which, in this case, consisted of a mock battle in the village between Carnival and Lent, ending with the discomfiture of Carnival; but the general matter of the scene presented is a somewhat free frolic of eating and drinking among the four shepherds, ending, like the rest of the eclogues, with a villancico, in which Antruejo, it is not easy to tell why, is treated as a saint.[443]

Quite opposite to both of the pieces already noticed is the Representation for Good Friday, between two hermits, Saint Veronica, and an angel. It opens with the meeting and salutation of the two hermits, the elder of whom, as they walk along, tells the younger, with great grief, that the Saviour has been crucified that very day, and agrees with him to visit the sepulchre. In the midst of their talk, Saint Veronica joins them, and gives an account of the crucifixion, not without touches of a simple pathos; showing, at the same time, the napkin on which the portrait of the Saviour had been miraculously impressed, as she wiped from his face the sweat of his agony. Arrived at the sepulchre,—which was some kind of a monument for the Corpus Christi in the Duke of Alva’s chapel, where the representation took place,—they kneel; an angel whom they find there explains to them the mystery of the Saviour’s death; and then, in a villancico in which all join, they praise God, and take comfort with the promise of the resurrection.[444]