Another sort of favor fell to the share of Antonio de Mendoza, who wrote much for the court between 1623 and 1643. His Works—besides a number of ballads and short poems addressed to the Duke of Lerma and other principal persons of the kingdom—contain a Life of Our Lady, in nearly eight hundred redondillas, and five plays, to which two or three more may be added from different miscellaneous collections. The poems are of little value; the plays are better. “He deserves most who loves most” may have contributed materials to Moreto’s “Disdain met with Disdain,” and is certainly a pleasant drama, with natural situations and an easy dialogue. “Society changes Manners” is another real comedy with much life and gayety. And “Love for Love’s Sake,” which, has been called its author’s happiest effort, enjoyed the distinction of being acted before the court by the queen’s maids of honor, who took all the parts,—those of the cavaliers, as well as those of the women.[553]
Ruiz de Alarcon, who was his contemporary, was less favored during his lifetime than Mendoza, but has much more merit. He was born in the province of Tasco, in Mexico, but was descended from a family that belonged to Alarcon in the mother country. As early as 1622 he was in Madrid, and assisted in the composition of a play in honor of the Marquis of Cañete for his victories in Arauco, which was the joint work of nine persons. In 1628, he published the first volume of his Dramas, on the title-page of which he calls himself Prolocutor of the Royal Council for the Indies; a place of both trust and profit. It is dedicated to the Público Vulgar, or the Rabble, in a tone of savage contempt for the audiences of Madrid, which, if it intimates that he had been ill-treated on the stage, proves, also, that he felt strong enough to defy his enemies. To the eight plays contained in this volume he added twelve more in 1635, with a Preface, which, again, leaves little doubt that his merit was undervalued, as he says he found it difficult to vindicate for himself even the authorship of not a few of the plays he had written. He died in 1639.[554]
His “Domingo de Don Blas,” one of the few among his works not found in the collection printed by himself, is a sketch of the character of a gentleman sunk into luxury and effeminacy by the possession of a large fortune suddenly won from the Moors in the time of Alfonso the Third of Leon; but who, at the call of duty, rouses himself again to his earlier energy, and shows the old Castilian character in all its loyalty and generosity. The scene where he refuses to risk his person in a bull-fight, merely to amuse the Infante, is full of humor, and is finely contrasted, first, with the scene where he runs all risks in defence of the same prince, and afterwards, still more finely, with that where he sacrifices the prince, because he had failed in loyalty to his father.
“How to gain Friends” gives us another exhibition of the principle of loyalty in the time of Peter the Cruel, who is here represented only as a severe, but just, administrator of the law in seasons of great trouble. His minister and favorite, Pedro de Luna, is one of the most noble characters offered to us in the whole range of the Spanish drama;—a character belonging to a class in which Alarcon has several times succeeded.
A better-known play than either, however, is the “Weaver of Segovia.” It is in two parts. In the first, its hero, Fernando Ramirez, is represented as suffering the most cruel injustice at the hands of his sovereign, who has put his father to death under a false imputation of treason, and reduced Ramirez himself to the misery of earning his subsistence, disguised as a weaver. Six years elapse, and, in the second part, he appears again, stung by new wrongs and associated with a band of robbers, at whose head, after spreading terror through the mountain range of the Guadarrama, he renders such service to his ungrateful king, in the crisis of a battle against the Moors, and extorts such confessions of his own and his father’s innocence from their dying enemy, that he is restored to favor, and becomes, in the Oriental style, the chief person in the kingdom he has rescued. He is, in fact, another Charles de Mohr, but has the advantage of being placed in a period of the world and a state of society where such a character is more possible than in the period assigned to it by Schiller, though it can never be one fitted for exhibition in a drama that claims to have a moral purpose.
“Truth itself Suspected” is, on the other hand, obviously written for such a purpose. It gives us the character of a young man, the son of a high-minded father, and himself otherwise amiable and interesting, who comes from the University of Salamanca to begin the world at Madrid, with an invincible habit of lying. The humor of the drama, which is really great, consists in the prodigious fluency with which he invents all sorts of fictions to suit his momentary purposes; the ingenuity with which he struggles against the true current of facts, which yet runs every moment more and more strongly against him; and the final result, when, nobody believing him, he is reduced to the necessity of telling the truth, and—by a mistake which he now finds it impossible to persuade any one he has really committed—loses the lady he had won, and is overwhelmed with shame and disgrace.
Parts of this drama are full of spirit; such as the description of a student’s life at the university, and that of a brilliant festival given to a lady on the banks of the Manzanares. These, with the exhortations of the young man’s father, intended to cure him of his shameful fault, and not a little of the dialogue between the hero—if he may be so called—and his servant, are excellent. It is the piece from which Corneille took the materials for his “Menteur,” and thus, in 1642, laid the foundations of classical French comedy in a play of Alarcon, as, six years before, he had laid the foundations for its tragedy in the “Cid” of Guillen de Castro. Alarcon, however, was then so little known, that Corneille supposed himself to be using a play of Lope de Vega; though it should be remembered, that, when, some years afterwards, he found out his mistake, he did Alarcon the justice to restore to him his rights, adding that he would gladly give the two best plays he had ever written to be the author of the one he had so freely used.
It would not be difficult to find other dramas of Alarcon showing equal judgment and spirit. Such, in fact, is the one entitled “Walls have Ears,” which, from its mode of exhibiting the ill consequences of slander and mischief-making, may be regarded as the counterpart to “Truth itself Suspected.” And such, too, is the “Trial of Husbands,” which has had the fortune to pass under the names of Lope de Vega and Montalvan, as well as of its true author, and would cast no discredit on either of them. But it is enough to add to what we have already said of Alarcon, that his style is excellent,—generally better than that of any but the very best of his contemporaries,—with less richness, indeed, than that of Tirso de Molina, and adhering more to the old redondilla measure than that of Lope, but purer in versification than either of them, more simple and more natural; so that, on the whole, he is to be ranked with the best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the national theatre.[555]
Other writers who devoted themselves to the drama were, however, as well known at the time they lived as he was, if not always as much valued. Among them may be mentioned Luis de Belmonte, whose “Renegade of Valladolid” and “God the best Guardian” are singular mixtures of what is sacred with what is profane; Jacinto Cordero, whose “Victory through Love” was long a favorite on the stage; Andres Gil Enriquez, the author of a pleasant play called “The Net, the Scarf, and the Picture”; Diego Ximenez de Enciso, who wrote grave historical plays on the life of Charles the Fifth at San Yuste, and on the death of Don Carlos; Gerónimo de Villaizan, whose best play is “A Great Remedy for a Great Wrong”; and many others, such as Felipe Godinez, Miguel Sanchez, and Rodrigo de Herrera, who shared, in an inferior degree, the favor of the popular audiences at Madrid.[556]
Writers distinguished in other branches of literature were also tempted by the success of those devoted to the stage to adventure for the brilliant prizes it scattered on all sides. Salas Barbadillo, who wrote many pleasant tales and died in 1630, left behind him two dramas, of which one claims to be in the manner of Terence.[557] Solorzano, who died ten years later and was known in the same forms of elegant literature with Barbadillo, is the author of a spirited play, founded on the story of a lady, who, after having accepted a noble lover from interested motives, gives him up for the servant of that lover, put forward in disguise, as if he were possessor of the very estates for which she had accepted his master.[558] Góngora wrote one play, and parts of two others, still preserved in the collection of his works;[559] and Quevedo, to please the great favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, assisted in the composition of at least a single drama, which is now lost, if it be not preserved, under another name, in the works of Antonio de Mendoza.[560] But the circumstances of chief consequence in relation to all these writers are, that they belonged to the school of Lope de Vega, and that they bear witness to the vast popularity of his drama in their time.