CHAPTER XXII.
Calderon. — His Life and Various Works. — Dramas falsely attributed to him. — His Sacramental Autos. — How represented. — Their Character. — The Divine Orpheus. — Great Popularity of such Exhibitions. — His Full-length Religious Plays. — Purgatory of Saint Patrick. — Devotion to the Cross. — Wonder-working Magician. — Other Similar Plays.
Turning from Lope de Vega and his school, we come now to his great successor and rival, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, who, if he invented no new form of the drama, was yet so eminently a poet in the national temper, and had a success so brilliant, that he must necessarily fill a large space in all inquiries concerning the history of the Spanish theatre.
He was born at Madrid, on the 17th of January, 1600;[570] and one of his friends claims kindred for him with nearly all the old kings of the different Spanish monarchies, and even with most of the crowned heads of his time, throughout Europe.[571] This is absurd. But it is of consequence to know that his family was respectable, and its position in society such as to give him an opportunity for early intellectual culture;—his father being Secretary to the Treasury Board under Philip the Second and Philip the Third, and his mother of a noble family, that came from the Low Countries long before. Perhaps, however, the most curious circumstance connected with his origin is to be found in the fact, that, while the two masters of the Spanish drama, Lope de Vega and Calderon, were both born in Madrid, the families of both are to be sought for, at an earlier period, in the same little picturesque valley of Carriedo, where each possessed an ancestral fief.[572]
When only nine years old, he was placed under the Jesuits, and from them received instructions which, like those Corneille was receiving at the same moment, in the same way, on the other side of the Pyrenees, imparted their coloring to the whole of his life, and especially to its latter years. After leaving the Jesuits, he went to Salamanca, where he studied with distinction the scholastic theology and philosophy then in fashion, and the civil and canon law. But when he left the University in 1619, he was already known as a writer for the theatre; and when he arrived at Madrid, he seems, probably on this account, to have been at once noticed by some of those persons about the court who could best promote his advancement and success.
In 1620, he entered, with the leading spirits of his time, into the first poetical contest opened by the city of Madrid in honor of San Isidro, and received for his efforts the public compliment of Lope de Vega’s praise.[573] In 1622, he appeared at the second and greater contest proposed by the capital, on the canonization of the same saint; and gained—all that could be gained by one individual—a single prize, with still further and more emphatic praises from the presiding spirit of the show.[574] In the same year, too, when Lope published a considerable volume containing an account of all these ceremonies and rejoicings, we find that the youthful Calderon approached him as a friend, with a few not ungraceful lines, which Lope, to show that he admitted the claim, prefixed to his book. But, from that time, we entirely lose sight of Calderon as an author, for ten years, except that in 1630 he figures in Lope de Vega’s “Laurel of Apollo,” among the crowd of poets born in Madrid.[575]
Much of this interval seems to have been filled with service in the armies of his country. At least, he was in the Milanese in 1625, and afterwards, as we are told, went to Flanders, where a disastrous war was still carried on with unrelenting hatred, both national and religious. That he was not a careless observer of men and manners during his campaigns, we see by the plots of some of his plays, and by the lively local descriptions with which they abound, as well as by the characters of his heroes, who often come fresh from these same wars, and talk of their adventures with an air of reality that leaves no doubt that they speak of what had absolutely happened. But we soon find him in the more appropriate career of letters. In 1632, Montalvan tells us that Calderon was already the author of many dramas, which had been acted with applause; that he had gained many public prizes; that he had written a great deal of lyrical verse; and that he had begun a poem on the General Deluge. His reputation as a poet, therefore, at the age of thirty-two, was an enviable one, and was fast rising.[576]
A dramatic author of such promise could not be overlooked in the reign of Philip the Fourth, especially when the death of Lope, in 1635, had left the theatre without a master. In 1636, therefore, Calderon was formally attached to the court, for the purpose of furnishing dramas to be represented in the royal theatres, and in 1637, as a further honor, he was made a knight of the Order of Santiago. His very distinctions, however, threw him back once more into a military life. When he was just entering on his brilliant career as a poet, the rebellion excited by France in Catalonia burst forth with great violence, and all the members of the four great military orders of the kingdom were required, in 1640, to appear in the field and sustain the royal authority. Calderon, like a true knight, presented himself at once to fulfil his duty. But the king was so anxious to enjoy his services in the palace, that he was willing to excuse him from the field, and asked from him yet another drama. In great haste, the poet finished his “Contest of Love and Jealousy,”[577] and then joined the army; serving loyally through the campaign in the body of troops commanded by the Count Duke Olivares in person, and remaining in the field till the rebellion was quelled.
After his return, the king testified his increased regard for Calderon by giving him a pension of thirty gold crowns a month, and by employing him in the arrangements for the festivities of the court, when, in 1649, the new queen, Anna Maria of Austria, made her entrance into Madrid. From this period, he uniformly enjoyed a high degree of the royal favor; and, till the death of Philip the Fourth, he had a controlling influence over whatever related to the drama, writing secular plays for the theatres and autos for the Church with uninterrupted applause.