Passing over such writers of plays as Monroy, Monteser, Cuellar, and not a few others, who flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century, we come to a pleasant comedy entitled “The Punishment of Avarice,” written by Juan de la Hoz, a native of Madrid, who was made a knight of Santiago in 1653, and Regidor of Burgos in 1657, after which he rose to good offices about the court, and was living there as late as 1689. How many plays he wrote, we are not told; but the only one now remembered is “The Punishment of Avarice.” It is founded on the third tale of María de Zayas, which bears the same name, and from which its general outline and all the principal incidents are taken.[705] But the miser’s character is much more fully and poetically drawn in the drama than it is in the story. Indeed, the play is one of the best specimens of character-drawing on the Spanish stage, and may, in many respects, bear a comparison with the “Aulularia” of Plautus, and the “Avare” of Molière.
The sketch of the miser by one of his acquaintance in the first act, ending with “He it was who first weakened water,” is excellent; and, even to the last scene, where he goes to a conjurer to recover his lost money, the character is consistently maintained and well developed.[706] He is a miser throughout; and, what is more, he is a Spanish miser. The moral is better in the prose tale, as the intrigante, who cheats him into a marriage with herself, is there made a victim of her crimes no less than he is; while in the drama she profits by them, and comes off with success at last,—a strange perversion of the original story, which it is not easy to explain. But in poetical merit there is no comparison between the two.
Juan de Matos Fragoso, a Portuguese, who lived in Madrid at the same time with Diamante and Hoz, and died in 1692, enjoyed quite as much reputation with the public as they did, though he often writes in the very bad taste of the age. But he never printed more than one volume of his dramas, so that they are now to be sought chiefly in separate pamphlets, and in collections made for other purposes than the claims of the individual authors found in them. Those of his dramas which are most known are his “Mistaken Experiment,” founded on the “Impertinent Curiosity” of the first part of Don Quixote; his “Fortune through Contempt,” a better-managed dramatic fiction; and his “Wise Man in Retirement and Peasant by his own Fireside,” which is commonly accounted the best of his works.
“The Captive Redeemer,” however, in which he was assisted by another well-known author of his time, Sebastian de Villaviciosa, is on many accounts more picturesque and attractive. It is, he says, a true story. It is certainly a heart-rending one, founded on an incident not uncommon during the barbarous wars carried on between the Christians in Spain and the Moors in Africa,—relics of the fierce hatreds of a thousand years.[707] A Spanish lady is carried into captivity by a marauding party, who land on the coast for plunder and instantly escape with their prey. Her lover, in despair, follows her, and the drama consists of their adventures till both are found and released. Mingled with this sad story, there is a sort of underplot, which gives its name to the piece, and is very characteristic of the state of the theatre and the demands of the public, or at least of the Church. A large bronze statue of the Saviour is discovered to be in the hands of the infidels. The captive Christians immediately offer the money, sent as the price of their own freedom, to rescue it from such sacrilege; and, at last, the Moors agree to give it up for its weight in gold; but when the value of the thirty pieces of silver, originally paid for the person of the Saviour himself, has been counted into one scale, it is found to outweigh the massive statue in the other, and enough is still left to purchase the freedom of the captives, who, in offering their ransoms, had, in fact, as they supposed, offered their own lives. With this triumphant miracle the piece ends. Like the other dramas of Fragoso, it is written in a great variety of measures, which are managed with skill and are full of sweetness.[708]
The last of the good writers for the Spanish stage with its old attributes is Antonio de Solís, the historian of Mexico. He was born on the 18th of July, 1610, in Alcalá de Henares, and completed his studies at the University of Salamanca, where, when only seventeen years old, he wrote a drama. Five years later he had given to the theatre his “Gitanilla” or “The Pretty Gypsy Girl,” founded on the story of Cervantes, or rather on a play of Montalvan borrowed from that story;—a graceful fiction, which has been constantly reproduced in one shape or another, ever since it first appeared from the hand of the great master. “One Fool makes a Hundred”—a pleasant figuron play of Solís, which was soon afterwards acted before the court—has less merit, and is somewhat indebted to the “Don Diego” of Moreto. But, on the other hand, his “Love à la Mode,” which is all his own, is among the good plays of the Spanish stage, and furnished materials for one of the best of Thomas Corneille’s.
In 1642, Solís prepared, for a festival at Pamplona, a dramatic entertainment on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the tone of the Spanish national theatre is fantastically confounded with the genius of the old Grecian mythology, even more than was common in similar cases; but the whole ends, quite contrary to all poetical tradition, by the rescue of Eurydice from the infernal regions, with an intimation that a second part would follow, whose conclusion would be tragical;—a promise which, like so many others of the same sort in Spanish literature, was never fulfilled.
As his reputation increased, Solís was made one of the royal secretaries, and, while acting in this capacity, wrote an allegorical drama, partly resembling a morality of the elder period, and partly a modern masque, in honor of the birth of one of the princes, which was acted in the palace of the Buen Retiro. The title of this wild, but not unpoetical, opera is “Triumphs of Love and Fortune”; and Diana and Endymion, Psyche and Venus, Happiness and Adversity, are among its dramatic personages; though a tone of honor and gallantry is as consistently maintained in it, as if its scene were laid at Madrid, and its characters taken from the audience that witnessed the performance. It is the more curious, however, from the circumstance, that the loa, the entremeses, and the saynete, with which it was originally accompanied, are still attached to it, all written by Solís himself.[709]
In this way he continued, during the greater part of his life, one of the favored writers for the private theatre of the king and the public theatres of the capital; the dramas he produced being almost uniformly marked by a skilful complication of their plots, which were not always original, and by a purity of style and harmony of versification which were quite his own. But at last, like many other Spanish poets, he began to think such occupations sinful; and, after much deliberation, he resolved on a life of religious retirement, and submitted to the tonsure. From this time he renounced the theatre. He even refused to write autos sacramentales, when he was applied to, in the hope that he might be willing to become a successor to the fame and fortunes of his great master; and, giving up his mind to devout meditation and historical studies, seems to have lived contentedly, though in seclusion and poverty, till his death, which happened in 1686. A volume of his minor poems, published afterwards, which are in all the forms then fashionable, has little value, except in a few short dramatic entertainments, several of which are characteristic and amusing.[710]
Later than Solís, but still partly his contemporary, was Francisco Banzes Candamo. He was a gentleman of ancient family, and was born in 1662, in Asturias,—that true soil of the old Spanish cavaliers. His education was careful, if not wise; and he was early sent to court, where he received, first a pension, and afterwards several important offices in the financial administration, whose duties, it is said, he fulfilled with good faith and efficiency. But at last the favor of the court deserted him; and he died in 1704, under circumstances of so much wretchedness, that he was buried at the charge of a religious society in the place to which he had been sent in disgrace.
His plays, or rather two volumes of them, were printed in 1722; but in relation to his other poems, a large mass of which he left to the Duke of Alva, we only know, that, long after their author’s death, a bundle of them was sold for a few pence, and that an inconsiderable collection of such of them as could be picked up from different sources was printed in a small volume in 1729.[711] Of his plays, those which he most valued are on historical subjects,[712] such as “The Recovery of Buda” and “For his King and his Lady.” He wrote for the theatre, however, in other forms, and several of his dramas are curious, from the circumstance that they are tricked out with the loas and entremeses which served originally to render them more attractive to the multitude. Nearly all his plots are ingenious, and, though involved, are more regular in their structure than was common at the time. But his style is swollen and presumptuous, and there is, notwithstanding their ingenuity, a want of life and movement in most of his plays that prevented them from being effective on the stage.