CHAPTER XXVI.
Character of the Spanish Drama. — The Autor, or Manager. — The Writers for the Stage. — The Actors, their Number, Success, and Condition. — Performances by Daylight. — The Stage. — The Court-yard, Mosqueteros, Gradas, Cazuela, and Aposentos. — The Audiences. — Play-bills, and Titles of Plays. — Representations, Ballads, Loas, Jornadas, Entremeses, Saynetes, and Dances. — Ballads danced and sung. — Xacaras, Zarabandas, and Alemanas. — Popular Character of the Whole. — Great Number of Writers and Plays.
The most prominent, if not the most important, characteristic of the Spanish drama, at the period of its widest success, was its nationality. In all its various forms, including the religious plays, and in all its manifold subsidiary attractions, down to the recitation of old ballads and the exhibition of popular dances, it addressed itself more to the whole people of the country which produced it than any other theatre of modern times. The Church, as we have seen, occasionally interfered, and endeavoured to silence or to restrict it. But the drama was too deeply seated in the general favor, to be much modified, even by a power that overshadowed nearly every thing else in the state; and during the whole of the seventeenth century,—the century which immediately followed the severe legislation of Philip the Second and his attempts to control the character of the stage,—the Spanish drama was really in the hands of the mass of the people, and its writers and actors were such as the popular will required them to be.[721]
At the head of each company of actors was their Autor. The name descended from the time of Lope de Rueda, when the writer of the rude farces then in favor collected about him a body of players to perform what should rather be called his dramatic dialogues than his proper dramas, in the public squares;—a practice soon imitated in France, where Hardy, the “Author,” as he styled himself, of his own company, produced, between 1600 and 1630, about five hundred rude plays and farces, often taken from Lope de Vega, and whatever was most popular at the same period in Spain.[722] But while Hardy was at the height of his success and preparing the way for Corneille, the canon in Don Quixote had already recognized in Spain the existence of two kinds of authors;—the authors who wrote, and the authors who acted;[723]—a distinction familiar from the time when Lope de Vega appeared, and one that was never afterwards overlooked. At any rate, from that time actors and managers were quite as rarely writers for the stage in Spain as in other countries.[724]
The relations between the dramatic poets and the managers and actors were not more agreeable in Spain than elsewhere. Figueroa, who was familiar with the subject, says that the writers for the theatre were obliged to flatter the heads of companies, in order to obtain a hearing from the public, and that they were often treated with coarseness and contempt, especially when their plays were read and adapted to the stage in presence of the actors who were to perform them.[725] Solorzano—himself a dramatist—gives similar accounts, and adds the story of a poet, who was not only rudely, but cruelly, abused by a company of players, to whose humors their autor or manager had abandoned him.[726] And even Lope de Vega and Calderon, the master-spirits of the time, complain bitterly of the way in which they were trifled with and defrauded of their rights and reputation, both by the managers and by the booksellers.[727] At the end of the drama, its author therefore sometimes announced his name, and, with more or less of affected humility, claimed the work as his own.[728] But this was not a custom. Almost uniformly, however, when the audience was addressed at all,—and that was seldom neglected at the conclusion of a drama,—it was saluted with the grave and flattering title of “Senate.”
Nor does the condition of the actors seem to have been one which could be envied by the poets who wrote for them. Their numbers and influence, indeed, soon became imposing under the great impulse given to the drama in the beginning of the seventeenth century. When Lope de Vega first appeared as a dramatic writer at Madrid, the only theatres he found were two unsheltered court-yards, which depended on such strolling companies of players as occasionally deemed it for their interest to visit the capital. Before he died, there were, besides the court-yards in Madrid, several theatres of great magnificence in the royal palaces, and multitudinous bodies of actors, comprehending in all above a thousand persons.[729] And half a century later, at the time of Calderon’s death, when the Spanish drama had taken all its attributes, the passion for its representations had spread into every part of the kingdom, until there was hardly a village, we are told, that did not possess some kind of a theatre.[730] Nay, so pervading and uncontrolled was the eagerness for dramatic exhibitions, that, notwithstanding the scandal it excited, secular comedies of a very equivocal complexion were represented by performers from the public theatres in some of the principal monasteries of the kingdom.[731]
Of course, out of so large a body of actors, all struggling for public favor, some became famous. Among the more distinguished were Agustin de Roxas, who wrote the gay travels of a company of comedians; Roque de Figueroa and Rios, Lope’s favorites; Pinedo, much praised by Tirso de Molina; Alonso de Olmedo and Sebastian Prado, who were rivals for public applause in the time of Calderon; Juan Rana, who was the best comic actor during the reigns of Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth, and amused the audiences by his own extemporaneous wit; the two Morales and Josefa Vaca, wife of the elder of them; Barbara Coronel, the Amazon, who preferred to appear as a man; María de Córdoba, praised by Quevedo and the Count Villamediana; and María Calderon, who, as the mother of the second Don John of Austria, figured in affairs of state, as well as in those of the stage. These and some others enjoyed, no doubt, that ephemeral, but brilliant, reputation which is generally the only reward of the best of their class; and enjoyed it to as high a degree, perhaps, as any persons that have appeared on the stage in more modern times.[732]
But, regarded as a body, the Spanish actors seem to have been any thing but respectable. In general, they were of a low and vulgar caste in society,—so low, that, for this reason, they were at one period forbidden to have women associated with them.[733] The rabble, indeed, sympathized with them, and sometimes, when their conduct called for punishment, protected them by force from the arm of the law; but, between 1644 and 1649, when their number in the metropolis had become very great, and they constituted no less than forty companies, full of disorderly persons and vagabonds, their character did more than any thing else to endanger the privileges of the drama, which with difficulty evaded the restrictions their riotous lives brought upon it.[734] One proof of their gross conduct is to be found in its results. Many of them, filled with compunction at their own shocking excesses, took refuge at last in a religious life, like Prado, who became a devout priest, and Francisca Baltasara, who died a hermit, almost in the odor of sanctity, and was afterwards made the subject of a religious play.[735]
They had, besides, many trials. They were obliged to learn a great number of pieces to satisfy the demands for novelty, which were more exacting on the Spanish stage than on any other; their rehearsals were severe, and their audiences rude. Cervantes says that their life was as hard as that of the Gypsies;[736] and Roxas, who knew all there was to be known on the subject, says that slaves in Algiers were better off than they were.[737]