Nothing can well be gayer or more free than these favorite entertainments, which were generally written in the genuine Castilian idiom and spirit.[768] At first, they were farces, or parts of farces, taken from Lope de Rueda and his school; but afterwards, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and the other writers for the theatre composed entremeses better suited to the changed character of the dramas in their times.[769] Their subjects were generally chosen from the adventures of the lower classes of society, whose manners and follies they ridiculed; many of the earlier of the sort ending, as one of the Dogs in Cervantes’s dialogue complains that they did too often, with vulgar scuffles and blows.[770] But later, they became more poetical, and were mingled with allegory, song, and dance; taking, in fact, whatever forms and tone were deemed most attractive. They seldom exceeded a few minutes in length, and never had any other purpose than to relieve the attention of the audience, which it was supposed might have been taxed too much by the graver action that had preceded them.[771] With this action they had, properly, nothing to do;—though in one instance Calderon has ingeniously made his entremes serve as a graceful conclusion to one of the acts of the principal drama.[772]
The second act was followed by a similar entremes, music, and dancing;[773] and after the third, the poetical part of the entertainment was ended with a saynete or bonne bouche, first so called by Benavente, but differing from the entremeses only in name, and written best by Cancer, Deza y Avila, and Benavente himself,—in short, by those who best succeeded in the entremeses.[774] Last of all came a national dance, which never failed to delight the audience of all classes, and served to send them home in good-humor when the entertainment was over.[775]
Dancing, indeed, was very early an important part of theatrical exhibitions in Spain, even of the religious, and its importance has continued down to the present day. This was natural. From the first intimations of history and tradition in antiquity, dancing was the favorite amusement of the rude inhabitants of the country;[776] and, so far as modern times are concerned, dancing has been to Spain what music has been to Italy, a passion with the whole population. In consequence of this, it finds a place in the dramas of Enzina, Vicente, and Naharro; and, from the time of Lope de Rueda and Lope de Vega, appears in some part, and often in several parts, of all theatrical exhibitions. An amusing instance of the slight grounds on which it was introduced may be found in “The Grand Sultana” of Lope de Vega, where one of the actors says,—
There ne’er was born a Spanish woman yet
But she was born to dance;
and a specimen is immediately given in proof of the assertion.[777]
Many of these dances, and probably nearly all of them that were introduced on the stage, were accompanied with words, and were what Cervantes calls “recited dances.”[778] Such were the well-known “Xacaras,”—roystering ballads, in the dialect of the rogues,—which took their name from the bullies who sung them, and were at one time rivals for favor with the regular entremeses.[779] Such, too, were the more famous “Zarabandas”; graceful, but voluptuous dances, that were known from about 1588, and, as Mariana says, received their name from a devil in woman’s shape at Seville, though elsewhere they are said to have derived it from a similar personage found at Guayaquil in America.[780] Another dance, full of a mad revelry, in which the audience were ready sometimes to join, was called “Alemana,” probably from its German origin, and was one of those whose discontinuance Lope, himself a great lover of dancing, always regretted.[781] Another was “Don Alonso el Bueno,” so named from the ballad that accompanied it; and yet others were called “El Caballero,” “La Carretería,” “Las Gambetas,” “Hermano Bartolo,” and “La Zapateta.”[782]
Most of them were free or licentious in their tendency. Guevara says that the Devil invented them all; and Cervantes, in one of his farces, admits that the Zarabanda, which was the most obnoxious to censure, could, indeed, have had no better origin.[783] Lope, however, was not so severe in his judgment. He declares that the dances accompanied by singing were better than the entremeses, which, he adds disparagingly, dealt only in hungry men, thieves, and brawlers.[784] But whatever may have been individual opinions about them, they occasioned great scandal, and, in 1621, kept their place on the theatre only by a vigorous exertion of the popular will in opposition to the will of the government. As it was, they were for a time restrained and modified; but still no one of them was absolutely exiled, except the licentious Zarabanda,—many of the crowds that thronged the court-yards thinking, with one of their leaders, that the dances were the salt of the plays, and that the theatre would be good for nothing without them.[785]
Indeed, in all its forms, and in all its subsidiary attractions of ballads, entremeses and saynetes, music, and dancing, the old Spanish drama was essentially a popular entertainment, governed by the popular will. In any other country, under the same circumstances, it would hardly have risen above the condition in which it was left by Lope de Rueda, when it was the amusement of the lowest classes of the populace. But the Spaniards have always been a poetical people. There is a romance in their early history, and a picturesqueness in their very costume and manners, that cannot be mistaken. A deep enthusiasm runs, like a vein of pure and rich ore, at the bottom of their character, and the workings of strong passions and an original imagination are everywhere visible among the wild elements that break out on its surface. The same energy, the same fancy, the same excited feelings, which, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, produced the most various and rich popular ballads of modern times, were not yet stilled or quenched in the seventeenth. The same national character, which, under Saint Ferdinand and his successors, drove the Moorish crescent through the plains of Andalusia, and found utterance for its exultation in poetry of such remarkable sweetness and power, was still active under the Philips, and called forth, directed, and controlled a dramatic literature which grew out of the national genius and the condition of the mass of the people, and which, therefore, in all its forms and varieties, is essentially and peculiarly Spanish.
Under an impulse so wide and deep, the number of dramatic authors would naturally be great. As early as 1605, when the theatre, such as it had been constituted by Lope de Vega, had existed hardly more than fifteen years, we can easily see, by the discussions in the first part of Don Quixote, that it already filled a large space in the interests of the time; and from the Prólogo prefixed by Cervantes to his plays in 1615, it is quite plain that its character and success were already settled, and that no inconsiderable number of its best authors had already appeared. Even as early as this, dramas were composed in the lower classes of society. Villegas tells us of a tailor of Toledo who wrote many; Guevara gives a similar account of a sheep-shearer at Ecija; and Figueroa, of a well-known tradesman of Seville;—all in full accordance with the representations made in Don Quixote concerning the shepherd Chrisóstomo, and the whole current of the story and conversations of the actors in the “Journey” of Roxas.[786] In this state of things, the number of writers for the theatre went on increasing out of all proportion to their increase in other countries, as appears from the lists given by Lope de Vega, in 1630; by Montalvan, in 1632, when we find seventy-six dramatic poets living in Castile alone; and by Antonio, about 1660. During the whole of this century, therefore, we may regard the theatre as a part of the popular character in Spain, and as having become, in the proper sense of the word, more truly a national theatre than any other that has been produced in modern times.