May well be added to fit out their dress.
Peralta.
No doubt, the man that dresses thus in straw
May tastefully put on a saddle too.[27]
In all the forms of the drama attempted by Lope de Rueda, the main purpose is evidently to amuse a popular audience. But to do this, his theatrical resources were very small and humble. “In the time of this celebrated Spaniard,” says Cervantes, recalling the gay season of his youth,[28] “the whole apparatus of a manager was contained in a large sack, and consisted of four white shepherd’s jackets, turned up with leather, gilt and stamped; four beards and false sets of hanging locks; and four shepherd’s crooks, more or less. The plays were colloquies, like eclogues, between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess, fitted up and extended with two or three interludes, whose personages were sometimes a negress, sometimes a bully, sometimes a fool, and sometimes a Biscayan;—for all these four parts, and many others, Lope himself performed with the greatest excellence and skill that can be imagined.... The theatre was composed of four benches, arranged in a square, with five or six boards laid across them, that were thus raised about four palms from the ground.... The furniture of the theatre was an old blanket drawn aside by two cords, making what they call a tiring-room, behind which were the musicians, who sang old ballads without a guitar.”
The place where this rude theatre was set up was a public square, and the performances occurred whenever an audience could be collected; apparently both forenoon and afternoon, for, at the end of one of his plays, Lope de Rueda invites his “hearers only to eat their dinner and return to the square,”[29] and witness another.
His four longer dramas have some resemblance to portions of the earlier English comedy, which, at precisely the same period, was beginning to show itself in pieces such as “Ralph Royster Doyster,” and “Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” They are divided into what are called scenes,—the shortest of them consisting of six, and the longest of ten; but in these scenes the place sometimes changes, and the persons often,—a circumstance of little consequence, where the whole arrangements implied no real attempt at scenic illusion.[30] Much of the success of all depended on the part played by the fools, or simples, who, in most of his dramas, are important personages, almost constantly on the stage;[31] while something is done by mistakes in language, arising from vulgar ignorance or from foreign dialects, like those of negroes and Moors. Each piece opens with a brief explanatory prologue, and ends with a word of jest and apology to the audience. Naturalness of thought, the most easy, idiomatic Castilian turns of expression, a good-humored, free gayety, a strong sense of the ridiculous, and a happy imitation of the manners and tone of common life, are the prominent characteristics of these, as they are of all the rest of his shorter efforts. He was, therefore, on the right road, and was, in consequence, afterwards justly reckoned, both by Cervantes and Lope de Vega, to be the true founder of the popular national theatre.[32]
The earliest follower of Lope de Rueda was his friend and editor, Juan de Timoneda, a bookseller of Valencia, who certainly flourished during the middle and latter part of the sixteenth century, and probably died in extreme old age, soon after the year 1597.[33] His thirteen or fourteen pieces that were printed pass under various names, and have a considerable variety in their character; the most popular in their tone being the best. Four are called “Pasos,” and four “Farsas,”—all much alike. Two are called “Comedias,” one of which, the “Aurelia,” written in short verses, is divided into five jornadas, and has an intróito, after the manner of Naharro; while the other, the “Cornelia,” is merely divided into seven scenes, and written in prose, after the manner of Lope de Rueda. Besides these, we have what, in the present sense of the word, is for the first time called an “Entremes”; a Tragicomedia, which is a mixture of mythology and modern history; a religious Auto, on the subject of the Lost Sheep; and a translation, or rather an imitation, of the “Menæchmi” of Plautus. In all of them, however, he seems to have relied for success on a spirited, farcical dialogue, like that of Lope de Rueda; and all were, no doubt, written to be acted in the public squares, to which, more than once, they make allusion.[34]
The “Cornelia,” first printed in 1559, is somewhat confused in its story. We have in it a young lady, taken, when a child, by the Moors, and returned, when grown up, to the neighbourhood of her friends, without knowing who she is; a foolish fellow, deceived by his wife, and yet not without shrewdness enough to make much merriment; and Pasquin, partly a quack doctor, partly a magician, and wholly a rogue; who, with five or six other characters, make rather a superabundance of materials for so short a drama. Some of the dialogues are full of life; and the development of two or three of the characters is good, especially that of Cornalla, the clown; but the most prominent personage, perhaps,—the magician,—is taken, in a considerable degree, from the “Negromante” of Ariosto, which was represented at Ferrara about thirty years earlier, and proves that Timoneda had some scholarship, if not always a ready invention.[35]
The “Menennos,” published in the same year with the Cornelia, is further proof of his learning. It is in prose, and taken from Plautus; but with large changes. The plot is laid in Seville; the play is divided into fourteen scenes, after the example of Lope de Rueda; and the manners are altogether Spanish. There is even a talk of Lazarillo de Tórmes, when speaking of an unprincipled young servant.[36] But it shows frequently the same free and natural dialogue, fresh from common life, that is found in his master’s dramas; and it can be read with pleasure throughout, as an amusing rifacimento.[37]