And add, besides, the blessed prayer
For the birth of our blessed Lord.[38]
The two blind men, hearing each other, enter into conversation, and, believing themselves to be alone, Alvarez relates how he had been robbed by his unprincipled attendant, and Gomez explains how he avoids such misfortunes by always carrying the ducats he begs sewed into his cap. Palillos, learning this, and not well pleased with the character he has just received, comes very quietly up to Gomez, knocks off his cap, and escapes with it. Gomez thinks it is his blind friend who has played him the trick, and asks civilly to have his cap back again. The friend denies, of course, all knowledge of it; Gomez insists; and the dialogue ends, as many of its class do, with a quarrel and a fight, to the great amusement, no doubt, of audiences such as were collected in the public squares of Valencia or Seville.[39]
CHAPTER VIII.
Theatre. — Followers of Lope de Rueda. — Alonso de la Vega. — Cisneros. — Seville. — Malara. — Cueva. — Zepeda. — Valencia. — Virues. — Translations and Imitations of the Ancient Classical Drama. — Villalobos. — Oliva. — Boscan. — Abril. — Bermudez. — Argensola. — State of the Theatre.
Two of the persons attached to Lope de Rueda’s company were, like himself, authors as well as actors. One of them, Alonso de la Vega, died at Valencia as early as 1566, in which year three of his dramas, all in prose, and one of them directly imitated from his master, were published by Timoneda.[40] The other, Antonio Cisneros, lived as late as 1579, but it does not seem certain that any dramatic work of his now exists.[41] Neither of them was equal to Lope de Rueda or Juan de Timoneda; but the four taken together produced an impression on the theatrical taste of their times, which was never afterwards wholly forgotten or lost,—a fact of which the shorter dramatic compositions that have been favorites on the Spanish stage ever since give decisive proof.
But dramatic representations in Spain between 1560 and 1590 were by no means confined to what was done by Lope de Rueda, his friends, and his strolling company of actors. Other efforts were made in various places, and upon other principles; sometimes with more success than theirs, sometimes with less. In Seville, a good deal seems to have been done. It is probable the plays of Malara, a native of that city, were represented there during this period; but they are now all lost.[42] Those of Juan de la Cueva, on the contrary, have been partly preserved, and merit notice for many reasons, but especially because most of them are historical. They were represented—at least, the few that still remain—in 1579, and the years immediately subsequent; but were not printed till 1588, and then only a single volume appeared.[43] Each of them is divided into four jornadas, or acts, and they are written in various measures, including terza rima, blank verse, and sonnets, but chiefly in redondillas and octave stanzas. Several are on national subjects, like “The Children of Lara,” “Bernardo del Carpio,” and “The Siege of Zamora”; others are on subjects from ancient history, such as Ajax, Virginia, and Mutius Scævola; some are on fictitious stories, like “The Old Man in Love,” and “The Decapitated,” which last is founded on a Moorish adventure; and one, at least, is on a great event of times then recent, “The Sack of Rome” by the Constable Bourbon. All, however, are crude in their structure, and unequal in their execution. The Sack of Rome, for instance, is merely a succession of dialogues thrown together in the loosest manner, to set forth the progress of the Imperial arms, from the siege of Rome in May, 1527, to the coronation of Charles the Fifth, at Bologna, in February, 1530; and though the picture of the outrages at Rome is not without an air of truth, there is little truth in other respects; the Spaniards being made to carry off all the glory.[44]
“El Infamador,” or The Calumniator, sets forth, in a different tone, the story of a young lady who refuses the love of a dissolute young man, and is, in consequence, accused by him of murder and other crimes, and condemned to death, but is rescued by preternatural power, while her accuser suffers in her stead. It is almost throughout a revolting picture; the fathers of the hero and heroine being each made to desire the death of his own child, while the whole is rendered absurd by the not unusual mixture of heathen mythology and modern manners. Of poetry, which is occasionally found in Cueva’s other dramas, there is in this play no trace; and so carelessly is it written, that there is no division of the acts into scenes.[45] Indeed, it seems difficult to understand how several of his twelve or fourteen dramas should have been brought into practical shape and represented at all. It is probable they were merely spoken as consecutive dialogues, to bring out their respective stories, without any attempt at theatrical illusion; a conjecture which receives confirmation from the fact, that nearly all of them are announced, on their titles, as having been represented in the garden of a certain Doña Elvira at Seville.[46]
The two plays of Joaquin Romero de Zepeda, of Badajoz, which were printed at Seville in 1582, are somewhat different from those of Cueva. One, “The Metamorfosea,” is in the nature of the old dramatic pastorals, but is divided into three short jornadas, or acts. It is a trial of wits and love, between three shepherds and three shepherdesses, who are constantly at cross purposes with each other, but are at last reconciled and united;—all except one shepherd, who had originally refused to love any body, and one shepherdess, Belisena, who, after being cruel to one of her lovers, and slighted by another, is finally rejected by the rejected of all. The other play, called “La Comedia Salvage,” is taken, in its first two acts, from the well-known dramatic novel of “Celestina”; the last act being filled with atrocities of Zepeda’s own invention. It obtains its name from the Salvages or wild men, who figure in it, as such personages did in the old romances of chivalry and the old English drama, and is as strange and rude as its title implies. Neither of these pieces, however, can have done any thing of consequence for the advancement of the drama at Seville, though each contains passages of flowing and apt verse, and occasional turns of thought that deserve to be called graceful.[47]