History of Spanish Literature, vol. 2 (of 3)

by George Ticknor

During the same period, there was at Valencia, as well as at Seville, a poetical movement in which the drama shared, and in which, perhaps, Lope de Vega, an exile in Valencia for several years, about 1585, took part. At any rate, his friend Cristóval de Virues, of whom he often speaks, and who was born there in 1550, was among those who then gave an impulse to the theatrical taste of his native city. He claims to have first divided Spanish dramas into three jornadas or acts, and Lope de Vega assents to the claim; but they were both mistaken, for we now know that such a division was made by Francisco de Avendaño, not later than 1553, when Virues was but three years old.[48]

Only five of the plays of Virues, all in verse, are extant; and these, though supposed to have been written as early as 1579-1581, were not printed till 1609, when Lope de Vega had already given its full development and character to the popular theatre; so that it is not improbable some of the dramas of Virues, as printed, may have been more or less altered and accommodated to the standard then considered as settled by the genius of his friend. Two of them, the “Cassandra” and the “Marcela,” are on subjects apparently of the Valencian poet’s own invention, and are extremely wild and extravagant; in “El Átila Furioso” above fifty persons come to an untimely end, without reckoning the crew of a galley who perish in the flames for the diversion of the tyrant and his followers; and in the “Semíramis,” the action extends to twenty or thirty years. All four of them are absurd.

The “Elisa Dido” is better, and may be regarded as an effort to elevate the drama. It is divided into five acts, and observes the unities, though Virues can hardly have comprehended what was afterwards considered as their technical meaning. Its plot, invented by himself, and little connected with the stories found in Virgil or the old Spanish chronicles, supposes the Queen of Carthage to have died by her own hand for a faithful attachment to the memory of Sichæus, and to avoid a marriage with Iarbas. It has no division into scenes, and each act is burdened with a chorus. In short, it is an imitation of the ancient Greek masters; and as some of the lyrical portions, as well as parts of the dialogue, are not unworthy the talent of the author of the “Monserrate,” it is, for the age in which it appeared, a remarkable composition. But it lacks a good development of the characters, as well as life and poetical warmth in the action; and being, in fact, an attempt to carry the Spanish drama in a direction exactly opposite to that of its destiny, it did not succeed.[49]

Such an attempt, however, was not unlikely to be made more than once; and this was certainly an age favorable for it. The theatre of the ancients was now known in Spain. The translations already noticed, of Villalobos in 1515, and of Oliva before 1536, had been followed, as early as 1543, by one from Euripides by Boscan;[50] in 1555, by two from Plautus, the work of an unknown author;[51] and in 1570-1577, by the “Plutus” of Aristophanes, the “Medea” of Euripides, and the six comedies of Terence, by Pedro Simon de Abril.[52] The efforts of Timoneda in his “Menennos” and of Virues in his “Elisa Dido” were among the consequences of this state of things, and were succeeded by others, two of which should be noticed.

The first is by Gerónimo Bermudez, a native of Galicia, who is supposed to have been born about 1530, and to have lived as late as 1589. He was a learned Professor of Theology at Salamanca, and published, at Madrid, in 1577, two dramas which he somewhat boldly called “the first Spanish tragedies.”[53] They are both on the subject of Inez de Castro; both are in five acts, and in various verse; and both have choruses in the manner of the ancients. But there is a great difference in their respective merits. The first, “Nise Lastimosa,” or Inez to be Compassionated,—Nise being a poor anagram of Inez,—is hardly more than a skilful translation of the Portuguese tragedy of “Inez de Castro,” by Ferreira, which, with considerable defects in its structure, is yet full of tenderness and poetical beauty. The last, “Nise Laureada,” or Inez Triumphant, takes up the tradition where the first left it, after the violent and cruel death of the princess, and gives an account of the coronation of her ghastly remains above twenty years after their interment, and of the renewed marriage of the prince to them;—the closing scene exhibiting the execution of her murderers with a coarseness, both in the incidents and in the language, as revolting as can well be conceived. Neither probably produced any perceptible effect on the Spanish drama; and yet the “Nise Lastimosa” contains passages of no little poetical merit; such as the beautiful chorus on Love at the end of the first act, the dream of Inez in the third, and the truly Greek dialogue between the princess and the women of Coimbra; for the last two of which, however, Bermudez was directly indebted to Ferreira.[54]

Three tragedies by Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, the accomplished lyric poet, who will hereafter be amply noticed, produced a much more considerable sensation, when they first appeared, though they were soon afterwards as much neglected as their predecessors. He wrote them when he was hardly more than twenty years old, and they were acted about the year 1585. “Do you not remember,” says the canon in Don Quixote, “that, a few years ago, there were represented in Spain three tragedies composed by a famous poet of these kingdoms, which were such that they delighted and astonished all who heard them; the ignorant as well as the judicious, the multitude as well as the few; and that these three alone brought more profit to the actors than the thirty best plays that have been written since?” “No doubt,” replied the manager of the theatre, with whom the canon was conversing, “no doubt you mean the ‘Isabela,’ the ‘Philis,’ and the ‘Alexandra.’“[55]

This statement of Cervantes is certainly extraordinary, and the more so from being put into the mouth of the wise canon of Toledo. But notwithstanding the flush of immediate success which it implies, all trace of these plays was soon so completely lost, that, for a long period, the name of the famous poet Cervantes had referred to was not known, and it was even suspected that he had intended to compliment himself. At last, between 1760 and 1770, two of them—the “Alexandra” and “Isabela”—were accidentally discovered, and all doubt ceased. They were found to be the work of Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola.[56]

But, unhappily, they quite failed to satisfy the expectations that had been excited by the good-natured praise of Cervantes. They are in various verse, fluent and pure, and were intended to be imitations of the Greek style of tragedy, called forth, perhaps, by the recent attempts of Bermudez. Each, however, is divided into three acts; and the choruses, originally prepared for them, are omitted. The Alexandra is the worse of the two. Its scene is laid in Egypt; and the story, which is fictitious, is full of loathsome horrors. Every one of its personages, except perhaps a messenger, perishes in the course of the action; children’s heads are cut off and thrown at their parents on the stage; and the false queen, after being invited to wash her hands in the blood of the person to whom she was unworthily attached, bites off her own tongue and spits it at her monstrous husband. Treason and rebellion form the lights in a picture composed mainly of such atrocities.

The Isabela is better; but still is not to be praised. The story relates to one of the early Moorish kings of Saragossa, who exiles the Christians from his kingdom in a vain attempt to obtain possession of Isabela, a Christian maiden with whom he is desperately in love, but who is herself already attached to a noble Moor whom she has converted, and with whom, at last, she suffers a triumphant martyrdom. The incidents are numerous, and sometimes well imagined; but no dramatic skill is shown in their management and combination, and there is little easy or living dialogue to give them effect. Like the Alexandra, it is full of horrors. The nine most prominent personages it represents come to an untimely end, and the bodies, or at least the heads, of most of them are exhibited on the stage, though some reluctance is shown at the conclusion about committing a supernumerary suicide before the audience. Fame opens the piece with a prologue, in which complaints are made of the low state of the theatre; and the ghost of Isabela, who is hardly dead, comes back at the end, with an epilogue very flat and quite needless.

With all this, however, a few passages of poetical eloquence, rather than of absolute poetry, are scattered through the long and tedious speeches of which the piece is principally composed; and once or twice there is a touch of passion truly tragic, as in the discussion between Isabela and her family on the threatened exile and ruin of their whole race, and in that between Adulce, her lover, and Aja, the king’s sister, who disinterestedly loves Adulce, notwithstanding she knows his passion for her fair Christian rival. But still it seems incomprehensible how such a piece should have produced the popular dramatic effect attributed to it, unless we suppose that the Spaniards had from the first a passion for theatrical exhibitions, which, down to this period, had been so imperfectly gratified, that any thing dramatic, produced under favorable circumstances, was run after and admired.