[561] Philip IV. was a lover of letters. Translations of Francesco Guicciardini’s “Wars in Italy,” and of the “Description of the Low Countries,” by his nephew, Luigi Guicciardini, made by him, and preceded by a well-written Prólogo, are said to be in the National Library at Madrid. (C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 162; Huerta, Teatro Hespañol, Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte I., Tom. III. p. 159; and Ochoa, Teatro, Paris, 1838, 8vo, Tom. V. p. 98.) “King Henry the Feeble” is also among the plays most confidently ascribed to Philip IV., who is said to have often joined in improvisating dramas, an amusement well known at the court of Madrid, and at the hardly less splendid court of the Count de Lemos at Naples. C. Pellicer, Teatro, Tom. I. p. 163, and J. A. Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. pp. 90-92, where a curious account, already referred to, is given of one of these Neapolitan exhibitions, by Estrada, who witnessed it.
[562] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 184, note; Suplemento al Índice, etc., 1805; and an excellent article by Louis de Vieil Castel, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1840. To these should be added the pleasant description given by Blanco White, in his admirable “Doblado’s Letters,” (1822, pp. 163-169), of a representation he himself witnessed of the “Diablo Predicador,” in the court-yard of a poor inn, where a cow-house served for the theatre, or rather the stage, and the spectators, who paid less than twopence apiece for their places, sat in the open air, under a bright, starry sky.
[563] El Pinciano, Filosofía Antigua Poética, Madrid, 1596, 4to, p. 381, etc.; Andres Rey de Artieda, Discursos, etc., de Artemidoro, Çaragoça, 1605, 4to, f. 87; C. de Mesa, Rimas, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, ff. 94, 145, 218, and his Pompeyo, Madrid, 1618, 12mo, with its Dedicatoria; Cascales, Tablas Poéticas, Murcia, 1616, 4to, Parte II.; C. S. de Figueroa, Pasagero, Madrid, 1617, 12mo, Alivio tercero; Est. M. de Villegas, Eróticas, Najera, 1617, 4to, Segunda Parte, f. 27; Los Argensolas, Rimas, Zaragoza, 1634, 4to, p. 447. I have arranged them according to their dates, because, in this case, the order of time is important, and because it should be noticed that all come within the period of Lope’s success as a dramatist.
[564] D. Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. III. p. 402, note.
[565] Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. p. 11.
[566] As a set-off to this alleged religious effect of the comedias de santos, we have, in the Address that opens the “Tratado de las Comedias,” (1618), by Bisbe y Vidal, an account of a young girl who was permitted to see the representation of the “Conversion of Mary Magdalen” several times, as an act of devotion, and ended her visits to the theatre by falling in love with the actor that personated the Saviour, and running off with him, or rather following him to Madrid.
[567] The account, however, was sometimes the other way. Bisbe y Vidal (f. 98) says that the hospitals made such efforts to sustain the theatres, in order to get an income from them afterwards, that they themselves were sometimes impoverished by the speculations they ventured to make; and adds, that in his time (c. 1618) there was a person alive, who, as a magistrate of Valencia, had been the means of such losses to the hospital of that city, through its investments and advances for the theatre, that he had entered a religious house, and given his whole fortune to the hospital, to make up for the injury he had done it.
[568] Roxas (1602) gives an amusing account of the nicknames and resources of eight different kinds of strolling companies of actors, beginning with the bululu, which boasted of but one person, and going up to the full compañía, which was required to have seventeen. (Viage, Madrid, 1614, 12mo, ff. 51-53.) These nicknames and distinctions were long known in Spain. Four of them occur in “Estebanillo Gonzalez,” 1646, c. 6.
[569] On the whole subject of the contest between the Church and the theatre, and the success of Lope and his school, see C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 118-122, and 142-157; Don Quixote, ed. J. A. Pellicer, Parte II., c. 11, note; Roxas, Viage, 1614, passim (f. 66, implying that he wrote in 1602); Montalvan, Para Todos, 1661, p. 543; Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. p. 66; and many other parts of Vols. XX. and XXI.;—all showing the triumph of Lope and his school. A letter of Francisco Cascales to Lope de Vega, published in 1634, in defence of plays and their representation, is the third in the second decade of his Epistles; but it goes on the untenable ground, that the plays then represented were liable to no objection on the score of morals.
[570] There has been some discussion, and a general error, about the date of Calderon’s birth; but in a rare book, entitled “Obelisco Fúnebre,” published in his honor, by his friend Gaspar Augustin de Lara, (Madrid, 1684, 4to), written immediately after Calderon’s death, it is distinctly stated, on the authority of Calderon himself, that he was born Jan. 17th, 1600. This settles all doubts. The certificate of baptism given in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid,” Tom. IV. p. 228, only says that he was baptized Feb. 14th, 1600; but why that ceremony, contrary to custom, was so long delayed, or why a person in the position of Vera Tassis y Villarroel, who, like Lara, was a friend of Calderon, should have placed the poet’s birth on January 1st, we cannot now even conjecture.