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

by George Ticknor

He asked for Abraham’s willing faith.[233]

No doubt, some of the circumstances in the poem are invented for the occasion, though there is in the margin much parade of authorities for almost every thing;—a practice very common at that period, to which Lope afterwards conformed only once or twice. But however we may now regard the “San Isidro,” it was printed four times in less than nine years; and, by addressing itself more to the national and popular feeling than the “Arcadia” had done, it became the foundation for its author’s fame as the favorite poet of the whole nation.

At this time, however, he was beginning to be so much occupied with the theatre, and so successful, that he had little leisure for any thing else. His next considerable publication,[234] therefore, was not till 1602, when the “Hermosura de Angélica,” or the Beauty of Angelica, appeared; a poem already mentioned as having been chiefly written while its author served at sea in the ill-fated Armada. It somewhat presumptuously claims to be a continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” and is stretched out through twenty cantos, comprehending above eleven thousand lines in octave verse. In the Preface, he says he wrote it “under the rigging of the galleon Saint John and the banners of the Catholic king,” and that “he and the generalissimo of the expedition finished their labors together”;—a remark which must not be taken too strictly, since both the thirteenth and twentieth cantos contain passages relating to events in the reign of Philip the Third. Indeed, in the Dedication, he tells his patron that he had suffered the whole poem to lie by him long for want of leisure to correct it; and he elsewhere adds, that he leaves it still unfinished, to be completed by some happier genius.

It is not unlikely that Lope was induced to write the Angelica by the success of several poems that had preceded it on the same series of fictions, and especially by the favor shown to one published only two years before, in the same style and manner; the “Angélica” of Luis Barahona de Soto, which is noticed with extraordinary praise in the scrutiny of the Knight of La Mancha’s library, as well as in the conclusion to Don Quixote, where a somewhat tardy compliment is paid to this very work of Lope. Both poems are obvious imitations of Ariosto; and if that of De Soto has been too much praised, it is, at least, better than Lope’s. And yet, in “The Beauty of Angelica,” the author might have been deemed to occupy ground well suited to his genius; for the boundless latitude afforded him by a subject filled with the dreamy adventures of chivalry was, necessarily, a partial release from the obligation to pursue a consistent plan,—while, at the same time, the example of Ariosto, as well as that of Luis de Soto, may be supposed to have launched him fairly forth upon the open sea of an unrestrained fancy, careless of shores or soundings.

But perhaps this very freedom was a principal cause of his failure; for his story is to the last degree wild and extravagant, and is connected by the slightest possible thread to the graceful fiction of Ariosto.[235] A king of Andalusia, as it pretends, leaves his kingdom by testament to the most beautiful man or woman that can be found.[236] All the world throngs to win the mighty prize; and one of the most amusing parts of the whole poem is that in which its author describes to us the crowds of the old and the ugly who, under such conditions, still thought themselves fit competitors. But as early as the fifth canto, the two lovers, Medoro and Angelica, who had been left in India by the Italian master, have already won the throne, and, for the sake of the lady’s unrivalled beauty, are crowned king and queen at Seville.

Here, of course, if the poem had a regular subject, it would end; but now we are plunged at once into a series of wars and disasters, arising out of the discontent of unsuccessful rivals, which threaten to have no end. Trials of all kinds follow. Visions, enchantments and counter enchantments, episodes quite unconnected with the main story, and broken up themselves by the most perverse interruptions, are mingled together, we hardly know why or how; and when at last the happy pair are settled in their hardly won kingdom, we are as much wearied by the wild waste of fancy in which Lope has indulged himself, as we should have been by almost any degree of monotony arising from a want of inventive power. The best parts of the poem are those that contain descriptions of persons and scenery;[237] the worst are those where Lope has displayed his learning, which he has sometimes done by filling whole stanzas with a mere accumulation of proper names. The versification is extraordinarily fluent.[238]

As the Beauty of Angelica was written in the ill-fated Armada, it contains occasional intimations of the author’s national and religious feelings, such as were naturally suggested by his situation. But in the same volume he originally published a poem in which these feelings are much more fully and freely expressed;—a poem, indeed, which is devoted to nothing else. It is called “La Dragontea,” and is on the subject of Sir Francis Drake’s last expedition and death. Perhaps no other instance can be found of a grave epic devoted to the personal abuse of a single individual; and to account for the present one, we must remember how familiar and formidable the name of Sir Francis Drake had long been in Spain.

He had begun his career as a brilliant pirate in South America above thirty years before; he had alarmed all Spain by ravaging its coasts and occupying Cadiz, in a sort of doubtful warfare which Lord Bacon tells us the free sailor used to call “singeing the king of Spain’s beard”;[239] and he had risen to the height of his glory as second in command of the great fleet which had discomfited the Armada, one of whose largest vessels was known to have surrendered to the terror of his name alone. In Spain, where he was as much hated as he was feared, he was regarded chiefly as a bold and successful buccaneer, whose melancholy death at Panamá, in 1596, was held to be a just visitation of the Divine vengeance for his piracies;—a state of feeling of which the popular literature of the country, down to its very ballads, affords frequent proof.[240]

The Dragontea, however, whose ten cantos of octave verse are devoted to the expression of this national hatred, may be regarded as its chief monument. It is a strange poem. It begins with the prayers of Christianity, in the form of a beautiful woman, who presents Spain, Italy, and America in the court of Heaven, and prays God to protect them all against what Lope calls “that Protestant Scotch pirate.”[241] It ends with rejoicings in Panamá because “the Dragon,” as he is called through the whole poem, has died, poisoned by his own people, and with the thanksgivings of Christianity that her prayers have been heard, and that “the scarlet lady of Babylon”—meaning Queen Elizabeth—had been at last defeated. The substance of the poem is such as may beseem such an opening and such a conclusion. It is violent and coarse throughout. But although it appeals constantly to the national prejudices that prevailed in its author’s time with great intensity, it was not received with favor. It was written in 1597, immediately after the occurrence of most of the events to which it alludes; but was not published till 1602, and has been printed since only in the collective edition of Lope’s miscellaneous works, in 1776.[242]

In the same year, however, in which he gave the Dragontea to the world, he published a prose romance, “The Pilgrim in his own Country”; dedicating it to the Marquis of Priego, on the last day of 1603, from the city of Seville. It contains the story of two lovers, who, after many adventures in Spain and Portugal, are carried into captivity among the Moors, and return home by the way of Italy, as pilgrims. We first find them at Barcelona, shipwrecked, and the principal scenes are laid there and in Valencia and Saragossa;—the whole ending in the city of Toledo, where, with the assent of their friends, they are at last married.[243] Several episodes are ingeniously interwoven with the thread of the principal narrative, and, besides many poems, chiefly written, no doubt, for other occasions, several dramas are inserted, which seem actually to have been performed under the circumstances described.[244]