Of his more regular plays, the two oldest, that were subsequently included in his printed collection, are not without similar indications of their origin. Both are pastorals. The first is called “The True Lover,” and was written when Lope was fourteen years old, though it may have been altered and improved before he published it, when he was fifty-eight. It is the story of a shepherd who refuses to marry a shepherdess, though she had put him in peril of his life by accusing him of having murdered her husband, who, as she was quite aware, had died a natural death, but whose supposed murderer could be released from his doom only at her requisition, as next of kin to the pretended victim;—a process by which she hoped to obtain all power over his spirit, and compel him to marry her, as Ximena married the Cid, by royal authority. Lope admits it to be a rude performance; but it is marked by the sweetness of versification which seems to have belonged to him at every period of his career.[286]
The other of his early performances above alluded to is the “Pastoral de Jacinto,” which Montalvan tells us was the first play Lope wrote in three acts, and that it was composed while he was attached to the person of the Bishop of Avila. This must have been about the year 1580; but as the Jacinto was not printed till thirty-seven years afterwards, it may perhaps have undergone large changes before it was offered to the public, whose requisitions had advanced in the interval no less than the condition of the theatre. He says in the Dedication, that it was “written in the years of his youth,” and it is founded on the somewhat artificial story of a shepherd fairly made jealous of himself by the management of another shepherd, who hopes thus to obtain the shepherdess they both love, and who passes himself off, for some time, as another Jacinto, and as the only one to whom the lady is really attached. It has the same flowing versification with the “True Lover,” but it is not superior in merit to that drama, which can hardly have preceded it by more than two or three years.[287]
Moralities, too, written with no little spirit, and with strong internal evidence of having been publicly performed, occur here and there;—sometimes where we should least look for them. Four such are produced in his “Pilgrim in his own Country”; the romance, it may be remembered, which is not without allusions to its author’s exile, and which seems to contain some of his personal experiences at Valencia. One of these allegorical plays, “The Salvation of Man,” is declared to have been performed in front of the venerable cathedral at Saragossa, and is among the more curious specimens of such entertainments, since it is accompanied with explanations of the way in which the churches were used for theatrical purposes, and ends with an account of the exposition of the Host, as an appropriate conclusion for a drama so devout.[288]
Another, called “The Soul’s Voyage,” is set forth as if represented in a public square of Barcelona.[289] It opens with a ballad, which is sung by three persons, and is followed, first, by a prologue full of cumbrous learning, and then by another ballad both sung and danced, as we are told, “with much skill and grace.” After all this note of preparation comes the “Moral Action” itself. The Soul enters dressed in white,—the way in which a disembodied spirit was indicated to the audience. A clown, who, as the droll of the piece, represents the Human Will, and a gallant youth, who represents Memory, enter at the same time; one of them urging the Soul to set out on the voyage of salvation, and the other endeavouring to jest her out of such a pious purpose. At this critical moment, Satan appears as a ship-captain, in a black suit, fringed with flames, and accompanied by Selfishness, Appetite, and other vices, as his sailors, and offers to speed the Soul on her voyage, all singing merrily together,—
Holloa! the good ship of Delight
Spreads her sails for the sea to-day;
Who embarks? who embarks, then, I say?
To-day, the good ship of Content,
With a wind at her choice for her course,
To a land where no troubles are sent,