But the popular vein had not yet been struck. Except dramatic exhibitions of a religious character, and under ecclesiastical authority, nothing had been attempted in which the people, as such, had any share. The attempt, however, was now made, and made successfully. Its author was a mechanic of Seville, Lope de Rueda, a goldbeater by trade, who, from motives now entirely unknown, became both a dramatic writer and a public actor. The period in which he flourished has been supposed to be between 1544 and 1567, in which year he is spoken of as dead; and the scene of his adventures is believed to have extended to Seville, Córdova, Valencia, Segovia, and probably other places, where his plays and farces could be represented with profit. At Segovia, we know he acted in the new cathedral, during the week of its consecration, in 1558; and Cervantes and the unhappy Antonio Perez both speak with admiration of his powers as an actor; the first having been twenty years old in 1567, the period commonly assumed as that of Rueda’s death,[16] and the last having been eighteen. Rueda’s success, therefore, even during his lifetime, seems to have been remarkable; and when he died, though he belonged to the despised and rejected profession of the stage, he was interred with honor among the mazy pillars in the nave of the great cathedral at Córdova.[17]
His works were collected after his death by his friend Juan de Timoneda, and published in different editions, between 1567 and 1588.[18] They consist of four Comedias, two Pastoral Colloquies, and ten Pasos, or dialogues, all in prose; besides two dialogues in verse. They were all evidently written for representation, and were unquestionably acted before popular audiences, by the strolling company Lope de Rueda led about.
The four Comedias are merely divided into scenes, and extend to the length of a common farce, whose spirit they generally share. The first of them, “Los Engaños,”—Frauds,—contains the story of a daughter of Verginio, who has escaped from the convent where she was to be educated, and is serving as a page to Marcelo, who had once been her lover, and who had left her because he believed himself to have been ill treated. Clavela, the lady to whom Marcelo now devotes himself, falls in love with the fair page, somewhat as Olivia does in “Twelfth Night,” and this brings in several effective scenes and situations. But a twin brother of the lady-page returns home, after a considerable absence, so like her, that he proves the other Sosia, who, first producing great confusion and trouble, at last marries Clavela, and leaves his sister to her original lover. This is at least a plot; and some of its details and portions of the dialogue are ingenious, and managed with dramatic skill.
The next, the “Medora,” is, also, not without a sense of what belongs to theatrical composition and effect. The interest of the action depends, in a considerable degree, on the confusion produced by the resemblance between a young woman stolen when a child by Gypsies, and the heroine, who is her twin sister. But there are well-drawn characters in it, that stand out in excellent relief, especially two: Gargullo,—the “miles gloriosus,” or Captain Bobadil, of the story,—who, by an admirable touch of nature, is made to boast of his courage when quite alone, as well as when he is in company; and a Gypsy woman, who overreaches and robs him at the very moment he intends to overreach and rob her.[19]
The story of the “Eufemia” is not unlike that of the slandered Imogen, and the character of Melchior Ortiz is almost exactly that of the fool in the old English drama,—a well-sustained and amusing mixture of simplicity and shrewdness.
The “Armelina,” which is the fourth and last of the longer pieces of Lope de Rueda, is more bold in its dramatic incidents than either of the others.[20] The heroine, a foundling from Hungary, after a series of strange incidents, is left in a Spanish village, where she is kindly and even delicately brought up by the village blacksmith; while her father, to supply her place, has no less kindly brought up in Hungary a natural son of this same blacksmith, who had been carried there by his unworthy mother. The father of the lady, having some intimation of where his daughter is to be found, comes to the Spanish village, bringing his adopted son with him. There he advises with a Moorish necromancer how he is to proceed in order to regain his lost child. The Moor, by a fearful incantation, invokes Medea, who actually appears on the stage, fresh from the infernal regions, and informs him that his daughter is living in the very village where they all are. Meanwhile the daughter has seen the youth from Hungary, and they are at once in love with each other;—the blacksmith, at the same time, having decided, with the aid of his wife, to compel her to marry a shoemaker, to whom he had before promised her. Here, of course, come troubles and despair. The young lady undertakes to cut them short, at once, by throwing herself into the sea, but is prevented by Neptune, who quietly carries her down to his abodes under the roots of the ocean, and brings her back at the right moment to solve all the difficulties, explain the relationships, and end the whole with a wedding and a dance. This is, no doubt, very wild and extravagant, especially in the part containing the incantation and in the part played by Neptune; but, after all, the dialogue is pleasant and easy, and the style natural and spirited.
The two Pastoral Colloquies differ from the four Comedias, partly in having even less carefully constructed plots, and partly in affecting, through their more bucolic portions, a stately and pedantic air, which is any thing but agreeable. They belong, however, substantially to the same class of dramas, and received a different name, perhaps, only from the circumstance, that a pastoral tone was always popular in Spanish poetry, and that, from the time of Enzina, it had been considered peculiarly fitted for public exhibition. The comic parts of the colloquies are the only portions of them that have merit; and the following passage from that of “Timbria” is as characteristic of Lope de Rueda’s light and natural manner as any thing, perhaps, that can be selected from what we have of his dramas. It is a discussion between Leno, the shrewd fool of the piece, and Troico,[21] in which Leno ingeniously contrives to get rid of all blame for having eaten up a nice cake which Timbria, the lady in love with Troico, had sent to him by the faithless glutton.
Leno. Ah, Troico, are you there?
Troico. Yes, my good fellow, don’t you see I am?
Leno. It would be better if I did not see it.