Be sure I dare. You saw him help me,—
And would you have me fail to thank him for it?
Theodora.
Go to! Come home! come home!
Belisa.
Now we shall have
A pretty scolding cooked up out of this.[315]
Other passages are equally spirited and no less Castilian. The scene, at the beginning of the second act, between Octavio, another lover of the lady, and his servant, who jests at his master’s passion, as well as the scene with the mock doctor, that follows, are both admirable in their way, and must have produced a great effect on the audiences of Madrid, who felt how true they were to the manners of the time.
But all Lope’s dramas were not written for the public theatres of the capital. He was the courtly, no less than the national, poet of his age; and as we have already noticed a play full of the spirit of his youth, and of the popular character, to which it was addressed, we will now turn to one no less buoyant and free, which was written in his old age and prepared expressly for a royal entertainment. It is the “Saint John’s Eve,” and shows that his manner was the same, whether he was to be judged by the unruly crowds gathered in one of the court-yards of the capital, or by a few persons selected from whatever was most exclusive and elevated in the kingdom.
The occasion for which it was prepared and the arrangements for its exhibition mark, at once, the luxury of the royal theatres in the reign of Philip the Fourth, and the consideration enjoyed by their favored poet.[316] The drama itself was ordered expressly by the Count Duke Olivares, for a magnificent entertainment which he wished to give his sovereign in one of the gardens of Madrid, on Saint John’s eve, in June, 1631. No expense was spared by the profligate favorite to please his indulgent master. The Marquis Juan Bautista Crescencio—the same artist to whom we owe the sombre Pantheon of the Escurial—arranged the architectural constructions, which consisted of luxurious bowers for the king and his courtiers, and a gorgeous theatre in front of them, where, amidst a blaze of torch-light, the two most famous companies of actors of the time performed successively two plays: one written by the united talent of Francisco de Quevedo and Antonio de Mendoça; and the other, the crowning grace of the festival, by Lope de Vega.