What’s that to me? But if ’t is surely so,
Why then, Sirs, ’t is for you to bury him.
I’m not the parish curate.[319]
This tone is maintained to the end, whenever the heroine appears; and it gives Lope an opportunity to bring forth a great deal of the fluent, light wit of which he had such ample store.
Little like all we have yet noticed, but still belonging to the same class, is “The Reward of Speaking Well,”[320] a charming play, in which the accounts of the hero’s birth and early condition are so absolutely a description of his own, that it can hardly be doubted that Lope intended to draw the character in some degree from himself. Don Juan, who is the hero, is standing with some idle gallants near a church in Seville, to see the ladies come out; and, while there, defends, though he does not know her, one of them who is lightly spoken of. A quarrel ensues. He wounds his adversary, is pursued, and chances to take refuge in the house of the very lady whose honor he had so gallantly maintained a few moments before. She from gratitude secretes him, and the play ends with a wedding, though not until there has been a perfect confusion of plots and counterplots, intrigues and concealments, such as so often go to make up the three acts of Lope’s dramas.
Many other plays might be added to these, showing, by the diversity of their tone and character, how diverse were the gifts of the extraordinary man who invented them and filled them with various and easy verse. Among them are “Por la Puente Juana,”[321] “El Anzuelo de Fenisa,”[322] “El Ruyseñor de Sevilla,”[323] and “Porfiar hasta Morir”;[324] which last is on the story of Macias el Enamorado, always a favorite with the old Spanish, and Provençal poets. But it is neither needful nor possible to go farther. Enough has been said to show the general character of their class, and we therefore now turn to another.
CHAPTER XVI.
Lope de Vega, continued. — His Heroic Drama, and its Characteristics. — Great Number on Subjects from Spanish History, and Some on Contemporary Events.
The dramas of Lope de Vega that belong to the next class were called “Comedias Heróicas,” or “Comedias Historiales,”—Heroic or Historical Dramas. The chief differences between these and the last are that they bring on the stage personages in a higher rank of life, such as kings and princes; that they generally have an historical foundation, or, at least, use historical names, as if claiming it; and that their prevailing tone is grave, imposing, and even tragical. They have, however, in general, the same involved, intriguing stories and underplots, the same play of jealousy and an over-sensitive honor, and the same low, comic caricatures to relieve their serious parts, that are found in the dramas of “the Cloak and Sword.” Philip the Second disapproved of this class of plays, thinking they tended to diminish the royal dignity,—a circumstance which shows at once the state of manners at the time, and the influence attributed to the theatre.[325]