Lope wrote a very large number of plays in the forms of the heroic drama, which he substantially invented,—perhaps as many as he wrote in any other class. Every thing historical seemed, indeed, to furnish him with a subject, from the earliest annals of the world down to the events of his own time; but his favorite materials were sought in Greek and Roman records, and especially in the chronicles and ballads of Spain itself.
Of the manner in which he dealt with ancient history, his “Roma Abrasada,” or Rome in Ashes, may be taken as a specimen, though certainly one of the least favorable specimens of the class to which it belongs.[326] The facts on which it is founded are gathered from the commonest sources open to its author,—chiefly from the “General Chronicle of Spain”; but they are not formed into a well-constructed or even ingenious plot,[327] and they relate to the whole twenty years that elapsed between the death of Messalina, in the reign of Claudius, and the death of Nero himself, who is not only the hero, but the gracioso, or droll, of the piece.
The first act, which comes down to the murder of Claudius by Nero and Agrippina, contains the old jest of the Emperor asking why his wife does not come to dinner, after he had put her to death, and adds, for equally popular effect, abundant praises of Spain and of Lucan and Seneca, claiming both of them to be Spaniards, and making the latter an astrologer as well as a moralist. The second act shows Nero beginning his reign with great gentleness, and follows Suetonius and the old Chronicle in making him grieve that he knew how to write, since otherwise he could not have been required to sign an order for a just judicial execution. The subsequent violent change in his conduct is not, however, in any way explained or accounted for. It is simply set before the spectators as a fact, and from this moment begins the headlong career of his guilt.
A curious scene, purely Spanish, is one of the early intimations of this change of character. Nero falls in love with Eta; but not at all in the Roman fashion. He visits her by night at her window, sings a sonnet to her, is interrupted by four men in disguise, kills one of them, and escapes from the pursuit of the officers of justice with difficulty; all, as if he were a wandering knight so fair of the time of Philip the Third.[328] The more historical love for Poppæa follows, with a shocking interview between Nero and his mother, in consequence of which he orders her to be at once put to death. The execution of this order, with the horrid exposure of her person afterwards, ends the act, which, gross as it is, does not sink to the revolting atrocities of the old Chronicle from which it is chiefly taken.
The third act is so arranged as partly to gratify the national vanity and partly to conciliate the influence of the Church, of which Lope, like his contemporaries, always stood in awe. Several devout Christians, therefore, are now introduced, and we have an edifying confession of faith, embracing the history of the world from the creation to the crucifixion, with an account of what the Spanish historians regard as the first of the twelve persecutions. The deaths of Seneca and Lucan follow; and then the conflagration of Rome, which, as it constitutes the show part of the play and is relied on for the stage effect it would produce, is brought in near the end, out of the proper order of the story, and after the building of Nero’s luxurious palace, the “aurea domus,” which was really constructed in the desert the fire had left. The audience, meantime, have been put in good humor by a scene in Spain, where a conspiracy is on foot to overthrow the Emperor’s power; and the drama concludes with the death of Poppæa,—again less gross than the account of it in the Chronicle,—with Nero’s own death, and with the proclamation of Galba as his successor; all of them crowded into a space disproportionately small for incidents so important.
But it was not often that Lope wrote so ill or so grossly. On modern, and especially on national subjects, he is almost always more fortunate, and sometimes becomes powerful and imposing. Among these, as a characteristic, though not as a remarkably favorable, specimen of his success, is to be placed the “Príncipe Perfeto,”[329] in which he intends to give his idea of a perfect prince under the character of Don John of Portugal, son of Alfonso the Fifth and contemporary with Ferdinand and Isabella, a full-length portrait of whom, by his friend and confidant, is drawn in the opening of the second act, with a minuteness of detail that leaves no doubt as to the qualities for which princes were valued in the age of the Philips, if not those for which they would be valued now.
Elsewhere in the piece, Don John is represented to have fought bravely in the disastrous battle of Toro, and to have voluntarily restored the throne to his father, who had once abdicated in his favor and had afterwards reclaimed the supreme power. Personal courage and strict justice, however, are the attributes most relied on to exhibit him as a perfect prince. Of the former he gives proof by killing a man in self-defence, and entering into a bull-fight under the most perilous circumstances. Of the latter—his love of justice—many instances are brought on the stage, and, among the rest, his protection of Columbus, after the return of that great navigator from America, though aware how much his discoveries had redounded to the honor of a rival country, and how great had been his own error in not obtaining the benefit of them for Portugal. But the most prominent of these instances of justice relates to a private and personal history, and forms the main subject of the drama. It is as follows.
Don Juan de Sosa, the king’s favorite, is twice sent by him to Spain on embassies of consequence, and, while residing there, lives in the family of a gentleman connected with him by blood, to whose daughter, Leonora, he makes love and wins her affections. Each time, when Don Juan returns to Portugal, he forgets his plighted faith and leaves the lady to languish. At last, she comes with her father to Lisbon in the train of the Spanish princess, Isabella, now married to the king’s son. But even there the false knight refuses to recognize his obligations. In her despair, she presents herself to the king, and explains her position in the following conversation, which is a favorable specimen of the easy narrative in which resides so much of the charm of Lope’s drama. As Leonora enters, she exclaims:—
Prince, whom in peace and war men perfect call,
Listen a woman’s cry!