History of Spanish Literature, vol. 2 (of 3)

by George Ticknor

The last act is chiefly taken up with discussions of the same subjects by the same shepherds and shepherdesses, and an account of the visit to the mother and child; some parts of which are not without poetical merit. It ends with the appearance of the three Kings, preceded by dances of Gypsies and Negroes, and with the worship and offerings brought by all to the newborn Saviour.

Such dramas do not seem to have been favorites with Lope, and perhaps were not favorites with his audiences. At least, few of them appear among his printed works;—the one just noticed, and another, called “The Creation of the World and Man’s First Sin,” being the most prominent and curious;[373] and one on the atonement, entitled “The Pledge Redeemed,” being the most wild and gross. But to the proper stories of the Scriptures he somewhat oftener resorted, and with characteristic talent. Thus, we have full-length plays on the history of Tobias and the seven-times-wedded maid;[374] on the fair Esther and Ahasuerus;[375] and on the somewhat unsuitable subject of the Ravishment of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, as it is told in the book of Genesis.[376] In all these, and in the rest of the class to which they belong, Spanish manners and ideas, rather than Jewish, give their coloring to the scene; and the story, though substantially taken from the Hebrew records, is thus rendered much more attractive, for the purposes of its representation at Madrid, than it would have been in its original simplicity; as, for instance, in the case of the “Esther,” where a comic underplot between a coquettish shepherdess and her lover is much relied upon for the popular effect of the whole.[377]

Still, even these dramas were not able to satisfy audiences accustomed to the more national spirit of plays founded on fashionable life and intriguing adventures. A wider range, therefore, was taken. Striking religious events of all kinds—especially those found in the lives of holy men—were resorted to, and ingenious stories were constructed out of the miracles and sufferings of saints, which were often as interesting as the intrigues of Spanish gallants, or the achievements of the old Spanish heroes, and were sometimes hardly less free and wild. Saint Jerome, under the name of the “Cardinal of Bethlehem,” is brought upon the stage in one of them, first as a gay gallant, and afterwards as a saint scourged by angels, and triumphing, in open show, over Satan.[378] In another, San Diego of Alcalá rises, from being the attendant of a poor hermit, to be a general with military command, and, after committing most soldier-like atrocities in the Fortunate Islands, returns and dies at home in the odor of sanctity.[379] And in yet others, historical subjects of a religious character are taken, like the story of the holy Bamba torn from the plough, in the seventh century, and by miraculous command made king of Spain;[380] or like the life of the Mohammedan prince of Morocco, who, in 1593, was converted to Christianity and publicly baptized in presence of Philip the Second, with the heir of the throne for his godfather.[381]

All these, and many more like them, were represented with the consent of the ecclesiastical powers,—sometimes even in convents and other religious houses, but oftener in public, and always under auspices no less obviously religious.[382] The favorite materials for such dramas, however, were found, at last, almost exclusively in the lives of popular saints; and the number of plays filled with such histories and miracles was so great, soon after the year 1600, that they came to be considered as a class by themselves, under the name of “Comedias de Santos,” or Saints’ Plays. Lope wrote many of them. Besides those already mentioned, we have from his pen dramatic compositions on the lives of Saint Francis, San Pedro de Nolasco, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Julian, Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, Santa Teresa, three on San Isidro de Madrid, and not a few others. Many of them, like Saint Nicholas of Tolentino,[383] are very strange and extravagant; but perhaps none will give a more true idea of the entire class than the first one he wrote, on the subject of the favored saint of his own city, San Isidro de Madrid.[384]

It seems to have all the varieties of interest and character that belong to the secular divisions of the Spanish drama. Scenes of stirring interest occur in it among warriors just returned to Madrid from a successful foray against the Moors; gay scenes, with rustic dancing and frolics, at the marriage of Isidro and the birth of his son; and scenes of broad farce with the sacristan, who complains, that, owing to Isidro’s power with Heaven, he no longer gets fees for burials, and that he believes Death is gone to live elsewhere. But through the whole runs the loving and devout character of the Saint himself, and gives it a sort of poetical unity. The angels come down to plough for him, that he may no longer incur reproach by neglecting his labors in order to attend mass; and at the touch of his goad, a spring of pure water, still looked upon with reverence, rises in a burning waste to refresh his unjust master. Popular songs and poetry, meanwhile,[385] with a parody of the old Moorish ballad of “Gentle River, Gentle River,”[386] and allusions to the holy image of Almudena, and the church of Saint Andrew, give life to the dialogue, as it goes on;—all familiar as household words at Madrid, and striking chords which, when this drama was first represented, still vibrated in every heart. At the end, the body of the Saint, after his death, is exposed before the well-known altar of his favorite church; and there, according to the old traditions, his former master and the queen come to worship him, and, with pious sacrilege, endeavour to bear away from his person relics for their own protection; but are punished on the spot by a miracle, which thus serves at once as the final and crowning testimony to the divine merits of the Saint, and as an appropriate dénouement for the piece.

No doubt, such a drama, extending over forty or fifty years of time, with its motley crowd of personages,—among whom are angels and demons, Envy, Falsehood, and the River Manzanares,—would now be accounted grotesque and irreverent, rather than any thing else. But in the time of Lope, the audiences not only brought a willing faith to such representations, but received gladly an exhibition of the miracles which connected the saint they worshipped and his beneficent virtues with their own times and their personal well-being.[387] If to this we add the restraints on the theatre, and Lope’s extraordinary facility, grace, and ingenuity, which never failed to consult and gratify the popular taste, we shall have all the elements necessary to explain the great number of religious dramas he composed, whether of the nature of Mysteries, Scripture stories, or lives of saints. They belonged to his age and country as much as he himself did.

But Lope adventured with success in another form of the drama, not only more grotesque than that of the full-length religious plays, but intended yet more directly for popular edification,—the “Autos Sacramentales,” or Sacramental Acts,—a sort of religious plays performed in the streets during the season when the gorgeous ceremonies of the “Corpus Christi” filled them with rejoicing crowds.[388] No form of the Spanish drama is older, and none had so long a reign, or maintained during its continuance so strong a hold on the general favor. Its representations, as we have already seen, may be found among the earliest intimations of the national literature; and, as we shall learn hereafter, they were with difficulty suppressed by the royal authority after the middle of the eighteenth century. In the age of Lope, and in that immediately following, they were at the height of their success, and had become an important part of the religious ceremonies arranged for the solemn sacramental festival to which they were devoted, not only in Madrid, but throughout Spain; all the theatres being closed for a month to give place to them and to do them honor.[389]

Yet to our apprehensions, notwithstanding their religious claims, they seem almost wholly gross and irreverent. Indeed, the very circumstances under which they were represented would seem to prove that they were not regarded as really solemn. A sort of rude mumming, which certainly had nothing grave about it, preceded them, as they advanced through the thronged streets, where the windows and balconies of all the better sort of houses were hung with silks and tapestries to do honor to the occasion. First in this extraordinary procession came the figure of a misshapen marine monster, called the Tarasca, half serpent in form, borne by men concealed in its cumbrous bulk, and surmounted by another figure representing the Woman of Babylon,—the whole so managed as to fill with wonder and terror the poor country people that crowded round it, some of whose hats and caps were generally snatched away by the grinning beast, and regarded as the lawful plunder of his conductors.[390]

Then followed a company of fair children, with garlands on their heads, singing hymns and litanies of the Church; and sometimes companies of men and women with castanets, dancing the national dances. Two or more huge Moorish or negro giants, commonly called the Gigantones, made of pasteboard, came next, jumping about grotesquely, to the great alarm of some of the less experienced part of the crowd, and to the great amusement of the rest. Then, with much pomp and fine music, appeared the priests, bearing the Host under a splendid canopy; and after them a long and devout procession, where was seen, in Madrid, the king, with a taper in his hand, like the meanest of his subjects, together with the great officers of state and foreign ambassadors, who all crowded in to swell the splendor of the scene.[391] Last of all came showy cars, filled with actors from the public theatres, who were to figure on the occasion, and add to its attractions, if not to its solemnity;—personages who constituted so important a part of the day’s festivity, that the whole was often called, in popular phrase, The Festival of the Cars,—“La Fiesta de los Carros.”[392]

This procession—not, indeed, magnificent in the towns and hamlets of the provinces, as it was in the capital, but always as imposing as the resources of the place where it occurred could make it—stopped from time to time under awnings in front of the house of some distinguished person,—perhaps that of the President of the Council of Castile at Madrid; perhaps that of the alcalde of a village,—and there waited reverently till certain religious offices could be performed by the ecclesiastics; the multitude, all the while, kneeling, as if in church. As soon as these duties were over, or at a later hour of the day, the actors from the cars appeared on a neighbouring stage, in the open air, and performed, according to their limited service, the sacramental auto prepared for the occasion, and always alluding to it directly. Of such autos, we know, on good authority, that Lope wrote about four hundred,[393] though no more than twelve or thirteen of the whole number are now extant, and these, we are told, were published only that the towns and villages of the interior might enjoy the same devout pleasures that were enjoyed by the court and capital;—so universal was the fanaticism for this strange form of amusement, and so deeply was it seated in the popular character.[394]