[383] Don Jaime Doms attacked Montiano in a Letter, without date or name of place or printer, and was answered by Domingo Luis de Guevara in three Letters, (Madrid, 1753, 18mo,) to which a rejoinder by Faustino de Quevedo appeared at Salamanca in 1754, 18mo;—all the names being pseudonymes, and all the discussions more angry than wise. The publication of the “Teatro” of La Huerta excited still more discussion. He himself speaks (Escena Hespañola Defendida, Madrid, 1786, 12mo, p. cliii.) of the “enorme número de folletos” that appeared in reply to his “Prólogo,” many of which were probably only circulated in manuscript, according to the fashion of the times, while others, like those of Cosme Damian, Tomé Cecial (i. e. J. P. Forner), etc., were printed in 1786, and La Huerta replied to them in his angry “Leccion Crítica” of the same year. (Sempere, Bib., Tom. III. p. 88.) The whole of this period of Spanish literature is filled with the quarrels of Sedano, Forner, Huerta, Yriarte, and their friends and rivals.
[384] The popularity of Antonio Valladares de Sotomayor, of Gaspar Zavala y Zamora, and of Luciano Francisco Comella, did not last long enough to cause their works to be collected. But I have many separate plays of each of them, and of other forgotten authors of this period, such as Luis Moncin, Vicente Rodriguez de Arellano, José Concha, etc. Of Comella alone I have thirty, and I am ashamed to say how many of them I have read for the pleasure their mere stories gave me.
[385] Obras Póstumas de N. F. Moratin, 1825, p. xvi.
[386] From a letter of Moratin, published in the Semanario Pintoresco, (1844, p. 43,) it seems that Comella and his friends prevented for some time the representation of the “Comedia Nueva,” and that the permission to act it was not granted till it had undergone five different examinations, and not till the very day for which it had been announced was come. The applause of the public, however, made amends to Moratin for the trouble which the intrigues of his rivals and enemies had given him.
[387] Every thing relating to Moratin the younger is to be found in the excellent edition of his Works, published by the Academy of History. Larra (Obras, Madrid, 1843, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 183-187) intimates that the “Mogigata” had been proscribed anew, and that the “Sí de las Niñas” had been mutilated, but that both were brought out again, in their original form, about 1838.
[388] C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. II. p. 41. Signorelli, Storia, Lib. IX. cap. 8. R. Cumberland (Memoirs of Himself, London, 1807, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 107) speaks of the Tirana as “at the very summit of her art,” and adds that on one occasion, when he was present, her tragic powers proved too much for the audience, at whose cries the curtain was lowered before the piece was ended. Maiquez was the friend of Blanco White, of Moratin the younger, etc. (New Monthly Mag., Tom. XI. p. 187, and L. F. Moratin, Obras, Tom. IV. p. 345). His best character was that of Garcia de Castañar, in Roxas, which I have seen him play with admirable power and effect.
[389] The war between the Church and the theatre was kept up during the whole of the eighteenth century, and till the end of the reign of Ferdinand VII., in the nineteenth. Not that plays were at any time forbidden effectually throughout the kingdom, or silenced in the capital, except during some short period of national anxiety or mourning; but that, at different intervals,—and especially about the year 1748, when, in consequence of earthquakes at Valencia, and under the influence of the Archbishop of that city, its theatre was closed, and remained so for twelve years, (Luis Lamarca, Teatro de Valencia, Valencia, 1840, 12mo, pp. 32-36,) and about the year 1754, when Father Calatayud preached as a missionary and published a book against plays,—there was great excitement on the subject in the provinces. Ferdinand VI. issued severe decrees for their regulation, which were little respected, and in different cities and dioceses, like Lérida, Palencia, Calahorra, Saragossa, Alicant, Córdova, etc., they were from time to time, and as late as 1807, under ecclesiastical influence, and, with the assent of the people, suppressed, and the theatres shut up. In Murcia, where they seem to have been prohibited from 1734 to 1789, and then permitted again, the religious authorities openly resisted their restoration, and not only denied the sacraments to actors, but endeavoured to deprive them of the enjoyment of some of the common rights of subjects, such as that of receiving testamentary legacies. This, however, was an anomalous and absurd state of things, making what was tolerated as harmless in the capital of the kingdom a sin or a crime in the provinces. It was a sort of war of the outposts, carried on after the citadel had been surrendered. Still it had its effect, and its influence continued to be felt till a new order of things was introduced into the state generally. Many singular facts in relation to it may be found scattered through a very ill-arranged book, written apparently by an ecclesiastic of Murcia, in two volumes quarto, at different times between 1789 and 1814, in which last year it was published there, with the title of “Pantoja, ó Resolucion Histórica, Teológica de un Caso Prático de Moral sobre Comédias”;—Pantoja being the name of a lady, real or pretended, who had asked questions of conscience concerning the lawfulness of plays, and who received her answers in this clumsy way.
The state of the theatre, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, can be well seen in the “Teatro Nuevo Español,” (Madrid, 1800-1, 5 tom. 12mo,) filled with the plays, original and translated, that were then in fashion. It contains a list of such as were forbidden; imperfect, but still embracing between five and six hundred, among which are Calderon’s “Life is a Dream,” Alarcon’s “Weaver of Segovia,” and many more of the best dramas of the old school. Duran, in a note to his Preface to Ramon de la Cruz, (Tom. I. p. v.,) intimates that this ostracism was in some degree the result of the influence of those who sustained the French doctrines.
The number of plays acted or published between 1700 and 1825, if not to be compared with that of the corresponding period preceding 1700, is still large. I think that, in the list given by Moratin, there are about fourteen hundred; nearly all after 1750.
[390] The last Index Expurgatorius is that of Madrid, 1790, (4to, pp. 305,) to which should be added a Supplement of 55 pages, dated 1805; both very meagre, compared with the vast folios of the two preceding centuries, of which that of 1667 fills, with its Supplement, above 1200 pages. But the last of the race is as bitter as its predecessors, and, by the great number of French books it includes, shows the quarter from which danger was chiefly apprehended. To prevent any of this class from escaping, it is ordered that “all papers, tracts, and books, on the disturbances in France, which can inspire a spirit of seduction, shall be delivered to some servant of the Holy Office.” Supplement of 1805, p. 3. Burke’s “Reflections” are forbidden in the same Index.