The first real success of any thing in the French style on the Spanish stage, though not in the classical forms prescribed by Boileau and Racine, was obtained by Jovellanos. Early in life he had ventured a tragedy, entitled “Pelayo,” in the same measure with Ayala’s “Numantia,” and on nearly the same subject with the “Hormesinda” of the elder Moratin. But the philosophical statesman, though he wrote good lyric verse, was not a tragic poet. He was, however, something better;—he was a really good man, and his philanthropy led him, in 1773, to write his “Honored Culprit,” a play, intended to rebuke the cruel and unavailing severity of the laws of his country against duelling, as they then existed. It is a sentimental comedy in the manner of Diderot’s “Natural Son”; and, beside that it has the honor of being the first attempt of the kind on the Spanish stage, it has that of being more fortunate than any of its successors. The story on which it is founded is that of a gentleman, who, after repeatedly refusing a challenge, kills, in a secret duel, the infamous husband of the lady he afterwards marries; and, being subsequently led to confess his crime in order to save a friend, who is arrested as the guilty party, he is condemned to death by a rigorous judge, who unexpectedly turns out to be his own father, and is saved from execution, but not from severe punishment, only by the royal clemency.
How many opportunities for scenes of the most painful interest such a story affords is obvious at the first glance. Jovellanos has used them skilfully, because he has done it in the simplest and most direct manner, with great warmth of kindly feeling, and in a style whose idiomatic purity is not the least of its attractions. “The Honored Culprit,” therefore, was at once successful, and when well acted, though its poetical power is small, it can hardly be listened to without tears. It was first produced in one of the royal theatres, without the knowledge of its author; then, spreading throughout Spain, it was acted at Cadiz at the same time both in French and Spanish, and, at last, became familiar on the stages of France and Germany. Such wide success had long been unknown to any thing in Spanish literature.[376]
But from the time when the first attempt was made to introduce regular plays in the French manner upon the Spanish stage, an active contest had been going on, which, though the advantage had of late been on the side of the innovators, did not seem likely to be soon determined. In 1762, Moratin the elder published what he called “The Truth told about the Spanish Stage”;—three spirited pamphlets, in which he attacked the old drama generally, but above all the autos sacramentales, not denying the poetical merit of those by Calderon, but declaring that such wild, coarse, and blasphemous exhibitions, as they generally were, ought not to be tolerated in a civilized and religious community. So far as the autos were concerned, Moratin was successful. They were prohibited by a royal edict, June 17, 1765; and though, even in the nineteenth century, it can hardly be said that they have been entirely driven out of the villages, where they have been the delight of the mass of the people from a period before that of Alfonso the Wise, yet in Madrid and the larger cities of Spain they have never been heard since they were first forbidden.[377]
But this was as far as Moratin could prevail. In the public secular theatre, generally, his poetry and wit produced no effect. There, two riotous parties in the two audiences of Madrid—distinguishing themselves by favors worn in their hats and led on by vulgar friars and rude mechanics, making up in spirit what they wanted in decency, and readily uniting to urge an open war against all further innovations—effectually prevented any of the regular dramas that were written from being represented in their presence, until 1770. The old masters they partly tolerated; especially Calderon, Moreto, and the dramatists of the latter part of the seventeenth century; but the popular favorites were Ibañez, Lobera, Vicente Guerrero, a play-actor, Julian de Castro, who wrote ballads for the street beggars and died in a hospital, and others of the same class; all as vulgar as the populace they delighted.
After Aranda ceased to be minister, in 1773, this state of things was somewhat modified, without being materially improved. Under his administration, the theatres in the royal residences had been opened for tragedy and comedy; and translations from the French had been acted before the court in a manner suited to their subjects. The two popular theatres of the capital, too, had not escaped his regard, and under his influence had been provided with better scenery; and, from 1768, gave representations in the evening.[378]
Still, every thing was in a very low state. A blacksmith was the reigning critic to be consulted by those who sought a hearing on either stage, and the more regular plays, whether translations that had been acted with success at court, or tragedies and comedies of the poets already noticed, made a strange confusion with those of the old masters, which were still sometimes heard, and those of the favorites of the mob, whose works prevailed over all others in the theatrical repertories and in the general regard. But, whatever might be produced and performed, the intervals between the acts, and much time before and after the principal piece, were filled up with tonadillas, seguidillas, ballads, and all the forms of entremeses, saynetes, and dances, that had been common in the last century or invented in the present one,—an act in a serious and poetical play being sometimes divided, in order to give place to one or another of them, and gratify an audience that seemed to grow more and more impatient of every thing except popular farce.[379]
In this confusion of the old and the new,—of what was stiff, formal, and foreign with what was rudest and most lawless in the national drama at home,—a single writer appeared, who, from the mere force of natural talent, fell instinctively into a tone not unworthy of the theatre, and yet one that obtained for him a degree of favor long denied to persons of more poetical accomplishments. This was Ramon de la Cruz, a gentleman of family and an officer of the government at Madrid, who was born in 1731, and from 1765 to the time of his death, at the end of the century, constantly amused the audiences of the capital with dramas, written in any form likely to please at the palace, on the public stages of the city, or in the houses of the nobility, who, like the Duchess of Ossuna, or Aranda, the minister of state, were able to indulge in such a luxury at home.
In the whole, he wrote about three hundred dramatic compositions, but printed less than a third of that number; most of those he published being farces designed to produce a merely popular effect. They fill ten volumes, and are all in the short, national measure of the old drama, mingled occasionally, though rarely, with other forms of verse. They bear, however, very different names; some of them characteristic and some of them not. A few he calls “Dramatic Caprices”; apparently because no more definite title would be suited to their undefined character. Some he calls “Saynetes to be sung,” and some “Burlesque Tragedies.” Others have no names at all, not even for their personages, except those of the actors who represented the different parts. While yet others pass under the old designations of loas, entremeses, and zarzuelas, though often with a character which it would have been impossible for the early representations bearing the same names to assume. Occasionally, as in the case of the “Clementina,” he takes pains to observe all the rules of the French drama; but they sit very uneasily upon him, and he seldom submits to them. His great merit is almost entirely confined to his short farces; and therefore, when Duran, to whom the Spanish theatre owes so much, undertook to publish what was best of the works of La Cruz, he rejected all the rest, and, taking his materials both from manuscript sources and from what had been already published, gives us merely a hundred and ten proper “Saynetes.”
Their subjects are various, and they are very unequal in length; but, amidst all their varieties, one principle gave them a prevailing character and insured their success. They are founded on the manners of the middling and lower classes of the city, which they reflect freshly and faithfully, whether their materials are sought in the tertulias or evening parties of persons in a decent condition of life, where the demure Abate and the authorized lover of the mistress of the house contend for influence; or in the trim walks of the Prado, and among the loungers of the Puerta del Sol, where the fashion of the court is jostled by the humors of the people; or in the Lavapies and the Maravillas, where the lowest classes, with their picturesque dresses and unchanging manners, reign supreme and unquestioned. But, under all circumstances and in all situations, Ramon de la Cruz, in this class of his dramas, is attractive and amusing; and, though there is seldom any thought of dramatic skill in his combinations, and often no attempt at a catastrophe,—though his style is any thing but correct, and he is wholly careless of finish in his versification,—yet his farces so abound in wit and faithful delineations of character, they are so true to the manners they intend to represent, and so entirely national in their tone, that they seem expressly made for a pleasant and appropriate accompaniment to the longer dramas of Lope and Calderon, in whose popular spirit they are most successfully written.[380]
Meanwhile the press was not so inactive as it had been. Sedano published his “Jael,” taken from the story in the book of Judges; Lassala his “Iphigenia”; Trigueros his “Tradesmen of Madrid”; and Cortés his “Atahualpa”; the last two having been written, and successful, at the same festivities of 1784 for which Melendez composed his “Marriage of Camacho,” and failed. Cienfuegos, too, a poet of more original power than either of them, wrote his “Pitaco,” which opened for him the doors of the Spanish Academy; his “Idomeneo,” from which, in imitation of Alfieri, he excluded the passion of love; and his “Countess of Castile,” and his “Zoraida,” taken from the old traditions of his country’s wars and feuds; each giving proof of talent, but of talent rather lyric than dramatic, and each showing too anxious an adherence to Greek models, which were particularly unsuitable for the Zoraida, whose scene is laid in the gardens of the Alhambra.[381] But all of them—so far at least as the public stage is concerned—have been long since forgotten.