A History of Spanish Literature

by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

Belisa.

Be sure I dare. You saw him help me;

And would you have me fail to thank him for it?

Teodora.

Go to! Come home! come home!"

This is a fair specimen, even in its sober English dress, of Lope's gallant dialogue and of his consummate skill in gripping his subject. No playwright has ever shown a more infallible tact, a more assured confidence in his own resources. He never attempts to puzzle his audience with a dull acrostic: complicated as his plot may be (and he loves to introduce a double intrigue when the chance proffers), he exposes it at the outset with an obvious solution; but not one in twenty can guess precisely how the solution is to be attained. And, till the last moment, his contagious, reckless gaiety, his touches of perplexing irony, his vigilant invention, help to thrill and vivify the interest.

Yet has he all the defects of his facility. In an indifferent mood, besieged by managers for more and more plays, he would set forth upon a piece, not knowing what was to be its action, would indulge in a triple plot of baffling complexity eked out by incredible episodes. Even his ingenuity failed to find escape from such unprepared situations. Still it is fair to say that such instances are rare with him: time upon time his dramatic instinct saved him where a less notable inventor must have succumbed. He could create character; he was an artist in construction; he knew what could, and could not, be done upon the stage. Like Dumas, he needed but "four trestles, four boards, two actors, and a passion"; and, at his best, he rises to the greatest occasion. In a single scene, in an act entire, you shall read him with wonder and delight for his force and truth and certainty. Yet the trail of carelessness is upon his last acts, and his conscience sometimes sleeps ere his curtain falls. The fact that he thought more of a listener than of ten readers comes home to a constant student. Lope had few theories as to style, and he rarely aims at sheer beauty of expression, at simple felicity of phrase. Hence his very cleverness grows wearisome at last. But, after all, he must be judged by the true historic standard: his achievement must be compared with what preceded, not with what came after him. Tirso de Molina and Calderón and Moreto grew the flower from Lope's seed. He took the farce as Lope de Rueda left it, and transformed its hard fun by his humane and sparkling wit. He inherited the cold mediæval morality, and touched it into life by the breath of devout imagination. He re-shaped the crude collection of massacres which Virués mistook for tragedy, and produced effects of dread and horror with an artistry of his own devising, a selection, a conscience, a delicate vigour all unknown until he came. And for the comedia de capa y espada, it springs direct from his own cunning brain, unsuggested and even unimagined by any forerunner.

It were hopeless to analyse any part of the immense theatre which he bequeathed to the world. But among his best tragedies may be cited El Castigo sin Venganza, with its dramatic rendering of the Duke of Ferrara sentencing his adulterous wife and incestuous son to death. Among his historic dramas none surpasses El Mejor Alcalde el Rey, with its presentation of the model Spanish heroine, Elvira; of the feudal baron, Tello; and of the King as the buckler of his people, the strong man doing justice in high places: a most typical piece of character, congenial to the aristocratic democracy of Spain. A more morbid version of the same monarchical sentiment is given in La Estrella de Sevilla, the argument of which is brief enough for quotation. King Sancho el Bravo falls enamoured of Busto Tavera's sister, Estrella, betrothed to Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas. Having vainly striven to win over Busto, the King follows the advice of Arias, corrupts her slave, enters Estrella's room, is there discovered, is challenged by Busto, and escapes with a sound skin. The slave, confessing her share in the scheme, is killed by the innocent heroine's brother. Meanwhile, the King determines upon Busto's death, summons Sancho Ortiz, and bids him slay a certain criminal guilty of lèse-majesté. Herewith the King offers Sancho a guarantee against consequences. Sancho Ortiz destroys it, saying that he asks for nothing better than the King's word, and ends by begging the sovereign to grant him the hand of an unnamed lady. To this the King accedes, and he hands Sancho Ortiz a paper containing the name of the doomed man. After much hesitation and self-torment, Sancho Ortiz resolves to do his duty to his King, slays Busto, is seized, refuses to explain, undergoes sentence of death, and is finally pardoned by King Sancho, who avows his own guilt, and endeavours to promote the marriage between Sancho Ortiz and Estrella. For an obvious reason they refuse, and the curtain falls upon Estrella's determination to get herself to a nunnery.

Thus baldly told, the story resembles a thousand others; under Lope's hand it throbs with life and movement and emotion. His dialogue is swift and strong and appropriate, whether he personifies the blind passion of the King, the incorruptibility of Busto, the feudal ideal of Sancho Ortiz, or the strength and sweetness of Estrella. Of dialogue he is the first and best master on the Spanish stage: more choice, if less powerful, than Tirso; more natural, if less altisonant, than Calderón. The dramatic use of certain metrical forms persisted as he sanctioned it: the décimas for laments, the romance for exposition, the lira for heroic declamation, the sonnet to mark time, the redondilla for love-passages. His lightness of touch, his gaiety and resourcefulness are exampled in La Dama Melindrosa (The Languishing Lady), as good a cloak-and-sword play as even Lope ever wrote. His gift of sombre conception is to be seen in Dineros son Calidad (Money is Rank), where his contrivance of the King of Naples' statue addressing Octavio is the nearest possible approach to Tirso's figures of the Commander and of Don Juan.

Whether or not Tirso took the idea from Lope cannot well be decided; but if he did so, he was no worse than the rest of the world. For ages dramatists of all nations have found Lope de Vega "good to steal from," and in many forms he has diverted other countries than the Spains. Alexandre Hardy is said by tradition to have exploited him vigorously, and probably we should find the imitations among Hardy's lost plays. Jean Mairet is reputed to have borrowed generously, and an undoubted follower is Jean Rotrou, many of whose pieces—from the early Occasions perdues and La belle Alfrède to his last effort, Don Lope de Cardonne—are boldly annexed from Lope. D'Ouville, in Les Morts vivants and in Aimer sans savoir qui, exploited Lope to the profit of French playgoers. It is a rash conjecture which identifies the Wild Gallant with the Galán escarmentado, inasmuch as the latter play is even still "inedited," and could scarcely have reached Dryden; but it cannot be doubted that when the sources of our Restoration drama are traced out, Lope will be found to rank with Calderón, and Moreto, and Rojas Zorrilla.