CHAPTER VIII
CALDERÓN
For some time before Lope de Vega’s death, it was evident that Calderón would succeed him as dictator of the stage. There was no serious competitor in sight. Tirso de Molina was becoming rusty; Vélez de Guevara and Ruiz de Alarcón, both on the wrong side of fifty when Lope died, had given the measure of what they could do, and Ruiz de Alarcón’s art was too individual to be popular. No possible rival to Calderón was to be found among the younger men. His path lay smooth before him. He developed the national drama which Lope had created; he accentuated its characteristics, but introduced no radical innovation. He found the most difficult part of the work already done; he inherited a vast intellectual estate, and it is the general opinion that the patronage of Philip IV. helped him to exploit it profitably. This point may stand over for the moment. Here and now, it is enough to say that Calderón’s career, so far as we can trace it, was one of uninterrupted success. Unfortunately, at present, we can only sketch his biography in outline. Within a year of his death, a short life of him was published by his admirer and editor, Juan de Vera Tassis y Villarroel; but, as Vera Tassis was thirty or forty years younger than Calderón, he naturally knew nothing of the dramatist’s early circumstances. He begins badly with a blunder as to the date of Calderón’s birth, shows himself untrustworthy in matters of fact, and indulges too freely in flatulent panegyric. For the present we are condemned to make bricks with only a few wisps of straw; but if, as seems likely, Dr. Pérez Pastor is as fortunate with Calderón as he was with Cervantes, many a blank will be filled in before long.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca was born at Madrid on January 17, 1600. He became an orphan at an early age. His mother, who was of Flemish origin, died in 1610; his father, who was Secretary of the Council of the Treasury, seems to have offended his first wife’s family by marrying again, was excluded from administering a chaplaincy in their gift, and died in 1615. Calderón was educated at the Jesuit college in Madrid, and later studied theology at the University of Salamanca with a view to holding the family living; but he gave up his idea of entering the Church, and took to literature. It has been said that he collaborated with Rojas Zorrilla and Belmonte in writing El mejor amigo el muerto, and he is specifically named as being the author of the Third Act. On the other hand, it is asserted that El mejor amigo el muerto was played on Christmas Eve, 1610, and, if this be so, we must abandon the ascription, for Calderón was then a boy of ten, while Rojas Zorrilla was only three years old. We may also hesitate to accept the unsupported statement of Vera Tassis that Calderón wrote El Carro del Cielo at the age of thirteen. Such ‘fond legends of their infancy’ accumulate round all great men. So far as can be gathered, Calderón first came before the public in 1620-22 at the literary fêtes held at Madrid in honour of St. Isidore, the patron saint of the city; and on the latter occasion Lope de Vega, who was usually florid in compliment, welcomed the new-comer as one who ‘in his youth has gained the laurels which time, as a rule, only grants together with grey hair.’ From the date of these first triumphs onward, Calderón never went back.
In 1621, four years before reaching his legal majority, he was granted letters-patent to administer his estate. Vera Tassis asserts that Calderón entered the army in 1625, and that he served in Milan and Flanders. If so, his service must have been very short, for he was at Madrid on September 11, 1625, and was still residing in that city on April 16, 1626. We find him again at Madrid, and in a scrape, in January 1629. His brother, Diego, had been stabbed by the actor Pedro de Villegas, who took sanctuary in the convent of the Trinitarian nuns; Calderón and his backers determined to seize the culprit, broke into the cloister, handled the nuns roughly, dragged off their veils, and used strong language to them. Such conduct is very unlike all that we know of Calderón; but this was the current version of his proceedings, and the rumour fluttered the dovecots of the devout. The alleged misdeeds of Calderón and his friends were denounced by the fashionable preacher, Hortensio Félix Paravicino, in a sermon delivered before Philip IV. on January 11, 1629. Calderon retaliated by making a sarcastic reference in El Príncipe constante to the popular ranter’s habit of spouting unintelligible jargon:—
Una oración se fragua
funebre, que es un sermón de Berberia.
Panegírico es que digo al agua,
y era emponomio Horténsico me quejo.
But ‘the king of preachers and the preacher of kings,’ though ready enough to attack others, was not disposed to share this privilege: and he had Philip’s ear. Calderón was arrested. As the jibe does not appear in the text of El Príncipe constante, possibly the author was released on the understanding that the offensive passage should be omitted from any printed edition; but it is just as likely that Calderón, who had not a shade of rancour in his nature, voluntarily struck out the lines when the play was published after Paravicino’s death, which occurred in 1633.
The escapade does not appear to have damaged him in any way, and his fame grew rapidly. The chronology of his plays is not yet determined, but it is certain that his activity at this period was remarkable. It seems probable that he collaborated with Pérez de Montalbán and Antonio Coello in El Privilegio de las mugeres during the visit of the Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I.) and Buckingham to Madrid in 1623; El Sitio de Bredá was no doubt written soon after the surrender on June 8, 1625; La Dama duende is not later than 1629, La Cena de Baltasar was performed at Seville in 1632, in which year also La Banda y la flor was produced and El Astrólogo fingido was printed; Amor, honor y poder with La Devoción de la Cruz and Un Castigo en tres venganzas were issued in a pirated edition in 1634. Two years later Philip IV. was so enchanted with Los tres mayores prodigios (a poor piece given at the Buen Retiro) that he resolved to admit Calderón to the Order of Santiago. The official pretensión was granted on July 3, 1636, and the robe was bestowed on April 8, 1637. In 1636 twelve of Calderón’s plays were issued by his brother José, who published twelve more in 1637. These two volumes raised the writer’s reputation immensely, and well they might; for, besides La Dama duende and La Devoción de la Cruz (already mentioned), the first volume contained, amongst other plays, La Vida es sueño, Casa con dos puertas, El Purgatorio de San Patricio, Peor está que estaba, and El Príncipe constante; while the second volume, besides El Astrólogo fingido (already mentioned) contained El Galán fantasma, El Médico de su honra, El Hombre pobre todo es trazas, Á secreto agravio secreta venganza, and the typical show-piece El mayor encanto amor.