pero en tanto que mi cuello
esté en mis hombros robusto,
no he de permitir me agravie
del Rey abajo, ninguno.
Del Rey abajo, ninguno—‘None, under the rank of King’—is the alternative title of García del Castañar, and these four energetic words sum up the exaltation of monarchical sentiment which is the leading motive of the play. Buckle, writing of Spain, says in his sweeping way that ‘whatever the King came in contact with, was in some degree hallowed by his touch,’ and that ‘no one might marry a mistress whom he had deserted.’ This is not quite accurate. We know that, at the very time of which we are speaking, the notorious ‘Calderona’—the mother of Don Juan de Austria—married an actor named Tomás Rojas, and that she returned to her husband and the stage after her liaison with Philip IV. was ended. Still, it is true that reverence for the person of the sovereign was a real and common sentiment among Spaniards. Clarendon speaks of ‘their submissive reverence to their princes being a vital part of their religion,’ and records the horrified amazement of Olivares on observing Buckingham’s familiarity with the Prince of Wales—‘a crime monstrous to the Spaniard.’ This reverential feeling, like every other emotion, found dramatic expression in the work of Lope de Vega. It is the leading theme in La Estrella de Sevilla, and Lope has even been accused of almost blasphemous adulation by those who only know this celebrated play in the popular recast made at the end of the eighteenth century by Cándido María Trigueros, and entitled Sancho Ortiz de las Roelas. The charge is based on a well-known passage:—
¡La espada sacastes vos,
y al Rey quisisteis herir
[219]¿El Rey no pudo mentir?
No, que es imagen de Dios.