Al suceder la tragedia
del silbo, si se repara,
ver su comedia era cara,
ver su cara era comedia.
This is not the kind of immortality that any one desires, but this—or something not much better—is the only kind of immortality that most of the five hundred are likely to attain. The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth its poppy on the crowd, and the long line closes with Bancés Candamo, who died in 1704. He was the favourite court-dramatist as Calderón had been before him. To say that Bancés Candamo occupied the place once filled by Calderón is to show how greatly the Spanish theatre had degenerated. No doubt it must have perished in any case, for institutions die as certainly as men. But its end was hastened by two most influential personages—one a man of genius, and the other a fribble—who had the welfare of the stage at heart. By reducing dramatic composition to a formula, Calderón arrested any possible development; by lavish expenditure on decorations, Philip IV. imposed his taste for spectacle upon the public. The public gets what it deserves: when the stage-carpenter comes in, the dramatist goes out. Compelled to write pieces which would suit the elaborate scenery provided at the Buen Retiro, Calderón was the first to suffer. He and Philip,[106] between them, dealt the Spanish drama its death-blow. It lingered on in senile decay for fifty years, and with Bancés Candamo it died. It was high time for it to be gone: for nothing is more lamentable than the progressive degradation of what has once been a great and living force.
CHAPTER X
MODERN SPANISH NOVELISTS
If asked to indicate the most interesting development in Spanish literature during the last century, I should point—not to the drama and poetry of the Romantic movement, but—to the renaissance of fiction. As the passion for narrative ‘springs eternal in the human breast,’ Cervantes was sure to have a train of successors who would attempt to carry on his great tradition. But, in the history of art, a short, glorious summer is usually followed by a long, blighting winter. The eighteenth century was an age of barrenness in Spain, so far as concerns romance. No doubt Torres Villaroel’s autobiography contains so much fiction that it may fairly be described as a picaresque novel, and you might easily be worse employed than in reading it. Nature intended the author to be a man of letters and a wit; poverty compelled him to become an incapable professor of mathematics, and a diffuse buffoon. With the single exception of Isla, no Spanish novelist of this time finds readers now, and Isla’s main object is utilitarian. The amusement in Fray Gerundio is incidental, and art has a very secondary place. Spain appears to have remained unaffected by the great schools of novelists in England and France: instead of being influenced by these writers, she influenced them. After lending to Lesage, she lent to Marivaux; she lent also to Fielding and Sterne, not to mention Smollett; but she herself was living on her capital. She has no contemporary novelists to place beside Ramón de la Cruz, González del Castillo, and the younger Moratín, all of whom found expression for their talent in the dramatic form. Not till about the middle of the last century does any notable novelist come
From tawny Spain, lost in the world’s debate.