Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 3 (of 3)

by James Montgomery; Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

After Rueda, Cervantes tells us, came another Naharro, a native of Toledo; he was also an actor and manager. "He augmented the decorations of the comedies; he substituted trunks and boxes for the old bag. He drew the musicians out from behind the curtain, where they were previously placed. He deprived the actors of their beards; for before him no actor had ever appeared without a false beard. He desired that all should show an unmasked battery, except those who represented old men, or were disguised. He invented side scenes, clouds, thunder, lightning, challenges, and battles.

Such were the commencements of the Spanish theatre, destined to take so high a place hereafter in the history of the drama.

We now come to a new era, and names more known. We have arrived at the age of Cervantes: these were the men who preceded him.

There is something very peculiar in the state of literature at this time. The infancy of Spanish poetry was such as might have been expected from a chivalrous nation; its themes were love and war, its heroes national, and its style such as to render it popular. The continued struggle with a foreign conqueror gave an ardent and gallant turn to the national character: and while the superior excellence of the enemy in arts and literature imparted some portion of refinement, national enthusiasm inspired independence. But now the enemy was quelled, the country overflowed with money, the harvest of the most nefarious cruelties, and the inquisition was established. Even these circumstances were not enough to subdue the heroism of the Spanish character: they made a stand for freedom against the encroachments of the monarchs; their disjointed councils caused them to fail, and from that moment they sank. The wars of Charles V. drained the country of men and money; the Lutheran heresy put fresh powers into the hands of the inquisition; a career of arms in a foreign country was all that was left; the gates of inquiry and free thought were closed and barred.

Intercourse with Italy opened fresh fields of poetry, which all other countries have found unlimited in the variety of subjects, and manner of treating them. Not so the Spaniards; they stopt short at once with elegies, and pastorals, and songs. Boscan, a man of gentle disposition and retired habits, naturally dwelt with complacency on descriptions of rural pleasures, or the sentiments of his own heart. Garcilaso de la Vega, a gallant soldier, found in poetry a recreation, a mode to gratify his taste; and retired from the world of arms to brood over the graceful and passionate reveries of a young lover. Mendoza, a man of harder temperament, was the servant of a king: a sort of worldly philosophy, Horatian in its expression, or the passion of love, inspired his writings at first; and when, later in life, he might be supposed to entertain the design of making his talents subservient to the good of mankind, he found, when he wrote the wars of Granada, the political and inquisitorial yoke so heavy that he could only hint at injuries, and allude to wrongs. The poets who came after were men of an inferior grade; they wrote in a great measure to please their contemporaries; they adopted, therefore, pastoral themes, they wrote elegies, sonnets; and love and scenic descriptions were the subjects of their compositions.

In all this, it is not to be supposed that they were servile imitators of the Italians; they were at first their pupils, but nothing more. Originality is the great distinctive of the Spanish character. Every line each author wrote was in its turn of thought and expression national. The conceits resulting from a meeting of ardent imaginations with ardent passions, which brought the whole phenomena of nature in the poet's service,—the burning emotions, the very constant brooding on one engrossing subject,—all belonged to a people whose souls were fiery, proud, and concentrated.

Still the Spaniards had found no peculiar form in which to embody the characteristics of the nation. Perhaps the gay sally of a youthful student. Lazarillo de Tormes, of Mendoza, was the most national work yet produced. In Italy the sort of free epic, introduced by Bojardo, became the expression of national tastes and character. This sort of composition never took deep root in Spain. The authors were too circumvented by the inquisition to dare say much; thus we shall find in the end, that the theatre became the body informed by Spanish poets with a soul all their own, where passions and imaginations, the most ardent and the most wild, the most true and the most beautiful, found expression.

All the authors hitherto mentioned were horn at the very commencement of the sixteenth century. By the time they had arrived at the age of manhood, the policy and success of Charles V. had established him firmly on the Spanish throne, and was extending far and wide the glory of his name. To fight for and to serve him was the Spaniards' duty: they had not yet suffered by the yoke, but they had yielded to it. At first the nobles of the land were the sole authors, while writing was merely a taste, a study, or an amusement; soon it was followed, for purposes of gain and reputation by men of inferior rank, who were endowed with genius; authorship became general; and poetry grew into one of the chief pleasures of the court.

[31]Bouterwek. Pellicer.

[32]Bouterwek.