There are some queer customs, the undeniable relics of paganism, in Spain. On Christmas-eve the streets are paraded by men rattling pots, just as the Romans used to celebrate the row that was made in Olympus to hide the birth of Jupiter from Saturn. In the Basque provinces they honour the Virgin Mary under the name of Astarte, a clear loan from the worship of Venus. As I am treating of queer customs, it is worth chronicling that the Republicans entered the churches as soon as their favourite Government was proclaimed and frantically rang the bells. A Bishop took care to exorcise the Republican demon next day by carefully sprinkling the bells with holy-water.
For all the Lent, the treacherous and trying weather, the wars and rumours of wars, Madrid enjoyed herself, ate, drank and made merry, flirted and gambled. The Opera, a cosy well-frequented resort of the fashionable set, was open, and gave the Creation and L'Africaine, and the usual repertory of musical masterpieces of which I plead profound technical ignorance redeemed by passionate fondness. The soprano was that plump goddess with the dimpled double chin, fair-haired Marie Sass. The orchestra was one of the finest I had ever heard, and the chorus in personal appearance one of the ugliest I had ever seen, and that, I can assure the reader, is saying much. The Zarzuela, a play-house devoted to opera-bouffe—the sacred lamp of burlesque was not trimmed—presented "Golden Dreams," a beautiful piece with plot and fun not cumbered with that scenic sumptuousness which is trying to edge acting ability off the boards elsewhere.
The respectable theatres in Madrid shut their doors on the Fridays in Lent, and respectable theatre-goers remain at home. It is not the correct thing to be seen pleasure-hunting on a day of mortification and white meats. But actors must live, as well as in London. Those who are connected with high-priced houses and are decently paid can afford to lose one night in the week. But there are poorer followers of the Thespian art who are in very bad case indeed, owing to this tribute to religious scruple. If we are to be virtuous, well and good: but let us be virtuous in earnest. We have bull-fights on the Sundays in Lent. Why may we not enjoy the singing of Marie Sass in Norma on a Lenten Friday? This thin distinction between what is right and what is not—so thin that men of the cold north cannot make it out—comes under the category of those indigenous peculiarities which surpass all understanding. Anyhow, it presses rather heavily on the humble votaries of the sock and buskin who are attached to the middle-class houses, and who are docked of one night's salary in every week of the seven in the penitential season, in order that the proprieties of a public which is not particular to a shade as to how it observes the Sabbath may be respected. The low theatres—the Romea, where the Republic is glorified; the Alhambra, where heels are kicked up and lewd songs are rolled forth; the Capellanes, where monks and nuns are caricatured, have reason on their side, at all events. They dare to be logical in their contempt for the Church, and keep open all the year round, on Friday as on Sunday, in the time of fasting as of feasting.
The Teatro Martin is not a low theatre nor yet is it a high-priced one. The actors there are not rich, but the audience has some pretensions to delicacy of taste. What is the lessee of the Martin to do during the Lent? To rob his treasury of one night's receipts and cheat his patrons of one night's enjoyment? That would be the last crime any spirited and enterprising lessee would dream of committing—if he could avoid it. From this dilemma the gentleman of the Teatro Martin has discovered an escape. He opens his house on Fridays, but he converts it into a temple; he reconciles amusement with religion; he produces a Passion Play! I went to see it for the special reason that it was my privilege once to describe the Passion Play in the Bavarian Highlands, and I was anxious to compare one representation with the other, and, if possible, to renew my emotions of the past.
The house was tolerably full, except the boxes, which were unoccupied, save one by a sedate family party. Devout folk of the Latin race are famous for the interest they take in the spectacular. They admire the pomps of religion; and this Passion Play, which was almost a function, had evidently brought many to the theatre who are seldom seen there on ordinary occasions. I thought I could detect a pious bearing in the pittites. The well-to-do persons—male and female—who sat patiently on the mouldy benches looked serious, as if they had come to assist at a sacrifice. There were old ladies there, I could almost take my word, who are more often to be encountered, with morocco-bound prayer-books in their shrivelled hands, creeping to early service. The gallery was packed, and the gods, for gods, were gentlemanlike. There was nothing in the aspect of the house meriting description—it was roomy, ill-lit, full of draughts and dust—one of those houses we know so well. The scene-painter, if the act-drop was a fair sample of his powers, was a victim to colour-blindness; the orchestra showed a Republican freedom in its scorn for the trammels of time and tune; but the prompter in his hooded box, full in the middle of the range of footlights, was the feature of the show. He had a very distinct voice—so distinct was it that every sentence he directed to the actors rebounded from the flats, came back in sibilant echo, and ascended to the gods. I have no intention of giving an analysis of the piece; to speak the sad truth, it did not come up to my expectations. Ober-Ammergau spoiled me for exhibitions of the kind. I could not screw up my enthusiasm, tried I ever so hard. That which charmed in Bavaria had no charm in Spain. The stately panorama which was put before the awe-struck spectator in that valley of the Ammer was not visible here. The blue sky overhead and the eternal hills in sight above the walls of the simple wooden structure; the music so tender and solemn; the clear-browed peasants losing their identity in the fervid rendering of their parts; the enraptured attention of the auditory, whose lips moved in prayer sometimes, and whose eyes sometimes brimmed with tears, as if the scenes they watched were real—those were things to be remembered. They were the points that helped to make an impression in Bavaria, that dispelled prejudice and replaced it with a pleased satisfaction which insensibly swelled to admiration; but they were wanting in this stuffy play-house. No illusion was possible. One never lost the consciousness that he was looking on at a stage-play acted for money by indifferent stage-players. There was a smell of paint and tobacco-smoke about. Then there was the voice of that irrepressible prompter, the shaven faces of the hungry supernumeraries who played the Roman soldiers, the gas-rakes, the shaky wings, the mark of the trap-doors from which devils with a family likeness to the imps of pantomime spring up to-night, and the statue of the Commander may emerge to-morrow night, the scenes that would not run smoothly in the grooves, and the stiff stereotyped exits and entrances. Everything was of the stage, stagey. One could not get rid of the notion that Caiaphas had dined on puchero with its flavour heightened by garlic. It was very palpable that the Apostle Peter wore a wig and a beard of tow. Mary Magdalen had an air of operatic resignation, and was troubled with the arrangement of her drapery. There was a layer of pearl-powder on the Virgin's cheeks.
I shall not bore the reader with an essay on mysteries and miracle-plays; neither, as I have said, shall I attempt to analyse this sacred drama, in seven acts, of "The Passion and Death of Jesus;" but I shall take the liberty of giving an epitome of some notes, pencilled on the spot, in the intervals of interruption by that loud prompter. The Pasion y Muerte de Jesus (that is the Spanish title) is written by Don Enrique Zumel, who appears to have fathered as many pieces as Lope de Vega, but whose pieces are not quite so well known. It was brought out for the first time in this self-same Teatro Martin on the 3rd of March, 1871. It is in verse, and has some literary merit. In the main incidents it resembles the Bavarian play, which does not deviate noticeably from the Bible narrative. It is unnecessary, therefore, to go over the incidents of its various acts. The Greek chorus to be remarked at Ober-Ammergau is absent. The tableaux from the Old Testament prefiguring events in the New are absent also. The first Act opens with a dialogue between Magdalen and some women of Jerusalem. The Saviour, with the Apostles, enters on the scene almost immediately after. Magdalen's garments are rich with spangles; her mantle is scarlet; she has flowers in her luxuriant tresses, and looks a vain creature. The Saviour is personified by an actor with a singular likeness to Joseph Mayer, the Bavarian Christus. Pale, clean-chiselled face, long black locks smoothed over, downcast eyes, a meek demeanour generally—the characteristics are identical. The voice of this man, who essayed so awful a rôle, was low and sweet; and, to give him his due, he moved as if he was filled with respect for his dangerous part. The Virgin comes on the scene in the same Act. She is clad in blue nun-like raiment. The people who filled up the background wore sandals, and had white towels, swathed in folds like those of the turban, round their raven-black hair. The entry into Jerusalem was shown, the Saviour being mounted on a white ass. The orchestra here woke up, and played a joyous strain to a chorus commencing—
| "Con palmas y oliva |
| Y alegre cantar |
| Y pintados florea |
| De lindos colores |
| Hijas de Judá |
| Llegad! Llegad!" |
and terminating with a hosannah to the Redeemer. The only anachronisms in dress that impressed me in this first Act were a silk net with which one young person of Jerusalem confined her rebellious hair, and a strip of black velvet which another had fastened round her throat, bringing out the whiteness of her skin by contrast. In the second Act Caiaphas speaks of Jesus as the fomenter of a "thousand conflicts between Church and State." The Last Supper is pictured after Leonardo da Vinci, and Judas comes into relief, a sullen scowler, who overdoes his part thus early. In the garden scene in the third Act the figure of Jesus in prayer is shown with a ray of luz Dumont, the lime-light of our London stage, playing upon it! I left my seat after this, and loitered outside till the Crucifixion scene was on. At Ammergau it was appallingly impressive; here it was sensational purely. The drama wound up with the bursting open of the sepulchre. I came away free from any desire to witness Don Enrique Zumel's production again. Without absolutely shocking one's feelings on a subject which should be sacred and approached reverently, if at all, his Passion Play offended fine taste throughout because of the obtrusive staginess of its action, get-up, and surroundings. Still the actors were occasionally applauded, and the audience left in a contented mood.
But the provisional rulers took care that those under their guardianship should have stronger pabulum than spoon-meat.
Napoleon I., unless the tale be a legend, used to order a new coat of gilding to be laid on the dome of the Invalides when the people of Paris chafed under his tyranny. That gave them something to talk about—supplied a sensation of twenty-four hours. The Spanish Republican governors are working on the same principle. Panes et circenses was the charter of the Roman plebs, "pan y toros" is that of the plebs of Madrid. I do not know how it is with the bread, but the rulers let the lieges have bulls galore to occupy their minds. There are grand corridas for professionals and amateurs. Nor is bull-fighting the only pastime provided for the populace; cock-fighting, with game-birds from the Canary Islands, is also carried on every Sunday morning in a pit constructed for the purpose, mains are scientifically fought, and money is prodigally squandered. All countries have their peculiarities. In some, people go racing on the Lord's Day; in others they are content with getting drunk in the bosoms of their families.