The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of Spanish Literature, vol. 2 (of 3)

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: History of Spanish Literature, vol. 2 (of 3)

Author: George Ticknor

Release date: September 20, 2017 [eBook #55589]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55589

Credits: Produced by Josep Cols Canals, Ramon Pajares Box and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

(This file was produced from images generously made

available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***

Transcriber's note

Table of Contents

HISTORY

OF

SPANISH LITERATURE.

VOL. II.

HISTORY

OF

SPANISH LITERATURE.

BY

GEORGE TICKNOR.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOLUME II.

NEW YORK:

HARPER AND BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET.

M DCCC XLIX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by

GEORGE TICKNOR,

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

CONTENTS

OF

VOLUME SECOND.

SECOND PERIOD.

(CONTINUED.)

CHAPTER VII.

THEATRE IN THE TIME OF CHARLES THE FIFTH, AND DURING THE FIRST PART OF THE REIGN OF PHILIP THE SECOND.

Drama opposed by the Church

3

Inquisition interferes

4

Religious Dramas continued

4

Secular Plays, Castillejo, Oliva

5

Juan de Paris

6

Jaume de Huete

8

Agostin Ortiz

9

Popular Drama attempted

9

Lope de Rueda

9

His Four Comedias

11

His Two Pastoral Colloquies

13

His Ten Pasos

16

His Two Dialogues in Verse

17

His insufficient Apparatus

18

He begins the Popular Drama

19

Juan de Timoneda

20

His Cornelia

21

His Menennos

21

His Blind Beggars

22

CHAPTER VIII.

THEATRE, CONTINUED.

Followers of Lope de Rueda

25

Alonso de la Vega, Cisneros

25

Attempts at Seville

26

Juan de la Cueva

26

Romero de Zepeda

27

Attempts at Valencia

28

Cristóval de Virues

28

Translations from the Ancients

30

Villalobos, Oliva

30

Boscan, Abril

30

Gerónimo Bermudez

30

Lupercio de Argensola

32

Spanish Drama to this Time

34

The Attempts to form it few

35

The Apparatus imperfect

36

Connection with the Hospitals

37

Court-yards in Madrid

37

Dramas have no uniform Character

37

A National Drama demanded

39

CHAPTER IX.

LUIS DE LEON.

Religious Element in Spanish Literature

40

Luis de Leon

40

His Birth and Training

40

Professor at Salamanca

41

His Version of Solomon’s Song

41

His Persecution for it

42

His Names of Christ

43

His Perfect Wife

45

His Exposition of Job

45

His Death

46

His Poetry

47

His Translations

48

His Original Poetry

49

His Character

51

CHAPTER X.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA.

His Family

52

His Birth

53

His Education

54

His first published Verses

54

Goes to Italy

55

Becomes a Soldier

55

Fights at Lepanto

56

And at Tunis

57

Is captured at Sea

57

Is a Slave at Algiers

57

His cruel Captivity

58

His Release

59

Serves in Portugal

61

His Galatea

61

His Marriage

64

His Literary Friends

65

His First Dramas

65

His Trato de Argel

67

His Numantia

70

Character of these Dramas

77

CHAPTER XI.

CERVANTES, CONTINUED.

He goes to Seville

77

His Life there

78

Asks Employment in America

78

Short Poems

79

Tradition from La Mancha

80

He goes to Valladolid

81

First Part of Don Quixote

82

He goes to Madrid

82

Relations with Poets there

82

With Lope de Vega

82

His Novelas

84

His Viage al Parnaso

88

His Adjunta

89

His Eight Comedias

90

His Eight Entremeses

94

Second Part of Don Quixote

97

His Sickness

98

His Death

99

CHAPTER XII.

CERVANTES, CONCLUDED.

His Persiles y Sigismunda

100

His Don Quixote, First Part

103

His Purpose in writing it

104

Passion for Romances of Chivalry

105

He destroys it

107

Character of the First Part

108

Avellaneda’s Second Part

109

Its Character

110

Cervantes’s Satire on it

111

His own Second Part

112

Its Character

113

Don Quixote and Sancho

114

Blemishes in the Don Quixote

116

Its Merits and Fame

118

Claims of Cervantes

119

CHAPTER XIII.

LOPE FELIX DE VEGA CARPIO.

His Birth

120

His Education

121

A Soldier

123

Patronized by Manrique

123

Bachelor at Alcalá

123

His Dorothea

124

Secretary to Alva

124

His Arcadia

125

Marries

127

Is exiled for a Duel

127

Life at Valencia

128

Death of his Wife

128

Establishes himself at Madrid

128

Serves in the Armada

129

Marries again

131

His Children

132

Death of his Sons

132

Death of his Wife

132

Becomes a Priest

133

His Poem of San Isidro

134

His Hermosura de Angélica

137

His Dragontea

140

His Peregrino en su Patria

142

His Jerusalen Conquistada

143

CHAPTER XIV.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.

His Relations with the Church

146

His Pastores de Belen

146

Various Works

148

Beatification of San Isidro

149

Canonization of San Isidro

153

Tomé de Burguillos

154

His Gatomachia

154

Various Works

155

His Novelas

156

He acts as an Inquisitor

157

His Religious Poetry

158

His Corona Trágica

159

His Laurel de Apolo

160

His Dorotea

160

His Last Works

161

His Illness and Death

162

His Burial

162

CHAPTER XV.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.

His Miscellaneous Works

164

Their Character

165

His earliest Dramas

166

At Valencia

167

State of the Theatre

168

El Verdadero Amante

169

El Pastoral de Jacinto

169

His Moral Plays

170

The Soul’s Voyage

171

The Prodigal Son

172

The Marriage of the Soul

173

The Theatre at Madrid

174

His published Dramas

175

Their great Number

175

His Dramatic Foundation

177

Varieties in his Plays

178

Comedias de Capa y Espada

179

Their Character

179

Their Number

180

El Azero de Madrid

181

La Noche de San Juan

184

Festival of the Count Duke

184

La Boba para los Otros

189

El Premio del Bien Hablar

190

Various Plays

190

CHAPTER XVI.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.

Comedias Heróicas

192

Roma Abrasada

193

El Príncipe Perfeto

195

El Nuevo Mundo

199

El Castigo sin Venganza

202

La Estrella de Sevilla

205

National Subjects

206

Various Plays

207

Character of the Heroic Drama

207

CHAPTER XVII.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.

Dramas on Common Life

210

El Cuerdo en su Casa

211

La Donzella Teodor

212

Cautivos de Argel

214

Three Classes of Secular Plays

215

The Influence of the Church

216

Religious Plays

217

Plays founded on the Bible

217

El Nacimiento de Christo

218

Other such Plays

221

Comedias de Santos

223

Several such Plays

224

San Isidro de Madrid

225

Autos Sacramentales

226

Festival of the Corpus Christi

227

Number of Lope’s Autos

229

Their Form

230

Their Loas

230

Their Entremeses

231

The Autos themselves

232

Lope’s Secular Entremeses

234

Popular Tone of his Drama

236

His Eclogues

237

CHAPTER XVIII.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONCLUDED.

Variety in the Forms of his Dramas

239

Characteristics of all of them

239

Personages

240

Dialogue

240

Irregular Plots

240

History disregarded

241

Geography

242

Morals

242

Dramatized Novelle

243

Comic Underplot

243

Graciosos

244

Poetical Style

245

Various Measures

246

Ballad Poetry in them

247

Popular Air of every thing

249

His Success at home

249

His Success abroad

250

His large Income

251

Still he is poor

251

Great Amount of his Works

252

Spirit of Improvisation

250

CHAPTER XIX.

FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS.

Birth and Training

255

Exile

256

Public Service in Sicily

256

In Naples

257

Persecution at Home

257

Marries

257

Persecution again

258

His Sufferings and Death

259

Variety of his Works

259

Many suppressed

260

His Poetry

261

Its Characteristics

262

Cultismo

263

El Bachiller de la Torre

263

His Prose Works

267

Paul the Sharper

269

Various Tracts

269

The Knight of the Forceps

269

La Fortuna con Seso

270

Visions

271

Quevedo’s Character

274

CHAPTER XX.

THE DRAMA OF LOPE’S SCHOOL.

Madrid the Capital

276

Its Effect on the Drama

277

Damian de Vegas

277

Francisco de Tarrega

278

His Enemiga Favorable

279

Gaspar de Aguilar

280

His Mercader Amante

280

His Suerte sin Esperanza

281

Guillen de Castro

283

His Dramas

284

His Don Quixote

285

His Piedad y Justicia

285

His Santa Bárbara

286

His Mocedades del Cid

287

Corneille’s Cid

289

Other Plays of Guillen

292

Luis Vélez de Guevara

293

Mas pesa el Rey que la Sangre

294

Other Plays of Guevara

296

Juan Perez de Montalvan

297

His San Patricio

298

His Orfeo

299

His Dramas

300

His Amantes de Teruel

301

His Don Carlos

304

His Autos

305

His Theory of the Drama

306

His Success

307

CHAPTER XXI.

DRAMA OF LOPE’S SCHOOL, CONCLUDED.

Tirso de Molina

308

His Dramas

308

His Burlador de Sevilla

309

His Vergonzoso en Palacio

312

His Theory of the Drama

314

Antonio Mira de Mescua

315

His Dramas and Poems

315

Joseph de Valdivielso

316

His Autos

317

His Religious Dramas

317

Antonio de Mendoza

318

Ruiz de Alarcon

319

His Dramas

320

His Texedor de Segovia

320

His Verdad Sospechosa

321

Other Plays

322

Belmonte, Cordero, Enriquez

323

Villaizan, Sanchez, Herrera

323

Barbadillo, Solorzano

324

Un Ingenio

325

El Diablo Predicador

325

Opposition to Lope’s School

327

By Men of Learning

328

By the Church

329

The Drama triumphs

331

Lope’s Fame

332

CHAPTER XXII.

PEDRO CALDERON DE LA BARCA.

Birth and Family

333

Education

334

Festivals of San Isidro

335

Serves as a Soldier

336

Writes for the Stage

336

Patronized by Philip the Fourth

336

Rebellion in Catalonia

337

Controls the Theatre

337

Enters the Church

337

Less favored by Charles the Second

338

Death and Burial

339

Person and Character

340

His Works

341

His Dramas

342

Many falsely ascribed to him

342

Their Number

343

His Autos Sacramentales

344

Feast of the Corpus Christi

345

His different Autos

347

His Divino Orfeo

348

Popularity of his Autos

350

His Religious Plays

351

Troubles with the Church

351

Ecclesiastics write Plays

352

Calderon’s San Patricio

353

His Devocion de la Cruz

355

His Mágico Prodigioso

355

Other similar Plays

358

CHAPTER XXIII.

CALDERON, CONTINUED.

Characteristics of his Drama

360

Trusts to the Story

361

Sacrifices much to it

362

Dramatic Interest strong

363

Love, Jealousy, and Honor

364

Amar despues de la Muerte

364

El Médico de su Honra

368

El Pintor de su Deshonra

371

El Mayor Monstruo los Zelos

371

El Príncipe Constante

376

CHAPTER XXIV.

CALDERON, CONCLUDED.

Comedias de Capa y Espada

381

Antes que todo es mi Dama

382

La Dama Duende

383

La Vanda y la Flor

385

Various Sources of Calderon’s Plots

389

Castilian Tone everywhere

389

Exaggerated Sense of Honor

391

Domestic Authority

392

Duels

393

Immoral Tendency of his Dramas

394

Attacked

394

Defended

394

Calderon’s courtly Tone

395

His Style and Versification

396

His long Success

397

Changes the Drama little

399

But gives it a lofty Tone

400

His Dramatic Character

401

CHAPTER XXV.

DRAMA OF CALDERON’S SCHOOL.

Most Brilliant Period

403

Agustin Moreto

403

His Dramas

404

Figuron Plays

405

El Lindo Don Diego

405

El Desden con el Desden

406

Francisco de Roxas

408

His Dramas

408

Del Rey abaxo Ninguno

409

Several Authors to one Play

411

Alvaro Cubillo

412

Leyba and Cancer y Velasco

413

Enriquez Gomez

414

Sigler and Zabaleta

414

Fernando de Zarate

414

Miguel de Barrios

415

Diamante

416

Monroy, Monteser, Cuellar

417

Juan de la Hoz

417

Juan de Matos Fragoso

418

Sebastian de Villaviciosa

419

Antonio de Solís

420

Francisco Banzes Candamo

422

Zarzuelas

424

Opera at Madrid

425

Antonio de Zamora

426

Lanini, Martinez

427

Rosete, Villegas

427

Joseph de Cañizares

427

Decline of the Drama

428

Vera y Villarroel

429

Inez de la Cruz

429

Fernandez de Leon

429

Tellez de Azevedo

429

Old Drama of Lope and of Calderon

429

CHAPTER XXVI.

OLD THEATRES.

Nationality of the Drama

430

The Autor of a Company

431

Relations with the Dramatists

432

Actors, their Number

433

The most distinguished

434

Their Character and hard Life

435

Exhibitions in the Day-time

436

Poor Scenery and Properties

437

The Stage

437

The Audience

437

The Mosqueteros

437

The Gradas, and Cazuela

438

The Aposentos

438

Entrance-money

439

Rudeness of the Audiences

439

Honors to the Authors

440

Play-Bills

440

Titles of Plays

441

Representations

441

Loa

441

Ballad

441

First Jornada

443

First Entremes

444

Second Jornada and Entremes

445

Third Jornada and Saynete

445

Dancing

445

Ballads

446

Xacaras

446

Zarabandas

447

Popular Character of the Drama

448

Great Number of Authors

449

Royal Patronage

450

Great Number of Dramas

451

All National

452

CHAPTER XXVII.

HISTORICAL AND NARRATIVE POEMS.

Old Epic Tendencies

454

Revived in the Time of Charles the Fifth

455

Hierónimo Sempere

455

Luis de Çapata

456

Diego Ximenez de Ayllon

457

Hippólito Sanz

457

Alfonso Fernandez

458

Espinosa and Coloma

458

Alonso de Ercilla

459

His Araucana

461

Diego de Osorio

464

Pedro de Oña

466

Gabriel Lasso de la Vega

467

Antonio de Saavedra

467

Juan de Castellanos

468

Centenera

469

Gaspar de Villagra

469

Religious Narrative Poems

470

Hernandez Blasco

470

Gabriel de Mata

470

Cristóval de Virues

470

His Monserrate

471

Nicolas Bravo

472

Joseph de Valdivielso

472

Diego de Hojeda

473

His Christiada

473

Alonso Diaz

474

Antonio de Escobar

474

Alonso de Azevedo

474

Rodriguez de Vargas

474

Jacobo Uziel

474

Sebastian de Nieva Calvo

474

Duran Vivas

474

Juan Dávila

474

Antonio Enriquez Gomez

474

Hernando Dominguez Camargo

474

Juan de Encisso y Monçon

474

Imaginative Epics

475

Orlando Furioso

476

Nicolas Espinosa

476

Abarca de Bolea

477

Garrido de Villena

477

Agostin Alonso

477

Luis Barahona de Soto

477

His Lágrimas de Angélica

478

Bernardo de Balbuena

479

His Bernardo

480

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HISTORICAL AND NARRATIVE POEMS, CONCLUDED.

Subjects from Antiquity

481

Boscan, Mendoza, Silvestre

481

Montemayor, Villegas

481

Perez, Romero de Cepeda

482

Fábulas, Góngora

483

Villamediana, Pantaleon

483

Moncayo, Villalpando

483

Salazar

483

Miscellaneous Poems

483

Yague de Salas

484

Miguel de Silveira

485

Fr. Lopez de Zarate

486

Mock-heroic Poems

487

Cosmé de Aldana

487

Cintio Merctisso

488

Villaviciosa

489

Heroic Poems

491

Don John of Austria

491

Hierónimo de Cortereal

492

Juan Rufo

493

Pedro de la Vezilla

494

Miguel Giner

495

Duarte Diaz

495

Lorenzo de Zamora

495

Cristóval de Mesa

496

Juan de la Cueva

497

Alfonso Lopez, El Pinciano

498

Francisco Mosquera

499

Vasconcellos

499

Bernarda Ferreira

500

Antonio de Vera y Figueroa

501

Francisco de Borja

501

Rise of Heroic Poetry

502

Its Decline

503

CHAPTER XXIX.

LYRIC POETRY.

Early Lyric Tendency

505

Italian School of Boscan

505

National School

506

Lomas de Cantorál

506

Francisco de Figueroa

507

Vicente Espinel

507

Montemayor

507

Barahona de Soto, Rufo

508

Vegas, Padilla

508

Lopez Maldonado

508

Fernando de Herrera

509

His Odes

511

His Castilian Style

513

Pedro Espinosa

515

His Flores de Poetas Ilustres

515

Rey de Artieda

516

Manoel de Portugal

516

Cristóval de Mesa

517

Francisco de Ocaña

517

Lope de Sosa

517

Alonso de Ledesma

517

The Conceptistas

518

Cultismo and its Causes

519

Luis de Góngora

521

His earlier Poetry

522

His later Poetry

523

His Extravagance

524

His Obscurity

524

His Commentators

525

His Followers

526

Count Villamediana

527

Felix de Arteaga

528

Roca y Serna

528

Antonio de Vega

529

Anastasio Pantaleon

529

Violante del Cielo

529

Manoel de Melo

529

Moncayo, La Torre

530

Vergara

530

Rozas, Ulloa

530

Salazar

530

Spread of Cultismo

531

Contest about it

532

Francisco de Medrano

533

Pedro Venegas

533

Baltasar de Alcazar

533

Arguijo

534

Antonio Balvas

534

CHAPTER XXX.

LYRIC POETRY, CONCLUDED.

The Argensolas

536

Lupercio

536

Bartolomé

537

Their Poetry

538

Juan de Jauregui

539

His Orfeo

540

His Aminta

540

His Lyrical Poetry

541

Estévan Manuel de Villegas

542

Imitates Anacreon

543

Bernardo de Balbuena

544

Barbadillo, Polo, Rojas

544

Francisco de Rioja

545

Borja y Esquilache

546

Antonio de Mendoza

547

Bernardino de Rebolledo

548

Ribero, Quiros

549

Barrios, Lucio y Espinossa

549

Evia, Inez de la Cruz

549

Solís, Candamo, Marcante

549

Montoro, Negrete

549

Success of Lyric Poetry

550

Religious

550

Secular and Popular

550

Secular and more formal

551

Its General Character

552

HISTORY

OF

SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.

THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE AUSTRIAN FAMILY TO ITS EXTINCTION, OR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH.

(CONTINUED.)

HISTORY

OF

SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.

(CONTINUED.)

CHAPTER VII.

THEATRE. — INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH AND THE INQUISITION. — MYSTERIES. — CASTILLEJO, OLIVA, JUAN DE PARIS, AND OTHERS. — POPULAR DEMANDS FOR DRAMATIC LITERATURE. — LOPE DE RUEDA. — HIS LIFE, COMEDIAS, COLOQUIOS, PASOS, AND DIALOGUES IN VERSE. — HIS CHARACTER AS FOUNDER OF THE POPULAR DRAMA IN SPAIN. — JUAN DE TIMONEDA.

THE theatre in Spain, as in most other countries of modern Europe, was early called to contend with formidable difficulties. Dramatic representations there, perhaps more than elsewhere, had been for centuries in the hands of the Church; and the Church was not willing to give them up, especially for such secular and irreligious purposes as we have seen were apparent in the plays of Naharro. The Inquisition, therefore, already arrogating to itself powers not granted by the state, but yielded by a sort of general consent, interfered betimes. After the publication of the Seville edition of the “Propaladia” in 1520,—but how soon afterward we do not know,—the representation of its dramas was forbidden, and the interdict was continued till 1573.[1] Of the few pieces written in the early part of the reign of Charles the Fifth, nearly all, except those on strictly religious subjects, were laid under the ban of the Church; several, like the “Orfea,” 1534, and the “Custodia,” 1541, being now known to have existed only because their names appear in the Index Expurgatorius;[2] and others, like the “Amadis de Gaula” of Gil Vicente, though printed and published, being subsequently forbidden to be represented.[3]

The old religious drama, meantime, was still upheld by ecclesiastical power. Of this we have sufficient proof in the titles of the Mysteries that were from time to time performed, and in the well-known fact, that, when, with all the magnificence of the court of Charles the Fifth, the infant heir to the crown, afterwards Philip the Second, was baptized at Valladolid, in 1527, five religious plays, one of which was on the Baptism of Saint John, constituted a part of the gorgeous ceremony.[4] Such compositions, however, did not advance the drama; though perhaps some of them, like that of Pedro de Altamira, on the Supper at Emmaus, are not without poetical merit.[5] On the contrary, their tendency must have been to keep back theatrical representations within their old religious purposes and limits.[6]

Nor were the efforts made to advance them in other directions marked by good judgment or permanent success. We pass over the “Costanza” by Castillejo, which seems to have been in the manner of Naharro, and is assigned to the year 1522,[7] but which, from its indecency, was never published, and is now probably lost; and we pass over the free versions, made about 1530, by Perez de Oliva, Rector of the University of Salamanca, from the “Amphitryon” of Plautus, the “Electra” of Sophocles, and the “Hecuba” of Euripides, because they fell, for the time, powerless on the early attempts of the national theatre, which had nothing in common with the spirit of antiquity.[8] But a single play, printed in 1536, should be noticed, as showing how slowly the drama made progress in Spain.

It is called “An Eclogue,” and is written by Juan de Paris, in versos de arte mayor, or long verses divided into stanzas of eight lines each, which show, in their careful construction, not a little labor and art.[9] It has five interlocutors: an esquire, a hermit, a young damsel, a demon, and two shepherds. The hermit enters first. He seems to be in a meadow, musing on the vanity of human life; and, after praying devoutly, determines to go and visit another hermit. But he is prevented by the esquire, who comes in weeping and complaining of ill treatment from Cupid, whose cruel character he illustrates by his conduct in the cases of Medea, the fall of Troy, Priam, David, and Hercules; ending with his own determination to abandon the world and live in a “nook merely monastical.” He accosts the hermit, who discourses to him on the follies of love, and advises him to take religion and works of devotion for a remedy in his sorrows. The young man determines to follow counsel so wise, and they enter the hermitage together. But they are no sooner gone than the demon appears, complaining bitterly that the esquire is likely to escape him, and determining to do all in his power to prevent it. One of the shepherds, whose name is Vicente, now comes in, and is much shocked by the glimpse he has caught of the retiring spirit, who, indeed, from his description, and from the wood-cut on the title-page, seems to have been a truly fantastic and hideous personage. Vicente thereupon hides himself; but the damsel, who is the lady-love of the esquire, enters, and, after drawing him from his concealment, holds with him a somewhat metaphysical dialogue about love. The other shepherd, Cremon, at this difficult point interrupts the discussion, and has a rude quarrel with Vicente, which the damsel composes; and then Cremon tells her where the hermit and the lover she has come to seek are to be found. All now go towards the hermitage. The esquire, overjoyed, receives the lady with open arms, and cries out,—

But now I abjure this friardom poor,

And will neither be hermit nor friar any more.[10]

The hermit marries them, and determines to go with them to their house in the town; and then the whole ends somewhat strangely with a villancico, which has for its burden,—

Let us fly, I say, from Love’s power away;

’T is a vassalage hard,

Which gives grief for reward.[11]

The piece is curious, because it is a wild mixture of the spirit of the old Mysteries with that of Juan de la Enzina’s Eclogues and the Comedies of Naharro, and shows by what awkward means it was attempted to conciliate the Church, and yet amuse an audience which had little sympathy with monks and hermits. But it has no poetry in it, and very little dramatic movement. Of its manner and measure the opening stanza is quite a fair specimen. The hermit enters, saying to himself,—

The suffering life we mortal men below,

Upon this terrene world, are bound to spend,

If we but carefully regard its end,

We find it very full of grief and woe:

Torments so multiplied, so great, and ever such,

That but to count an endless reckoning brings,

While, like the rose that from the rose-tree springs,

Our life itself fades quickly at their touch.[12]

Other attempts followed this, or appeared at just about the same time, which approach nearer to the example set by Naharro. One of them is called “La Vidriana,” by Jaume de Huete, on the loves of a gentleman and lady of Aragon, who desired the author to represent them dramatically;[13] and another, by the same hand, is called “La Tesorina,” and was afterwards forbidden by the Inquisition.[14] This last is a direct imitation of Naharro; has an intróito; is divided into five jornadas; and is written in short verses. Indeed, at the end, Naharro is mentioned by name, with much implied admiration on the part of the author, who in the title-page announces himself as an Aragonese, but of whom we know nothing else. And, finally, we have a play in five acts, and in the same style, with an intróito at the beginning and a villancico at the end, by Agostin Ortiz,[15] leaving no doubt that the manner and system of Naharro had at last found imitators in Spain, and were fairly recognized there.

But the popular vein had not yet been struck. Except dramatic exhibitions of a religious character, and under ecclesiastical authority, nothing had been attempted in which the people, as such, had any share. The attempt, however, was now made, and made successfully. Its author was a mechanic of Seville, Lope de Rueda, a goldbeater by trade, who, from motives now entirely unknown, became both a dramatic writer and a public actor. The period in which he flourished has been supposed to be between 1544 and 1567, in which year he is spoken of as dead; and the scene of his adventures is believed to have extended to Seville, Córdova, Valencia, Segovia, and probably other places, where his plays and farces could be represented with profit. At Segovia, we know he acted in the new cathedral, during the week of its consecration, in 1558; and Cervantes and the unhappy Antonio Perez both speak with admiration of his powers as an actor; the first having been twenty years old in 1567, the period commonly assumed as that of Rueda’s death,[16] and the last having been eighteen. Rueda’s success, therefore, even during his lifetime, seems to have been remarkable; and when he died, though he belonged to the despised and rejected profession of the stage, he was interred with honor among the mazy pillars in the nave of the great cathedral at Córdova.[17]

His works were collected after his death by his friend Juan de Timoneda, and published in different editions, between 1567 and 1588.[18] They consist of four Comedias, two Pastoral Colloquies, and ten Pasos, or dialogues, all in prose; besides two dialogues in verse. They were all evidently written for representation, and were unquestionably acted before popular audiences, by the strolling company Lope de Rueda led about.

The four Comedias are merely divided into scenes, and extend to the length of a common farce, whose spirit they generally share. The first of them, “Los Engaños,”—Frauds,—contains the story of a daughter of Verginio, who has escaped from the convent where she was to be educated, and is serving as a page to Marcelo, who had once been her lover, and who had left her because he believed himself to have been ill treated. Clavela, the lady to whom Marcelo now devotes himself, falls in love with the fair page, somewhat as Olivia does in “Twelfth Night,” and this brings in several effective scenes and situations. But a twin brother of the lady-page returns home, after a considerable absence, so like her, that he proves the other Sosia, who, first producing great confusion and trouble, at last marries Clavela, and leaves his sister to her original lover. This is at least a plot; and some of its details and portions of the dialogue are ingenious, and managed with dramatic skill.

The next, the “Medora,” is, also, not without a sense of what belongs to theatrical composition and effect. The interest of the action depends, in a considerable degree, on the confusion produced by the resemblance between a young woman stolen when a child by Gypsies, and the heroine, who is her twin sister. But there are well-drawn characters in it, that stand out in excellent relief, especially two: Gargullo,—the “miles gloriosus,” or Captain Bobadil, of the story,—who, by an admirable touch of nature, is made to boast of his courage when quite alone, as well as when he is in company; and a Gypsy woman, who overreaches and robs him at the very moment he intends to overreach and rob her.[19]

The story of the “Eufemia” is not unlike that of the slandered Imogen, and the character of Melchior Ortiz is almost exactly that of the fool in the old English drama,—a well-sustained and amusing mixture of simplicity and shrewdness.

The “Armelina,” which is the fourth and last of the longer pieces of Lope de Rueda, is more bold in its dramatic incidents than either of the others.[20] The heroine, a foundling from Hungary, after a series of strange incidents, is left in a Spanish village, where she is kindly and even delicately brought up by the village blacksmith; while her father, to supply her place, has no less kindly brought up in Hungary a natural son of this same blacksmith, who had been carried there by his unworthy mother. The father of the lady, having some intimation of where his daughter is to be found, comes to the Spanish village, bringing his adopted son with him. There he advises with a Moorish necromancer how he is to proceed in order to regain his lost child. The Moor, by a fearful incantation, invokes Medea, who actually appears on the stage, fresh from the infernal regions, and informs him that his daughter is living in the very village where they all are. Meanwhile the daughter has seen the youth from Hungary, and they are at once in love with each other;—the blacksmith, at the same time, having decided, with the aid of his wife, to compel her to marry a shoemaker, to whom he had before promised her. Here, of course, come troubles and despair. The young lady undertakes to cut them short, at once, by throwing herself into the sea, but is prevented by Neptune, who quietly carries her down to his abodes under the roots of the ocean, and brings her back at the right moment to solve all the difficulties, explain the relationships, and end the whole with a wedding and a dance. This is, no doubt, very wild and extravagant, especially in the part containing the incantation and in the part played by Neptune; but, after all, the dialogue is pleasant and easy, and the style natural and spirited.

The two Pastoral Colloquies differ from the four Comedias, partly in having even less carefully constructed plots, and partly in affecting, through their more bucolic portions, a stately and pedantic air, which is any thing but agreeable. They belong, however, substantially to the same class of dramas, and received a different name, perhaps, only from the circumstance, that a pastoral tone was always popular in Spanish poetry, and that, from the time of Enzina, it had been considered peculiarly fitted for public exhibition. The comic parts of the colloquies are the only portions of them that have merit; and the following passage from that of “Timbria” is as characteristic of Lope de Rueda’s light and natural manner as any thing, perhaps, that can be selected from what we have of his dramas. It is a discussion between Leno, the shrewd fool of the piece, and Troico,[21] in which Leno ingeniously contrives to get rid of all blame for having eaten up a nice cake which Timbria, the lady in love with Troico, had sent to him by the faithless glutton.

Leno.    Ah, Troico, are you there?

Troico.    Yes, my good fellow, don’t you see I am?

Leno.    It would be better if I did not see it.

Troico.    Why so, Leno?

Leno.    Why then you would not know a piece of ill-luck that has just happened.

Troico.    What ill-luck?

Leno.    What day is it to-day?

Troico.    Thursday.

Leno.    Thursday? How soon will Tuesday come, then?

Troico.    Tuesday is passed two days ago.

Leno.    Well, that’s something;—but tell me, are there not other days of ill-luck as well as Tuesdays?[22]

Troico.    What do you ask that for?

Leno.    I ask, because there may be unlucky pancakes, if there are unlucky Thursdays.

Troico.    I suppose so.

Leno.    Now stop there;—suppose one of yours had been eaten of a Thursday; on whom would the ill-luck have fallen? on the pancake or on you?

Troico.    No doubt, on me.

Leno.    Then, my good Troico, comfort yourself, and begin to suffer and be patient; for men, as the saying is, are born to misfortunes, and there are matters, in fine, that come from God; and in the order of time you must die yourself, and, as the saying is, your last hour will then be come and arrived. Take it, then, patiently, and remember that we are here to-morrow and gone to-day.

Troico.    For heaven’s sake, Leno, is any body in the family dead? Or else why do you console me so?

Leno.    Would to heaven that were all, Troico!

Troico.    Then what is it? Can’t you tell me, without so many circumlocutions? What is all this preamble about?

Leno.    When my poor mother died, he that brought me the news, before he told me of it, dragged me round through more turn-abouts than there are windings in the Pisuerga and Zapardiel.[23]

Troico.    But I have got no mother, and never knew one. I don’t comprehend what you mean.

Leno.    Then smell of this napkin.

Troico.    Very well, I have smelt of it.

Leno.    What does it smell of?

Troico.    Something like butter.

Leno.    Then you may truly say, “Here Troy was.”

Troico.    What do you mean, Leno?

Leno.    For you it was given to me; for you Madam Timbria sent it, all stuck over with nuts;—but as I have (and Heaven and every body else knows it) a sort of natural relationship to whatever is good, my eyes watched and followed it just as a hawk follows chickens.

Troico.    Followed whom, villain? Timbria?

Leno.    Heaven forbid! But how nicely she sent it, all made up with butter and sugar!

Troico.    And what was that?

Leno.    The pancake, to be sure,—don’t you understand?

Troico.    And who sent a pancake to me?

Leno.    Why, Madam Timbria.

Troico.    Then what became of it?

Leno.    It was consumed.

Troico.    How?

Leno.    By looking at it.

Troico.    Who looked at it?

Leno.    I, by ill-luck.

Troico.    In what fashion?

Leno.    Why, I sat down by the way-side.

Troico.    Well, what next?

Leno.    I took it in my hand.

Troico.    And then?

Leno.    Then I tried how it tasted; and what between taking and leaving all round the edges of it, when I tried to think what had become of it, I found I had no sort of recollection.

Troico.    The upshot is, that you ate it?

Leno.    It is not impossible.

Troico.    In faith, you are a trusty fellow!

Leno.    Indeed! do you think so? Hereafter, if I bring two, I will eat them both, and so be better yet.

Troico.    The business goes on well.

Leno.    And well advised, and at small cost; and to my content. But now, go to; suppose we have a little jest with Timbria.

Troico.    Of what sort?

Leno.    Suppose you make her believe you ate the pancake yourself, and, when she thinks it is true, you and I can laugh at the trick till you split your sides. Can you ask for any thing better?

Troico.    You counsel well.

Leno.    Well, Heaven bless the men that listen to reason! But tell me, Troico, do you think you can carry out the jest with a grave face?

Troico.    I? What have I to laugh about?

Leno.    Why, don’t you think it is a laughing matter to make her believe you ate it, when all the time it was your own good Leno that did it?

Troico.    Wisely said. But now hold your tongue, and go about your business.[24]

The ten Pasos are much like this dialogue,—short and lively, without plot or results, and merely intended to amuse an idle audience for a few moments. Two of them are on glutton tricks, like that practised by Leno; others are between thieves and cowards; and all are drawn from common life, and written with spirit. It is very possible that some of them were taken out of larger and more formal dramatic compositions, which it was not thought worth while to print entire.[25]

The two dialogues in verse are curious, as the only specimens of Lope de Rueda’s poetry that are now extant, except some songs and a fragment preserved by Cervantes.[26] One is called “Proofs of Love,” and is a sort of pastoral discussion between two shepherds, on the question, which was most favored, the one who had received a finger-ring as a present, or the one who had received an ear-ring. It is written in easy and flowing quintillas, and is not longer than one of the slight dialogues in prose. The other is called “A Dialogue on the Breeches now in Fashion,” and is in the same easy measure, but has more of its author’s peculiar spirit and manner. It is between two lackeys, and begins thus abruptly:—

Peralta.

Master Fuentes, what’s the change, I pray,

I notice in your hosiery and shape?

You seem so very swollen as you walk.

Fuentes.

Sir, ’t is the breeches fashion now prescribes.

Peralta.

I thought it was an under-petticoat!

Fuentes.

I’m not ashamed of what I have put on.

Why must I wear my breeches made like yours?

Good friend, your own are wholly out of vogue.

Peralta.

But what are yours so lined and stuffed withal,

That thus they seem so very smooth and tight?

Fuentes.

Of that we’ll say but little. An old mantle,

And a cloak still older and more spoiled,

Do vainly struggle from my hose t’ escape.

Peralta.

To my mind, they were used to better ends,

If sewed up for a horse’s blanket, Sir.

Fuentes.

But others stuff in plenty of clean straw

And rushes to make out a shapely form——

Peralta.

Proving that they are more or less akin

To beasts of burden.

Fuentes.

But they wear, at least,

Such gallant hosiery, that things of taste

May well be added to fit out their dress.

Peralta.

No doubt, the man that dresses thus in straw

May tastefully put on a saddle too.[27]

In all the forms of the drama attempted by Lope de Rueda, the main purpose is evidently to amuse a popular audience. But to do this, his theatrical resources were very small and humble. “In the time of this celebrated Spaniard,” says Cervantes, recalling the gay season of his youth,[28] “the whole apparatus of a manager was contained in a large sack, and consisted of four white shepherd’s jackets, turned up with leather, gilt and stamped; four beards and false sets of hanging locks; and four shepherd’s crooks, more or less. The plays were colloquies, like eclogues, between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess, fitted up and extended with two or three interludes, whose personages were sometimes a negress, sometimes a bully, sometimes a fool, and sometimes a Biscayan;—for all these four parts, and many others, Lope himself performed with the greatest excellence and skill that can be imagined.... The theatre was composed of four benches, arranged in a square, with five or six boards laid across them, that were thus raised about four palms from the ground.... The furniture of the theatre was an old blanket drawn aside by two cords, making what they call a tiring-room, behind which were the musicians, who sang old ballads without a guitar.”

The place where this rude theatre was set up was a public square, and the performances occurred whenever an audience could be collected; apparently both forenoon and afternoon, for, at the end of one of his plays, Lope de Rueda invites his “hearers only to eat their dinner and return to the square,”[29] and witness another.

His four longer dramas have some resemblance to portions of the earlier English comedy, which, at precisely the same period, was beginning to show itself in pieces such as “Ralph Royster Doyster,” and “Gammer Gurton’s Needle.” They are divided into what are called scenes,—the shortest of them consisting of six, and the longest of ten; but in these scenes the place sometimes changes, and the persons often,—a circumstance of little consequence, where the whole arrangements implied no real attempt at scenic illusion.[30] Much of the success of all depended on the part played by the fools, or simples, who, in most of his dramas, are important personages, almost constantly on the stage;[31] while something is done by mistakes in language, arising from vulgar ignorance or from foreign dialects, like those of negroes and Moors. Each piece opens with a brief explanatory prologue, and ends with a word of jest and apology to the audience. Naturalness of thought, the most easy, idiomatic Castilian turns of expression, a good-humored, free gayety, a strong sense of the ridiculous, and a happy imitation of the manners and tone of common life, are the prominent characteristics of these, as they are of all the rest of his shorter efforts. He was, therefore, on the right road, and was, in consequence, afterwards justly reckoned, both by Cervantes and Lope de Vega, to be the true founder of the popular national theatre.[32]

The earliest follower of Lope de Rueda was his friend and editor, Juan de Timoneda, a bookseller of Valencia, who certainly flourished during the middle and latter part of the sixteenth century, and probably died in extreme old age, soon after the year 1597.[33] His thirteen or fourteen pieces that were printed pass under various names, and have a considerable variety in their character; the most popular in their tone being the best. Four are called “Pasos,” and four “Farsas,”—all much alike. Two are called “Comedias,” one of which, the “Aurelia,” written in short verses, is divided into five jornadas, and has an intróito, after the manner of Naharro; while the other, the “Cornelia,” is merely divided into seven scenes, and written in prose, after the manner of Lope de Rueda. Besides these, we have what, in the present sense of the word, is for the first time called an “Entremes”; a Tragicomedia, which is a mixture of mythology and modern history; a religious Auto, on the subject of the Lost Sheep; and a translation, or rather an imitation, of the “Menæchmi” of Plautus. In all of them, however, he seems to have relied for success on a spirited, farcical dialogue, like that of Lope de Rueda; and all were, no doubt, written to be acted in the public squares, to which, more than once, they make allusion.[34]

The “Cornelia,” first printed in 1559, is somewhat confused in its story. We have in it a young lady, taken, when a child, by the Moors, and returned, when grown up, to the neighbourhood of her friends, without knowing who she is; a foolish fellow, deceived by his wife, and yet not without shrewdness enough to make much merriment; and Pasquin, partly a quack doctor, partly a magician, and wholly a rogue; who, with five or six other characters, make rather a superabundance of materials for so short a drama. Some of the dialogues are full of life; and the development of two or three of the characters is good, especially that of Cornalla, the clown; but the most prominent personage, perhaps,—the magician,—is taken, in a considerable degree, from the “Negromante” of Ariosto, which was represented at Ferrara about thirty years earlier, and proves that Timoneda had some scholarship, if not always a ready invention.[35]

The “Menennos,” published in the same year with the Cornelia, is further proof of his learning. It is in prose, and taken from Plautus; but with large changes. The plot is laid in Seville; the play is divided into fourteen scenes, after the example of Lope de Rueda; and the manners are altogether Spanish. There is even a talk of Lazarillo de Tórmes, when speaking of an unprincipled young servant.[36] But it shows frequently the same free and natural dialogue, fresh from common life, that is found in his master’s dramas; and it can be read with pleasure throughout, as an amusing rifacimento.[37]

The Paso, however, of “The Blind Beggars and the Boy” is, like the other short pieces, more characteristic of the author and of the little school to which he belonged. It is written in short, familiar verses, and opens with an address to the audience by Palillos, the boy, asking for employment, and setting forth his own good qualities, which he illustrates by showing how ingeniously he had robbed a blind beggar who had been his master. At this instant, Martin Alvarez, the blind beggar in question, approaches on one side of a square where the scene passes, chanting his prayers, as is still the wont of such persons in the streets of Spanish cities; while on the other side of the same square approaches another of the same class, called Pero Gomez, similarly employed. Both offer their prayers in exchange for alms, and are particularly earnest to obtain custom, as it is Christmas eve. Martin Alvarez begins:—

What pious Christian here

Will bid me pray

A blessed prayer,

Quite singular

And new, I say,

In honor of our Lady dear?

On hearing the well-known voice, Palillos, the boy, is alarmed, and, at first, talks of escaping; but recollecting that there is no need of this, as the beggar is blind, he merely stands still, and his old master goes on:—

O, bid me pray! O, bid me pray!—

The very night is holy time,—

O, bid me pray the blessed prayer,

The birth of Christ in rhyme!

But as nobody offers an alms, he breaks out again:—

Good heavens! the like was never known!

The thing is truly fearful grown;

For I have cried,

Till my throat is dried,

At every corner on my way,

And not a soul heeds what I say!

The people, I begin to fear,

Are grown too careful of their gear,

For honest prayers to pay.

The other blind beggar, Pero Gomez, now comes up and strikes in:—

Who will ask for the blind man’s prayer?—

O gentle souls that hear my word!

Give but an humble alms,

And I will sing the holy psalms

For which Pope Clement’s bulls afford

Indulgence full, indulgence rare,

· · · · · ·

And add, besides, the blessed prayer

For the birth of our blessed Lord.[38]

The two blind men, hearing each other, enter into conversation, and, believing themselves to be alone, Alvarez relates how he had been robbed by his unprincipled attendant, and Gomez explains how he avoids such misfortunes by always carrying the ducats he begs sewed into his cap. Palillos, learning this, and not well pleased with the character he has just received, comes very quietly up to Gomez, knocks off his cap, and escapes with it. Gomez thinks it is his blind friend who has played him the trick, and asks civilly to have his cap back again. The friend denies, of course, all knowledge of it; Gomez insists; and the dialogue ends, as many of its class do, with a quarrel and a fight, to the great amusement, no doubt, of audiences such as were collected in the public squares of Valencia or Seville.[39]

CHAPTER VIII.

THEATRE. — FOLLOWERS OF LOPE DE RUEDA. — ALONSO DE LA VEGA. — CISNEROS. — SEVILLE. — MALARA. — CUEVA. — ZEPEDA. — VALENCIA. — VIRUES. — TRANSLATIONS AND IMITATIONS OF THE ANCIENT CLASSICAL DRAMA. — VILLALOBOS. — OLIVA. — BOSCAN. — ABRIL. — BERMUDEZ. — ARGENSOLA. — STATE OF THE THEATRE.

TWO of the persons attached to Lope de Rueda’s company were, like himself, authors as well as actors. One of them, Alonso de la Vega, died at Valencia as early as 1566, in which year three of his dramas, all in prose, and one of them directly imitated from his master, were published by Timoneda.[40] The other, Antonio Cisneros, lived as late as 1579, but it does not seem certain that any dramatic work of his now exists.[41] Neither of them was equal to Lope de Rueda or Juan de Timoneda; but the four taken together produced an impression on the theatrical taste of their times, which was never afterwards wholly forgotten or lost,—a fact of which the shorter dramatic compositions that have been favorites on the Spanish stage ever since give decisive proof.

But dramatic representations in Spain between 1560 and 1590 were by no means confined to what was done by Lope de Rueda, his friends, and his strolling company of actors. Other efforts were made in various places, and upon other principles; sometimes with more success than theirs, sometimes with less. In Seville, a good deal seems to have been done. It is probable the plays of Malara, a native of that city, were represented there during this period; but they are now all lost.[42] Those of Juan de la Cueva, on the contrary, have been partly preserved, and merit notice for many reasons, but especially because most of them are historical. They were represented—at least, the few that still remain—in 1579, and the years immediately subsequent; but were not printed till 1588, and then only a single volume appeared.[43] Each of them is divided into four jornadas, or acts, and they are written in various measures, including terza rima, blank verse, and sonnets, but chiefly in redondillas and octave stanzas. Several are on national subjects, like “The Children of Lara,” “Bernardo del Carpio,” and “The Siege of Zamora”; others are on subjects from ancient history, such as Ajax, Virginia, and Mutius Scævola; some are on fictitious stories, like “The Old Man in Love,” and “The Decapitated,” which last is founded on a Moorish adventure; and one, at least, is on a great event of times then recent, “The Sack of Rome” by the Constable Bourbon. All, however, are crude in their structure, and unequal in their execution. The Sack of Rome, for instance, is merely a succession of dialogues thrown together in the loosest manner, to set forth the progress of the Imperial arms, from the siege of Rome in May, 1527, to the coronation of Charles the Fifth, at Bologna, in February, 1530; and though the picture of the outrages at Rome is not without an air of truth, there is little truth in other respects; the Spaniards being made to carry off all the glory.[44]

“El Infamador,” or The Calumniator, sets forth, in a different tone, the story of a young lady who refuses the love of a dissolute young man, and is, in consequence, accused by him of murder and other crimes, and condemned to death, but is rescued by preternatural power, while her accuser suffers in her stead. It is almost throughout a revolting picture; the fathers of the hero and heroine being each made to desire the death of his own child, while the whole is rendered absurd by the not unusual mixture of heathen mythology and modern manners. Of poetry, which is occasionally found in Cueva’s other dramas, there is in this play no trace; and so carelessly is it written, that there is no division of the acts into scenes.[45] Indeed, it seems difficult to understand how several of his twelve or fourteen dramas should have been brought into practical shape and represented at all. It is probable they were merely spoken as consecutive dialogues, to bring out their respective stories, without any attempt at theatrical illusion; a conjecture which receives confirmation from the fact, that nearly all of them are announced, on their titles, as having been represented in the garden of a certain Doña Elvira at Seville.[46]

The two plays of Joaquin Romero de Zepeda, of Badajoz, which were printed at Seville in 1582, are somewhat different from those of Cueva. One, “The Metamorfosea,” is in the nature of the old dramatic pastorals, but is divided into three short jornadas, or acts. It is a trial of wits and love, between three shepherds and three shepherdesses, who are constantly at cross purposes with each other, but are at last reconciled and united;—all except one shepherd, who had originally refused to love any body, and one shepherdess, Belisena, who, after being cruel to one of her lovers, and slighted by another, is finally rejected by the rejected of all. The other play, called “La Comedia Salvage,” is taken, in its first two acts, from the well-known dramatic novel of “Celestina”; the last act being filled with atrocities of Zepeda’s own invention. It obtains its name from the Salvages or wild men, who figure in it, as such personages did in the old romances of chivalry and the old English drama, and is as strange and rude as its title implies. Neither of these pieces, however, can have done any thing of consequence for the advancement of the drama at Seville, though each contains passages of flowing and apt verse, and occasional turns of thought that deserve to be called graceful.[47]

During the same period, there was at Valencia, as well as at Seville, a poetical movement in which the drama shared, and in which, perhaps, Lope de Vega, an exile in Valencia for several years, about 1585, took part. At any rate, his friend Cristóval de Virues, of whom he often speaks, and who was born there in 1550, was among those who then gave an impulse to the theatrical taste of his native city. He claims to have first divided Spanish dramas into three jornadas or acts, and Lope de Vega assents to the claim; but they were both mistaken, for we now know that such a division was made by Francisco de Avendaño, not later than 1553, when Virues was but three years old.[48]

Only five of the plays of Virues, all in verse, are extant; and these, though supposed to have been written as early as 1579-1581, were not printed till 1609, when Lope de Vega had already given its full development and character to the popular theatre; so that it is not improbable some of the dramas of Virues, as printed, may have been more or less altered and accommodated to the standard then considered as settled by the genius of his friend. Two of them, the “Cassandra” and the “Marcela,” are on subjects apparently of the Valencian poet’s own invention, and are extremely wild and extravagant; in “El Átila Furioso” above fifty persons come to an untimely end, without reckoning the crew of a galley who perish in the flames for the diversion of the tyrant and his followers; and in the “Semíramis,” the action extends to twenty or thirty years. All four of them are absurd.

The “Elisa Dido” is better, and may be regarded as an effort to elevate the drama. It is divided into five acts, and observes the unities, though Virues can hardly have comprehended what was afterwards considered as their technical meaning. Its plot, invented by himself, and little connected with the stories found in Virgil or the old Spanish chronicles, supposes the Queen of Carthage to have died by her own hand for a faithful attachment to the memory of Sichæus, and to avoid a marriage with Iarbas. It has no division into scenes, and each act is burdened with a chorus. In short, it is an imitation of the ancient Greek masters; and as some of the lyrical portions, as well as parts of the dialogue, are not unworthy the talent of the author of the “Monserrate,” it is, for the age in which it appeared, a remarkable composition. But it lacks a good development of the characters, as well as life and poetical warmth in the action; and being, in fact, an attempt to carry the Spanish drama in a direction exactly opposite to that of its destiny, it did not succeed.[49]

Such an attempt, however, was not unlikely to be made more than once; and this was certainly an age favorable for it. The theatre of the ancients was now known in Spain. The translations already noticed, of Villalobos in 1515, and of Oliva before 1536, had been followed, as early as 1543, by one from Euripides by Boscan;[50] in 1555, by two from Plautus, the work of an unknown author;[51] and in 1570-1577, by the “Plutus” of Aristophanes, the “Medea” of Euripides, and the six comedies of Terence, by Pedro Simon de Abril.[52] The efforts of Timoneda in his “Menennos” and of Virues in his “Elisa Dido” were among the consequences of this state of things, and were succeeded by others, two of which should be noticed.

The first is by Gerónimo Bermudez, a native of Galicia, who is supposed to have been born about 1530, and to have lived as late as 1589. He was a learned Professor of Theology at Salamanca, and published, at Madrid, in 1577, two dramas which he somewhat boldly called “the first Spanish tragedies.”[53] They are both on the subject of Inez de Castro; both are in five acts, and in various verse; and both have choruses in the manner of the ancients. But there is a great difference in their respective merits. The first, “Nise Lastimosa,” or Inez to be Compassionated,—Nise being a poor anagram of Inez,—is hardly more than a skilful translation of the Portuguese tragedy of “Inez de Castro,” by Ferreira, which, with considerable defects in its structure, is yet full of tenderness and poetical beauty. The last, “Nise Laureada,” or Inez Triumphant, takes up the tradition where the first left it, after the violent and cruel death of the princess, and gives an account of the coronation of her ghastly remains above twenty years after their interment, and of the renewed marriage of the prince to them;—the closing scene exhibiting the execution of her murderers with a coarseness, both in the incidents and in the language, as revolting as can well be conceived. Neither probably produced any perceptible effect on the Spanish drama; and yet the “Nise Lastimosa” contains passages of no little poetical merit; such as the beautiful chorus on Love at the end of the first act, the dream of Inez in the third, and the truly Greek dialogue between the princess and the women of Coimbra; for the last two of which, however, Bermudez was directly indebted to Ferreira.[54]

Three tragedies by Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola, the accomplished lyric poet, who will hereafter be amply noticed, produced a much more considerable sensation, when they first appeared, though they were soon afterwards as much neglected as their predecessors. He wrote them when he was hardly more than twenty years old, and they were acted about the year 1585. “Do you not remember,” says the canon in Don Quixote, “that, a few years ago, there were represented in Spain three tragedies composed by a famous poet of these kingdoms, which were such that they delighted and astonished all who heard them; the ignorant as well as the judicious, the multitude as well as the few; and that these three alone brought more profit to the actors than the thirty best plays that have been written since?” “No doubt,” replied the manager of the theatre, with whom the canon was conversing, “no doubt you mean the ‘Isabela,’ the ‘Philis,’ and the ‘Alexandra.’“[55]

This statement of Cervantes is certainly extraordinary, and the more so from being put into the mouth of the wise canon of Toledo. But notwithstanding the flush of immediate success which it implies, all trace of these plays was soon so completely lost, that, for a long period, the name of the famous poet Cervantes had referred to was not known, and it was even suspected that he had intended to compliment himself. At last, between 1760 and 1770, two of them—the “Alexandra” and “Isabela”—were accidentally discovered, and all doubt ceased. They were found to be the work of Lupercio Leonardo de Argensola.[56]

But, unhappily, they quite failed to satisfy the expectations that had been excited by the good-natured praise of Cervantes. They are in various verse, fluent and pure, and were intended to be imitations of the Greek style of tragedy, called forth, perhaps, by the recent attempts of Bermudez. Each, however, is divided into three acts; and the choruses, originally prepared for them, are omitted. The Alexandra is the worse of the two. Its scene is laid in Egypt; and the story, which is fictitious, is full of loathsome horrors. Every one of its personages, except perhaps a messenger, perishes in the course of the action; children’s heads are cut off and thrown at their parents on the stage; and the false queen, after being invited to wash her hands in the blood of the person to whom she was unworthily attached, bites off her own tongue and spits it at her monstrous husband. Treason and rebellion form the lights in a picture composed mainly of such atrocities.

The Isabela is better; but still is not to be praised. The story relates to one of the early Moorish kings of Saragossa, who exiles the Christians from his kingdom in a vain attempt to obtain possession of Isabela, a Christian maiden with whom he is desperately in love, but who is herself already attached to a noble Moor whom she has converted, and with whom, at last, she suffers a triumphant martyrdom. The incidents are numerous, and sometimes well imagined; but no dramatic skill is shown in their management and combination, and there is little easy or living dialogue to give them effect. Like the Alexandra, it is full of horrors. The nine most prominent personages it represents come to an untimely end, and the bodies, or at least the heads, of most of them are exhibited on the stage, though some reluctance is shown at the conclusion about committing a supernumerary suicide before the audience. Fame opens the piece with a prologue, in which complaints are made of the low state of the theatre; and the ghost of Isabela, who is hardly dead, comes back at the end, with an epilogue very flat and quite needless.

With all this, however, a few passages of poetical eloquence, rather than of absolute poetry, are scattered through the long and tedious speeches of which the piece is principally composed; and once or twice there is a touch of passion truly tragic, as in the discussion between Isabela and her family on the threatened exile and ruin of their whole race, and in that between Adulce, her lover, and Aja, the king’s sister, who disinterestedly loves Adulce, notwithstanding she knows his passion for her fair Christian rival. But still it seems incomprehensible how such a piece should have produced the popular dramatic effect attributed to it, unless we suppose that the Spaniards had from the first a passion for theatrical exhibitions, which, down to this period, had been so imperfectly gratified, that any thing dramatic, produced under favorable circumstances, was run after and admired.

The dramas of Argensola, by their date, though not by their character and spirit, bring us at once within the period which opens with the great and prevalent names of Cervantes and Lope de Vega. They, therefore, mark the extreme limits of the history of the early Spanish theatre; and if we now look back and consider its condition and character during the long period we have just gone over, we shall easily come to three conclusions of some consequence.[57]

The first is, that the attempts to form and develop a national drama in Spain have been few and rare. During the two centuries following the first notice of it, about 1250, we cannot learn distinctly that any thing was undertaken but rude exhibitions in pantomime; though it is not unlikely dialogues may sometimes have been added, such as we find in the more imperfect religious pageants produced at the same period in England and France. During the next century, which brings us down to the time of Lope de Rueda, we have nothing better than “Mingo Revulgo,” which is rather a spirited political satire than a drama, Enzina’s and Vicente’s dramatic eclogues, and Naharro’s more dramatic “Propaladia,” with a few translations from the ancients which were little noticed or known. And during the half-century which Lope de Rueda opened with an attempt to create a popular drama, we have obtained only a few farces from himself and his followers, the little that was done at Seville and Valencia, and the countervailing tragedies of Bermudez and Argensola, who intended, no doubt, to follow what they considered the safer and more respectable traces of the ancient Greek masters. Three centuries and a half, therefore, or four centuries, furnished less dramatic literature to Spain, than the last half-century of the same portion of time had furnished to France and Italy; and near the end of the whole period, or about 1585, it is apparent that the national genius was not more turned towards the drama than it was at the same period in England, where Greene and Peele were just preparing the way for Marlowe and Shakspeare.

In the next place, the apparatus of the stage, including scenery and dresses, was very imperfect. During the greater part of the period we have gone over, dramatic exhibitions in Spain were either religious pantomimes shown off in the churches to the people, or private entertainments given at court and in the houses of the nobility. Lope de Rueda brought them out into the public squares, and adapted them to the comprehension, the taste, and the humors of the multitude. But he had no theatre anywhere, and his genial farces were represented on temporary scaffolds, by his own company of strolling players, who stayed but a few days at a time in even the largest cities, and were sought, when there, chiefly by the lower classes of the people.

The first notice, therefore, we have of any thing approaching to a regular establishment—and this is far removed from what that phrase generally implies—is in 1568, when an arrangement or compromise between the Church and the theatre was begun, traces of which have subsisted at Madrid and elsewhere down to our own times. Recollecting, no doubt, the origin of dramatic representations in Spain for religious edification, the government ordered, in form, that no actors should make an exhibition in Madrid, except in some place to be appointed by two religious brotherhoods designated in the decree, and for a rent to be paid to them;—an order in which, after 1583, the general hospital of the city was included.[58] Under this order, as it was originally made, we find plays acted from 1568; but only in the open area of a court-yard, without roof, seats, or other apparatus, except such as is humorously described by Cervantes to have been packed, with all the dresses of the company, in a few large sacks.

In this state things continued several years. None but strolling companies of actors were known, and they remained but a few days at a time even in Madrid. No fixed place was prepared for their reception; but sometimes they were sent by the pious brotherhoods to one court-yard, and sometimes to another. They acted in the day-time, on Sundays and other holidays, and then only if the weather permitted a performance in the open air;—the women separated from the men,[59] and the entire audience so small, that the profit yielded by the exhibitions to the religious societies and the hospital rose only to eight or ten dollars each time.[60] At last, in 1579 and 1583, two court-yards were permanently fitted up for them, belonging to houses in the streets of the “Príncipe” and “Cruz.” But though a rude stage and benches were provided in each, a roof was still wanting; the spectators all sat in the open air, or at the windows of the house whose court-yard was used for the representation; and the actors performed under a slight and poor awning, without any thing that deserved to be called scenery. The theatres, therefore, at Madrid, as late as 1586, could not be said to be in a condition materially to further any efforts that might be made to produce a respectable national drama.

In the last place, the pieces that had been written had not the decided, common character on which a national drama could be fairly founded, even if their number had been greater. Juan de la Enzina’s eclogues, which were the first dramatic compositions represented in Spain by actors who were neither priests nor cavaliers, were really what they were called, though somewhat modified in their bucolic character by religious and political feelings and events;—two or three of Naharro’s plays, and several of those of Cueva, give more absolute intimations of the intriguing and historical character of the stage, though the effect of the first at home was delayed, from their being for a long time published only in Italy;—the translations from the ancients by Villalobos, Oliva, Abril, and others, seem hardly to have been intended for representation, and certainly not for popular effect;—and Bermudez, with one of his pieces stolen from the Portuguese and the other full of horrors of his own, was, it is plain, little thought of at his first appearance, and soon quite neglected.

There were, therefore, before 1586, only two persons to whom it was possible to look for the establishment of a popular and permanent drama. The first of them was Argensola, whose three tragedies enjoyed a degree of success before unknown; but they were so little in the national spirit, that they were early overlooked, and soon completely forgotten. The other was Lope de Rueda, who, himself an actor, wrote such farces as he found would amuse the common audiences he served, and thus created a school in which other actors, like Alonso de la Vega and Cisneros, wrote the same kind of farces, chiefly in prose, and intended so completely for temporary effect, that hardly one of them has come down to our own times. Of course, the few and rare efforts made before 1586 to produce a drama in Spain had been made upon such various or contradictory principles, that they could not be combined so as to constitute the safe foundation for a national theatre.

But though the proper foundation was not yet laid, all was tending to it and preparing for it. The stage, rude as it was, had still the great advantage of being confined to two spots, which, it is worth notice, have continued to be the sites of the two principal theatres of Madrid ever since. The number of authors, though small, was yet sufficient to create so general a taste for theatrical representations, that Lopez Pinciano, a learned man, and one of a temper little likely to be pleased with a rude drama, said, “When I see that Cisneros or Galvez is going to act, I run all risks to hear him; and when I am in the theatre, winter does not freeze me, nor summer make me hot.”[61] And finally, the public, who resorted to the imperfect entertainments offered them, if they had not determined what kind of drama should become national, had yet decided that a national drama should be formed, and that it should be founded on the national character and manners.

CHAPTER IX.

LUIS DE LEON. — EARLY LIFE. — PERSECUTIONS. — TRANSLATION OF THE CANTICLES. — NAMES OF CHRIST. — PERFECT WIFE AND OTHER PROSE WORKS. — HIS DEATH. — HIS POEMS. — HIS CHARACTER.

IT should not be forgotten, that, while we have gone over the beginnings of the Italian school and of the existing theatre, we have had little occasion to notice one distinctive element of the Spanish character, which is yet almost constantly present in the great mass of the national literature: I mean, the religious element. A reverence for the Church, or, more properly, for the religion of the Church, and a deep sentiment of devotion, however mistaken in the forms it wore or in the direction it took, had been developed in the old Castilian character by the wars against Islamism, as much as the spirit of loyalty and knighthood, and had, from the first, found no less fitting poetical forms of expression. That no change took place in this respect in the sixteenth century, we find striking proof in the character of a noble Spaniard born in the city of Granada about twenty years later than Diego de Mendoza; but one whose gentler and graver genius easily took the direction which that of the elder cavalier so decidedly refused.

Luis Ponce de Leon, called, from his early and unbroken connection with the Church, “Brother Luis de Leon,” was born in 1528, and enjoyed advantages for education which, in his time, were almost exclusively confined to the children of noble and distinguished families. He was early sent to Salamanca, and there, when only sixteen years old, voluntarily entered the order of Saint Augustin. From this moment, the final direction was given to his life. He never ceased to be a monk; and he never ceased to be attached to the University where he was bred. In 1560, he became a Licentiate in Theology, and immediately afterwards was made a Doctor of Divinity. The next year, at the age of thirty-four, he obtained the chair of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which he won after a public competition against several opponents, four of whom were already professors; and to these honors he added, ten years later, that of the chair of Sacred Literature.

By this time, however, his influence and success had gathered round him a body of enemies, who soon found means to disturb his peace.[62] A friend, who did not understand the ancient languages, had desired him to translate “The Song of Solomon” into Castilian, and explain its character and purposes. This he had done; and the version which he thus made is commonly regarded as the earliest, or one of the earliest, among his known works. But in making it, he had treated the whole poem as a pastoral eclogue, in which the different personages converse together like shepherds.[63] This opinion, of course, was not agreeable to the doctrines of his Church and its principles of interpretation; but what he had done had been done only as an act of private friendship, and he had taken some pains to have his version known only to the individual at whose request it had been made. His manuscript, however, was copied and circulated by the treachery of a servant. One of the copies thus obtained fell into the hands of an enemy, and its author, in 1572, was brought before the Inquisition of Valladolid, charged with Lutheranism and with making a vernacular translation from the Scriptures, contrary to the decree of the Council of Trent. It was easy to answer the first part of the complaint, for Luis de Leon was no Protestant; but it was not possible to give a sufficient answer to the last. He had, however, powerful friends, and by their influence escaped the final terrors of the Inquisition, though not until he had been almost five years imprisoned in a way that seriously impaired his health and broke down his spirits.[64]

But the University remained faithful to him. He was reinstated in all his offices, with marks of the sincerest respect, on the 30th of December, 1576; and it is a beautiful circumstance attending his restoration, that, when, for the first time, he rose before a crowded audience, eager to hear what allusion he would make to his persecutions, he began by simply saying, “As we remarked when we last met,” and then went on, as if the five bitter years of his imprisonment had been a blank in his memory, bearing no record of the cruel treatment he had suffered.[65]

It seems, however, to have been thought advisable that he should vindicate his reputation from the suspicions that had been cast upon it; and therefore, in 1580, at the request of his friends, he published, in Latin, an extended commentary on the Canticles, interpreting each part in three different ways,—directly, symbolically, and mystically,—and giving the whole as theological and obscure a character as the most orthodox could desire, though still without concealing his opinion that it was originally intended to be a pastoral eclogue.

Another work on the same subject, but in Spanish, and in some respects like the one that had caused his imprisonment, was also prepared by him and found among his manuscripts after his death. But it was not thought advisable to print it till 1798. Even then a version of the Canticles, in Spanish octaves, as an eclogue, intended originally to accompany it, was not added, and did not appear till 1806;—a beautiful translation, which discovers, not only its author’s power as a poet, but the remarkable freedom of his theological inquiries, in a country where such freedom was, in that age, not tolerated for an instant.[66] The fragment of a defence of this version, or of some parts of it, is dated from his prison, in 1573, and was found long afterwards among the state papers of the kingdom in the archives of Simancas.[67]

While in prison he prepared a long prose work, which he entitled “The Names of Christ.” It is a singular specimen at once of Spanish theological learning, eloquence, and devotion. Of this, between 1583 and 1585, he published three books, but he never completed it.[68] It is thrown into the form of a dialogue, like the “Tusculan Questions,” which it was probably intended to imitate; and its purpose is, by means of successive discussions of the character of the Saviour, as set forth under the names of Son, Prince, Shepherd, King, etc., to excite devout feelings in those who read it. The form, however, is not adhered to with great strictness. The dialogue, instead of being a discussion, is, in fact, a series of speeches; and once, at least, we have a regular sermon, of as much merit, perhaps, as any in the language;[69] so that, taken together, the entire work may be regarded as a series of declamations on the character of Christ, as that character was regarded by the more devout portions of the Spanish Church in its author’s time. Many parts of it are eloquent, and its eloquence has not unfrequently the gorgeous coloring of the elder Spanish literature; such, for instance, as is found in the following passage, illustrating the title of Christ as the Prince of Peace, and proving the beauty of all harmony in the moral world from its analogies with the physical:—

“Even if reason should not prove it, and even if we could in no other way understand how gracious a thing is peace, yet would this fair show of the heavens over our heads and this harmony in all their manifold fires sufficiently bear witness to it. For what is it but peace, or, indeed, a perfect image of peace, that we now behold, and that fills us with such deep joy? Since if peace is, as Saint Augustin, with the brevity of truth, declares it to be, a quiet order, or the maintenance of a well-regulated tranquillity in whatever order demands,—then what we now witness is surely its true and faithful image. For while these hosts of stars, arranged and divided into their several bands, shine with such surpassing splendor, and while each one of their multitude inviolably maintains its separate station, neither pressing into the place of that next to it, nor disturbing the movements of any other, nor forgetting its own; none breaking the eternal and holy law God has imposed on it; but all rather bound in one brotherhood, ministering one to another, and reflecting their light one to another,—they do surely show forth a mutual love, and, as it were, a mutual reverence, tempering each other’s brightness and strength into a peaceful unity and power, whereby all their different influences are combined into one holy and mighty harmony, universal and everlasting. And therefore may it be most truly said, not only that they do all form a fair and perfect model of peace, but that they all set forth and announce, in clear and gracious words, what excellent things peace contains within herself and carries abroad whithersoever her power extends.”[70]

The eloquent treatise on the Names of Christ was not, however, the most popular of the prose works of Luis de Leon. This distinction belongs to his “Perfecta Casada,” or Perfect Wife; a treatise which he composed, in the form of a commentary on some portions of Solomon’s Proverbs, for the use of a lady newly married, and which was first published in 1583.[71] But it is not necessary specially to notice either this work, or his Exposition of Job, in two volumes, accompanied with a poetical version, which he began in prison for his own consolation, and finished the year of his death, but which none ventured to publish till 1779.[72] Both are marked with the same humble faith, the same strong enthusiasm, and the same rich eloquence, that appear, from time to time, in the work on the Names of Christ; though perhaps the last, which received the careful corrections of its author’s matured genius, has a serious and settled power greater than he has shown anywhere else. But the characteristics of his prose compositions—even those which from their nature are the most strictly didactic—are the same everywhere; and the rich language and imagery of the passage already cited afford a fair specimen of the style towards which he constantly directed his efforts.

Luis de Leon’s health never recovered from the shock it suffered in the cells of the Inquisition. He lived, indeed, nearly fourteen years after his release; but most of his works, whether in Castilian or in Latin, were written before his imprisonment or during its continuance, while those he undertook afterwards, as his account of Santa Teresa and some others, were never finished. His life was always, from choice, very retired, and his austere manners were announced by his habitual reserve and silence. In a letter that he sent with his poems to his friend Puertocarrero, a statesman at the court of Philip the Second and a member of the principal council of the Inquisition, he says, that, in the kingdom of Old Castile, where he had lived from his youth, he could hardly claim to be familiarly acquainted with ten persons.[73] Still he was extensively known, and was held in great honor. In the latter part of his life especially, his talents and sufferings, his religious patience and his sincere faith, had consecrated him in the eyes alike of his friends and his enemies. Nothing relating to the monastic brotherhood of which he was a member, or to the University where he taught, was undertaken without his concurrence and support; and when he died, in 1591, he was in the exercise of a constantly increasing influence, having just been chosen the head of his Order, and being engaged in the preparation of new regulations for its reform.[74]

But besides the character in which we have thus far considered him, Luis de Leon was a poet, and a poet of no common genius. He seems, it is true, to have been little conscious, or, at least, little careful, of his poetical talent; for he made hardly an effort to cultivate it, and never took pains to print any thing, in order to prove its existence to the world. Perhaps, too, he showed more deference than was due to the opinion of many persons of his time, who thought poetry an occupation not becoming one in his position; for, in the prefatory notice to his sacred odes, he says, in a deprecating tone: “Let none regard verse as any thing new and unworthy to be applied to Scriptural subjects, for it is rather appropriate to them; and so old is it in this application, that, from the earliest ages of the Church to the present day, men of great learning and holiness have thus employed it. And would to God that no other poetry were ever sounded in our ears; that only these sacred tones were sweet to us; that none else were heard at night in the streets and public squares; that the child might still lisp it, the retired damsel find in it her best solace, and the industrious tradesman make it the relief of his toil! But the Christian name is now sunk to such immodest and reckless degradation, that we set our sins to music, and, not content with indulging them in secret, shout them joyfully forth to all who will listen.”

But whatever may have been his own feelings on the suitableness of such an occupation to his profession, it is certain, that, while most of the poems he has left us were written in his youth, they were not collected by him till the latter part of his life, and then only to please a personal friend, who never thought of publishing them; so that they were not printed at all till forty years after his death, when Quevedo gave them to the public, in the hope that they might help to reform the corrupted taste of the age. But from this time they have gone through many editions, though still they never appeared properly collated and arranged till 1816.[75]

They are, however, of great value. They consist of versions of all the Eclogues and two of the Georgics of Virgil, about thirty Odes of Horace, about forty Psalms, and a few passages from the Greek and Italian poets; all executed with freedom and spirit, and all in a genuinely Castilian style. His translations, however, seem to have been only in the nature of exercises and amusements. But though he thus acquired great facility and exactness in his versification, he wrote little. His original poems fill no more than about a hundred pages; but there is hardly a line of them which has not its value; and the whole, when taken together, are to be placed at the head of Spanish lyric poetry. They are chiefly religious, and the source of their inspiration is not to be mistaken. Luis de Leon had a Hebrew soul, and kindles his enthusiasm almost always from the Jewish Scriptures. Still he preserved his nationality unimpaired. Nearly all the best of his poetical compositions are odes written in the old Castilian measures, with a classical purity and rigorous finish before unknown in Spanish poetry, and hardly attained since.[76]

This is eminently the case, for instance, with what the Spaniards have esteemed the best of his poetical works: his ode, called “The Prophecy of the Tagus,” in which the river-god predicts to Roderic the Moorish conquest of his country, as the result of that monarch’s violence to Cava, the daughter of one of his principal nobles. It is an imitation of the Ode of Horace in which Nereus rises from the waves and predicts the overthrow of Troy to Paris, who, under circumstances not entirely dissimilar, is transporting the stolen wife of Menelaus to the scene of the fated conflict between the two nations. But the Ode of Luis de Leon is written in the old Spanish quintillas, his favorite measure, and is as natural, fresh, and flowing as one of the national ballads.[77] Foreigners, however, less interested in what is so peculiarly Spanish, and so full of allusions to Spanish history, may sometimes prefer the serener ode “On a Life of Retirement,” that “On Immortality,” or perhaps the still more beautiful one “On the Starry Heavens”; all written with the same purity and elevation of spirit, and all in the same national measure and manner.

A truer specimen of his prevalent lyrical tone, and, indeed, of his tone in much else of what he wrote, is perhaps to be found in his “Hymn on the Ascension.” It is both very original and very natural in its principal idea, being supposed to express the disappointed feelings of the disciples as they see their Master passing out of their sight into the opening heavens above them.

And dost them, holy Shepherd, leave

Thine unprotected flock alone,

Here, in this darksome vale, to grieve,

While thou ascend’st thy glorious throne?

O, where can they their hopes now turn,

Who never lived but on thy love?

Where rest the hearts for thee that burn,

When thou art lost in light above?

How shall those eyes now find repose

That turn, in vain, thy smile to see?

What can they hear save mortal woes,

Who lose thy voice’s melody?

And who shall lay his tranquil hand

Upon the troubled ocean’s might?

Who hush the winds by his command?

Who guide us through this starless night?

For THOU art gone!—that cloud so bright,

That bears thee from our love away,

Springs upward through the dazzling light,

And leaves us here to weep and pray![78]

In order, however, to comprehend aright the genius and spirit of Luis de Leon, we must study, not only his lyrical poetry, but much of his prose; for, while his religious odes and hymns, beautiful in their severe exactness of style, rank him before Klopstock and Filicaja, his prose, more rich and no less idiomatic, places him at once among the greatest masters of eloquence in his native Castilian.[79]

CHAPTER X.

CERVANTES. — HIS FAMILY. — EDUCATION. — FIRST VERSES. — LIFE IN ITALY. — A SOLDIER IN THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO. — A CAPTIVE IN ALGIERS. — RETURNS HOME. — SERVICE IN PORTUGAL. — LIFE IN MADRID. — HIS GALATEA, AND ITS CHARACTER. — HIS MARRIAGE. — WRITES FOR THE STAGE. — HIS LIFE IN ALGIERS. — HIS NUMANCIA. — POETICAL TENDENCIES OF HIS DRAMA.

THE family of Cervantes was originally Galician, and, at the time of his birth, not only numbered five hundred years of nobility and public service, but was spread throughout Spain, and had been extended to Mexico and other parts of America.[80] The Castilian branch, which, in the fifteenth century, became connected by marriage with the Saavedras, seems, early in the sixteenth, to have fallen off in its fortunes; and we know that the parents of Miguel, who has given to the race a splendor which has saved its old nobility from oblivion, were poor inhabitants of Alcalá de Henares, a small, but nourishing city, about twenty miles from Madrid. There he was born, the youngest of four children, on one of the early days of October, 1547.[81]

No doubt, he received his early education in the place of his nativity, then in the flush of its prosperity and fame from the success of the University founded there by Cardinal Ximenes, about fifty years before. At any rate, like many other generous spirits, he has taken an obvious delight in recalling the days of his childhood in different parts of his works; as in his Don Quixote, where he alludes to the burial and enchantments of the famous Moor Muzaraque on the great hill of Zulema,[82] just as he had probably heard them in some nursery story; and in his prose pastoral, “Galatea,” where he arranges the scene of some of its most graceful adventures “on the banks,” as he fondly calls it, “of the famous Henares.”[83] But concerning his youth we know only what he incidentally tells us himself;—that he took great pleasure in attending the theatrical representations of Lope de Rueda;[84] that he wrote verses when very young;[85] and that he always read every thing within his reach, even, as it should seem, the torn scraps of paper he picked up in the public streets.[86]

It has been conjectured that he pursued his studies in part at Madrid, and there is some probability, notwithstanding the poverty of his family, that he passed two years at the University of Salamanca. But what is certain is, that he obtained a public and decisive mark of respect, before he was twenty-two years old, from one of his teachers; for, in 1569, Lope de Hoyos published, by authority, on the death of the unhappy Isabelle de Valois, wife of Philip the Second, a volume of verse, in which, among other contributions of his pupils, are six short poems by Cervantes, whom he calls his “dear and well-beloved disciple.” This was, no doubt, Cervantes’s first appearance in print as an author; and though he gives in it little proof of poetical talent, yet the affectionate words of his master by which his verses were accompanied, and the circumstance, that one of his elegies was written in the name of the whole school, show that he enjoyed the respect of his teacher and the good-will of his fellow-students.[87]

The next year, 1570, we find him, without any notice of the cause, removed from all his early connections, and serving at Rome as chamberlain in the household of Monsignor Aquaviva, soon afterwards a cardinal; the same person who had been sent, in 1568, on a special mission from the Pope to Philip the Second, and who, as he seems to have had a regard for literature and for men of letters, may, on his return to Italy, have taken Cervantes with him from interest in his talents. The term of service of the young man must, however, have been short. Perhaps he was too much of a Spaniard, and had too proud a spirit, to remain long in a position at best very equivocal, and that, too, at a period when the world was full of solicitations to adventure and military glory.

But whatever may have been his motive, he soon left Rome and its court. In 1571, the Pope, Philip the Second, and the state of Venice, concluded what was called a “Holy League” against the Turks, and set on foot a joint armament, commanded by the chivalrous Don John of Austria, a natural son of Charles the Fifth. The temptations of such a romantic, as well as imposing, expedition against the ancient oppressor of whatever was Spanish, and the formidable enemy of all Christendom, were more than Cervantes, at the age of twenty-three, could resist; and the next thing we hear of him is, that he had volunteered in it as a common soldier. For, as he says in a work written just before his death, he had always observed “that none make better soldiers than those who are transplanted from the region of letters to the fields of war, and that never scholar became soldier that was not a good and brave one.”[88] Animated with this spirit, he entered the service of his country among the troops with which Spain then filled a large part of Italy, and continued in it till he was honorably discharged in 1575.

During these four or five years he learned many of the hardest lessons of life. He was present in the sea-fight of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, and, though suffering at the time under a fever, insisted on bearing his part in that great battle, which first decisively arrested the intrusion of the Turks into the West of Europe. The galley in which he served was in the thickest of the contest, and that he did his duty to his country and to Christendom he carried proud and painful proof to his grave; for, besides two other wounds, he received one which deprived him of the use of his left hand and arm during the rest of his life. With the other sufferers in the fight, he was taken to the hospital at Messina, where he remained till April, 1572; and then, under Mark Antonio Colonna, went on the expedition to the Levant, to which he alludes with so much satisfaction in his dedication of the “Galatea,” and which he has so well described in the story of the Captive, in Don Quixote.

The next year, 1573, he was in the affair of the Goleta at Tunis, under Don John of Austria, and afterwards, with the regiment to which he was attached,[89] returned to Sicily and Italy, many parts of which, in different journeys or expeditions, he seems to have visited, remaining at one time in Naples above a year.[90] This period of his life, however, though marked with much suffering, seems never to have been regarded by him with regret. On the contrary, above forty years afterwards, with a generous pride in what he had undergone, he declared, that, if the alternative were again offered him, he should account his wounds a cheap exchange for the glory of having been present in that great enterprise.[91]

When he was discharged, in 1575, he took with him letters from the Duke of Sessa and Don John, commending him earnestly to the king, and embarked for Spain. But on the 26th of September he was captured and carried into Algiers, where he passed five years yet more disastrous and more full of adventure than the five preceding. He served successively three cruel masters,—a Greek and a Venetian, both renegadoes, and the Dey, or King, himself; the first two tormenting him with that peculiar hatred against Christians which naturally belonged to persons who, from unworthy motives, had joined themselves to the enemies of all Christendom; and the last, the Dey, claiming him for his slave, and treating him with great severity, because he had fled from his master and become formidable by a series of efforts to obtain liberty for himself and his fellow-captives.

Indeed, it is plain that the spirit of Cervantes, so far from having been broken by his cruel captivity, had been only raised and strengthened by it. On one occasion he attempted to escape by land to Oran, a Spanish settlement on the coast, but was deserted by his guide and compelled to return. On another, he secreted thirteen fellow-sufferers in a cave on the sea-shore, where, at the constant risk of his own life, he provided during many weeks for their daily wants, while waiting for rescue by sea; but at last, after he had joined them, was basely betrayed, and then nobly took the whole punishment of the conspiracy on himself. Once he sent for help to break forth by violence, and his letter was intercepted; and once he had matured a scheme for being rescued, with sixty of his countrymen,—a scheme of which, when it was defeated by treachery, he again announced himself as the only author and the willing victim. And finally, he had a grand project for the insurrection of all the Christian slaves in Algiers, which was, perhaps, not unlikely to succeed, as their number was full twenty-five thousand, and which was certainly so alarming to the Dey, that he declared, that, “if he could but keep that lame Spaniard well guarded, he should consider his capital, his slaves, and his galleys safe.”[92] On each of these occasions, severe, but not degrading,[93] punishments were inflicted upon him. Four times he expected instant death in the awful form of impalement or of fire; and the last time a rope was absolutely put about his neck, in the vain hope of extorting from a spirit so lofty the names of his accomplices.

At last, the moment of release came. His elder brother, who was captured with him, had been ransomed three years before; and now his widowed mother was obliged to sacrifice, for her younger son’s freedom, all the pittance that remained to her in the world, including the dowry of her daughters. But even this was not enough; and the remainder of the poor five hundred crowns that were demanded as the price of his liberty was made up partly by small borrowings, and partly by the contributions of religious charity.[94] In this way he was ransomed on the 19th of September, 1580, just at the moment when he had embarked with his master, the Dey, for Constantinople, whence his rescue would have been all but hopeless. A short time afterwards he left Algiers, where we have abundant proof, that, by his disinterestedness, his courage, and his fidelity, he had, to an extraordinary degree, gained the affection and respect of the multitude of Christian captives with which that city of anathemas was then crowded.[95]

But though he was thus restored to his home and his country, and though his first feelings may have been as fresh and happy as those he has so eloquently expressed more than once when speaking of the joys of freedom,[96] still it should be remembered that he returned after an absence of ten years, beginning at a period of life when he could hardly have taken root in society, or made for himself, amidst its struggling interests, a place which would not be filled almost as soon as he left it. His father was dead. His family, poor before, had been reduced to a still more bitter poverty by his own ransom and that of his brother. He was unfriended and unknown, and must have suffered naturally and deeply from a sort of grief and disappointment which he had felt neither as a soldier nor as a slave. It is not remarkable, therefore, that he should have entered anew into the service of his country,—joining his brother, probably in the same regiment to which he had formerly belonged, and which was now sent to maintain the Spanish authority in the newly acquired kingdom of Portugal. How long he remained there is not certain. But he was at Lisbon, and went, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, in the expedition of 1581, as well as in the more important one of the year following, to reduce the Azores, which still held out against the arms of Philip the Second. From this period, therefore, we are to date the full knowledge he frequently shows of Portuguese literature, and that strong love for Portugal which, in the third book of “Persiles and Sigismunda,” as well as in other parts of his works, he exhibits with a kindliness and generosity remarkable in a Spaniard of any age, and particularly in one of the age of Philip the Second.[97]

It is not unlikely that this circumstance had some influence on the first direction of his more serious efforts as an author, which, soon after his return to Spain, ended in the pastoral romance of “Galatea.” For prose pastorals have been a favorite form of fiction in Portugal from the days of the “Menina e Moça”[98] down to our own times; and had already been introduced into Spanish literature by George of Montemayor, a Portuguese poet of reputation, whose “Diana Enamorada” and the continuation of it by Gil Polo were, as we know, favorite books with Cervantes.

But whatever may have been the cause, Cervantes now wrote all he ever published of his Galatea, which was licensed on the 1st of February, 1584, and printed in the December following. He himself calls it “An Eclogue,” and dedicates it, as “the first fruits of his poor genius,”[99] to the son of that Colonna under whose standard he had served, twelve years before, in the Levant. It is, in fact, a prose pastoral, after the manner of Gil Polo’s; and, as he intimates in the Preface, “its shepherds and shepherdesses are many of them such only in their dress.”[100] Indeed, it has always been understood that Galatea, the heroine, is the lady to whom he was soon afterwards married; that he himself is Elicio, the hero; and that several of his literary friends, especially Luis Barahona de Soto, whom he seems always to have overrated as a poet, Francisco de Figueroa, Pedro Lainez, and some others, are disguised under the names of Lauso, Tirsi, Damon, and similar pastoral appellations. At any rate, these personages of his fable talk with so much grace and learning, that he finds it necessary to apologize for their too elegant discourse.[101]

Like other works of the same sort, the Galatea is founded on an affectation which can never be successful; and which, in this particular instance, from the unwise accumulation and involution of the stories in its fable, from the conceited metaphysics with which it is disfigured, and from the poor poetry profusely scattered through it, is more than usually unfortunate. Yet there are traces both of Cervantes’s experience in life, and of his talent, in different parts of it. Some of the tales, like that of Sileno, in the second and third books, are interesting; others, like Timbrio’s capture by the Moors, in the fifth book, remind us of his own adventures and sufferings; while yet one, at least, that of Rosaura and Grisaldo, in the fourth book, is quite emancipated from pastoral conceits and fancies. In all, we have passages marked with his rich and flowing style, though never, perhaps, with what is most peculiar to his genius. The inartificial texture of the whole, and the confusion of Christianity and mythology, almost inevitable in such a work, are its most obvious defects; though nothing, perhaps, is more incongruous than the representation of that sturdy old soldier and formal statesman, Diego de Mendoza, as a lately deceased shepherd.[102]

But when speaking thus slightingly of the Galatea, we ought to remember, that, though it extends to two volumes, it is unfinished, and that passages which now seem out of proportion or unintelligible might have their meaning, and might be found appropriate, if the second part, which Cervantes had perhaps written, and which he continued to talk of publishing till a few days before his death,[103] had ever appeared. And certainly, as we make up our judgment on its merits, we are bound to bear in mind his own touching words, when he represents it as found by the barber and curate in Don Quixote’s library.[104] “‘But what book is the next one?’ said the curate. ‘The Galatea of Miguel de Cervantes,’ replied the barber. ‘This Cervantes,’ said the curate, ‘has been a great friend of mine these many years; and I know that he is more skilled in sorrows than in verse. His book is not without happiness in the invention; it proposes something, but finishes nothing. So we must wait for the second part, which he promises; for perhaps he will then obtain the favor that is now denied him; and in the mean time, my good gossip, keep it locked up at home.’”

If the story be true, that he wrote the Galatea to win the favor of his lady, his success may have been the reason why he was less interested to finish it; for, almost immediately after the appearance of the first part, he was married, December 12th, 1584, to a lady of a good family in Esquivias, a village near Madrid.[105] The pecuniary arrangements consequent on the marriage, which have been published,[106] show that both parties were poor; and the Galatea intimates that Cervantes had a formidable Portuguese rival, who was, at one time, nearly successful in winning his bride.[107] But whether the course of his love ran smooth before marriage or not, his wedded life, for above thirty years, seems to have been happy, and his widow, at her death, desired to be buried by his side.

In order to support his family, he probably lived much at Madrid, where, we know, he was familiar with several contemporary poets, such as Juan Rufo, Pedro de Padilla, and others, whom, with his inherent good-nature, he praises constantly in his later works, and often unreasonably. From the same motive, too, and perhaps partly in consequence of these intimacies, he now undertook to gain some portion of his subsistence by authorship, turning away from the life of adventure to which he had earlier been attracted.

His first efforts in this way were for the stage, which naturally presented strong attractions to one who was early fond of dramatic representations, and who was now in serious want of such immediate profit as the theatre sometimes yields. The drama, however, in the time of Cervantes, was rude and unformed. He tells us, as we have already noticed, that he had witnessed its beginnings in the time of Lope de Rueda and Naharro,[108] which must have been before he went to Italy, and when, from his description of its dresses and apparatus, we plainly see that the theatre was not so well understood and managed as it is now by strolling companies and in puppet-shows. From this humble condition, which the efforts made by Bermudez and Argensola, Virues, La Cueva, and their contemporaries, had not much ameliorated, Cervantes undertook to raise it; and he succeeded so far, that, thirty years afterwards, he thought his success of sufficient consequence frankly to boast of it.[109]

But it is curious to see the methods he deemed it expedient to adopt for such a purpose. He reduced, he says, the number of acts from five to three; but this is a slight matter, and, though he does not seem to be aware of the fact, it had been done long before by Avendaño. He claims to have introduced phantasms of the imagination, or allegorical personages, like War, Disease, and Famine; but, besides that Juan de la Cueva had already done this, it was, at best, nothing more in either of them than reviving the forms of the old religious shows. And finally, though this is not one of the grounds on which he himself places his dramatic merits, he seems to have endeavoured in his plays, as in his other works, to turn his personal travels and sufferings to account, and thus, unconsciously, became an imitator of some of those who were among the earliest inventors of such representations in modern Europe.

But, with a genius like that of Cervantes, even changes or attempts as crude as these were not without results. He wrote, as he tells us with characteristic carelessness, twenty or thirty pieces, which were received with applause;—a number greater than can be with certainty attributed to any preceding Spanish author, and a success before quite unknown. None of these pieces were printed at the time, but he has given us the names of nine of them, two of which were discovered in 1782, and printed, for the first time, in 1784.[110] The rest, it is to be feared, are irrecoverably lost, and among them is “La Confusa,” which, long after Lope de Vega had given its final character to the proper national drama, Cervantes fondly declared was still one of the very best of the class to which it belonged;[111] a judgment which the present age might perhaps confirm, if the proportions and finish of the drama he preferred were equal to the strength and originality of the two that have been rescued.

The first of these is “El Trato de Argel,” or, as he elsewhere calls it, “Los Tratos de Argel,” which may be translated Life, or Manners, in Algiers. It is a drama slight in its plot, and so imperfect in its dialogue, that, in these respects, it is little better than some of the old eclogues on which the earlier theatre was founded. His purpose, indeed, seems to have been simply to set before a Spanish audience such a picture of the sufferings of the Christian captives at Algiers as his own experience would justify, and such as might well awaken sympathy in a country which had furnished a deplorable number of the victims. He, therefore, is little careful to construct a regular plot, if, after all, he were aware that such a plot was important; but, instead of it, he gives us a stiff and unnatural love-story, which he thought good enough to be used again, both in one of his later plays and in one of his tales;[112] and then trusts the main success of the piece to its episodical sketches.

Of these sketches, several are striking. First, we have a scene between Cervantes himself and two of his fellow-captives, in which they are jeered at as slaves and Christians by the Moors, and in which they give an account of the martyrdom in Algiers of a Spanish priest, which was subsequently used by Lope de Vega in one of his dramas. Next, we have the attempt of Pedro Alvarez to escape to Oran, which is, no doubt, taken from the similar attempt of Cervantes, and has all the spirit of a drawing from life. And, in different places, we have two or three painful scenes of the public sale of slaves, and especially of little children, which he must often have witnessed, and which again Lope de Vega thought worth borrowing, when he had risen, as Cervantes calls it, to the monarchy of the scene.[113] The whole play is divided into five jornadas or acts, and written in octaves, redondillas, terza rima, blank verse, and almost all the other measures known to Spanish poetry; while among the persons of the drama are strangely scattered, as prominent actors, Necessity, Opportunity, a Lion, and a Demon.

Yet, notwithstanding the unhappy confusion and carelessness all this implies, there are passages in the Trato de Argel which are poetical. Aurelio, the hero,—who is a Christian captive, affianced to another captive named Sylvia,—is loved by Zara, a Moorish lady, whose confidante, Fatima, makes a wild incantation in order to obtain means to secure the gratification of her mistress’s love; the result of which is that a demon rises and places in her power Necessity and Opportunity. These two immaterial agencies are then sent by her upon the stage, and—invisible to Aurelio himself, but seen by the spectators—tempt him with evil thoughts to yield to the seductions of the fair unbeliever.[114] When they are gone, he thus expresses, in soliloquy, his feelings at the idea of having nearly yielded:—

Aurelio, whither goest thou? Where, O where,

Now tend thine erring steps? Who guides thee on?

Is, then, thy fear of God so small, that thus,

To satisfy mad fantasy’s desires,

Thou rushest headlong? Can light and easy

Opportunity, with loose solicitation,

Thus persuade and overcome thy soul,

And yield thee up to love a prisoner?

Is this the lofty thought and firm resolve

In which thou once wast rooted, to resist

Offence and sin, although in torments sharp

Thy days should end and earthly martyrdom?

So soon hast thou offended, to the winds

Thy true and loving hopes cast forth,

And yielded up thy soul to low desire?

Away with such wild thoughts, of basest birth

And basest lineage sprung! Such witchery

Of foul, unworthy love shall by a love

All pure be broke! A Christian soul is mine,

And as a Christian’s shall my life be marked;—

Nor gifts, nor promises, nor cunning art,

Shall from the God I serve my spirit turn,

Although the path I trace lead on to death![115]

The conception of this passage and of the scene preceding it is certainly not dramatic, though it is one of those on which, from the introduction of spiritual agencies, Cervantes valued himself. But neither is it without poetry. Like the rest of the piece, it is a mixture of personal feelings and fancies, struggling with an ignorance of the proper principles of the drama, and with the rude elements of the theatre in its author’s time. He calls the whole a Comedia; but it does not deserve the name. Like the old Mysteries, it is rather an attempt to exhibit, in living show, a series of unconnected incidents; but it has no properly constructed plot, and, as he honestly confesses afterwards, it comes to no proper conclusion.[116]

The other play of Cervantes, that has reached us from this period of his life, is founded on the tragical fate of Numantia, which, having resisted the Roman arms fourteen years,[117] was reduced by famine; the Roman forces consisting of eighty thousand men, and the Numantian of less than four thousand, not one of whom was found alive when the conquerors entered the city.[118] Cervantes probably chose this subject in consequence of the patriotic recollections it awakened and still continues to awaken in the minds of his countrymen; and, for the same reason, he filled his drama chiefly with the public and private horrors consequent on the self-devotion of the Numantians.

It is divided into four jornadas, and, like the Trato de Argel, is written in a great variety of measures; the ancient redondilla being preferred for the more active portions. Its dramatis personæ are no fewer than forty in number; and among them are Spain and the River Duero, a Dead Body, War, Sickness, Famine, and Fame; the last personage speaking the Prologue. The action opens with Scipio’s arrival. He at once reproaches the Roman army, that, in so long a time, they had not conquered so small a body of Spaniards,—as Cervantes always patriotically calls the Numantians,—and then announces that they must now be subdued by Famine. Spain enters, as a fair matron, and, aware of what awaits her devoted city, invokes the Duero in two poetical octaves,[119] which the river answers in person, accompanied by three of his tributary streams, but gives no hope to Numantia, except that the Goths, the Constable of Bourbon, and the Duke of Alva shall one day avenge its fate on the Romans. This ends the first act.

The other three divisions are filled with the horrors of the siege endured by the unhappy Numantians; the anticipations of their defeat; their sacrifices and prayers to avert it; the unhallowed incantations by which a dead body is raised to predict the future; and the cruel sufferings to old and young, to the loved and the lovely, and even to the innocence of childhood, through which the stern fate of the city is accomplished. The whole ends with the voluntary immolation of those who remained alive among the starving inhabitants, and the death of a youth who holds up the keys of the gates, and then, in presence of the Roman general, throws himself headlong from one of the towers of the city; its last self-devoted victim.

In such a story there is no plot, and no proper development of any thing like a dramatic action. But the romance of real life has rarely been exhibited on the stage in such bloody extremity; and still more rarely, when thus exhibited, has there been so much of poetical effect produced by individual incidents. In a scene of the second act, Marquino, a magician, after several vain attempts to compel a spirit to reënter the body it had just left on the battle-field, in order to obtain from it a revelation of the coming fate of the city, bursts forth indignantly and says:—

Rebellious spirit! Back again, and fill

The form which, but a few short hours ago,

Thyself left tenantless.

To which the spirit, reëntering the body, replies:—

Restrain the fury of thy cruel power!

Enough, Marquino! O, enough of pain

I suffer in those regions dark, below,

Without the added torments of thy spell!

Thou art deluded, if thou deem’st indeed

That aught of earthly pleasure can repay

Such brief return to this most wretched world,

Where, when I barely seem to live again,

With urgent speed life harshly shrinks away.

Nay, rather dost thou bring a shuddering pain;

Since, on the instant, all-prevailing death

Triumphant reigns anew, subduing life and soul;

Thus yielding twice the victory to my foe,

Who now, with others of his grisly crew,

Obedient to thy will, and stung with rage,

Awaits the moment when shall be fulfilled

The knowledge thou requirest at my hand;

The knowledge of Numantia’s awful fate.[120]

There is nothing of so much dignity in the incantations of Marlowe’s “Faustus,” which belong to the contemporary period of the English stage; nor does even Shakspeare demand from us a sympathy so strange with the mortal head reluctantly rising to answer Macbeth’s guilty question, as Cervantes makes us feel for this suffering spirit, recalled to life only to endure a second time the pangs of dissolution.

The scenes of private and domestic affliction arising from the pressure of famine are sometimes introduced with unexpected effect, especially one between a mother and her child, and the following between Morandro, a lover, and his mistress, Lira, whom he now sees wasted by hunger and mourning over the universal desolation. She turns from him to conceal her sufferings, and he says tenderly,—

Nay, Lira, haste not, haste not thus away;

But let me feel an instant’s space the joy

Which life can give even here, amidst grim death.

Let but mine eyes an instant’s space behold

Thy beauty, and, amidst such bitter woes,

Be gladdened! O my gentle Lira!—thou,

That dwell’st for ever in such harmony

Amidst the thoughts that throng my fantasy,

That suffering grows glorious for thy sake;—

What ails thee, love? On what are bent thy thoughts,

Chief honor of mine own?

Lira.

I think, how fast

All happiness is gliding both from thee

And me; and that, before this cruel war

Can find a close, my life must find one too.

Morandro.

What sayst thou, love?

Lira.

That hunger so prevails

Within me, that it soon must triumph quite,

And break my life’s thin thread. What wedded love

Canst thou expect from me in such extremity,—

Looking for death perchance in one short hour?

With famine died my brother yesterday;

With famine sank my mother; and if still

I struggle on, ’t is but my youth that bears

Me up against such rigors horrible.

But sustenance is now so many days

Withheld, that all my weakened powers

Contend in vain.

Morandro.

O Lira! dry thy tears,

And let but mine bemoan thy bitter griefs!

For though fierce famine press thee merciless,

Of famine, while I live, thou shalt not die.

Fosse deep and wall of strength shall be o’erleaped,

And death confronted, and yet warded off!

The bread the bloody Roman eats to-day

Shall from his lips be torn and placed in thine;—

My arms shall hew a passage for thy life;—

For death is naught when I behold thee thus.

Food thou shall have, in spite of Roman power,

If but these hands are such as once they were.

Lira.

Thou speak’st, Morandro, with a loving heart;—

But food thus bought with peril to thy life

Would lose its savor. All that thou couldst snatch

In such an onset must be small indeed,

And rather cost thy life than rescue mine.

Enjoy, then, love, thy fresh and glowing youth!

Thy life imports the city more than mine;

Thou canst defend it from this cruel foe,

Whilst I, a maiden, weak and faint at heart,

Am worthless all. So, gentle love, dismiss this thought;

I taste no food bought at such deadly price.

And though a few short, wretched days thou couldst

Protect this life, still famine, at the last,

Must end us all.

Morandro.

In vain thou strivest, love,

To hinder me the way my will alike

And destiny invite and draw me on.

Pray rather, therefore, to the gods above,

That they return me home, laden with spoils,

Thy sufferings and mine to mitigate.

Lira.

Morandro, gentle friend, O, go not forth!

For here, before me, gleams a hostile sword,

Red with thy blood! O, venture, venture not

Such fierce extremity, light of my life!

For if the sally be with dangers thick,

More dread is the return.[121]

He persists, and, accompanied by a faithful friend, penetrates into the Roman camp and obtains bread. In the contest he is wounded; but still, forcing his way back to the city, by the mere energy of despair, he gives to Lira the food he has won, wet with his own blood, and then falls dead at her feet.

A very high authority in dramatic criticism speaks of the Numancia as if it were not merely one of the more distinguished efforts of the early Spanish theatre, but one of the more striking exhibitions of modern poetry.[122] It is not probable that this opinion will prevail. Yet the whole piece has the merit of originality, and, in several of its parts, succeeds in awakening strong emotions; so that, notwithstanding the want of dramatic skill and adaptation, it may still be cited as a proof of its author’s poetical talent, and, in the actual condition of the Spanish stage when he wrote, as a bold effort to raise it.

CHAPTER XI.

CERVANTES NEGLECTED. — AT SEVILLE. — HIS FAILURE. — ASKS EMPLOYMENT IN AMERICA. — AT VALLADOLID. — HIS TROUBLES. — PUBLISHES THE FIRST PART OF DON QUIXOTE. — HE REMOVES TO MADRID. — HIS LIFE THERE. — HIS RELATIONS WITH LOPE DE VEGA. — HIS TALES AND THEIR CHARACTER. — HIS JOURNEY TO PARNASSUS, AND DEFENCE OF HIS DRAMAS. — PUBLISHES HIS PLAYS AND ENTREMESES. — THEIR CHARACTER. — SECOND PART OF DON QUIXOTE. — HIS DEATH.

THE low condition of the theatre in his time was a serious misfortune to Cervantes. It prevented him from obtaining, as a dramatic author, a suitable remuneration for his efforts, even though they were, as he tells us, successful in winning public favor. If we add to this, that he was now married, that one of his sisters was dependent on him, and that he was maimed in his person and a neglected man, it will not seem remarkable, that, after struggling on for three years at Esquivias and Madrid, he found himself obliged to seek elsewhere the means of subsistence. In 1588, therefore, he went to Seville, then the great mart for the vast wealth coming in from America, and, as he afterwards called it, “a shelter for the poor and a refuge for the unfortunate.”[123] There he acted for some time as one of the agents of Antonio de Guevara, a royal commissary for the American fleets, and afterwards as a collector of moneys due to the government and to private individuals; an humble condition, certainly, and full of cares, but still one that gave him the bread he had vainly sought in other pursuits.

The chief advantage, perhaps, of these employments to a genius like that of Cervantes was, that they led him to travel much for ten years in different parts of Andalusia and Granada, and made him familiar with life and manners in these picturesque parts of his native country. During the latter portion of the time, indeed, partly owing to the failure of a person to whose care he had intrusted some of the moneys he had received, and partly, it is to be feared, owing to his own negligence, he became indebted to the government, and was imprisoned at Seville, as a defaulter, for a sum so small, that it seems to mark a more severe degree of poverty than he had yet suffered. After a strong application to the government, he was released from prison under an order of December 1, 1597, when he had been confined, apparently, about three months; but the claims of the public treasury on him were not adjusted in 1608, nor do we know what was the final result of his improvidence in relation to them, except that he does not seem to have been molested on the subject after that date.

During his residence at Seville, which, with some interruptions, extended from 1588 to 1598, or perhaps somewhat longer, Cervantes made an ineffectual application to the king for an appointment in America; setting forth by exact documents—which now constitute the most valuable materials for his biography—a general account of his adventures, services, and sufferings while a soldier in the Levant, and of the miseries of his life while he was a slave in Algiers.[124] This was in 1590. But no other than a formal answer seems ever to have been returned to the application; and the whole affair only leaves us to infer the severity of that distress which should induce him to seek relief in exile to a colony of which he has elsewhere spoken as the great resort of rogues.[125]

As an author, his residence at Seville has left few distinct traces of him. In 1595, he sent some trifling verses to Saragossa, which gained one of the prizes offered at the canonization of San Jacinto;[126] in 1596, he wrote a sonnet in ridicule of a great display of courage made in Andalusia after all danger was over and the English had evacuated Cadiz, which, under Essex, Elizabeth’s favorite, they had for a short time occupied;[127] and in 1598, he wrote another sonnet, in ridicule of an unseemly uproar that took place in the cathedral at Seville, from a pitiful jealousy between the municipality and the Inquisition, on occasion of the religious ceremonies observed there after the death of Philip the Second.[128] But except these trifles, we know of nothing that he wrote, during this active period of his life, unless we are to assign to it some of his tales, which, like the “Española Inglesa,” are connected with known contemporary events, or, like “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” savor so much of the manners of Seville, that it seems as if they could have been written nowhere else.

Of the next period of his life,—and it is the important one immediately preceding the publication of the First Part of Don Quixote,—we know even less than of the last. A uniform tradition, however, declares that he was employed by the Grand Prior of the Order of Saint John in La Mancha to collect rents due to his monastery in the village of Argamasilla; that he went there on this humble agency and made the attempt, but that the debtors refused payment, and, after persecuting him in different ways, ended by throwing him into prison, where, in a spirit of indignation, he began to write the Don Quixote, making his hero a native of the village that treated him so ill, and laying the scene of most of the knight’s earlier adventures in La Mancha. But though this is possible, and even probable, we have no direct proof of it. Cervantes says, indeed, in his Preface to the First Part, that his Don Quixote was begun in a prison;[129] but this may refer to his earlier imprisonment at Seville, or his subsequent one at Valladolid. All that is certain, therefore, is, that he had friends and relations in La Mancha; that, at some period of his life, he must have enjoyed an opportunity of acquiring the intimate knowledge of its people, antiquities, and topography, which the Don Quixote shows; and that this could hardly have happened except between the end of 1598, when we lose all trace of him at Seville, and the beginning of 1603, when we find him established at Valladolid.

To Valladolid he went, apparently because the court had been removed thither by the caprice of Philip the Third and the interests of his favorite, the Duke of Lerma; but, as everywhere else, there too, he was overlooked and left in poverty. Indeed, we should hardly know he was in Valladolid at all before the publication of the First Part of his Don Quixote, but for two painful circumstances. The first is an account, in his own handwriting, for sewing done by his sister, who, having sacrificed every thing for his redemption from captivity, became dependent on him during her widowhood and died in his family. The other is, that, in one of those night-brawls common among the gallants of the Spanish court, a stranger was killed near the house where Cervantes lived; in consequence of which, and of some suspicions that fell on the family, he was, according to the hard provisions of the Spanish law, confined with the other principal witnesses until an investigation could take place.[130]

But in the midst of poverty and embarrassments, and while acting in the humble capacity of general agent and amanuensis for those who needed his services,[131] Cervantes had prepared for the press the First Part of his Don Quixote, which was licensed in 1604, at Valladolid, and printed in 1605, at Madrid. It was received with such decided favor, that, before the year was out, another edition was called for at Madrid, and two more elsewhere; circumstances which, after so many discouragements in other attempts to procure a subsistence, naturally turned his thoughts more towards letters than they had been at any previous period of his life.

In 1606, the court having gone back to Madrid, Cervantes followed it, and there passed the remainder of his life; changing his residence to different parts of the city at least seven times in the course of ten years, apparently as he was driven hither and thither by his necessities. In 1609, he joined the Brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament,—one of those religious associations which were then fashionable, and the same of which Quevedo, Lope de Vega, and other distinguished men of letters of the time, were members. About the same period, too, he seems to have become known to most of these persons, as well as to others of the favored poets round the court, among whom were Espinel and the two Argensolas; though what were his relations with them, beyond those implied in the commendatory verses they prefixed to each other’s works, we do not know.

Concerning his relations with Lope de Vega there has been much discussion to little purpose. Certain it is, that Cervantes often praises this great literary idol of his age, and that four or five times Lope stoops from his pride of place and compliments Cervantes, though never beyond the measure of praise he bestows on many whose claims were greatly inferior. But in his stately flight, it is plain that he soared much above the author of Don Quixote, to whose highest merits he seemed carefully to avoid all homage;[132] and though I find no sufficient reason to suppose their relation to each other was marked by any personal jealousy or ill-will, as has been sometimes supposed, yet I can find no proof that it was either intimate or kindly. On the contrary, when we consider the good-nature of Cervantes, which made him praise to excess nearly all his other literary contemporaries, as well as the greatest of them all, and when we allow for the frequency of hyperbole in such praises at that time, which prevented them from being what they would now be, we may perceive an occasional coolness in his manner, when he speaks of Lope, which shows, that, without overrating his own merits and claims, he was not insensible to the difference in their respective positions, or to the injustice towards himself implied by it. Indeed, his whole tone, whenever he notices Lope, seems to be marked with much personal dignity, and to be singularly honorable to him.[133]

In 1613, he published his “Novelas Exemplares,” Instructive or Moral Tales,[134] twelve in number, and making one volume. Some of them were written several years before, as was “The Impertinent Curiosity,” inserted in the First Part of Don Quixote,[135] and “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” which is mentioned there, so that both must be dated as early as 1604; while others contain internal evidence of the time of their composition, as the “Española Inglesa” does, which seems to have been written in 1611. All of these stories are, as he intimates in their Preface, original, and most of them have the air of being drawn from his personal experience and observation.

Their value is different, for they are written with different views, and in a variety of style and manner greater than he has elsewhere shown; but most of them contain touches of what is peculiar in his talent, and are full of that rich eloquence and of those pleasing descriptions of natural scenery which always flow so easily from his pen. They have little in common with the graceful story-telling spirit of Boccaccio and his followers, and still less with the strictly practical tone of Don Juan Manuel’s tales; nor, on the other hand, do they approach, except in the case of the Impertinent Curiosity, the class of short novels which have been frequent in other countries within the last century. The more, therefore, we examine them, the more we shall find that they are original in their composition and general tone, and that they are strongly marked with the individual genius of their author, as well as with the more peculiar traits of the national character,—the ground, no doubt, on which they have always been favorites at home, and less valued than they deserve to be abroad. As works of invention, they rank, among their author’s productions, next after Don Quixote; in correctness and grace of style they stand before it.

The first in the series, “The Little Gypsy Girl,” is the story of a beautiful creature, Preciosa, who had been stolen, when an infant, from a noble family, and educated in the wild community of the Gypsies,—that mysterious and degraded race which, until within the last fifty years, has always thriven in Spain since it first appeared there in the fifteenth century. There is a truth, as well as a spirit, in parts of this little story, that cannot be overlooked. The description of Preciosa’s first appearance in Madrid during a great religious festival; the effect produced by her dancing and singing in the streets; her visits to the houses to which she was called for the amusement of the rich; and the conversations, compliments, and style of entertainment, are all admirable, and leave no doubt of their truth and reality. But there are other passages which, mistaking in some respects the true Gypsy character, seem as if they were rather drawn from some such imitations of it as the “Life of Bampfylde Moore Carew” than from a familiarity with Gypsy life as it then existed in Spain.[136]

The next of the tales is very different, and yet no less within the personal experience of Cervantes himself. It is called “The Generous Lover,” and is nearly the same in its incidents with an episode found in his own “Trato de Argel.” The scene is laid in Cyprus, two years after the capture of that island by the Turks in 1570; but here it is his own adventures in Algiers upon which he draws for the materials and coloring of what is Turkish in his story, and the vivacity of his descriptions shows how much of reality there is in both.

The third story, “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” is again quite unlike any of the others. It is an account of two young vagabonds, not without ingenuity and spirit, who join at Seville, in 1569, one of those organized communities of robbers and beggars which often recur in the history of Spanish society and manners during the last three centuries. The realm of Monipodio, their chief, reminds us at once of Alsatia in Sir Walter Scott’s “Nigel,” and the resemblance is made still more obvious afterwards, when, in “The Colloquy of the Dogs,” we find the same Monipodio in secret league with the officers of justice. A single trait, however, will show with what fidelity Cervantes has copied from nature. The members of this confederacy, who lead the most dissolute and lawless lives, are yet represented as superstitious, and as having their images, their masses, and their contributions for pious charities, as if robbery were a settled and respectable vocation, a part of whose income was to be devoted to religious purposes in order to consecrate the remainder; a delusion which, in forms alternately ridiculous and revolting, has subsisted in Spain from very early times down to the present day.[137]

It would be easy to go on and show how the rest of the tales are marked with similar traits of truth and nature: for example, the story founded on the adventures of a Spanish girl carried to England when Cadiz was sacked in 1596; “The Jealous Estremadurian,” and “The Fraudulent Marriage,” the last two of which bear internal evidence of being founded on fact; and even “The Pretended Aunt,” which, as he did not print it himself,—apparently in consequence of its coarseness,—ought not now to be placed among his works, is after all the story of an adventure that really occurred at Salamanca in 1575.[138] Indeed, they are all fresh from the racy soil of the national character, as that character is found in Andalusia; and are written with an idiomatic richness, a spirit, and a grace, which, though they are the oldest tales of their class in Spain, have left them ever since without successful rivals.

In 1614, the year after they appeared, Cervantes printed his “Journey to Parnassus”; a satire in terza rima, divided into eight short chapters, and written in professed imitation of an Italian satire, by Cesare Caporali, on the same subject and in the same measure.[139] The poem of Cervantes has little merit. It is an account of a summons by Apollo, requiring all good poets to come to his assistance for the purpose of driving all the bad poets from Parnassus, in the course of which Mercury is sent in a royal galley, allegorically built and rigged with different kinds of verses, to Cervantes, who, being confidentially consulted about the Spanish poets that can be trusted as allies in the war against bad taste, has an opportunity of speaking his opinion on whatever relates to the poetry of his time.

The most interesting part is the fourth chapter, in which he slightly notices the works he has himself written,[140] and complains, with a gayety that at least proves his good-humor, of the poverty and neglect with which they have been rewarded.[141] It may be difficult, perhaps, to draw a line between such feelings as Cervantes here very strongly expresses, and the kindred ones of vanity and presumption; but yet, when his genius, his wants, and his manly struggles against the gravest evils of life are considered, and when to this are added the light-heartedness and simplicity with which he always speaks of himself, and the indulgence he always shows to others, few will complain of him for claiming with some boldness honors that had been coldly withheld, and to which he felt that he was entitled.

At the end he has added a humorous prose dialogue, called the “Adjunta,” defending his dramas, and attacking the actors who refused to represent them. He says that he had prepared six full-length plays, and six Entremeses or farces; but that the theatre had its pensioned poets, and so took no note of him. The next year, however, when their number had become eight plays and eight Entremeses, he found a publisher, though not without difficulty; for the bookseller, as he says in the Preface, had been warned by a noble author, that from his prose much might be hoped, but from his poetry nothing. And truly his position in relation to the theatre was not one to be desired. Thirty years had passed since he had himself been a successful writer for it; and the twenty or more pieces he had then produced, some of which he mentions anew with great complacency,[142] were, no doubt, long since forgotten. In the interval, as he tells us, “that great prodigy of nature, Lope de Vega, has raised himself to the monarchy of the theatre, subjected it to his control, and placed all its actors under his jurisdiction; filled the world with becoming plays, happily and well written; ... and if any persons (and in truth there are not a few such) have desired to enter into competition with him and share the glory of his labors, all they have done, when put together, would not equal the half of what has been done by him alone.”[143]

The number of these writers for the stage in 1615 was, as Cervantes intimates, very considerable; and when he goes on to enumerate, among the more successful, Mira de Mescua, Guillen de Castro, Aguilar, Luis Vélez de Guevara, Gaspar de Avila, and several others, we perceive, at once, that the essential direction and character of the Spanish drama were at last determined. Of course, the free field open to him when he composed the plays of his youth was now closed; and as he wrote from the pressure of want, he could venture to write only according to the models triumphantly established by Lope de Vega and his imitators.

The eight plays or Comedias he now produced were, therefore, all composed in the style and in the forms of verse already fashionable and settled. Their subjects are as various as the subjects of his tales. One of them is a rifacimento of his “Trato de Argel,” and is curious, because it contains some of the materials, and even occasionally the very phraseology, of the story of the Captive in Don Quixote, and because Lope de Vega thought fit afterwards to use it somewhat too freely in the composition of his own “Esclavos en Argel.”[144] Much of it seems to be founded in fact; among the rest, the deplorable martyrdom of a child in the third act, and the representation of one of the Coloquios or farces of Lope de Rueda by the slaves in their prison-yard.

Another of the plays, the story of which is also said to be true, is “El Gallardo Español,” or The Bold Spaniard.[145] Its hero, named Saavedra, and therefore, perhaps, of the old family into which that of Cervantes had long before intermarried, goes over to the Moors for a time, from a point of honor about a lady, but turns out at last a true Spaniard in every thing else, as well as in the exaggeration of his gallantry. “The Sultana” is founded on the history of a Spanish captive, who rose so high in the favor of the Grand Turk, that she is represented in the play as having become, not merely a favorite, but absolutely the Sultana, and yet as continuing to be a Christian,—a story which was readily believed in Spain, though only the first part of it is true, as Cervantes must have known, since Catharine of Oviedo, who is the heroine, was his contemporary.[146] The “Rufian Dichoso” is a Don Juan in licentiousness and crime, who is converted and becomes so extraordinary a saint, that, to redeem the soul of a dying sinner, Doña Ana de Treviño, he formally surrenders to her his own virtues and good works, and assumes her sins, beginning anew, through incredible sufferings, the career of penitence and reformation; all of which, or at least what is the most gross and revolting in it, is declared by Cervantes, as an eye-witness, to be true.[147]

The remaining four plays are no less various in their subjects and no less lawless in the modes of treating them; and all the eight are divided into three jornadas, which Cervantes uses as strictly synonymous with acts.[148] All preserve the character of the Fool, who in one instance is an ecclesiastic,[149] and all extend over any amount of time and space that is found convenient to the action; the “Rufian Dichoso,” for instance, beginning in Seville and Toledo, during the youth of the hero, and ending in Mexico in his old age. The personages represented are extravagant in their number,—once amounting to above thirty,—and among them, besides every variety of human existences, are Demons, Souls in Purgatory, Lucifer, Fear, Despair, Jealousy, and other similar phantasms. The truth is, Cervantes had renounced all the principles of the drama which his discreet canon had so gravely set forth ten years earlier in the First Part of Don Quixote; and now, whether with the consent of his will, or only with that of his poverty, we cannot tell, but, as may be seen, not merely in the plays themselves, but in a sort of induction to the second act of the Rufian Dichoso, he had fully and knowingly adopted the dramatic theories of Lope’s school.

The eight Entremeses are better than the eight full-length plays. They are short farces, generally in prose, with a slight plot, and sometimes with none, and were intended merely to amuse an audience in the intervals between the acts of the longer pieces. “The Spectacle of Wonders,” for instance, is only a series of practical tricks to frighten the persons attending a puppet-show, so as to persuade them that they see what is really not on the stage. “The Watchful Guard” interests us, because he seems to have drawn the character of the soldier from his own; and the date of 1611, which is contained in it, may indicate the time when it was written. “The Jealous Old Man” is a reproduction of the tale of “The Jealous Estremadurian,” with a different and more spirited conclusion. And the “Cueva de Salamanca” is one of those jests at the expense of husbands which are common enough on the Spanish stage, and were, no doubt, equally common in Spanish life and manners. All, indeed, have an air of truth and reality, which, whether they were founded in fact or not, it was evidently the author’s purpose to give them.

But there was an insuperable difficulty in the way of all his efforts on the stage. Cervantes had not dramatic talent, nor a clear perception how dramatic effects were to be produced. From the time when he wrote the “Trato de Argel,” which was an exhibition of the sufferings he had himself witnessed and shared in Algiers, he seemed to suppose that whatever was both absolutely true and absolutely striking could be produced with effect on the theatre; thus confounding the province of romantic fiction and story-telling with that of theatrical representation, and often relying on trivial incidents and an humble style for effects which could be produced only by ideal elevation and incidents so combined by a dramatic instinct as to produce a dramatic interest.

This was, probably, owing in part to the different direction of his original genius, and in part to the condition of the theatre, which in his youth he had found open to every kind of experiment and really settled in nothing. But whatever may have been the cause of his failure, the failure itself has been a great stumbling-block in the way of Spanish critics, who have resorted to somewhat violent means in order to prevent the reputation of Cervantes from being burdened with it. Thus, Blas de Nasarre, the king’s librarian,—who, in 1749, published the first edition of these unsuccessful dramas that had appeared since they were printed above a century earlier,—would persuade us, in his Preface, that they were written by Cervantes to parody and caricature the theatre of Lope de Vega;[150] though, setting aside all that at once presents itself from the personal relations of the parties, nothing can be more serious than the interest Cervantes took in the fate of his plays, and the confidence he expressed in their dramatic merit; while, at the same time, not a line has ever been pointed out as a parody in any one of them.[151]

This position being untenable, Lampillas, who, in the latter part of the last century, wrote a long defence of Spanish literature against the suggestions of Tiraboschi and Bettinelli in Italy, gravely maintains that Cervantes sent, indeed, eight plays and eight Entremeses to the booksellers, but that the booksellers took the liberty to change them, and printed eight others with his name and Preface. It should not, however, be forgotten that Cervantes lived to prepare two works after this, and if such an insult had been offered him, the country, judging from the way in which he treated the less gross offence of Avellaneda, would have been filled with his reproaches and remonstrances.[152]

Nothing remains, therefore, but to confess—what seems, indeed, to be quite incontestable—that Cervantes wrote several plays which fell seriously below what might have been hoped from him. Passages, indeed, may be found in them where his genius asserts itself. “The Labyrinth of Love,” for instance, has a chivalrous air and plot that make it interesting; and the Entremes of “The Pretended Biscayan,” contains specimens of the peculiar humor with which we always associate the name of its author. But it is quite too probable that he had made up his mind to sacrifice his own opinions respecting the drama to the popular taste; and if the constraint he thus laid upon himself was one of the causes of his failure, it only affords another ground for our interest in the fate of one whose whole career was so deeply marked with trials and calamity.[153]

But the life of Cervantes, with all its troubles and sufferings, was now fast drawing to a close. In October of the same year, 1615, he published the Second Part of his Don Quixote; and in its Dedication to the Count de Lemos, who had for some time favored him,[154] he alludes to his failing health, and intimates that he hardly looked for the continuance of life beyond a few months. His spirits, however, which had survived his sufferings in the Levant, at Algiers, and in prisons at home, and which, as he approached his seventieth year, had been sufficient to produce a work like the Second Part of Don Quixote, did not forsake him, now that his strength was wasting away under the influence of disease and old age. On the contrary, with unabated vivacity he urged forward his romance of “Persiles and Sigismunda”; anxious only that life enough should be allowed him to finish it, as the last offering of his gratitude to his generous patron. In the spring he went to Esquivias, where was the little estate he had received with his wife, and after his return wrote a Preface to his unpublished romance, full of a delightful and simple humor, in which he tells a pleasant story of being overtaken in his ride back to Madrid by a medical student, who gave him much good advice about the dropsy, under which he was suffering; to which he replied, that his pulse had already warned him that he was not to live beyond the next Sunday. “And so,” says he, at the conclusion of this remarkable Preface, “farewell to jesting, farewell my merry humors, farewell my gay friends, for I feel that I am dying, and have no desire but soon to see you happy in the other life.”

In this temper he prepared to meet death, as many Catholics of strong religious impressions were accustomed to do at that time;[155] and, on the 2d of April, entered the order of Franciscan friars, whose habit he had assumed three years before at Alcalá. Still, however, his feelings as an author, his vivacity, and his personal gratitude did not desert him. On the 18th of April he received the extreme unction, and the next day wrote a Dedication of his “Persiles y Sigismunda” to the Count de Lemos, marked, to an extraordinary degree, with his natural humor, and with the solemn thoughts that became his situation.[156] The last known act of his life, therefore, shows that he still possessed his faculties in perfect serenity, and four days afterwards, on the 23d of April, 1616, he died, at the age of sixty-eight.[157] He was buried, as he probably had desired, in the convent of the Nuns of the Trinity; but a few years afterwards this convent was removed to another part of the city, and what became of the ashes of the greatest genius of his country is, from that time, wholly unknown.[158]

CHAPTER XII.

CERVANTES. — HIS PERSILES AND SIGISMUNDA, AND ITS CHARACTER. — HIS DON QUIXOTE. — CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH IT WAS WRITTEN. — ITS PURPOSE AND GENERAL PLAN. — PART FIRST. — AVELLANEDA. — PART SECOND. — CHARACTER OF THE WHOLE. — CHARACTER OF CERVANTES.

SIX months after the death of Cervantes,[159] the license for publishing “Persiles y Sigismunda” was granted to his widow, and in 1617 it was printed.[160] His purpose seems to have been to write a serious romance, which should be to this species of composition what the Don Quixote is to comic romance. So much, at least, may be inferred from the manner in which it is spoken of by himself and by his friends. For in the Dedication of the Second Part of Don Quixote he says, “It will be either the worst or the best book of amusement in the language”; adding, that his friends thought it admirable; and Valdivielso,[161] after his death, said he had equalled or surpassed in it all his former efforts.

But serious romantic fiction, which is peculiarly the offspring of modern civilization, was not yet far enough developed to enable one like Cervantes to obtain a high degree of success in it, especially as the natural bent of his genius was to humorous fiction. The imaginary travels of Lucian, three or four Greek romances, and the romances of chivalry, were all he had to guide him; for any thing approaching nearer to the proper modern novel than some of his own tales had not yet been imagined. Perhaps his first impulse was to write a romance of chivalry, modified by the spirit of the age, and free from the absurdities which abound in the romances that had been written before his time.[162] But if he had such a thought, the success of his own Don Quixote almost necessarily prevented him from attempting to put it in execution. He therefore looked rather to the Greek romances, and, as far as he used any model, took the “Theagenes and Chariclea” of Heliodorus.[163] He calls what he produced “A Northern Romance,” and makes its principal story consist of the sufferings of Persiles and Sigismunda,—the first the son of a king of Iceland, and the second the daughter of a king of Friesland,—laying the scene of one half of his fiction in the North of Europe, and that of the other half in the South. He has some faint ideas of the sea-kings and pirates of the Northern Ocean, but very little of the geography of the countries that produced them; and as for his savage men and frozen islands, and the wild and strange adventures he imagines to have passed among them, nothing can be more fantastic and incredible.

In Portugal, Spain, and Italy, through which his hero and heroine—disguised as they are from first to last under the names of Periandro and Auristela—make a pilgrimage to Rome, we get rid of most of the extravagances which deform the earlier portion of the romance. The whole, however, consists of a labyrinth of tales, showing, indeed, an imagination quite astonishing in an old man like Cervantes, already past his grand climacteric,—a man, too, who might be supposed to be broken down by sore calamities and incurable disease;—but it is a labyrinth from which we are glad to be extricated, and we feel relieved when the labors and trials of his Persiles and Sigismunda are over, and when, the obstacles to their love being removed, they are happily united at Rome. No doubt, amidst the multitude of separate stories with which this wild work is crowded, several are graceful in themselves, and others are interesting because they contain traces of Cervantes’s experience of life,[164] while, through the whole, his style is more carefully finished, perhaps, than in any other of his works. But, after all, it is far from being what he and his friends fancied it was,—a model of this peculiar style of fiction, and the best of his works.

This honor, if we may trust the uniform testimony of two centuries, belongs, beyond question, to his Don Quixote,—the work which, above all others, not merely of his own age, but of all modern times, bears most deeply the impression of the national character it represents, and has, therefore, in return, enjoyed a degree and extent of national favor never granted to any other.[165] When Cervantes began to write it is wholly uncertain. For twenty years preceding the appearance of the First Part he printed nothing;[166] and the little we know of him, during that long and dreary period of his life, shows only how he obtained a hard subsistence for himself and his family by common business agencies, which, we have reason to suppose, were generally of trifling importance, and which, we are sure, were sometimes distressing in their consequences. The tradition, therefore, of his persecutions in La Mancha, and his own averment that the Don Quixote was begun in a prison, are all the hints we have received concerning the circumstances under which it was first imagined; and that such circumstances should have tended to such a result is a striking fact in the history, not only of Cervantes, but of the human mind, and shows how different was his temperament from that commonly found in men of genius.

His purpose in writing the Don Quixote has sometimes been enlarged by the ingenuity of a refined criticism, until it has been made to embrace the whole of the endless contrast between the poetical and the prosaic in our natures,—between heroism and generosity on one side, as if they were mere illusions, and a cold selfishness on the other, as if it were the truth and reality of life.[167] But this is a metaphysical conclusion drawn from views of the work at once imperfect and exaggerated; a conclusion contrary to the spirit of the age, which was not given to a satire so philosophical and generalizing, and contrary to the character of Cervantes himself, as we follow it from the time when he first became a soldier, through all his trials in Algiers, and down to the moment when his warm and trusting heart dictated the Dedication of “Persiles and Sigismunda” to the Count de Lemos. His whole spirit, indeed, seems rather to have been filled with a cheerful confidence in human virtue, and his whole bearing in life seems to have been a contradiction to that discouraging and saddening scorn for whatever is elevated and generous, which such an interpretation of the Don Quixote necessarily implies.[168]

Nor does he himself permit us to give to his romance any such secret meaning; for, at the very beginning of the work, he announces it to be his sole purpose to break down the vogue and authority of books of chivalry, and, at the end of the whole, he declares anew, in his own person, that “he had had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry”;[169] exulting in his success, as an achievement of no small moment. And such, in fact, it was; for we have abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm to the more judicious. Many of the distinguished contemporary authors speak of its mischiefs, and among the rest the venerable Luis de Granada, and Malon de Chaide, who wrote the eloquent “Conversion of Mary Magdalen.”[170] Guevara, the learned and fortunate courtier of Charles the Fifth, declares that “men did read nothing in his time but such shameful books as ‘Amadis de Gaula,’ ‘Tristan,’ ‘Primaleon,’ and the like”;[171] the acute author of “The Dialogue on Languages” says that “the ten years he passed at court he wasted in studying ‘Florisando,’ ‘Lisuarte,’ ‘The Knight of the Cross,’ and other such books, more than he can name”;[172] and from different sources we know, what, indeed, we may gather from Cervantes himself, that many who read these fictions took them for true histories.[173] At last, they were deemed so noxious, that, in 1553, they were prohibited by law from being printed or sold in the American colonies, and in 1555 the same prohibition, and even the burning of all copies of them extant in Spain itself, was earnestly asked for by the Cortes.[174] The evil, in fact, had become formidable, and the wise began to see it.

To destroy a passion that had struck its roots so deeply in the character of all classes of men,[175] to break up the only reading which at that time could be considered widely popular and fashionable,[176] was certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks any thing rather than a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes succeeded. But that he did there is no question. No book of chivalry was written after the appearance of Don Quixote, in 1605; and from the same date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted;[177] so that, from that time to the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now among the rarest of literary curiosities;—a solitary instance of the power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, an entire department, and that, too, a flourishing and favored one, in the literature of a great and proud nation.

The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results, was simple as well as original. In 1605,[178] he published the First Part of Don Quixote, in which a country gentleman of La Mancha—full of genuine Castilian honor and enthusiasm, gentle and dignified in his character, trusted by his friends, and loved by his dependants—is represented as so completely crazed by long reading the most famous books of chivalry, that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become the impossible knight-errant they describe,—nay, actually goes forth into the world to defend the oppressed and avenge the injured, like the heroes of his romances.

To complete his chivalrous equipment—which he had begun by fitting up for himself a suit of armour strange to his century—he took an esquire out of his neighbourhood; a middle-aged peasant, ignorant and credulous to excess, but of great good-nature; a glutton and a liar; selfish and gross, yet attached to his master; shrewd enough occasionally to see the folly of their position, but always amusing, and sometimes mischievous, in his interpretations of it. These two sally forth from their native village in search of adventures, of which the excited imagination of the knight, turning windmills into giants, solitary inns into castles, and galley-slaves into oppressed gentlemen, finds abundance, wherever he goes; while the esquire translates them all into the plain prose of truth with an admirable simplicity, quite unconscious of its own humor, and rendered the more striking by its contrast with the lofty and courteous dignity and magnificent illusions of the superior personage. There could, of course, be but one consistent termination of adventures like these. The knight and his esquire suffer a series of ridiculous discomfitures, and are at last brought home, like madmen, to their native village, where Cervantes leaves them, with an intimation that the story of their adventures is by no means ended.

From this time we hear little of Cervantes and nothing of his hero, till eight years afterwards, in July, 1613, when he wrote the Preface to his Tales, where he distinctly announces a Second Part of Don Quixote. But before this Second Part could be published, and, indeed, before it was finished, a person calling himself Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, who seems, from some provincialisms in his style, to have been an Aragonese, and who, from other internal evidence, is suspected to have been a Dominican monk, came out, in the summer of 1614, with what he impertinently called “The Second Volume of the Ingenious Knight, Don Quixote de la Mancha.”[179]

Two things are remarkable in relation to this book. The first is, that, though it is hardly possible its author’s name should not have been known to many, and especially to Cervantes himself, still it is only by remote conjecture that it has been sometimes assigned to Luis de Aliaga, the king’s confessor, a person whom, from his influence at court, it might not have been deemed expedient openly to attack; and sometimes to Juan Blanco de Paz, a Dominican friar, who had been an enemy of Cervantes in Algiers. The second is, that the author seems to have had hints of the plan Cervantes was pursuing in his Second Part, then unfinished, and to have used them in an unworthy manner, especially in making Don Alvaro Tarfe play substantially the same part that is played by the Duke and Duchess towards Don Quixote, and in carrying the knight through an adventure at an inn with play-actors rehearsing one of Lope de Vega’s dramas, almost exactly like the adventure with the puppet-show man so admirably imagined by Cervantes.[180]

But this is all that can interest us about the book, which, if not without merit in some respects, is generally low and dull, and would now be forgotten, if it were not connected with the fame of Don Quixote. In its Preface, Cervantes is treated with coarse indignity, his age, his sufferings, and even his honorable wounds, being sneered at;[181] and in the body of the book, the character of Don Quixote, who appears as a vulgar madman, fancying himself to be Achilles, or any other character that happened to occur to the author,[182] is so completely without dignity or consistency, that it is clear the writer did not possess the power of comprehending the genius he at once basely libelled and meanly attempted to supplant. The best parts of the work are those in which Sancho is introduced; the worst are its indecent stories and the adventures of Barbara, who is a sort of brutal caricature of the graceful Dorothea, and whom the knight mistakes for Queen Zenobia.[183] But it is almost always wearisome, and comes to a poor conclusion by the confinement of Don Quixote in a mad-house.[184]

Cervantes evidently did not receive this affronting production until he was far advanced in the composition of his Second Part; but in the fifty-ninth chapter, written apparently when it first reached him, he breaks out upon it, and from that moment never ceases to persecute it, in every form of ingenious torture, until, in the seventy-fourth, he brings his own work to its conclusion. Even Sancho, with his accustomed humor and simplicity, is let loose upon the unhappy Aragonese; for, having understood from a chance traveller who first brings the book to their knowledge, that his wife is called in it Mary Gutierrez, instead of Teresa Panza,—

“‘A pretty sort of a history-writer,’ cried Sancho, ‘and a deal must he know of our affairs, if he calls Teresa Panza, my wife, Mary Gutierrez. Take the book again, Sir, and see if I am put into it, and if he has changed my name, too.’ ‘By what I hear you say, my friend,’ replied the stranger, ‘you are, no doubt, Sancho Panza, the esquire of Don Quixote.’ ‘To be sure I am,’ answered Sancho, ‘and proud of it, too.’ ‘Then, in truth,’ said the gentleman, ‘this new author does not treat you with the propriety shown in your own person; he makes you a glutton and a fool; not at all amusing, and quite another thing from the Sancho described in the first part of your master’s history.’ ‘Well, Heaven forgive him!’ said Sancho; ‘but I think he might have left me in my corner, without troubling himself about me; for, Let him play that knows the way; and, Saint Peter at Rome is well off at home.’”[185]

Stimulated by the appearance of this rival work, as well as offended with its personalities, Cervantes urged forward his own, and, if we may judge by its somewhat hurried air, brought it to a conclusion sooner than he had intended.[186] At any rate, as early as February, 1615, it was finished, and was published in the following autumn; after which we hear nothing more of Avellaneda, though he had intimated his purpose to exhibit Don Quixote in another series of adventures at Avila, Valladolid, and Salamanca.[187] This, indeed, Cervantes took some pains to prevent; for—besides a little changing his plan, and avoiding the jousts at Saragossa, because Avellaneda had carried his hero there[188]—he finally restores Don Quixote, through a severe illness, to his right mind, and makes him renounce all the follies of knight-errantry, and die, like a peaceful Christian, in his own bed;—thus cutting off the possibility of another continuation with the pretensions of the first.

This latter half of Don Quixote is a contradiction of the proverb Cervantes cites in it,—that second parts were never yet good for much. It is, in fact, better than the first. It shows more freedom and vigor; and if the caricature is sometimes pushed to the very verge of what is permitted, the invention, the style of thought, and, indeed, the materials throughout, are richer, and the finish is more exact. The character of Samson Carrasco, for instance,[189] is a very happy, though somewhat bold, addition to the original persons of the drama; and the adventures at the castle of the Duke and Duchess, where Don Quixote is fooled to the top of his bent; the managements of Sancho as governor of his island; the visions and dreams of the cave of Montesinos; the scenes with Roque Guinart, the freebooter, and with Gines de Passamonte, the galley-slave and puppet-show man; together with the mock-heroic hospitalities of Don Antonio Moreno at Barcelona, and the final defeat of the knight there, are all admirable. In truth, every thing in this Second Part, especially its general outline and tone, show that time and a degree of success he had not before known had ripened and perfected the strong manly sense and sure insight into human nature which are visible everywhere in the works of Cervantes, and which here become a part, as it were, of his peculiar genius, whose foundations had been laid, dark and deep, amidst the trials and sufferings of his various life.

But throughout both parts, Cervantes shows the impulses and instincts of an original power with most distinctness in his development of the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho; characters in whose contrast and opposition is hidden the full spirit of his peculiar humor, and no small part of what is most characteristic of the entire fiction. They are his prominent personages. He delights, therefore, to have them as much as possible in the front of his scene. They grow visibly upon his favor as he advances, and the fondness of his liking for them makes him constantly produce them in lights and relations as little foreseen by himself as they are by his readers. The knight, who seems to have been originally intended for a parody of the Amadis, becomes gradually a detached, separate, and wholly independent personage, into whom is infused so much of a generous and elevated nature, such gentleness and delicacy, such a pure sense of honor, and such a warm love for whatever is noble and good, that we feel almost the same attachment to him that the barber and the curate did, and are almost as ready as his family was to mourn over his death.

The case of Sancho is again very similar, and perhaps in some respects stronger. At first, he is introduced as the opposite of Don Quixote, and used merely to bring out his master’s peculiarities in a more striking relief. It is not until we have gone through nearly half of the First Part that he utters one of those proverbs which form afterwards the staple of his conversation and humor; and it is not till the opening of the Second Part, and, indeed, not till he comes forth, in all his mingled shrewdness and credulity, as governor of Barataria, that his character is quite developed and completed to the full measure of its grotesque, yet congruous, proportions.

Cervantes, in truth, came, at last, to love these creations of his marvellous power, as if they were real, familiar personages, and to speak of them and treat them with an earnestness and interest that tend much to the illusion of his readers. Both Don Quixote and Sancho are thus brought before us, like such living realities, that, at this moment, the figures of the crazed, gaunt, dignified knight and of his round, selfish, and most amusing esquire dwell bodied forth in the imaginations of more, among all conditions of men throughout Christendom, than any other of the creations of human talent. The greatest of the great poets—Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton—have no doubt risen to loftier heights, and placed themselves in more imposing relations with the noblest attributes of our nature; but Cervantes—always writing under the unchecked impulse of his own genius, and instinctively concentrating in his fiction whatever was peculiar to the character of his nation—has shown himself of kindred to all times and all lands; to the humblest degrees of cultivation as well as to the highest; and has thus, beyond all other writers, received in return a tribute of sympathy and admiration from the universal spirit of humanity.

It is not easy to believe, that, when he had finished such a work, he was insensible to what he had done. Indeed, there are passages in the Don Quixote itself which prove a consciousness of his own genius, its aspirations, and its power.[190] And yet there are, on the other hand, carelessnesses, blemishes, and contradictions scattered through it, which seem to show him to have been almost indifferent to contemporary success or posthumous fame. His plan, which he seems to have modified more than once while engaged in the composition of the work, is loose and disjointed; his style, though full of the richest idiomatic beauties, abounds with inaccuracies; and the facts and incidents that make up his fiction are full of anachronisms, which Los Rios, Pellicer, and Eximeno have in vain endeavoured to reconcile, either with the main current of the story itself, or with one another.[191] Thus, in the First Part, Don Quixote is generally represented as belonging to a remote age, and his history is supposed to have been written by an ancient Arabian author;[192] while, in the examination of his library, he is plainly contemporary with Cervantes himself, and, after his defeats, is brought home confessedly in the year 1604. To add further to this confusion, when we reach the Second Part, which opens only a month after the conclusion of the First, and continues only a few weeks, we have, at the side of the same claims of an ancient Arabian author, a conversation about the expulsion of the Moors,[193] which happened after 1609, and a criticism on Avellaneda, whose work was published in 1614.[194]

But this is not all. As if still further to accumulate contradictions and incongruities, the very details of the story he has invented are often in whimsical conflict with each other, as well as with the historical facts to which they allude. Thus, on one occasion, the scenes which he had represented as having occurred in the course of a single evening and the following morning are said to have occupied two days;[195] on another, he sets a company down to a late supper, and, after conversations and stories that must have carried them nearly through the night, he says, “It began to draw towards evening.”[196] In different places he calls the same individual by different names, and—what is rather amusing—once reproaches Avellaneda with a mistake which was, after all, his own.[197] And finally, having discovered the inconsequence of saying seven times that Sancho was on his mule after Gines de Passamonte had stolen it, he took pains, in the only edition of the First Part that he ever revised, to correct two of his blunders,—heedlessly overlooking the rest; and when he published the Second Part, laughed heartily at the whole,—the errors, the corrections, and all,—as things of little consequence to himself or any body else.[198]

The romance, however, which he threw so carelessly from him, and which, I am persuaded, he regarded rather as a bold effort to break up the absurd taste of his time for the fancies of chivalry than as any thing of more serious import, has been established by an uninterrupted, and, it may be said, an unquestioned, success ever since, both as the oldest classical specimen of romantic fiction, and as one of the most remarkable monuments of modern genius. But though this may be enough to fill the measure of human fame and glory, it is not all to which Cervantes is entitled; for, if we would do him the justice that would have been dearest to his own spirit, and even if we would ourselves fully comprehend and enjoy the whole of his Don Quixote, we should, as we read it, bear in mind, that this delightful romance was not the result of a youthful exuberance of feeling and a happy external condition, nor composed in his best years, when the spirits of its author were light and his hopes high; but that—with all its unquenchable and irresistible humor, with its bright views of the world, and its cheerful trust in goodness and virtue—it was written in his old age, at the conclusion of a life nearly every step of which had been marked with disappointed expectations, disheartening struggles, and sore calamities; that he began it in a prison, and that it was finished when he felt the hand of death pressing heavy and cold upon his heart. If this be remembered as we read, we may feel, as we ought to feel, what admiration and reverence are due, not only to the living power of Don Quixote, but to the character and genius of Cervantes;—if it be forgotten or underrated, we shall fail in regard to both.[199]

CHAPTER XIII.

LOPE DE VEGA. — HIS EARLY LIFE. — A SOLDIER. — HE WRITES THE ARCADIA. — MARRIES. — HAS A DUEL. — FLIES TO VALENCIA. — DEATH OF HIS WIFE. — HE SERVES IN THE ARMADA. — RETURNS TO MADRID. — MARRIES AGAIN. — DEATH OF HIS SONS. — HE BECOMES RELIGIOUS. — HIS POSITION AS A MAN OF LETTERS. — HIS SAN ISIDRO, HERMOSURA DE ANGÉLICA, DRAGONTEA, PEREGRINO EN SU PATRIA, AND JERUSALEN CONQUISTADA.

IT is impossible to speak of Cervantes as the great genius of the Spanish nation without recalling Lope de Vega, the rival who far surpassed him in contemporary popularity, and rose, during the lifetime of both, to a degree of fame which no Spaniard had yet attained, and which has been since reached by few of any country. To the examination, therefore, of this great man’s claims—which extend to almost every department of the national literature—we naturally turn, after examining those of the author of Don Quixote.

Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born on the 25th of November, 1562, at Madrid, whither his father had recently removed, almost by accident, from the old family estate of Vega, in the picturesque valley of Carriedo.[200] From his earliest youth he discovered extraordinary powers. At five years of age, we are assured by his friend Montalvan, that he could not only read Latin as well as Spanish, but that he had such a passion for poetry as to pay his more advanced school-fellows with a share of his breakfast for writing down the verses he dictated to them, before he had learned to do it for himself.[201] His father, who, he intimates, was a poet,[202] and who was much devoted to works of charity in the latter years of his life, died when he was very young, and left, besides Lope, a son who perished in the Armada in 1588, and a daughter who died in 1601. In the period immediately following the father’s death, the family seems to have been scattered by poverty; and during this interval Lope probably lived with his uncle, the Inquisitor, Don Miguel de Carpio, of whom he long afterwards speaks with great respect.[203]

But though the fortunes of his house were broken, his education was not neglected. He was sent to the Imperial College at Madrid, and in two years made extraordinary progress in ethics and in elegant literature, avoiding, as he tells us, the mathematics, which he found unsuited to his humor, if not to his genius. Accomplishments, too, were added,—fencing, dancing, and music; and he was going on in a way to gratify the wishes of his friends, when, at the age of fourteen, a wild, giddy desire to see the world took possession of him; and, accompanied by a schoolfellow, he ran away from college. At first, they went on foot for two or three days. Then they bought a sorry horse, and travelled as far as Astorga, in the northwestern part of Spain, not far from the old fief of the Vega family; but there, growing tired of their journey, and missing more seriously than they had anticipated the comforts to which they had been accustomed, they determined to come home. At Segovia, they attempted, in a silversmith’s shop, to exchange some doubloons and a gold chain for small coin, but were suspected to be thieves and arrested. The magistrate, however, before whom they were brought, being satisfied that they were guilty of nothing but folly, released them; though, wishing to do a kindness to their friends, as well as to themselves, he sent an officer of justice to deliver them safely in Madrid.[204]

At the age of fifteen, as he tells us in one of his poetical epistles, he was serving as a soldier against the Portuguese in Terceira;[205] but only a little later than this, we know that he filled some place about the person of Gerónimo Manrique, Bishop of Avila, to whose kindness he acknowledged himself to be much indebted, and in whose honor he wrote several eclogues, and inserted a long passage in his “Jerusalem.”[206] Under the patronage of Manrique, he was, probably, sent to the University of Alcalá, where he certainly studied some time, and not only took the degree of Bachelor, but was near submitting himself to the irrevocable tonsure of the priesthood.[207]

But, as we learn from some of his own accounts, he now fell in love. Indeed, if we are to believe the tales he tells of himself in his “Dorothea,” which was written in his youth and printed with the sanction of his old age, he suffered great extremity from that passion when he was only seventeen. Some of the stories of that remarkable dramatic romance, in which he figures under the name of Fernando, are, it may be hoped, fictitious;[208] though it must be admitted that others, like the scene between the hero and Dorothea, in the first act, the account of his weeping behind the door with Marfisa, on the day she was to be married to another, and most of the narrative parts in the fourth act, have an air of reality about them that hardly permits us to doubt they were true.[209] Taken together, however, they do him little credit as a young man of honor and a cavalier.

From Alcalá Lope came to Madrid, and attached himself to the Duke of Alva; not, as it has been generally supposed, the remorseless favorite of Philip the Second, but Antonio, the great Duke’s grandson, who had succeeded to his ancestor’s fortunes without inheriting his formidable spirit.[210] Lope was much liked by his new patron, and rose to be his confidential secretary; living with him both at court and in his retirement at Alva, where letters seem, for a time, to have taken the place of arms and affairs. At the suggestion of the Duke, he wrote his “Arcadia,” a pastoral romance, making a volume of considerable size; and though chiefly in prose, yet with poetry of various kinds freely intermixed. Such compositions, as we have seen, were already in favor in Spain;—the last of them, the “Galatea” of Cervantes, published in 1584, giving, perhaps, occasion to the Arcadia, which seems to have been written almost immediately afterwards. Most of them have one striking peculiarity; that of concealing, under the forms of pastoral life in ancient times, adventures which had really occurred in the times of their respective authors. The Duke was desirous to figure among these somewhat fantastic shepherds and shepherdesses, and therefore induced Lope to write the Arcadia, and make him its hero, furnishing some of his own experiences as materials for the work. At least, so the affair was understood both in Spain and France, when the Arcadia was published, in 1598; besides which, Lope himself, a few years later, in the Preface to some miscellaneous poems, tells us expressly, “The Arcadia is a true history.”[211]

But whether it be throughout a true history or not, it is a very unsatisfactory one. It is commonly regarded as an imitation of its popular namesake, the “Arcadia” of Sannazaro, of which a Spanish translation had appeared in 1547; but it much more resembles the similar works of Montemayor and Cervantes, both in story and style. Metaphysics and magic, as in the “Diana” and “Galatea,” are strangely mixed up with the shows of a pastoral life; and, as in them, we listen with little interest to the perplexities and sorrows of a lover who, from mistaking the feelings of his mistress, treats her in such a way that she marries another, and then, by a series of enchantments, is saved from the effects of his own despair, and his heart is washed so clean, that, like Orlando’s, there is not one spot of love left in it. All this, of course, is unnatural; for the personages it represents are such as can never have existed, and they talk in a language strained above the tone becoming prose; all propriety of costume and manners is neglected; so much learning is crowded into it, that a dictionary is placed at the end to make it intelligible; and it is drawn out to a length which now seems quite absurd, though the editions it soon passed through show that it was not too long for the taste of its time. It should be added, however, that it occasionally furnishes happy specimens of a glowing declamatory eloquence, and that in its descriptions of natural scenery there is often great felicity of imagery and illustration.[212]

About the time when Lope was writing the Arcadia, he married Isabela de Urbina, daughter of the King-at-arms to Philip the Second and Philip the Third; a lady, we are told, not a little loved and admired in the high circle to which she belonged.[213] But his domestic happiness was soon interrupted. He fell into a quarrel with a nobleman of no very good repute; lampooned him in a satirical ballad; was challenged, and wounded his adversary;—in consequence of all which, and of other follies of his youth that seem now to have been brought up against him, he was cast into prison.[214] He was not, however, left without a true friend. Claudio Conde, who on more than one occasion showed a genuine attachment to Lope’s person, accompanied him to his cell, and, when he was released, went with him to Valencia, where Lope himself was treated with extraordinary kindness and consideration, though exposed, he says, at times, to dangers as great as those from which he had suffered so much at Madrid.[215]

The exile of Lope lasted several years, and was chiefly passed at Valencia, then in literary reputation next after Madrid among the cities of Spain. Nor does he seem to have missed the advantages it offered him; for it was, no doubt, during his residence there that he formed a friendship with Gaspar de Aguilar and Guillen de Castro, of which many traces are to be found in his works; while, on the other hand, it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that the theatre, which was just then beginning to take its form in Valencia, was indebted to the fresh power of Lope for an impulse it never afterwards lost. At any rate, we know that he was much connected with the Valencian poets, and that, a little later, they were among his marked followers in the drama. But his exile was still an exile,—bitter and wearisome to him,—and he gladly returned to Madrid as soon as he could venture there safely.

His home, however, soon ceased to be what it had been. His young wife died in less than a year after his return, and one of his friends, Pedro de Medinilla, joined him in an eclogue to her memory, which is dedicated to Lope’s patron, Antonio Duke of Alva,[216]—a poem of little value, and one that does much less justice to his feelings than some of his numerous verses to the same lady, under the name of Belisa, which are scattered through his own works and found in the old Romanceros.[217]

It must be admitted, however, that there is some confusion in this matter. The ballads bear witness to the jealousy felt by Isabela on account of his relations with another fair lady, who passes under the name of Filis,—a jealousy which seems to have caused him no small embarrassment; for while, in some of his verses, he declares it has no foundation, in others he admits and justifies it.[218] But however this may have been, a very short time after Isabela’s death he made no secret of his passion for the rival who had disturbed her peace. He was not, however, successful. For some reason or other, the lady rejected his suit. He was in despair, as his ballads prove; but his despair did not last long. In less than a year from the death of Isabela it was all over, and he had again taken, to amuse and distract his thoughts, the genuine Spanish resource of becoming a soldier.

The moment in which he made this decisive change in his life was one when a spirit of military adventure was not unlikely to take possession of a character always seeking excitement; for it was just as Philip the Second was preparing the portentous Armada, with which he hoped, by one blow, to overthrow the power of Elizabeth and bring back a nation of heretics to the bosom of the Church. Lope, therefore, as he tells us in one of his eclogues, finding the lady of his love would not smile upon him, took his musket on his shoulder, amidst the universal enthusiasm of 1588, marched to Lisbon, and, accompanied by his faithful friend Conde, went on board the magnificent armament destined for England, where, he says, he used up for wadding the verses he had written in his lady’s praise.[219]

A succession of disasters followed this ungallant jest. His brother, from whom he had long been separated, and whom he now found as a lieutenant on board the Saint John, in which he himself served, died in his arms of a wound received during a fight with the Dutch. Other great troubles crowded after this one. Storms scattered the unwieldy fleet; calamities of all kinds confounded prospects that had just before been so full of glory; and Lope must have thought himself but too happy, when, after the Armada had been dispersed or destroyed, he was brought back in safety, first to Cadiz and afterwards to Toledo and Madrid, reaching the last city, probably, in 1590. It is a curious fact, however, in his personal history, that, amidst all the terrors and sufferings of this disastrous expedition, he found leisure and quietness of spirit to write the greater part of his long poem on “The Beauty of Angelica,” which he intended as a continuation of the “Orlando Furioso.”[220]

But Lope could not well return from such an expedition without something of that feeling of disappointment which, with the nation at large, accompanied its failure. Perhaps it was owing to this that he entered again on the poor course of life of which he had already made an experiment with the Duke of Alva, and became secretary, first of the Marquis of Malpica and afterwards of the generous Marquis of Sarria, who, as Count de Lemos, was, a little later, the patron of Cervantes and the Argensolas. While he was in the service of the last distinguished nobleman, and already known as a dramatist, he became attached to Doña Juana de Guardio, a lady of good family in Madrid, whom he married in 1597; and soon afterwards leaving the Count de Lemos, had never any other patrons than those whom, like the Duke de Sessa, his literary fame procured for him.[221]

Lope had now reached the age of thirty-five, and seems to have enjoyed a few years of happiness, to which he often alludes, and which, in two of his poetical epistles, he has described with much gentleness and grace.[222] But it did not last long. A son, Carlos, to whom he was tenderly attached, lived only to his seventh year;[223] and the mother, broken down by grief at his loss, soon died, giving birth, at the same time, to Feliciana,[224] who was afterwards married to Don Luis de Usategui, the editor of some of his father-in-law’s posthumous works. Lope seems to have felt bitterly his desolate estate after the death of his wife and son, and speaks of it with much feeling in a poem addressed to his faithful friend Conde.[225] But in 1605 an illegitimate daughter was born to him, whom he named Marcela,—the same to whom, in 1620, he dedicated one of his plays, with extraordinary expressions of affection and admiration,[226] and who, in 1621, took the veil and retired from the world, renewing griefs which, with his views of religion, he desired rather to bear with patience, and even with pride.[227] In 1606, the same lady—Doña María de Luxan—who was the mother of Marcela bore him a son, whom he named Lope, and who, at the age of fourteen, appears among the poets at the canonization of San Isidro.[228] But though his father had fondly destined him for a life of letters, he insisted on becoming a soldier, and, after serving under the Marquis of Santa Cruz against the Dutch and the Turks, perished, when only fifteen years old, in a vessel which was totally lost at sea with all on board.[229] Lope poured forth his sorrows in a piscatory eclogue, less full of feeling than the verses in which he describes Marcela taking the veil.[230]

After the birth of these two children, we hear nothing more of their mother. Indeed, soon afterwards, Lope, no longer at an age to be deluded by his passions, began, according to the custom of his time and country, to turn his thoughts seriously to religion. He devoted himself to pious works, as his father had done; visited the hospitals regularly; resorted daily to a particular church; entered a secular religious congregation; and finally, at Toledo, in 1609, received the tonsure and became a priest. The next year he joined the same brotherhood of which Cervantes was afterwards a member.[231] In 1625, he entered the congregation of the native priesthood of Madrid, and was so faithful and exact in the performance of his duties, that, in 1628, he was elected to be its chief chaplain. He is, therefore, for the twenty-six latter years of his long life, to be regarded as strictly connected with the Spanish Church, and as devoting to its daily service some portion of his time.

But we must not misunderstand the position in which, through these relations, Lope had now placed himself, nor overrate the sacrifices they required of him. Such a connection with the Church, in his time, by no means involved an abandonment of the world,—hardly an abandonment of its pleasures. On the contrary, it was rather regarded as one of the means for securing the leisure suited to a life of letters and social ease. As such, unquestionably, Lope employed it; for, during the long series of years in which he was a priest, and gave regular portions of his time to offices of devotion and charity, he was at the height of favor and fashion as a poet. And, what may seem to us more strange, it was during the same period he produced the greater number of his dramas, not a few of whose scenes offend against the most unquestioned precepts of Christian morality, while, at the same time, in their title-pages and dedications, he carefully sets forth his clerical distinctions, giving peculiar prominence to his place as a Familiar or Servant of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.[232]

It was, however, during the happier period of his married life that he laid the foundations for his general popularity as a poet. His subject was well chosen. It was that of the great fame and glory of San Isidro the Ploughman. This remarkable personage, who plays so distinguished a part in the ecclesiastical history of Madrid, is supposed to have been born in the twelfth century, on what afterwards became the site of that city, and to have led a life so eminently pious, that the angels came down and ploughed his grounds for him, which the holy man neglected in order to devote his time to religious duties. From an early period, therefore, he enjoyed much consideration, and was regarded as the patron and friend of the whole territory, as well as of the city of Madrid itself. But his great honors date from the year 1598. In that year Philip the Third was dangerously ill at a neighbouring village; the city sent out the remains of Isidro in procession to avert the impending calamity; the king recovered; and for the first time the holy man became widely famous and fashionable.

Lope seized the occasion, and wrote a long poem on the life of “Isidro the Ploughman,” or Farmer; so called to distinguish him from the learned saint of Seville who bore the same name. It consists of ten thousand lines, exactly divided among the ten books of which it is composed; and yet it was finished within the year, and published in 1599. It has no high poetical merit, and does not, indeed, aspire to any. But it was intended to be popular, and succeeded. It is written in the old national five-line stanza, carefully rhymed throughout; and, notwithstanding the apparent difficulty of the measure, it everywhere affords unequivocal proof of that facility and fluency of versification for which Lope became afterwards so famous. Its tone, which, on the most solemn matters of religion, is so familiar that we should now consider it indecorous, was no doubt in full consent with the spirit of the times and one main cause of its success. Thus, in Canto Third, where the angels come to Isidro and his wife Mary, who are too poor to entertain them, Lope describes the scene—which ought to be as solemn as any thing in the poem, since it involves the facts on which Isidro’s claim to canonization was subsequently admitted—in the following light verses, which may serve as a specimen of the measure and style of the whole:—

Three angels, sent by grace divine,

Once on a time blessed Abraham’s sight;—

To Mamre came that vision bright,

Whose number should our thoughts incline

To Him of whom the Prophets write.

But six now came to Isidore!

And, heavenly powers! what consternation!

Where is his hospitable store?

Surely they come with consolation,

And not to get a timely ration.

Still, if in haste unleavened bread

Mary, like Sarah, now could bake,

Or Isidore, like Abraham, take

The lamb that in its pasture fed,

And honey from its waxen cake,

I know he would his guests invite;—

But whoso ploughs not, it is right

His sufferings the price should pay;—

And how has Isidore a way

Six such to harbour for a night?

And yet he stands forgiven there,

Though friendly bidding he make none;

For poverty prevents alone;—

But, Isidore, thou still canst spare

What surest rises to God’s throne.

Let Abraham to slay arise;

But, on the ground, in sacrifice,

Give, Isidore, thy soul to God,

Who never doth the heart despise

That bows beneath his rod.

He did not ask for Isaac’s death;

He asked for Abraham’s willing faith.[233]

No doubt, some of the circumstances in the poem are invented for the occasion, though there is in the margin much parade of authorities for almost every thing;—a practice very common at that period, to which Lope afterwards conformed only once or twice. But however we may now regard the “San Isidro,” it was printed four times in less than nine years; and, by addressing itself more to the national and popular feeling than the “Arcadia” had done, it became the foundation for its author’s fame as the favorite poet of the whole nation.

At this time, however, he was beginning to be so much occupied with the theatre, and so successful, that he had little leisure for any thing else. His next considerable publication,[234] therefore, was not till 1602, when the “Hermosura de Angélica,” or the Beauty of Angelica, appeared; a poem already mentioned as having been chiefly written while its author served at sea in the ill-fated Armada. It somewhat presumptuously claims to be a continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” and is stretched out through twenty cantos, comprehending above eleven thousand lines in octave verse. In the Preface, he says he wrote it “under the rigging of the galleon Saint John and the banners of the Catholic king,” and that “he and the generalissimo of the expedition finished their labors together”;—a remark which must not be taken too strictly, since both the thirteenth and twentieth cantos contain passages relating to events in the reign of Philip the Third. Indeed, in the Dedication, he tells his patron that he had suffered the whole poem to lie by him long for want of leisure to correct it; and he elsewhere adds, that he leaves it still unfinished, to be completed by some happier genius.

It is not unlikely that Lope was induced to write the Angelica by the success of several poems that had preceded it on the same series of fictions, and especially by the favor shown to one published only two years before, in the same style and manner; the “Angélica” of Luis Barahona de Soto, which is noticed with extraordinary praise in the scrutiny of the Knight of La Mancha’s library, as well as in the conclusion to Don Quixote, where a somewhat tardy compliment is paid to this very work of Lope. Both poems are obvious imitations of Ariosto; and if that of De Soto has been too much praised, it is, at least, better than Lope’s. And yet, in “The Beauty of Angelica,” the author might have been deemed to occupy ground well suited to his genius; for the boundless latitude afforded him by a subject filled with the dreamy adventures of chivalry was, necessarily, a partial release from the obligation to pursue a consistent plan,—while, at the same time, the example of Ariosto, as well as that of Luis de Soto, may be supposed to have launched him fairly forth upon the open sea of an unrestrained fancy, careless of shores or soundings.

But perhaps this very freedom was a principal cause of his failure; for his story is to the last degree wild and extravagant, and is connected by the slightest possible thread to the graceful fiction of Ariosto.[235] A king of Andalusia, as it pretends, leaves his kingdom by testament to the most beautiful man or woman that can be found.[236] All the world throngs to win the mighty prize; and one of the most amusing parts of the whole poem is that in which its author describes to us the crowds of the old and the ugly who, under such conditions, still thought themselves fit competitors. But as early as the fifth canto, the two lovers, Medoro and Angelica, who had been left in India by the Italian master, have already won the throne, and, for the sake of the lady’s unrivalled beauty, are crowned king and queen at Seville.

Here, of course, if the poem had a regular subject, it would end; but now we are plunged at once into a series of wars and disasters, arising out of the discontent of unsuccessful rivals, which threaten to have no end. Trials of all kinds follow. Visions, enchantments and counter enchantments, episodes quite unconnected with the main story, and broken up themselves by the most perverse interruptions, are mingled together, we hardly know why or how; and when at last the happy pair are settled in their hardly won kingdom, we are as much wearied by the wild waste of fancy in which Lope has indulged himself, as we should have been by almost any degree of monotony arising from a want of inventive power. The best parts of the poem are those that contain descriptions of persons and scenery;[237] the worst are those where Lope has displayed his learning, which he has sometimes done by filling whole stanzas with a mere accumulation of proper names. The versification is extraordinarily fluent.[238]

As the Beauty of Angelica was written in the ill-fated Armada, it contains occasional intimations of the author’s national and religious feelings, such as were naturally suggested by his situation. But in the same volume he originally published a poem in which these feelings are much more fully and freely expressed;—a poem, indeed, which is devoted to nothing else. It is called “La Dragontea,” and is on the subject of Sir Francis Drake’s last expedition and death. Perhaps no other instance can be found of a grave epic devoted to the personal abuse of a single individual; and to account for the present one, we must remember how familiar and formidable the name of Sir Francis Drake had long been in Spain.

He had begun his career as a brilliant pirate in South America above thirty years before; he had alarmed all Spain by ravaging its coasts and occupying Cadiz, in a sort of doubtful warfare which Lord Bacon tells us the free sailor used to call “singeing the king of Spain’s beard”;[239] and he had risen to the height of his glory as second in command of the great fleet which had discomfited the Armada, one of whose largest vessels was known to have surrendered to the terror of his name alone. In Spain, where he was as much hated as he was feared, he was regarded chiefly as a bold and successful buccaneer, whose melancholy death at Panamá, in 1596, was held to be a just visitation of the Divine vengeance for his piracies;—a state of feeling of which the popular literature of the country, down to its very ballads, affords frequent proof.[240]

The Dragontea, however, whose ten cantos of octave verse are devoted to the expression of this national hatred, may be regarded as its chief monument. It is a strange poem. It begins with the prayers of Christianity, in the form of a beautiful woman, who presents Spain, Italy, and America in the court of Heaven, and prays God to protect them all against what Lope calls “that Protestant Scotch pirate.”[241] It ends with rejoicings in Panamá because “the Dragon,” as he is called through the whole poem, has died, poisoned by his own people, and with the thanksgivings of Christianity that her prayers have been heard, and that “the scarlet lady of Babylon”—meaning Queen Elizabeth—had been at last defeated. The substance of the poem is such as may beseem such an opening and such a conclusion. It is violent and coarse throughout. But although it appeals constantly to the national prejudices that prevailed in its author’s time with great intensity, it was not received with favor. It was written in 1597, immediately after the occurrence of most of the events to which it alludes; but was not published till 1602, and has been printed since only in the collective edition of Lope’s miscellaneous works, in 1776.[242]

In the same year, however, in which he gave the Dragontea to the world, he published a prose romance, “The Pilgrim in his own Country”; dedicating it to the Marquis of Priego, on the last day of 1603, from the city of Seville. It contains the story of two lovers, who, after many adventures in Spain and Portugal, are carried into captivity among the Moors, and return home by the way of Italy, as pilgrims. We first find them at Barcelona, shipwrecked, and the principal scenes are laid there and in Valencia and Saragossa;—the whole ending in the city of Toledo, where, with the assent of their friends, they are at last married.[243] Several episodes are ingeniously interwoven with the thread of the principal narrative, and, besides many poems, chiefly written, no doubt, for other occasions, several dramas are inserted, which seem actually to have been performed under the circumstances described.[244]

The entire romance is divided into five books, and is carefully constructed and finished. Some of Lope’s own experiences at Valencia and elsewhere evidently contributed materials for it; but a poetical coloring is thrown over the whole, and, except in some of the details about the city, and descriptions of natural scenery, we rarely feel that what we read is absolutely true.[245] The story, especially when regarded from the point of view chosen by its author, is interesting; and it is not only one of the earliest specimens in Spanish literature of the class to which it belongs, but one of the best.[246]

Passing over some of his minor poems and his “New Art of Writing Plays,” for noticing both of which more appropriate occasions will occur hereafter, we come to another of Lope’s greater efforts, his “Jerusalem Conquered,” which appeared in 1609, and was twice reprinted in the course of the next ten years. He calls it “a tragic epic,” and divides it into twenty books of octave rhymes, comprehending, when taken together, above twenty-two thousand verses. The attempt was certainly an ambitious one, since we see, on its very face, that it is nothing less than to rival Tasso on the ground where Tasso’s success had been so brilliant.

As might have been foreseen, Lope failed. His very subject is unfortunate, for it is not the conquest of Jerusalem by the Christians, but the failure of Cœur de Lion to rescue it from the infidels in the end of the twelfth century;—a theme evidently unfit for a Christian epic. All the poet could do, therefore, was to take the series of events as he found them in history, and, adding such episodes and ornaments as his own genius could furnish, give to the whole as much as possible of epic form, dignity, and completeness. But Lope has not done even this. He has made merely a long narrative poem, of which Richard is the hero; and he relies for success, in no small degree, on the introduction of a sort of rival hero, in the person of Alfonso the Eighth of Castile, who, with his knights, is made, after the fourth book, to occupy a space in the foreground of the action quite disproportionate and absurd, since it is certain that Alfonso was never in Palestine at all.[247] What is equally inappropriate, the real subject of the poem is ended in the eighteenth book, by the return home of both Richard and Alfonso; the nineteenth being filled with the Spanish king’s subsequent history, and the twentieth with the imprisonment of Richard and the quiet death of Saladin, as master of Jerusalem,—a conclusion so abrupt and unsatisfactory, that it seems as if its author could hardly have originally foreseen it.

But though, with the exception of what relates to the apocryphal Spanish adventurers, the series of historical events in that brilliant crusade is followed down with some regard to the truth of fact, still we are so much confused by the visions and allegorical personages mingled in the narrative, and by the manifold episodes and love-adventures which interrupt it, that it is all but impossible to read any considerable portion consecutively and with attention. Lope’s easy and graceful versification is, indeed, to be found here, as it is in nearly all his poetry; but even on the holy ground of chivalry, at Cyprus, Ptolemais, and Tyre, his narrative has much less movement and life than we might claim from its subject, and almost everywhere else it is languid and heavy. Of plan, proportions, or a skilful adaptation of the several parts so as to form an epic whole, there is no thought; and yet Lope intimates that his poem was written with care some time before it was published,[248] and he dedicates it to his king, in a tone indicating that he thought it by no means unworthy the royal favor.

CHAPTER XIV.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED. — HIS RELATIONS WITH THE CHURCH. — HIS PASTORES DE BELEN. — HIS RELIGIOUS POEMS. — HIS CONNECTION WITH THE FESTIVALS AT THE BEATIFICATION AND CANONIZATION OF SAN ISIDRO. — TOMÉ DE BURGUILLOS. — LA GATOMACHIA. — AN AUTO DA FÉ. — TRIUNFOS DIVINOS. — POEM ON MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. — LAUREL DE APOLO. — DOROTEA. — HIS OLD AGE AND DEATH.

JUST at the time the Jerusalem was published, Lope began to wear the livery of his Church. Indeed, it is on the title-page of this very poem that he, for the first time, announces himself as a “Familiar of the Holy Inquisition.” Proofs of the change in his life are soon apparent in his works. In 1612, he published “The Shepherds of Bethlehem,” a long pastoral in prose and verse, divided into five books. It contains the sacred history, according to the more popular traditions of the author’s Church, from the birth of Mary, the Saviour’s mother, to the arrival of the holy family in Egypt,—all supposed to be related or enacted by shepherds in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, at the time the events occurred.

Like the other prose pastorals written at the same period, it is full of incongruities. Some of the poems, in particular, are as inappropriate and in as bad taste as can well be conceived; and why three or four poetical contests for prizes and several common Spanish games are introduced at all, it is not easy to imagine, since they are permitted by the conditions of no possible poetical theory for such fictions. But it must be confessed, on the other hand, that there runs through the whole an air of amenity and gentleness well suited to its subject and purpose. Several stories from the Old Testament are gracefully told, and translations from the Psalms and other parts of the Jewish Scriptures are brought in with a happy effect. Some of the original poetry, too, is to be placed among the best of Lope’s minor compositions;—such as the following imaginative little song, which is supposed to have been sung in a palm-grove, by the Madonna, to her sleeping child, and is as full of the tenderest feelings of Catholic devotion as one of Murillo’s pictures on the same subject:—

Holy angels and blest,

Through these palms as ye sweep,

Hold their branches at rest,

For my babe is asleep.

And ye Bethlehem palm-trees,

As stormy winds rush

In tempest and fury,

Your angry noise hush;—

Move gently, move gently,

Restrain your wild sweep;

Hold your branches at rest,—

My babe is asleep.

My babe all divine,

With earth’s sorrows oppressed,

Seeks in slumber an instant

His grievings to rest;

He slumbers,—he slumbers,—

O, hush, then, and keep

Your branches all still,—

My babe is asleep!

Cold blasts wheel about him,—

A rigorous storm,—

And ye see how, in vain,

I would shelter his form;—

Holy angels and blest,

As above me ye sweep,

Hold these branches at rest,—

My babe is asleep![249]

The whole work is dedicated with great tenderness, in a few simple words, to Cárlos, the little son that died before he was seven years old, and of whom Lope always speaks so lovingly. But it breaks off abruptly, and was never finished;—why, it is not easy to tell, for it was well received, and was printed four times in as many years.

In 1612, the year of the publication of this pastoral, Lope printed a few religious ballads and some “Thoughts in Prose,” which he pretended were translated from the Latin of Gabriel Padecopeo, an imperfect anagram of his own name; and in 1614, there appeared a volume containing, first, a collection of his short sacred poems, to which were afterwards added four solemn and striking poetical Soliloquies, composed while he knelt before a cross on the day he was received into the Society of Penitents; then two contemplative discourses, written at the request of his brethren of the same society; and finally, a short spiritual Romancero, or ballad-book, and a “Via Crucis,” or meditations on the passage of the Saviour from the judgment-seat of Pilate to the hill of Calvary.[250]

Many of these poems are full of a deep and solemn devotion;[251] others are strangely coarse and free;[252] and a few are merely whimsical and trifling.[253] Some of the more religious of the ballads are still sung about the streets of Madrid by blind beggars;—a testimony to the devout feelings which, occasionally at least, glowed in their author’s heart, that is not to be mistaken. These poems, however, with an account of the martyrdom of a considerable number of Christians at Japan, in 1614, which was printed four years later,[254] were all the miscellaneous works published by Lope between 1612 and 1620;—the rest of his time during this period having apparently been filled with his brilliant successes in the drama, both secular and sacred.

But in 1620 and 1622, he had an opportunity to exhibit himself to the mass of the people, as well as to the court, at Madrid, in a character which, being both religious and dramatic, was admirably suited to his powers and pretensions. It was the double occasion of the beatification and the canonization of Saint Isidore, in whose honor, above twenty years earlier, Lope had made one of his most successful efforts for popularity,—a long interval, but one during which the claims of the Saint had been by no means overlooked. On the contrary, the king, from the time of his restoration to health, had been constantly soliciting the honors of the Church for a personage to whose miraculous interposition he believed himself to owe it. At last they were granted, and the 19th of May, 1620, was appointed for celebrating the beatification of the pious “Ploughman of Madrid.”

Such occasions were now often seized in the principal cities of Spain, as a means alike of exhibiting the talents of their poets, and amusing and interesting the multitude;—the Church gladly contributing its authority to substitute, as far as possible, a sort of poetical tournament, held under its own management, for the chivalrous tournaments which had for centuries exercised so great and so irreligious an influence throughout Europe. At any rate, these literary contests, in which honors and prizes of various kinds were offered, were called “Poetical Joustings,” and soon became favorite entertainments with the mass of the people. We have already noticed such festivals, as early as the end of the fifteenth century; and besides the prize which, as we have seen, Cervantes gained at Saragossa in May, 1595,[255] Lope gained one at Toledo, in June, 1608;[256] and in September, 1614, he was the judge at a poetical festival in honor of the beatification of Saint Theresa, at Madrid, where the rich tones of his voice and his graceful style of reading were much admired.[257]

The occasion of the beatification of the Saint who presided over the fortunes of Madrid was, however, one of more solemn importance than either of these had been. All classes of the inhabitants of that “Heroic Town,” as it is still called, took an interest in it; for it was believed to concern the well-being of all.[258] The Church of Saint Andrew, in which reposed the body of the worthy Ploughman, was ornamented with unwonted splendor. The merchants of the city completely encased its altars with plain, but pure silver. The goldsmiths enshrined the form of the Saint, which five centuries had not wasted away, in a sarcophagus of the same metal, elaborately wrought. Other classes brought other offerings; all marked by the gorgeous wealth that then flowed through the privileged portions of Spanish society, from the mines of Peru and Mexico. In front of the church a showy stage was erected, from which the poems sent in for prizes were read, and over this part of the ceremonies Lope presided.

As a sort of prologue, a few satirical petitions were produced, which were intended to excite merriment, and, no doubt, were successful; after which Lope opened the literary proceedings of the festival, by pronouncing a poetical oration of above seven hundred lines in honor of San Isidro. This was followed by reading the subjects for the nine prizes offered by the nine Muses, together with the rules according to which the honors of the occasion were to be adjudged; and then came the poems themselves. Among the competitors were many of the principal men of letters of the time: Zarate, Guillen de Castro, Jauregui, Espinel, Montalvan, Pantaleon, Silveira, the young Calderon, and Lope himself, with the son who bore his name, still a boy. All this, or nearly all of it, was grave, and beseeming the grave occasion. But at the end of the list of those who entered their claims for each prize, there always appeared a sort of masque, who, under the assumed name of Master Burguillos, “seasoned the feast in the most savory manner,” it is said, with his amusing verses, caricaturing the whole, like the gracioso of the popular theatre, and serving as a kind of interlude after each division of the more regular drama.

Lope took hardly any pains to conceal that this savory part of the festival was entirely his own; so surely had his theatrical instincts indicated to him the merry relief its introduction would give to the stateliness and solemnity of the occasion.[259] All the various performances were read by him with much effect, and at the end he gave a light and pleasant account, in the old popular ballad measure, of what had been done; after which the judges pronounced the names of the successful competitors. Who they were, we are not told; but the offerings of all—those of the unsuccessful as well as of the successful—were published by him without delay.

A greater jubilee followed two years afterwards, when, at the opening of the reign of Philip the Fourth, the negotiations of his grateful predecessor were crowned with a success he did not live to witness; and San Isidro, with three other devout Spaniards, was admitted by the Head of the Church at Rome to the full glories of saintship, by a formal canonization. The people of Madrid took little note of the Papal bull, except so far as it concerned their own particular saint and protector. But to him the honors they offered were abundant.[260] The festival they instituted for the occasion lasted nine days. Eight pyramids, above seventy feet high, were arranged in different parts of the city, and nine magnificent altars, a castle, a rich garden, and a temporary theatre. All the houses of the better sort were hung with gorgeous tapestry; religious processions, in which the principal nobility took the meanest places, swept through the streets; and bull-fights, always the most popular of Spanish entertainments, were added, in which above two thousand of those noble animals were sacrificed in amphitheatres or public squares open to all.

As a part of the show, a great literary contest or jousting was held on the 19th of May,—exactly two years after that held at the beatification. Again Lope appeared on the stage in front of the Church of Saint Andrew, and, with similar ceremonies and a similar admixture of the somewhat broad farce of Tomé de Burguillos, most of the leading poets of the time joined in the universal homage. Lope carried away the principal prizes. Others were given to Zarate, Calderon, Montalvan, and Guillen de Castro. Two plays—one on the childhood, and the other on the youth of San Isidro, but both expressly ordered from Lope by the city—were acted on open, movable stages, before the king, the court, and the multitude, making their author the most prominent figure of a festival which, rightly understood, goes far to explain the spirit of the times and of the religion on which it all depended. An account of the whole, comprehending the poems offered on the occasion, and his own two plays, was published by Lope before the close of the year.

His success at these two jubilees was, no doubt, very flattering to him. It had been of the most public kind; it had been on a very popular subject; and it had, perhaps, brought him more into the minds and thoughts of the great mass of the people, and into the active interests of the time, than even his success in the theatre. The caricatures of Tomé de Burguillos, in particular, though often rude, seem to have been received with extraordinary favor. Later, therefore, he was induced to write more verses in the same style; and, in 1634, he published a volume, consisting almost wholly of humorous and burlesque poems, under the same disguise. Most of the pieces it contains are sonnets and other short poems;—some very sharp and satirical, and nearly all fluent and happy. But one of them is of considerable length, and should be separately noticed.

It is a mock-heroic, in irregular verse, divided into six silvas or cantos, and is called “La Gatomachia,” or the Battle of the Cats; being a contest between two cats for the love of a third. Like nearly all the poems of the class to which it belongs, from the “Batrachomyomachia” downwards, it is too long. It contains about twenty-five hundred lines, in various measures. But if it is not the first in the Spanish language in the order of time, it is the first in the order of merit. The last two silvas, in particular, are written with great lightness and spirit; sometimes parodying Ariosto and the epic poets, and sometimes the old ballads, with the gayest success. From its first appearance, therefore, it has been a favorite in Spain; and it is now, probably, more read than any other of its author’s miscellaneous works. An edition printed in 1794 assumes, rather than attempts to prove, that Tomé de Burguillos was a real personage. But few persons have ever been of this opinion; for though, when it first appeared, Lope prefixed to it one of those accounts concerning its pretended author that deceive nobody, yet he had, as early as the first festival in honor of San Isidro, almost directly declared Master Burguillos to be merely a disguise for himself and a means of adding interest to the occasion,—a fact, indeed, plainly intimated by Quevedo in the Approbation prefixed to the volume, and by Coronel in the verses which immediately follow.[261]

In 1621, just in the interval between the two festivals, Lope published a volume containing the “Filomena,” a poem, in the first canto of which he gives the mythological story of Tereus and the Nightingale, and in the second, a vindication of himself, under the allegory of the Nightingale’s Defence against the Envious Thrush. To this he added, in the same volume, “La Tapada,” a description, in octave verse, of a country-seat of the Duke of Braganza in Portugal; the “Andromeda,” a mythological story like the Filomena; “The Fortunes of Diana,” the first prose tale he ever printed; several poetical epistles and smaller poems; and a correspondence on the subject of the New Poetry, as it was called, in which he boldly attacked the school of Góngora, then at the height of its favor.[262] The whole volume added nothing to its author’s permanent reputation; but parts of it, and especially passages in the epistles and in the Filomena, are interesting from the circumstance that they contain allusions to his own personal history.

Another volume, not unlike the last, followed in 1624. It contains three poems in the octave stanza: “Circe,” an unfortunate amplification of the well-known story found in the Odyssey; “The Morning of Saint John,” on the popular celebration of that graceful festival in the time of Lope; and a fable on the Origin of the White Rose. To these he added several epistles in prose and verse, and three more prose tales, which, with the one already mentioned, constitute all the short prose fictions he ever published.[263]

The best part of this volume is, no doubt, the three stories. Probably Lope was induced to write them by the success of those of Cervantes, which had now been published eleven years, and were already known throughout Europe. But Lope’s talent seems not to have been more adapted to this form of composition than that of the author of Don Quixote was to the drama. Of this he seems to have been partially aware himself; for he says of the first tale, that it was written to please a lady in a department of letters where he never thought to have adventured, and the other three are addressed to the same person, and seem to have been written with the same feelings.[264] None of them excited much attention at the time when they appeared. But, twenty years afterwards, they were reprinted with four others, torn, apparently, from some connected series of similar stories, and certainly not the work of Lope. The last of the eight is the best of the collection, though it ends awkwardly, with an intimation that another is to follow; and all are thrust together into the complete edition of Lope’s miscellaneous works, though there is no pretence for claiming any of them to be his, except the first four.[265]

In the year preceding the appearance of the tales we find him in a new character. A miserable man, a Franciscan monk, from Catalonia, was suspected of heresy; and the suspicion fell on him the more heavily because his mother was of the Jewish faith. Having been, in consequence of this, expelled successively from two religious houses of which he had been a member, he seems to have become disturbed in his mind, and at last he grew so frantic, that, while mass was celebrating in open church, he seized the consecrated host from the hands of the officiating priest and violently destroyed it. He was at once arrested and given up to the Inquisition. The Inquisition, finding him obstinate, declared him to be a Lutheran and a Calvinist, and, adding to this the crime of his Hebrew descent, delivered him over to the secular arm for punishment. He was, almost as a matter of course, ordered to be burned alive; and in January, 1623, the sentence was literally executed outside the gate of Alcalá at Madrid. The excitement was great, as it always was on such occasions. An immense concourse of people was gathered to witness the edifying spectacle; the court was present; the theatres and public shows were suspended for a fortnight; and we are told that Lope de Vega, who, in some parts of his “Dragontea,” shows a spirit not unworthy of such an office, was one of those who presided at the loathsome sacrifice and directed its ceremonies.[266]

His fanaticism, however, in no degree diminished his zeal for poetry. In 1625, he published his “Divine Triumphs,” a poem in five cantos, in the measure and the manner of Petrarch, beginning with the triumphs of “the Divine Pan” and ending with those of Religion and the Cross.[267] It was a failure, and the more obviously so, because its very title placed it in direct contrast with the “Trionfi” of the great Italian master. It was accompanied, in the same volume, by a small collection of sacred poetry, which was increased in later editions until it became a large one. Some of it is truly tender and solemn, as, for instance, the cancion on the death of his son,[268] and the sonnet on his own death, beginning, “I must lie down and slumber in the dust”; while other parts, like the villancicos to the Holy Sacrament, are written with unseemly levity, and are even sometimes coarse and sensual.[269] All, however, are specimens of what respectable and cultivated Spaniards in that age called religion.

A similar remark may be made in relation to the “Corona Trágica,” The Tragic Crown, which he published in 1627, on the history and fate of the unhappy Mary of Scotland, who had perished just forty years before.[270] It is intended to be a religious epic, and fills five books of octave stanzas. But it is, in fact, merely a specimen of intolerant controversy. Mary is represented as a pure and glorious martyr to the Catholic faith, while Elizabeth is alternately called a Jezebel and an Athaliah, whom it was a doubtful merit in Philip the Second to have spared, when, as king-consort of England, he had her life in his power.[271] In other respects it is a dull poem; beginning with an account of Mary’s previous history, as related by herself to her women in prison, and ending with her death. But it savors throughout of its author’s sympathy with the religious spirit of his age and country;—a spirit, it should be remembered, which made the Inquisition what it was.

The Corona Trágica was, however, perhaps on this very account, thought worthy of being dedicated to Pope Urban the Eighth, who had himself written an epitaph on the unfortunate Mary of Scotland, which Lope, in courtly phrase, declared was “beatifying her in prophecy.” The flattery was well received. Urban sent the poet in return a complimentary letter; gave him a degree of Doctor in Divinity, and the cross of the Order of Saint John; and appointed him to the honorary places of Fiscal in the Apostolic Chamber and Notary of the Roman Archives. The measure of his ecclesiastical honors was now full.

In 1630, he published “The Laurel of Apollo,” a poem somewhat like “The Journey to Parnassus” of Cervantes, but longer, more elaborate, and still more unsatisfactory. It describes a festival, supposed to have been held by the god of Poetry, on Mount Helicon, in April, 1628, and records the honors then bestowed on nearly three hundred Spanish poets;—a number so great, that the whole account becomes monotonous and almost valueless, partly from the impossibility of drawing with distinctness or truth so many characters of little prominence, and partly from its too free praise of nearly all of them. It is divided into ten silvas, and contains about seven thousand irregular verses. At the end, besides a few minor and miscellaneous poems, Lope added an eclogue, in seven scenes, which had been previously represented before the king and court with a costly magnificence in the theatre and a splendor in its decorations that show, at least, how great was the favor he enjoyed, when he was indulged, for so slight an offering, with such royal luxuries.[272]

The last considerable work he published was his “Dorotea,” a long prose romance in dialogue.[273] It was written in his youth, and, as has been already suggested, probably contains more or less of his own youthful adventures and feelings. But whether this be so or not, it was a favorite with him. He calls it “the most beloved of his works,” and says he has revised it with care and made additions to it in his old age.[274] It was first printed in 1632. A moderate amount of verse is scattered through it, and there is a freshness and a reality in many passages that remind us constantly of its author’s life before he served as a soldier in the Armada. The hero, Fernando, is a poet, like Lope, who, after having been more than once in love and married, refuses Dorotea, the object of his first attachment, and becomes religious. There is, however, little plan, consistency, or final purpose in most of the manifold scenes that go to make up its five long acts; and it is now read only for its rich and easy prose style, for the glimpses it seems to give of the author’s own life, and for a few of its short poems, some of which were probably written for occasions not unlike those to which they are here applied.

The last work he printed was an eclogue in honor of a Portuguese lady; and the last things he wrote—only the day before he was seized with his mortal illness—were a short poem on the Golden Age, remarkable for its vigor and harmony, and a sonnet on the death of a friend.[275] All of them are found in a collection consisting chiefly of a few dramas, published by his son-in-law, Luis de Usategui, two years after Lope’s death.

But as his life drew to a close, his religious feelings, mingled with a melancholy fanaticism, predominated more and more. Much of his poetry composed at this time expressed them; and at last they rose to such a height, that he was almost constantly in a state of excited melancholy, or, as it was then beginning to be called, of hypochondria.[276] Early in the month of August, he felt himself extremely weak, and suffered more than ever from that sense of discouragement which was breaking down his resources and strength. His thoughts, however, were so exclusively occupied with his spiritual condition, that, even when thus reduced, he continued to fast, and on one occasion went through with a private discipline so cruel, that the walls of the apartment where it occurred were afterwards found sprinkled with his blood. From this he never recovered. He was taken ill the same night; and, after fulfilling the offices prescribed by his Church with the most submissive devotion,—mourning that he had ever been engaged in any occupations but such as were exclusively religious,—he died on the 25th of August, 1635, nearly seventy-three years old.

The sensation produced by his death was such as is rarely witnessed even in the case of those upon whom depends the welfare of nations. The Duke of Sessa, who was his especial patron, and to whom he left his manuscripts, provided for the funeral in a manner becoming his own wealth and rank. It lasted nine days. The crowds that thronged to it were immense. Three bishops officiated, and the first nobles of the land attended as mourners. Eulogies and poems followed on all sides, and in numbers all but incredible. Those written in Spain make one considerable volume, and end with a drama in which his apotheosis was brought upon the public stage. Those written in Italy are hardly less numerous, and fill another.[277] But more touching than any of them was the prayer of that much-loved daughter who had been shut up from the world fourteen years, that the long funeral procession might pass by her convent and permit her once more to look on the face she so tenderly venerated; and more solemn than any was the mourning of the multitude, from whose dense mass audible sobs burst forth, as his remains slowly descended from their sight into the house appointed for all living.[278]

CHAPTER XV.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED. — CHARACTER OF HIS MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. — HIS DRAMAS. — HIS LIFE AT VALENCIA. — HIS MORAL PLAYS. — HIS SUCCESS AT MADRID. — VAST NUMBER OF HIS DRAMAS. — THEIR FOUNDATION AND THEIR VARIOUS FORMS. — HIS COMEDIAS DE CAPA Y ESPADA, AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS.

THE works of Lope de Vega that we have considered, while tracing his long and brilliant career, are far from being sufficient to explain the degree of popular admiration that, almost from the first, followed him. They show, indeed, much original talent, a still greater power of invention, and a wonderful facility of versification. But they are rarely imbued with the deep and earnest spirit of a genuine poetry; they generally have an air of looseness and want of finish; and almost all of them are without that national physiognomy and character, in which, after all, resides so much of the effective power of genius over any people.

The truth is, that Lope, in what have been called his miscellaneous works, was seldom in the path that leads to final success. He was turned aside by a spirit which, if not that of the whole people, was the spirit of the court and the higher classes of Castilian society. Boscan and Garcilasso, who preceded him by only half a century, had made themselves famous by giving currency to the lighter forms of Italian verse, especially those of the sonnet and the canzone; and Lope, who found these fortunate poets the idols of the period, when his own character was forming, thought that to follow their brilliant course would open to him the best chances for success. His aspirations, however, stretched very far beyond theirs. He felt other and higher powers within him, and entered boldly into rivalship, not only with Sannazaro and Bembo, as they had done, but with Ariosto, Tasso, and Petrarch. Eleven of his longer poems, epic, narrative, and descriptive, are in the stately ottava rima of his great masters; besides which he has left us two long pastorals in the manner of the “Arcadia,” many adventurous attempts in the terza rima, and numberless specimens of all the varieties of Italian lyrics, including, among the rest, nearly seven hundred sonnets.

But in all this there is little that is truly national,—little that is marked with the old Castilian spirit; and if this were all he had done, his fame would by no means stand where we now find it. His prose pastorals and his romances are, indeed, better than his epics; and his didactic poetry, his epistles, and his elegies are occasionally excellent; but it is only when he touches fairly and fully upon the soil of his country,—it is only in his glosas, his letrillas, his ballads, and his light songs and roundelays, that he has the richness and grace which should always have accompanied him. We feel at once, therefore, whenever we meet him in these paths, that he is on ground he should never have deserted, because it is ground on which, with his extraordinary gifts, he could easily have erected permanent monuments to his own fame. But he himself determined otherwise. Not that he entirely approved the innovations of Boscan and Garcilasso; for he tells us distinctly, in his “Philomena,” that their imitations of the Italian had unhappily supplanted the grace and the glory that belonged peculiarly to the old Spanish genius.[279] The theories and fashions of his time, therefore, misled, though they did not delude, a spirit that should have been above them; and the result is, that little of poetry such as marks the old Castilian genius is to be found in the great mass of his works we have thus far been called on to examine. In order to account for his permanent success, as well as marvellous popularity, we must, then, turn to another and wholly distinct department,—that of the drama,—in which he gave himself up to the leading of the national spirit as completely as if he had not elsewhere seemed sedulously to avoid it; and thus obtained a kind and degree of fame he could never otherwise have reached.

It is not possible to determine the year when Lope first began to write for the public stage; but whenever it was, he found the theatre in a rude and humble condition. That he was very early drawn to this form of composition, though not, perhaps, for the purposes of representation, we know on his own authority; for, in his pleasant didactic poem on the New Art of Making Plays, which he published in 1609, but read several years earlier to a society of dilettanti in Madrid, he says expressly,—

The Captain Virues, a famous wit,

Cast dramas in three acts, by happy hit;

For, till his time, upon all fours they crept,

Like helpless babes that never yet had stepped.

Such plays I wrote, eleven and twelve years old;

Four acts—each measured to a sheet’s just fold—

Filled out four sheets; while still, between,

Three entremeses short filled up the scene.[280]

This was as early as 1574. A few years later, or about 1580, when the poet was eighteen years old, he attracted the notice of his early patron, Manrique, the Bishop of Avila, by a pastoral. His studies at Alcalá followed; then his service under the young Duke of Alva, his marriage, and his exile of several years; for all which we must find room before 1588, when we know he served in the Armada. In 1590, however, if not a year earlier, he had returned to Madrid; and it does not seem unreasonable to assume that soon afterwards he began to be known in the capital as a dramatic writer, being then twenty-eight years old.

But it was during the period of his exile that he seems to have really begun his public dramatic career, and prepared himself, in some measure, for his subsequent more general popularity. Much of this interval was passed in Valencia; and in Valencia a theatre had been known for a long time.[281] As early as 1526, the hospital there received an income from it, by a compromise similar to that in virtue of which the hospitals of Madrid long afterwards laid the theatre under contribution for their support.[282] The Captain Virues, who was a friend of Lope de Vega, and is commemorated by him more than once, wrote for this theatre, as did Timoneda, the editor of Lope de Rueda; the works of both the last being printed in Valencia about 1570. These Valencian dramas, however, except in the case of Lope de Rueda, were of moderate amount and value; nor was what was done at Seville by Cueva and his followers, about 1580, or at Madrid by Cervantes, a little later, of more real importance, regarded as the foundations for a national theatre.

Indeed, if we look over all that can be claimed for the Spanish drama from the time of the eclogues of Juan de la Enzina, in 1492, to the appearance of Lope de Rueda, about 1544, and then, again, from his time to that of Lope de Vega, we shall find, not only that the number of dramas was small, but that they had been written in forms so different and so often opposed to each other as to have little consistency or authority, and to offer no sufficient indication of the channel in which the dramatic literature of the country was at last destined to flow. We may even say, that, except Lope de Rueda, no author for the theatre had yet enjoyed a permanent popularity; and he having now been dead more than twenty years, Lope de Vega must be admitted to have had a fair and free field open before him.

Unfortunately we have few of his earlier efforts. He seems, however, to have begun upon the old foundations of the eclogues and moralities, whose religious air and tone commended them to that ecclesiastical toleration without which little could thrive in Spain.[283] An eclogue, which is announced as having been represented, and which seems really to be arranged for exhibition, is found in the third book of the “Arcadia,” the earliest of Lope’s published works, and one that was written before his exile.[284] Several similar attempts occur elsewhere,—so rude and pious, that it seems almost as if they might have belonged to the age of Juan de la Enzina and Gil Vicente; and others of the same character are scattered through other parts of his multitudinous works.[285]

Of his more regular plays, the two oldest, that were subsequently included in his printed collection, are not without similar indications of their origin. Both are pastorals. The first is called “The True Lover,” and was written when Lope was fourteen years old, though it may have been altered and improved before he published it, when he was fifty-eight. It is the story of a shepherd who refuses to marry a shepherdess, though she had put him in peril of his life by accusing him of having murdered her husband, who, as she was quite aware, had died a natural death, but whose supposed murderer could be released from his doom only at her requisition, as next of kin to the pretended victim;—a process by which she hoped to obtain all power over his spirit, and compel him to marry her, as Ximena married the Cid, by royal authority. Lope admits it to be a rude performance; but it is marked by the sweetness of versification which seems to have belonged to him at every period of his career.[286]

The other of his early performances above alluded to is the “Pastoral de Jacinto,” which Montalvan tells us was the first play Lope wrote in three acts, and that it was composed while he was attached to the person of the Bishop of Avila. This must have been about the year 1580; but as the Jacinto was not printed till thirty-seven years afterwards, it may perhaps have undergone large changes before it was offered to the public, whose requisitions had advanced in the interval no less than the condition of the theatre. He says in the Dedication, that it was “written in the years of his youth,” and it is founded on the somewhat artificial story of a shepherd fairly made jealous of himself by the management of another shepherd, who hopes thus to obtain the shepherdess they both love, and who passes himself off, for some time, as another Jacinto, and as the only one to whom the lady is really attached. It has the same flowing versification with the “True Lover,” but it is not superior in merit to that drama, which can hardly have preceded it by more than two or three years.[287]

Moralities, too, written with no little spirit, and with strong internal evidence of having been publicly performed, occur here and there;—sometimes where we should least look for them. Four such are produced in his “Pilgrim in his own Country”; the romance, it may be remembered, which is not without allusions to its author’s exile, and which seems to contain some of his personal experiences at Valencia. One of these allegorical plays, “The Salvation of Man,” is declared to have been performed in front of the venerable cathedral at Saragossa, and is among the more curious specimens of such entertainments, since it is accompanied with explanations of the way in which the churches were used for theatrical purposes, and ends with an account of the exposition of the Host, as an appropriate conclusion for a drama so devout.[288]

Another, called “The Soul’s Voyage,” is set forth as if represented in a public square of Barcelona.[289] It opens with a ballad, which is sung by three persons, and is followed, first, by a prologue full of cumbrous learning, and then by another ballad both sung and danced, as we are told, “with much skill and grace.” After all this note of preparation comes the “Moral Action” itself. The Soul enters dressed in white,—the way in which a disembodied spirit was indicated to the audience. A clown, who, as the droll of the piece, represents the Human Will, and a gallant youth, who represents Memory, enter at the same time; one of them urging the Soul to set out on the voyage of salvation, and the other endeavouring to jest her out of such a pious purpose. At this critical moment, Satan appears as a ship-captain, in a black suit, fringed with flames, and accompanied by Selfishness, Appetite, and other vices, as his sailors, and offers to speed the Soul on her voyage, all singing merrily together,—

Holloa! the good ship of Delight

Spreads her sails for the sea to-day;

Who embarks? who embarks, then, I say?

To-day, the good ship of Content,

With a wind at her choice for her course,

To a land where no troubles are sent,

Where none knows the stings of remorse,

With a wind fair and free takes her flight;—

Who embarks? who embarks, then, I say?[290]

A new world is announced as their destination, and the Will asks whether it is the one lately discovered by Columbus; to which and to other similar questions Satan replies evasively, but declares that he is a greater pilot of the seas than Magellan or Drake, and will insure to all who sail with him a happy and prosperous voyage. Memory opposes the project, but, after some resistance, is put asleep; and Understanding, who follows as a greybeard full of wise counsel, comes too late. The adventurers are already gone. But still he shouts after them, and continues his warnings, till the ship of Penitence arrives, with the Saviour for its pilot, a cross for its mast, and sundry Saints for its sailors. They summon the Soul anew. The Soul is surprised and shocked at her situation; and the piece ends with her embarkation on board the sacred vessel, amidst a feu de joie, and the shouts of the delighted spectators, who, we may suppose, had been much edified by the show.

Another of these strange dramas is founded on the story of the Prodigal Son, and is said to have been represented at Perpignan, then a Spanish fortress, by a party of soldiers; one of the actors being mentioned by name in its long and absurdly learned Prologue.[291] Among the interlocutors are Envy, Youth, Repentance, and Good Advice; and among other extraordinary passages, it contains a flowing paraphrase of Horace’s “Beatus ille,” pronounced by the respectable proprietor of the swine intrusted to the unhappy Prodigal.

The fourth Morality, found in the romance of the Pilgrim, is entitled “The Marriage of the Soul and Divine Love”; and is set forth as having been acted in a public square at Valencia, on occasion of the marriage of Philip the Third with Margaret of Austria, which took place in that city,—an occasion, we are told, when Lope himself appeared in the character of a buffoon,[292] and one to which this drama, though it seems to have been written earlier, was carefully adjusted.[293] The World, Sin, the City of Jerusalem, and Faith, who is dressed in the costume of a captain-general of Spain, all play parts in it. Envy enters, in the first scene, as from the infernal regions, through a mouth casting forth flames; and the last scene represents Love, stretched on the cross, and wedded to a fair damsel who figures as the Soul of Man. Some parts of this drama are very offensive; especially the passage in which Margaret of Austria, with celestial attributes, is represented as arriving in the galley of Faith, and the passage in which Philip’s entrance into Valencia is described literally as it occurred, but substituting the Saviour for the king, and the prophets, the martyrs, and the hierarchy of heaven for the Spanish nobles and clergy who really appeared on the occasion.[294]

Such were, probably, the unsteady attempts with which Lope began his career on the public stage during his exile at Valencia and immediately afterwards. They are certainly wild enough in their structure, and sometimes gross in sentiment, though hardly worse in either respect than the similar allegorical mysteries and farces which, till just about the same period, were performed in France and England, and much superior in their general tone and style. How long he continued to write them, or how many he wrote, we do not know. Few of them appear in the collection of his dramas, which does not begin till 1604, though an allegorical spirit is occasionally visible in some of his plays, which are, in other respects, quite in the temper of the secular theatre. But that he wrote such religious dramas early, and that he wrote great numbers of them, is unquestionable.

In Madrid, if he found little to hinder, he also found little to help him, except two rude theatres, or rather court-yards, licensed for the representation of plays, and a dramatic taste formed or forming in the character of the people. But this was enough for a spirit like his. His success was immediate and complete; his popularity overwhelming. Cervantes, as we have seen, declared him to be a “prodigy of nature”; and, though himself seeking both the fame and the profit of a writer for the public stage, generously recognized his great rival as its sole monarch.[295]

Many years, however, elapsed before he published even a single volume of the plays with which he was thus delighting the audiences of Madrid, and settling the final forms of the national drama. This was, no doubt, in part owing to the habit, which seems to have prevailed in Spain from the first appearance of the theatre, of regarding its literature as ill-suited for publication; and in part to the circumstance, that, when plays were produced on the stage, the author usually lost his right in them, if not entirely, yet so far that he could not publish them without the assent of the actors. But whatever may have been the cause, it is certain that a multitude of Lope’s plays had been acted before he published any of them; and that, to this day, not a fourth part of those he wrote has been preserved by the press.[296]

Their very number, however, may have been one obstacle to their publication; for the most moderate and certain accounts on this point have almost a fabulous air about them; so extravagant do they seem. In 1603, he gives us the titles of three hundred and forty-one pieces that he had already written;[297] in 1609, he says their number had risen to four hundred and eighty-three;[298] in 1618, he says it was eight hundred;[299] in 1619, again in round numbers, he states it at nine hundred;[300] and in 1624, at one thousand and seventy.[301] After his death, in 1635, Perez de Montalvan, his intimate friend and executor, who three years before had declared the number to be fifteen hundred, without reckoning the shorter pieces,[302] puts it at eighteen hundred plays and four hundred autos;[303] numbers which are confidently repeated by Antonio in his notice of Lope,[304] and by Franchi, an Italian, who had been much with Lope at Madrid, and who wrote one of the multitudinous eulogies on him after his death.[305] The prodigious facility implied by this is further confirmed by the fact stated by himself in one of his plays, that it was written and acted in five days,[306] and by the anecdotes of Montalvan, that he wrote five full-length dramas at Toledo in fifteen days, and one act of another in a few hours of the early morning, without seeming to make any effort in either case.[307]

Of this enormous mass, a little more than five hundred dramas appear to have been published at different times,—most of them in the twenty-five, or more properly twenty-eight, volumes which were printed in various places between 1604 and 1647, but of which it is now nearly impossible to form a complete collection. In these volumes, so far as any rules of the dramatic art are concerned, it is apparent that Lope took the theatre in the state in which he found it; and instead of attempting to adapt it to any previous theory, or to any existing models, whether ancient or recent, made it his great object to satisfy the popular audiences of his age;[308]—an object which he avows so distinctly in his “Art of Writing Plays,” and in the Preface to the twentieth volume of his Dramas, that there is no doubt it was the prevailing purpose with which he labored for the theatre. For such a purpose, he certainly appeared at a fortunate moment; and, possessing a genius no less fortunate, was enabled to become the founder of the national Spanish theatre, which, since his time, has rested substantially on the basis where he placed and left it.

But this very system—if that may be called a system which was rather an instinct—almost necessarily supposes that he indulged his audiences in a great variety of dramatic forms; and accordingly we find, among his plays, a diversity, alike in spirit, tone, and structure, which was evidently intended to humor the uncertain cravings of the popular taste, and which we know was successful. Whether he himself ever took the trouble to consider what were the different classes into which his dramas might be divided does not appear. Certainly no attempt at any technical arrangement of them is made in the collection he printed, except that, in the first and third volumes, a few entremeses, or farces, generally in prose, are thrown in at the end of each, as a sort of appendix. All the rest of the plays contained in them are in verse, and are called comedias,—a word which is by no means to be translated “comedies,” but “dramas,” since no other name is comprehensive enough to include their manifold varieties,—and all of them are divided into three jornadas, or acts.

But in every thing else there seems no end to their diversities,—whether we regard their subjects, running from the deepest tragedy to the broadest farce, and from the most solemn mysteries of religion down to the loosest frolics of common life, or their style, which embraces every change of tone and measure known to the poetical language of the country. And all these different masses of Lope’s drama, it should be further noted, run insensibly into each other,—the sacred and the secular; the tragic and the comic; the heroic action and that from vulgar life,—until sometimes it seems as if there were neither separate form nor distinctive attribute to any of them.

This, however, is less the case than it at first appears to be. Lope, no doubt, did not always know or care into what peculiar form the story of his drama was cast; but still there were certain forms and attributes invented by his own genius, or indicated to him by the success of his predecessors or the demands of his time, to which each of his dramas more or less tended. A few, indeed, may be found so nearly on the limits that separate the different classes, that it is difficult to assign them strictly to either; but in all—even in those that are the freest and wildest—the distinctive elements of some class are apparent, while all, by the peculiarly national spirit that animates them, show the source from which they come, and the direction they are destined to follow.

The first class of plays that Lope seems to have invented—the one in which his own genius seemed most to delight, and which still remains more popular in Spain than any other—consists of those called “Comedias de Capa y Espada,” or Dramas with Cloak and Sword. They took their name from the circumstance, that their principal personages belong to the genteel portion of society, accustomed, in Lope’s time, to the picturesque national dress of cloaks and swords,—excluding, on the one hand, those dramas in which royal personages appear, and, on the other, those which are devoted to common life and the humbler classes. Their main and moving principle is gallantry,—such gallantry as existed in the time of their author. The story is almost always involved and intriguing, and almost always accompanied with an underplot and parody on the characters and adventures of the principal parties, formed out of those of the servants and other inferior personages.

Their titles are intended to be attractive, and are not infrequently taken from among the old rhymed proverbs that were always popular, and that sometimes seem to have suggested the subject of the drama itself. They uniformly extend to the length of regular pieces for the theatre, now settled at three jornadas, or acts, each of which, Lope advises, should have its action compressed within the limits of a single day, though he himself is rarely scrupulous enough to follow his own recommendation. They are not properly comedies, for nothing is more frequent in them than duels, murders, and assassinations; and they are not tragedies, for, besides that they end happily, they are generally composed of humorous and sentimental dialogue, and their action is carried on chiefly by lovers full of romance, or by low characters whose wit is mingled with buffoonery. All this, it should be understood, was new on the Spanish stage; or if hints might have been furnished for individual portions of it as far back as Torres Naharro, the combination, at least, was new, as well as the manners, tone, and costume.

Of such plays Lope wrote a very large number; several hundreds, at least. His genius—rich, free, and eminently inventive—was well fitted for their composition, and in many of them he shows great dramatic tact and talent. Among the best are “The Ugly Beauty”;[309] “Money makes the Man”;[310] “The Pruderies of Belisa,”[311] which has the accidental merit of being all but strictly within the rules; “The Slave of her Lover,”[312] in which he has sounded the depths of a woman’s tenderness; and “The Dog in the Manger,” in which he has almost equally well sounded the depths of her selfish vanity.[313] But perhaps there are some others which, even better than these, will show the peculiar character of this class of Lope’s dramas, and his peculiar position in relation to them. To two or three such we will, therefore, now turn.

“El Azero de Madrid,” or The Madrid Steel, is one of them, and is among his earlier works for the stage.[314] It takes its name from the preparations of steel for medicinal purposes, which, in Lope’s time, had just come into fashionable use; but the main story is that of a light-hearted girl who deceives her father, and especially a hypocritical old aunt, by pretending to be ill and taking steel medicaments from a seeming doctor, who is a friend of her lover, and who prescribes walking abroad, and such other free modes of life as may best afford opportunities for her admirer’s attentions.

There can be little doubt that in this play we find some of the materials for the “Médecin Malgré Lui”; and though the full success of Molière’s original wit is not to be questioned, still the happiest portions of his comedy can do no more than come into fair competition with some passages in that of Lope. The character of the heroine, for instance, is drawn with more spirit in the Spanish than it is in the French play; and that of the devotee aunt, who acts as her duenna, and whose hypocrisy is exposed when she herself falls in love, is one which Molière might well have envied, though it was too exclusively Spanish to be brought within the courtly conventions by which he was restrained.

The whole drama is full of life and gayety, and has a truth and reality about it rare on any stage. Its opening is both a proof of this and a characteristic specimen of its author’s mode of placing his audience at once, by a decisive movement, in the midst of the scene and the personages he means to represent. Lisardo, the hero, and Riselo, his friend, appear watching the door of a fashionable church in Madrid, at the conclusion of the service, to see a lady with whom Lisardo is in love. They are wearied with waiting, while the crowds pass out, and Riselo at last declares he will wait for his friend’s fancy no longer. At this moment appears Belisa, the lady in question, attended by her aunt, Theodora, who wears an affectedly religious dress and is lecturing her:—

Theodora.

Show more of gentleness and modesty;—

Of gentleness in walking quietly,

Of modesty in looking only down

Upon the earth you tread.

Belisa.

’T is what I do.

Theodora.

What? When you’re looking straight towards that man?

Belisa.

Did you not bid me look upon the earth?

And what is he but just a bit of it?

Theodora.

I said the earth whereon you tread, my niece.

Belisa.

But that whereon I tread is hidden quite

With my own petticoat and walking-dress.

Theodora.

Words such as these become no well-bred maid.

But, by your mother’s blessed memory,

I’ll put an end to all your pretty tricks;—

What? You look back at him again?

Belisa.

Who? I?

Theodora.

Yes, you;—and make him secret signs besides.

Belisa.

Not I. ’T is only that you troubled me

With teasing questions and perverse replies,

So that I stumbled and looked round to see

Who would prevent my fall.

Riselo.

(to Lisardo).                   She falls again.

Be quick and help her.

Lisardo.

(to Belisa).                Pardon me, lady,

And forgive my glove.

Theodora.

Who ever saw the like?

Belisa.

I thank you, Sir; you saved me from a fall.

Lisardo.

An angel, lady, might have fallen so;

Or stars that shine with heaven’s own blessed light.

Theodora.

I, too, can fall; but ’t is upon your trick.

Good gentleman, farewell to you!

Lisardo.

Madam,

Your servant. (Heaven save us from such spleen!)

Theodora.

A pretty fall you made of it; and now, I hope,

You’ll be content, since they assisted you.

Belisa.

And you no less content, since now you have

The means to tease me for a week to come.

Theodora.

But why again do you turn back your head?

Belisa.

Why, sure you think it wise and wary

To notice well the place I stumbled at,

Lest I should stumble there when next I pass.

Theodora.

Mischief befall you! But I know your ways!

You’ll not deny this time you looked upon the youth?

Belisa.

Deny it? No!

Theodora.

You dare confess it, then?

Belisa.

Be sure I dare. You saw him help me,—

And would you have me fail to thank him for it?

Theodora.

Go to! Come home! come home!

Belisa.

Now we shall have

A pretty scolding cooked up out of this.[315]

Other passages are equally spirited and no less Castilian. The scene, at the beginning of the second act, between Octavio, another lover of the lady, and his servant, who jests at his master’s passion, as well as the scene with the mock doctor, that follows, are both admirable in their way, and must have produced a great effect on the audiences of Madrid, who felt how true they were to the manners of the time.

But all Lope’s dramas were not written for the public theatres of the capital. He was the courtly, no less than the national, poet of his age; and as we have already noticed a play full of the spirit of his youth, and of the popular character, to which it was addressed, we will now turn to one no less buoyant and free, which was written in his old age and prepared expressly for a royal entertainment. It is the “Saint John’s Eve,” and shows that his manner was the same, whether he was to be judged by the unruly crowds gathered in one of the court-yards of the capital, or by a few persons selected from whatever was most exclusive and elevated in the kingdom.

The occasion for which it was prepared and the arrangements for its exhibition mark, at once, the luxury of the royal theatres in the reign of Philip the Fourth, and the consideration enjoyed by their favored poet.[316] The drama itself was ordered expressly by the Count Duke Olivares, for a magnificent entertainment which he wished to give his sovereign in one of the gardens of Madrid, on Saint John’s eve, in June, 1631. No expense was spared by the profligate favorite to please his indulgent master. The Marquis Juan Bautista Crescencio—the same artist to whom we owe the sombre Pantheon of the Escurial—arranged the architectural constructions, which consisted of luxurious bowers for the king and his courtiers, and a gorgeous theatre in front of them, where, amidst a blaze of torch-light, the two most famous companies of actors of the time performed successively two plays: one written by the united talent of Francisco de Quevedo and Antonio de Mendoça; and the other, the crowning grace of the festival, by Lope de Vega.

The subject of the play of Lope is happily taken from the frolics of the very night on which it was represented;—a night frequently alluded to in the old Spanish stories and ballads, as one devoted, both by Moors and Christians, to gayer superstitions, and adventures more various, than belonged to any other of the old national holidays.[317] What was represented, therefore, had a peculiar interest, from its appropriateness both as to time and place.

Leonora, the heroine, first comes on the stage, and confesses her attachment to Don Juan de Hurtado, a gentleman who has recently returned rich from the Indies. She gives a lively sketch of the way in which he had made love to her in all the forms of national admiration, at church by day, and before her grated balcony in the evenings. Don Luis, her brother, ignorant of all this, gladly becomes acquainted with the lover, whom he interests in a match of his own with Doña Blanca, sister of Bernardo, who is the cherished friend of Don Juan. Eager to oblige the brother of the lady he loves, Don Juan seeks Bernardo, and, in the course of their conversation, ingeniously describes to him a visit he has just made to see all the arrangements for the evening’s entertainment now in progress before the court, including this identical play of Lope; thus whimsically claiming from the audience a belief that the action they are witnessing on the stage in the garden is, at the very same moment, going on in real life in the streets of Madrid, just behind their backs;—a passage which, involving, as it does, compliments to the king and the Count Duke, to Quevedo and Mendoça, must have been one of the most brilliant in its effect that can be imagined. But when Don Juan comes to explain his mission about the lady Blanca, although he finds a most willing consent on the part of her brother, Bernardo, he is thunderstruck at the suggestion, that this brother, his most intimate friend, wishes to make the alliance double and marry Leonora himself.

Now, of course, begin the involutions and difficulties. Don Juan’s sense of what he owes to his friend forbids him from setting up his own claim to Leonora, and he at once decides that nothing remains for him but flight. At the same time, it is discovered that the Lady Blanca is already attached to another person, a noble cavalier, named Don Pedro, and will, therefore, never marry Don Luis, if she can avoid it. The course of true love, therefore, runs smooth in neither case. But both the ladies avow their determination to remain steadfastly faithful to their lovers, though Leonora, from some fancied symptoms of coldness in Don Juan, arising out of his over-nice sense of honor, is in despair at the thought that he may, after all, prove false to her.

So ends the first act. The second opens with the lady Blanca’s account of her own lover, his condition, and the way in which he had made his love known to her in a public garden;—all most faithful to the national costume. But just as she is ready to escape and be privately married to him, her brother, Don Bernardo, comes in and proposes to her to make her first visit to Leonora, in order to promote his own suit. Meantime, the poor Leonora, quite desperate, rushes into the street with her attendant, and meets her lover’s servant, the clown and harlequin of the piece, who tells her that his master, unable any longer to endure his sufferings, is just about escaping from Madrid. The master, Don Juan, follows in hot haste, booted for his journey. The lady faints. When she revives, they come to an understanding, and determine to be married on the instant; so that we have now two private marriages, beset with difficulties, on the carpet at once. But the streets are full of frolicsome crowds, who are indulged in a sort of carnival freedom during this popular festival. Don Juan’s rattling servant gets into a quarrel with some gay young men, who are impertinent to his master, and to the terrified Leonora. Swords are drawn, and Don Juan is arrested by the officers of justice and carried off,—the lady, in her fright, taking refuge in a house, which accidentally turns out to be that of Don Pedro. But Don Pedro is abroad, seeking for his own lady, Doña Blanca. When he returns, however, making his way with difficulty through the rioting populace, he promises, as in Castilian honor bound, to protect the helpless and unknown Leonora, whom he finds in his balcony timidly watching the movements of the crowd in the street, among whom she is hoping to catch a glimpse of her own lover.

In the last act we learn that Don Juan has at once, by bribes, easily rid himself of the officers of justice, and is again in the noisy and gay streets seeking for Leonora. He falls in with Don Pedro, whom he has never seen before; but Don Pedro, taking him, from his inquiries, to be the brother from whom Leonora is anxious to be concealed, carefully avoids betraying her to him. Unhappily, the Lady Blanca now arrives, having been prevented from coming earlier by the confusion in the streets; and he hurries her into his house for concealment till the marriage ceremony can be performed. But she hurries out again no less quickly, having found another lady already concealed there;—a circumstance which she takes to be direct proof of her lover’s falsehood. Leonora follows her, and begins an explanation; but in the midst of it, the two brothers, who had been seeking these same missing sisters, come suddenly in; a scene of great confusion and mutual reproaches ensues; and then the curtain falls with a recognition of all the mistakes and attachments, and the full happiness of the two ladies and their two lovers. At the end, the poet, in his own person, declares, that, if his art permits him to extend his action over twenty-four hours, he has, in the present case, kept within its rules, since he has occupied less than ten.

As a specimen of plays founded on Spanish manners, few are happier than the “Saint John’s Eve.” The love-scenes, all honor and passion; the scenes between the cavaliers and the populace, at once rude and gay; and the scenes with the free-spoken servant who plays the wit are almost all excellent, and instinct with the national character. It was received with the greatest applause, and constituted the finale of the Count Duke’s magnificent entertainment, which, with its music and dances, interludes and refreshments, occupied the whole night, from nine o’clock in the evening till daylight the next morning.

Another of the plays of Lope, and one that belongs to the division of the Capa y Espada, but approaches that of the heroic drama, is his “Fool for Others and Wise for Herself.”[318] It is of a lighter and livelier temper throughout than most of its class. Diana, educated in the simple estate of a shepherdess, and wholly ignorant that she is the daughter and heir of the Duke of Urbino, is suddenly called, by the death of her father, to fill his place. She is surrounded by intriguing enemies, but triumphs over them by affecting a rustic simplicity in whatever she says and does, while, at the same time, she is managing all around her, and carrying on a love intrigue with the Duke Alexander Farnese, which ends in her marriage with him.

The jest of the piece lies in the wit she is able to conceal under her seeming rusticity. For instance, at the very opening, after she has been secretly informed of the true state of things, and has determined what course to pursue, the ambassadors from Urbino come in and tell her, with a solemnity suited to the occasion,—

Lady, our sovereign lord, the Duke, is dead!

To which she replies,—

What’s that to me? But if ’t is surely so,

Why then, Sirs, ’t is for you to bury him.

I’m not the parish curate.[319]

This tone is maintained to the end, whenever the heroine appears; and it gives Lope an opportunity to bring forth a great deal of the fluent, light wit of which he had such ample store.

Little like all we have yet noticed, but still belonging to the same class, is “The Reward of Speaking Well,”[320] a charming play, in which the accounts of the hero’s birth and early condition are so absolutely a description of his own, that it can hardly be doubted that Lope intended to draw the character in some degree from himself. Don Juan, who is the hero, is standing with some idle gallants near a church in Seville, to see the ladies come out; and, while there, defends, though he does not know her, one of them who is lightly spoken of. A quarrel ensues. He wounds his adversary, is pursued, and chances to take refuge in the house of the very lady whose honor he had so gallantly maintained a few moments before. She from gratitude secretes him, and the play ends with a wedding, though not until there has been a perfect confusion of plots and counterplots, intrigues and concealments, such as so often go to make up the three acts of Lope’s dramas.

Many other plays might be added to these, showing, by the diversity of their tone and character, how diverse were the gifts of the extraordinary man who invented them and filled them with various and easy verse. Among them are “Por la Puente Juana,”[321] “El Anzuelo de Fenisa,”[322] “El Ruyseñor de Sevilla,”[323] and “Porfiar hasta Morir”;[324] which last is on the story of Macias el Enamorado, always a favorite with the old Spanish, and Provençal poets. But it is neither needful nor possible to go farther. Enough has been said to show the general character of their class, and we therefore now turn to another.

CHAPTER XVI.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED. — HIS HEROIC DRAMA, AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS. — GREAT NUMBER ON SUBJECTS FROM SPANISH HISTORY, AND SOME ON CONTEMPORARY EVENTS.

THE dramas of Lope de Vega that belong to the next class were called “Comedias Heróicas,” or “Comedias Historiales,”—Heroic or Historical Dramas. The chief differences between these and the last are that they bring on the stage personages in a higher rank of life, such as kings and princes; that they generally have an historical foundation, or, at least, use historical names, as if claiming it; and that their prevailing tone is grave, imposing, and even tragical. They have, however, in general, the same involved, intriguing stories and underplots, the same play of jealousy and an over-sensitive honor, and the same low, comic caricatures to relieve their serious parts, that are found in the dramas of “the Cloak and Sword.” Philip the Second disapproved of this class of plays, thinking they tended to diminish the royal dignity,—a circumstance which shows at once the state of manners at the time, and the influence attributed to the theatre.[325]

Lope wrote a very large number of plays in the forms of the heroic drama, which he substantially invented,—perhaps as many as he wrote in any other class. Every thing historical seemed, indeed, to furnish him with a subject, from the earliest annals of the world down to the events of his own time; but his favorite materials were sought in Greek and Roman records, and especially in the chronicles and ballads of Spain itself.

Of the manner in which he dealt with ancient history, his “Roma Abrasada,” or Rome in Ashes, may be taken as a specimen, though certainly one of the least favorable specimens of the class to which it belongs.[326] The facts on which it is founded are gathered from the commonest sources open to its author,—chiefly from the “General Chronicle of Spain”; but they are not formed into a well-constructed or even ingenious plot,[327] and they relate to the whole twenty years that elapsed between the death of Messalina, in the reign of Claudius, and the death of Nero himself, who is not only the hero, but the gracioso, or droll, of the piece.

The first act, which comes down to the murder of Claudius by Nero and Agrippina, contains the old jest of the Emperor asking why his wife does not come to dinner, after he had put her to death, and adds, for equally popular effect, abundant praises of Spain and of Lucan and Seneca, claiming both of them to be Spaniards, and making the latter an astrologer as well as a moralist. The second act shows Nero beginning his reign with great gentleness, and follows Suetonius and the old Chronicle in making him grieve that he knew how to write, since otherwise he could not have been required to sign an order for a just judicial execution. The subsequent violent change in his conduct is not, however, in any way explained or accounted for. It is simply set before the spectators as a fact, and from this moment begins the headlong career of his guilt.

A curious scene, purely Spanish, is one of the early intimations of this change of character. Nero falls in love with Eta; but not at all in the Roman fashion. He visits her by night at her window, sings a sonnet to her, is interrupted by four men in disguise, kills one of them, and escapes from the pursuit of the officers of justice with difficulty; all, as if he were a wandering knight so fair of the time of Philip the Third.[328] The more historical love for Poppæa follows, with a shocking interview between Nero and his mother, in consequence of which he orders her to be at once put to death. The execution of this order, with the horrid exposure of her person afterwards, ends the act, which, gross as it is, does not sink to the revolting atrocities of the old Chronicle from which it is chiefly taken.

The third act is so arranged as partly to gratify the national vanity and partly to conciliate the influence of the Church, of which Lope, like his contemporaries, always stood in awe. Several devout Christians, therefore, are now introduced, and we have an edifying confession of faith, embracing the history of the world from the creation to the crucifixion, with an account of what the Spanish historians regard as the first of the twelve persecutions. The deaths of Seneca and Lucan follow; and then the conflagration of Rome, which, as it constitutes the show part of the play and is relied on for the stage effect it would produce, is brought in near the end, out of the proper order of the story, and after the building of Nero’s luxurious palace, the “aurea domus,” which was really constructed in the desert the fire had left. The audience, meantime, have been put in good humor by a scene in Spain, where a conspiracy is on foot to overthrow the Emperor’s power; and the drama concludes with the death of Poppæa,—again less gross than the account of it in the Chronicle,—with Nero’s own death, and with the proclamation of Galba as his successor; all of them crowded into a space disproportionately small for incidents so important.

But it was not often that Lope wrote so ill or so grossly. On modern, and especially on national subjects, he is almost always more fortunate, and sometimes becomes powerful and imposing. Among these, as a characteristic, though not as a remarkably favorable, specimen of his success, is to be placed the “Príncipe Perfeto,”[329] in which he intends to give his idea of a perfect prince under the character of Don John of Portugal, son of Alfonso the Fifth and contemporary with Ferdinand and Isabella, a full-length portrait of whom, by his friend and confidant, is drawn in the opening of the second act, with a minuteness of detail that leaves no doubt as to the qualities for which princes were valued in the age of the Philips, if not those for which they would be valued now.

Elsewhere in the piece, Don John is represented to have fought bravely in the disastrous battle of Toro, and to have voluntarily restored the throne to his father, who had once abdicated in his favor and had afterwards reclaimed the supreme power. Personal courage and strict justice, however, are the attributes most relied on to exhibit him as a perfect prince. Of the former he gives proof by killing a man in self-defence, and entering into a bull-fight under the most perilous circumstances. Of the latter—his love of justice—many instances are brought on the stage, and, among the rest, his protection of Columbus, after the return of that great navigator from America, though aware how much his discoveries had redounded to the honor of a rival country, and how great had been his own error in not obtaining the benefit of them for Portugal. But the most prominent of these instances of justice relates to a private and personal history, and forms the main subject of the drama. It is as follows.

Don Juan de Sosa, the king’s favorite, is twice sent by him to Spain on embassies of consequence, and, while residing there, lives in the family of a gentleman connected with him by blood, to whose daughter, Leonora, he makes love and wins her affections. Each time, when Don Juan returns to Portugal, he forgets his plighted faith and leaves the lady to languish. At last, she comes with her father to Lisbon in the train of the Spanish princess, Isabella, now married to the king’s son. But even there the false knight refuses to recognize his obligations. In her despair, she presents herself to the king, and explains her position in the following conversation, which is a favorable specimen of the easy narrative in which resides so much of the charm of Lope’s drama. As Leonora enters, she exclaims:—

Prince, whom in peace and war men perfect call,

Listen a woman’s cry!

King.

Begin;—I hear.

Leonora.

Fadrique—he of ancient Lara’s house,

And governor of Seville—is my sire.

King.

Pause there, and pardon first the courtesy

That owes a debt to thy name and to his,

Which ignorance alone could fail to pay.

Leonora.

Such condescending gentleness, my lord,

Is worthy of the wisdom and the wit

Which through the world are blazoned and admired.—

But to my tale. Twice came there to Castile

A knight from this thy land, whose name I hide

Till all his frauds are manifest. For thou,

My lord, dost love him in such wise, that, wert

Thou other than thou art, my true complaints

Would fear to seek a justice they in vain

Would strive to find. Each time within our house

He dwelt a guest, and from the very first

He sought my love.

King.

Speak on, and let not shame

Oppress thy words; for to the judge and priest

Alike confession’s voice should boldly come.

Leonora.

I was deceived. He went and left me sad

To mourn his absence; for of them he is

Who leave behind their knightly, nobler parts,

When they themselves are long since fled and gone.

Again he came, his voice more sweetly tuned,

More syren-like, than ever. I heard the voice,

Nor knew its hidden fraud. O, would that Heaven

Had made us, in its highest justice, deaf,

Since tongues so false it gave to men! He lured,

He lured me as the fowler lures the bird

And snares in meshes hid beneath the grass.

I struggled, but in vain; for Love, heaven’s child,

Has power the mightiest fortress to subdue.

He pledged his knightly word,—in writing pledged it,—

Trusting that afterwards, in Portugal,

The debt and all might safely be denied;—

As if the heavens were narrower than the earth,

And justice not supreme. In short, my lord,

He went; and, proud and vain, the banners bore

That my submission marked, not my defeat;

For where love is, there comes no victory.

His spoils he carried to his native land,

As if they had been torn in heathen war

From Africa; such as in Arcila,

In earliest youth, thyself with glory won;

Or such as now, from shores remote, thy ships

Bring home,—dark slaves, to darker slavery.

No written word of his came back to me.

My honor wept its obsequies, and built its tomb

With Love’s extinguished torches. Soon, the prince,

Thy son, was wed with our Infanta fair,—

God grant it for a blessing to both realms!—

And with her, as ambassador, my sire

To Lisbon came, and I with him. But here—

Even here—his promises that knight denies,

And so disheartens and despises me,

That, if your Grace no remedy can find,

The end of all must be the end of life,—

So heavy is my misery.

King.

That scroll?

Thou hast it?

Leonora.

Surely. It were an error

Not to be repaired, if I had lost it.

King.

It cannot be but I should know the hand,

If he who wrote it in my household serve.

Leonora.

This is the scroll, my lord.

King.

And John de Sosa’s is

The signature! But yet, unless mine eyes

Had seen and recognized his very hand,

I never had believed the tale thou bring’st;—

So highly deem I of his faithfulness.[330]

The dénouement naturally consists in the marriage, which is thus made a record of the king’s perfect justice.

Columbus, as we have seen, appears in this piece. He is introduced with little skill, but the dignity of his pretensions is not forgotten. In another drama, devoted to the discovery of America, and called “The New World of Columbus,” his character is further and more truly developed. The play itself embraces the events of the great Admiral’s life between his first vain effort to obtain countenance in Portugal and his triumphant presentation of the spoils of the New World to Ferdinand and Isabella at Barcelona,—a period amounting to about fourteen years.[331] It is one of Lope’s more wild and extravagant attempts, but not without marks of his peculiar talent, and fully embodies the national feeling in regard to America, as a world rescued from heathenism. Some of its scenes are in Portugal; others on the plain of Granada, at the moment of its fall; others in the caravel of Columbus during the mutiny; and yet others in the West Indies, and before his sovereigns on his return home.

Among the personages, besides such as might be reasonably anticipated from the course of the story, are Gonzalvo de Córdova, sundry Moors, several American Indians, and several spiritual beings, such as Providence, Christianity, and Idolatry; the last of whom struggles with great vehemence against the introduction of the Spaniards and their religion into the New World, and in passages like the following seems in danger of having the best of the argument.

O Providence Divine, permit them not

To do me this most plain unrighteousness!

’T is but base avarice that spurs them on.

Religion is the color and the cloak;

But gold and silver, hid within the earth,

Are all they truly seek and strive to win.[332]

The greater part of the action and the best portions of it pass in the New World; but it is difficult to imagine any thing more extravagant than the whole fable. Dramatic propriety is constantly set at naught. The Indians, before the appearance of Europeans among them, sing about Phœbus and Diana; and while, from the first, they talk nothing but Spanish, they frequently pretend, after the arrival of the Spaniards, to be unable to understand a word of their language. The scene in which Idolatry pleads its cause against Christianity before Divine Providence, the scenes with the Demon, and those touching the conversion of the heathen, might have been presented in the rudest of the old Moralities. Those, on the contrary, in which the natural feelings and jealousies of the simple and ignorant natives are brought out, and those in which Columbus appears,—always dignified and gentle,—are not without merit. Few, however, can be said to be truly good or poetical; and yet a poetical interest is kept up through the worst of them, and the story they involve is followed to the end with a living curiosity.

The common traditions are repeated, that Columbus was born at Nervi, and that he received from a dying pilot at Madeira the charts that led him to his grand adventure; but it is singular, that, in contradiction to all this, Lope, in other parts of the play, should have hazarded the suggestion, that Columbus was moved by Divine inspiration. The friar, in the scene of the mutiny, declares it expressly; and Columbus himself, in his discourse with his brother Bartholomew, when their fortunes seemed all but desperate, plainly alludes to it, when he says,—

A hidden Deity still drives me on,

Bidding me trust the truth of what I feel,

And, if I watch, or if I sleep, impels

The strong will boldly to work out its way.

But what is this that thus possesses me?

What spirit is it drives me onward thus?

Where am I borne? What is the road I take?

What track of destiny is this I tread?

And what the impulse that I blindly follow?

Am I not poor, unknown, a broken man,

Depending on the pilot’s anxious trade?

And shall I venture on the mighty task

To add a distant world to this we know?[333]

The conception of the character in this particular is good, and, being founded, as we know it was, on the personal convictions of Columbus himself, might have been followed out by further developments with poetical effect. But the opportunity is neglected, and, like many other occasions for success, is thrown away by Lope, through haste and carelessness.

Another of the dramas of this class, “El Castigo sin Venganza,” or Punishment, not Revenge, is important from the mode in which its subject is treated, and interesting from the circumstance that its history can be more exactly traced than that of any other of Lope’s plays. It is founded on the dark and hideous story in the annals of Ferrara, during the fifteenth century, which Lord Byron found in Gibbon’s “Antiquities of the House of Brunswick,” and made the subject of his “Parisina,”[334] but which Lope, following the old chronicles of the duchy, has presented in a somewhat different light, and thrown with no little skill into a dramatic form.

The Duke of Ferrara, in his tragedy, is a person of mark and spirit; a commander of the Papal forces, and a prince of statesmanlike experience and virtues. He marries when already past the middle age of life, and sends his natural son, Frederic, to receive his beautiful bride, a daughter of the Duke of Mantua, and to conduct her to Ferrara. Before he reaches Mantua, however, Frederic meets her accidentally on the way; and his first interview with his step-mother is when he rescues her from drowning. From this moment they become gradually more and more attached to each other, until their attachment ends in guilt; partly through the strong impulses of their own natures, and partly from the coldness and faithlessness of the Duke to his young and passionate wife.

On his return home from a successful campaign, the Duke discovers the intrigue. A struggle ensues between his affection for his son and the stinging sense of his own dishonor. At last he determines to punish; but in such a manner as to hide the grounds of his offence. To effect this, he confines his wife in a darkened room, and so conceals and secures her person, that she can neither move, nor speak, nor be seen. He then sends his offending son to her, under the pretence that beneath the pall that hides her is placed a traitor, whom the son is required to kill in order to protect his father’s life; and when the desperate young man rushes from the room, ignorant who has been his victim, he is instantly cut down by the by-standers, on his father’s outcry, that he has just murdered his step-mother, with whose blood his hands are, in fact, visibly reeking.

Lope finished this play on the 1st of August, 1631, when he was nearly sixty-nine years old; and yet there are few of his dramas, in the class to which it belongs, that are more marked with poetical vigor, and in none is the versification more light and various.[335] The characters, especially those of the father and son, are better defined and better sustained than usual; and the whole was evidently written with care, for there are not infrequently large alterations, as well as many minute verbal corrections, in the original manuscript, which is still extant.

It was not licensed for representation till the 9th of May, 1632,—apparently from the known unwillingness of the court to have persons of rank, like the Duke of Ferrara, brought upon the stage in a light so odious. At any rate, when the tardy permission was granted, it was accompanied with a certificate that the Duke was treated with “the decorum due to his person”; though, even with this assurance, it was acted but once, notwithstanding it made a strong impression at the time, and was brought out by the company of Figueroa, the most successful of the period,—Arias, whose acting Montalvan praises highly, taking the part of the son. In 1634, Lope printed it, with more than common care, at Barcelona, dedicating it to his great patron, the Duke of Sessa, among “the servants of whose house,” he says, he “was inscribed”; and the next year, immediately after his death, it appeared again, without the Dedication, in the twenty-first volume of his plays, prepared anew by himself for the press, but published by his daughter Feliciana.[336]

Like “Punishment, not Vengeance,” several other dramas of its class are imbued with the deepest spirit of tragedy. “The Knights Commanders of Córdova” is an instance in point.[337] It is a parallel to the story of Ægisthus and Clytemnestra in its horrors; but the husband, instead of meeting the fate of Agamemnon, puts to death, not only his guilty wife, but all his servants and every living thing in his household, to satisfy his savage sense of honor. Poetry is not wanting in some of its scenes, but the atrocities of the rest will hardly permit it to be perceived.

“The Star of Seville,” on the other hand, though much more truly tragic, is liable to no such objection.[338] In some respects it resembles Corneille’s “Cid.” At the command of his king and from the loftiest loyalty, a knight of Seville kills his friend, a brother of the lady whom he is about to marry. The king afterwards endeavours to hold him harmless for the crime; but the royal judges refuse to interrupt the course of the law in his favor, and the brave knight is saved from death only by the plenary confession of his guilty sovereign. It is one of the very small number of Lope’s pieces that have no comic and distracting underplot. Not a few of its scenes are admirable; especially that in which the king urges the knight to kill his friend; that in which the lovely and innocent creature whom the knight is about to marry receives, in the midst of the frank and delightful expressions of her happiness, the dead body of her brother, who has been slain by her lover; and that in which the Alcaldes solemnly refuse to wrest the law in obedience to the royal commands. The conclusion is better than that in the tragedy of Corneille. The lady abandons the world and retires to a convent.

Of the great number of Lope’s heroic dramas on national subjects, a few should be noticed, in order to indicate the direction he gave to this division of his theatre. One, for instance, is on the story of Bamba, taken from the plough to be made king of Spain;[339] and another, “The Last Goth,” is on the popular traditions of the loss of Spain by Roderic;[340]—the first being among the earliest of his published plays,[341] and the last not printed till twelve years after his death, but both written in one spirit and upon the same system. On the attractive subject of Bernardo del Carpio he has several dramas. One is called “The Youthful Adventures of Bernardo,” and relates his exploits down to the time when he discovered the secret of his birth. Another, called “Bernardo in France,” gives us the story of that part of his life for which the ballads and chronicles afford only slight hints. And a third, “Marriage in Death,” involves the misconduct of King Alfonso, and the heart-rending scene in which the dead body of Bernardo’s father is delivered to the hero, who has sacrificed every thing to filial piety, and now finds himself crushed and ruined by it.[342] The seven Infantes of Lara are not passed over, as we see both in the play that bears their name, and in the more striking one on the story of Mudarra, “El Bastardo Mudarra.”[343] Indeed, it seems as if no picturesque point in the national annals were overlooked by Lope;[344] and that, after bringing on the stage the great events in Spanish history and tradition consecutively down to his own times, he looks round on all sides for subjects, at home and abroad, taking one from the usurpation of Boris Gudunow at Moscow, in 1606,[345] another from the conquest of Arauco, in 1560,[346] and another from the great league that ended with the battle of Lepanto, in 1571; in which last, to avoid the awkwardness of a sea-fight on the stage, he is guilty of introducing the greater awkwardness of an allegorical figure of Spain describing the battle to the audience in Madrid, at the very moment when it is supposed to be going on near the shores of Greece.[347]

The whole class of these heroic and historical dramas, it should be remembered, makes little claim to historical accuracy. A love-story, filled as usual with hairbreadth escapes, jealous quarrels, and questions of honor, runs through nearly every one of them; and though, in some cases, we may trust to the facts set before us, as we must in “The Valiant Cespedes,” where the poet gravely declares that all except the love adventures are strictly true,[348] still, in no case can it be pretended, that the manners of an earlier age, or of foreign nations, are respected, or that the general coloring of the representation is to be regarded as faithful. Thus, in one play we see Nero hurrying about the streets of Rome, like a Spanish gallant, with a guitar on his arm, and making love to his mistress at her grated window.[349] In another, Belisarius, in the days of his glory, is selected to act the part of Pyramus in an interlude before the Emperor Justinian, much as if he belonged to Nick Bottom’s company, and afterwards has his eyes put out, on a charge of making love to the Empress.[350] And in yet a third, Cyrus the Great, after he is seated on his throne, marries a shepherdess.[351] But there is no end to such absurdities in Lope’s plays; and the explanation of them all is, that they were not felt to be such at the time. Truth and faithfulness in regard to the facts, manners, and costume of a drama were not supposed to be more important, in the age of Lope, than an observation of the unities;—not more important than they were supposed to be a century later, in France, in the unending romances of Calprenède and Scudéry;—not more important than they are deemed in an Italian opera now:—so profound is the thought of the greatest of all the masters of the historical drama, that “the best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.”

CHAPTER XVII.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED. — DRAMAS THAT ARE FOUNDED ON THE MANNERS OF COMMON LIFE. — THE WISE MAN AT HOME. — THE DAMSEL THEODORA. — CAPTIVES IN ALGIERS. — INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH ON THE DRAMA. — LOPE’S PLAYS FROM SCRIPTURE. — THE BIRTH OF CHRIST. — THE CREATION OF THE WORLD. — LOPE’S PLAYS ON THE LIVES OF SAINTS. — SAINT ISIDORE OF MADRID. — LOPE’S SACRAMENTAL AUTOS FOR THE FESTIVAL OF THE CORPUS CHRISTI. — THEIR PROLOGUES. — THEIR INTERLUDES. — THE AUTOS THEMSELVES.

THE historical drama of Lope was but a deviation from the more truly national type of the “Comedia de Capa y Espada,” made by the introduction of historical names for its leading personages, instead of those that belong to fashionable and knightly life. This, however, was not the only deviation he made.[352] He went sometimes quite as far on the other side, and created a variety or subdivision of the theatre, founded on common life, in which the chief personages, like those of “The Watermaid,” and “The Slave of her Lover,” belong to the lower classes of society.[353] Of such dramas he has left only a few, but these few are interesting.

Perhaps the best specimen of them is “The Wise Man at Home,” in which the hero, if he may be so called, is Mendo, the son of a poor charcoal-burner.[354] He has married the only child of a respectable farmer, and is in an easy condition of life, with the road to advancement, at least in a gay course, open before him. But he prefers to remain where he is. He refuses the solicitations of a neighbouring lawyer or clerk, engaged in public affairs, who would have the honest Mendo take upon himself the airs of an hidalgo and caballero. Especially upon what was then the great point in private life,—his relations with his pretty wife,—he shows his uniform good sense, while his more ambitious friend falls into serious embarrassments, and is obliged at last to come to him for counsel and help.

The doctrine of the piece is well explained in the following reply of Mendo to his friend, who had been urging him to lead a more showy life, and raise the external circumstances of his father.

He that was born to live in humble state

Makes but an awkward knight, do what you will.

My father means to die as he has lived,

The same plain collier that he always was;

And I, too, must an honest ploughman die.

’T is but a single step, or up or down;

For men there must be that will plough and dig,

And, when the vase has once been filled, be sure

’T will always savor of what first it held.[355]

The story is less important than it is in many of Lope’s dramas; but the sketches of common life are sometimes spirited, like the one in which Mendo describes his first sight of his future wife busied in household work, and the elaborate scene where his first child is christened.[356] The characters, on the other hand, are better defined and drawn than is common with him; and that of the plain, practically wise Mendo is sustained, from beginning to end, with consistency and skill, as well as with good dramatic effect.[357]

Another of these more domestic pieces is called “The Damsel Theodora,” and shows how gladly and with what ingenuity Lope seized on the stories current in his time and turned them to dramatic account. The tale he now used, which bears the same name with the play, and is extremely simple in its structure, was written by an Aragonese, of whom we know only that his name was Alfonso.[358] The damsel Theodora, in this original fiction, is a slave in Tunis, and belongs to a Hungarian merchant living there, who has lost his whole fortune. At her suggestion, she is offered by her master to the king of Tunis, who is so much struck with her beauty and with the amount of her knowledge, that he purchases her at a price which reëstablishes her master’s condition. The point of the whole consists in the exhibition of this knowledge through discussions with learned men; but the subjects are most of them of the commonest kind, and the merit of the story is quite inconsiderable,—less, for instance, than that of “Friar Bacon,” in English, to which, in several respects, it may be compared.[359]

But Lope knew his audiences, and succeeded in adapting this old tale to their taste. The damsel Theodora, as he arranges her character for the stage, is the daughter of a professor at Toledo, and is educated in all the learning of her father’s schools. She, however, is not raised by it above the influences of the tender passion, and, running away with her lover, is captured by a vessel from the coast of Barbary, and carried as a slave successively to Oran, to Constantinople, and finally to Persia, where she is sold to the Sultan for an immense sum on account of her rare knowledge, displayed in the last act of the play much as it is in the original tale of Alfonso, and sometimes in the same words. But the love intrigue, with a multitude of jealous troubles and adventures, runs through the whole; and as the Sultan is made to understand at last the relations of all the parties, who are strangely assembled before him, he gives the price of the damsel as her dower, and marries her to the lover with whom she originally fled from Toledo. The principal jest, both in the drama and the story, is, that a learned doctor, who is defeated by Theodora in a public trial of wits, is bound by the terms of the contest to be stripped naked, and buys off his ignominy with a sum which goes still further to increase the lady’s fortune and the content of her husband.[360]

The last of Lope’s plays to be noticed among those whose subjects are drawn from common life is a more direct appeal, perhaps, than any other of its class to the popular feeling. It is his “Captives in Algiers,”[361] and has been already alluded to as partly borrowed from a play of Cervantes. In its first scenes, a Morisco of Valencia leaves the land where his race had suffered so cruelly, and, after establishing himself among those of his own faith in Algiers, returns by night as a corsair, and, from his familiar knowledge of the Spanish coast, where he was born, easily succeeds in carrying off a number of Christian captives. The fate of these victims, and that of others whom they find in Algiers, including a lover and his mistress, form the subject of the drama. In the course of it, we have scenes in which Christian Spaniards are publicly sold in the slave-market; Christian children torn from their parents and cajoled out of their faith;[362] and a Christian gentleman made to suffer the most dreadful forms of martyrdom for his religion;—in short, we have set before us whatever could most painfully and powerfully excite the interest and sympathy of an audience in Spain at a moment when such multitudes of Spanish families were mourning the captivity of their children and friends.[363] It ends with an account of a play to be acted by the Christian slaves in one of their vast prison-houses, to celebrate the recent marriage of Philip the Third; from which, as well as from a reference to the magnificent festivities that followed it at Denia, in which Lope, as we know, took part, we may be sure that the “Cautivos de Argel” was written as late as 1598, and probably not much later.[364]

A love-story unites its rather incongruous materials into something like a connected whole; but the part we read with the most interest is that assigned to Cervantes, who appears under his family name of Saavedra, without disguise, though without any mark of respect.[365] Considering that Lope took from him some of the best materials for this very piece, and that the sufferings and heroism of Cervantes at Algiers must necessarily have been present to his thoughts when he composed it, we can hardly do him any injustice by adding, that he ought either to have given Cervantes a more dignified part, and alluded to him with tenderness and consideration, or else have refrained from introducing him at all.

The three forms of Lope’s drama which have thus far been considered, and which are nearly akin to each other,[366] were, no doubt, the spontaneous productions of his own genius; modified, indeed, by what he found already existing, and by the taste and will of the audiences for which he wrote, but still essentially his own. Probably, if he had been left to himself and to the mere influences of the theatre, he would have preferred to write no other dramas than such as would naturally come under one of these divisions. But neither he nor his audiences were permitted to settle the whole of this question. The Church, always powerful in Spain, but never so powerful as during the latter part of the reign of Philip the Second, when Lope was just rising into notice, was offended with the dramas then so much in favor, and not without reason. Their free love-stories, their duels, and, indeed, their ideas generally upon domestic life and personal character, have, unquestionably, any thing but a Christian tone.[367] A controversy, therefore, naturally arose concerning their lawfulness, and this controversy was continued till 1598, when, by a royal decree, the representation of secular plays in Madrid was entirely forbidden, and the common theatres were closed for nearly two years.[368]

Lope was compelled to accommodate himself to this new state of things, and seems to have done it easily and with his accustomed address. He had, as we have seen, early written religious plays, like the old Mysteries and Moralities; and he now undertook to infuse their spirit into the more attractive forms of his secular drama, and thus produce an entertainment which, while it might satisfy the popular audiences of the capital, would avoid the rebukes of the Church. His success was as marked as it had been before; and the new varieties of form in which his genius now disported itself were hardly less striking.

His most obvious resource was the Scriptures, to which, as they had been used more than four centuries for dramatic purposes, on the greater religious festivals of the Spanish Church, the ecclesiastical powers could hardly, with a good grace, now make objection. Lope, therefore, resorted to them freely; sometimes constructing dramas out of them which might be mistaken for the old Mysteries, were it not for their more poetical character, and their sometimes approaching so near to his own intriguing comedies, that, but for the religious parts, they might seem to belong to the merely secular and fashionable theatre that had just been interdicted.

Of the first, or more religious sort, his “Birth of Christ” may be taken as a specimen.[369] It is divided into three acts, and begins in Paradise, immediately after the creation. The first scene introduces Satan, Pride, Beauty, and Envy;—Satan appearing with “dragon’s wings, a bushy wig, and above it a serpent’s head”; and Envy carrying a heart in her hand and wearing snakes in her hair. After some discussion about the creation, Adam and Eve approach in the characters of King and Queen. Innocence, who is the clown and wit of the piece, and Grace, who is dressed in white, come in at the same time, and, while Satan and his friends are hidden in the thicket, hold the following dialogue, which may be regarded as characteristic, not only of this particular drama, but of the whole class to which it belongs:—

Adam.

Here, Lady Queen, upon this couch of grass and flowers

Sit down.

Innocence.

Well, that’s good, i’ faith;

He calls her Lady Queen.

Grace.

And don’t you see

She is his wife; flesh of his flesh indeed,

And of his bone the bone?

Innocence.

That’s just as if

You said, She, through his being, being hath.—

What dainty compliments they pay each other!

Grace.

Two persons are they, yet one flesh they are.

Innocence.

And may their union last a thousand years,

And in sweet peace continue evermore!

Grace.

The king his father and his mother leaves

For his fair queen.

Innocence.

And leaves not overmuch,

Since no man yet has been with parents born.

But, in good faith, good master Adam,

All fine as you go on, pranked out by Grace,

I feel no little trouble at your course,

Like that of other princes made of clay.

But I admit it was a famous trick,

In your most sovereign Lord, out of the mud

A microcosm nice to make, and do it

In one day.

Grace.

He that the greater world could build

By his commanding power alone, to him

It was not much these lesser works on earth

To do. And see you not the two great lamps

Which overhead he hung so fair?

Innocence.

And how

The earth he sowed with flowers, the heavens with stars?[370]

Immediately after the fall, and therefore, according to the common Scriptural computation, about four thousand years before she was born, the Madonna appears, and personally drives Satan down to perdition, while, at the same time, an Angel expels Adam and Eve from Paradise. The Divine Prince and the Celestial Emperor, as the Saviour and the Supreme Divinity are respectively called, then come upon the vacant stage, and, in a conference full of theological subtilties, arrange the system of man’s redemption, which, at the Divine command, Gabriel,

Accompanied with armies all of stars

To fill the air with glorious light,[371]

descending to Galilee, announces as about to be accomplished by the birth of the Messiah. This ends the first act.

The second opens with the rejoicings of the Serpent, Sin, and Death,—confident that the World is now fairly given up to them. But their rejoicings are short. Clarionets are sounded, and Divine Grace appears on the upper portion of the stage, and at once expels the sinful rout from their boasted possessions; explaining afterwards to the World, who now comes on as one of the personages of the scene, that the Holy Family are immediately to bring salvation to men.

The World replies with rapture:—

O holy Grace, already I behold them;

And, though the freezing night forbids, will haste

To border round my hoar frost all with flowers;

To force the tender buds to spring again

From out their shrunken branches; and to loose

The gentle streamlets from the hill-tops cold,

That they may pour their liquid crystal down;

While the old founts, at my command, shall flow

With milk, and ash-trees honey pure distil

To quench our joyful thirst.[372]

The next scene is in Bethlehem, where Joseph and Mary appear begging for entrance at an inn, but, owing to the crowd, they are sent to a stable just outside the city, in whose contiguous fields shepherds and shepherdesses are seen suffering from the frosty night, but jesting and singing rude songs about it. In the midst of their troubles and merriment, an angel appears in a cloud announcing the birth of the Saviour; and the second act is then concluded by the resolution of all to go and find him, and carry him their glad salutations.

The last act is chiefly taken up with discussions of the same subjects by the same shepherds and shepherdesses, and an account of the visit to the mother and child; some parts of which are not without poetical merit. It ends with the appearance of the three Kings, preceded by dances of Gypsies and Negroes, and with the worship and offerings brought by all to the newborn Saviour.

Such dramas do not seem to have been favorites with Lope, and perhaps were not favorites with his audiences. At least, few of them appear among his printed works;—the one just noticed, and another, called “The Creation of the World and Man’s First Sin,” being the most prominent and curious;[373] and one on the atonement, entitled “The Pledge Redeemed,” being the most wild and gross. But to the proper stories of the Scriptures he somewhat oftener resorted, and with characteristic talent. Thus, we have full-length plays on the history of Tobias and the seven-times-wedded maid;[374] on the fair Esther and Ahasuerus;[375] and on the somewhat unsuitable subject of the Ravishment of Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, as it is told in the book of Genesis.[376] In all these, and in the rest of the class to which they belong, Spanish manners and ideas, rather than Jewish, give their coloring to the scene; and the story, though substantially taken from the Hebrew records, is thus rendered much more attractive, for the purposes of its representation at Madrid, than it would have been in its original simplicity; as, for instance, in the case of the “Esther,” where a comic underplot between a coquettish shepherdess and her lover is much relied upon for the popular effect of the whole.[377]

Still, even these dramas were not able to satisfy audiences accustomed to the more national spirit of plays founded on fashionable life and intriguing adventures. A wider range, therefore, was taken. Striking religious events of all kinds—especially those found in the lives of holy men—were resorted to, and ingenious stories were constructed out of the miracles and sufferings of saints, which were often as interesting as the intrigues of Spanish gallants, or the achievements of the old Spanish heroes, and were sometimes hardly less free and wild. Saint Jerome, under the name of the “Cardinal of Bethlehem,” is brought upon the stage in one of them, first as a gay gallant, and afterwards as a saint scourged by angels, and triumphing, in open show, over Satan.[378] In another, San Diego of Alcalá rises, from being the attendant of a poor hermit, to be a general with military command, and, after committing most soldier-like atrocities in the Fortunate Islands, returns and dies at home in the odor of sanctity.[379] And in yet others, historical subjects of a religious character are taken, like the story of the holy Bamba torn from the plough, in the seventh century, and by miraculous command made king of Spain;[380] or like the life of the Mohammedan prince of Morocco, who, in 1593, was converted to Christianity and publicly baptized in presence of Philip the Second, with the heir of the throne for his godfather.[381]

All these, and many more like them, were represented with the consent of the ecclesiastical powers,—sometimes even in convents and other religious houses, but oftener in public, and always under auspices no less obviously religious.[382] The favorite materials for such dramas, however, were found, at last, almost exclusively in the lives of popular saints; and the number of plays filled with such histories and miracles was so great, soon after the year 1600, that they came to be considered as a class by themselves, under the name of “Comedias de Santos,” or Saints’ Plays. Lope wrote many of them. Besides those already mentioned, we have from his pen dramatic compositions on the lives of Saint Francis, San Pedro de Nolasco, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Julian, Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, Santa Teresa, three on San Isidro de Madrid, and not a few others. Many of them, like Saint Nicholas of Tolentino,[383] are very strange and extravagant; but perhaps none will give a more true idea of the entire class than the first one he wrote, on the subject of the favored saint of his own city, San Isidro de Madrid.[384]

It seems to have all the varieties of interest and character that belong to the secular divisions of the Spanish drama. Scenes of stirring interest occur in it among warriors just returned to Madrid from a successful foray against the Moors; gay scenes, with rustic dancing and frolics, at the marriage of Isidro and the birth of his son; and scenes of broad farce with the sacristan, who complains, that, owing to Isidro’s power with Heaven, he no longer gets fees for burials, and that he believes Death is gone to live elsewhere. But through the whole runs the loving and devout character of the Saint himself, and gives it a sort of poetical unity. The angels come down to plough for him, that he may no longer incur reproach by neglecting his labors in order to attend mass; and at the touch of his goad, a spring of pure water, still looked upon with reverence, rises in a burning waste to refresh his unjust master. Popular songs and poetry, meanwhile,[385] with a parody of the old Moorish ballad of “Gentle River, Gentle River,”[386] and allusions to the holy image of Almudena, and the church of Saint Andrew, give life to the dialogue, as it goes on;—all familiar as household words at Madrid, and striking chords which, when this drama was first represented, still vibrated in every heart. At the end, the body of the Saint, after his death, is exposed before the well-known altar of his favorite church; and there, according to the old traditions, his former master and the queen come to worship him, and, with pious sacrilege, endeavour to bear away from his person relics for their own protection; but are punished on the spot by a miracle, which thus serves at once as the final and crowning testimony to the divine merits of the Saint, and as an appropriate dénouement for the piece.

No doubt, such a drama, extending over forty or fifty years of time, with its motley crowd of personages,—among whom are angels and demons, Envy, Falsehood, and the River Manzanares,—would now be accounted grotesque and irreverent, rather than any thing else. But in the time of Lope, the audiences not only brought a willing faith to such representations, but received gladly an exhibition of the miracles which connected the saint they worshipped and his beneficent virtues with their own times and their personal well-being.[387] If to this we add the restraints on the theatre, and Lope’s extraordinary facility, grace, and ingenuity, which never failed to consult and gratify the popular taste, we shall have all the elements necessary to explain the great number of religious dramas he composed, whether of the nature of Mysteries, Scripture stories, or lives of saints. They belonged to his age and country as much as he himself did.

But Lope adventured with success in another form of the drama, not only more grotesque than that of the full-length religious plays, but intended yet more directly for popular edification,—the “Autos Sacramentales,” or Sacramental Acts,—a sort of religious plays performed in the streets during the season when the gorgeous ceremonies of the “Corpus Christi” filled them with rejoicing crowds.[388] No form of the Spanish drama is older, and none had so long a reign, or maintained during its continuance so strong a hold on the general favor. Its representations, as we have already seen, may be found among the earliest intimations of the national literature; and, as we shall learn hereafter, they were with difficulty suppressed by the royal authority after the middle of the eighteenth century. In the age of Lope, and in that immediately following, they were at the height of their success, and had become an important part of the religious ceremonies arranged for the solemn sacramental festival to which they were devoted, not only in Madrid, but throughout Spain; all the theatres being closed for a month to give place to them and to do them honor.[389]

Yet to our apprehensions, notwithstanding their religious claims, they seem almost wholly gross and irreverent. Indeed, the very circumstances under which they were represented would seem to prove that they were not regarded as really solemn. A sort of rude mumming, which certainly had nothing grave about it, preceded them, as they advanced through the thronged streets, where the windows and balconies of all the better sort of houses were hung with silks and tapestries to do honor to the occasion. First in this extraordinary procession came the figure of a misshapen marine monster, called the Tarasca, half serpent in form, borne by men concealed in its cumbrous bulk, and surmounted by another figure representing the Woman of Babylon,—the whole so managed as to fill with wonder and terror the poor country people that crowded round it, some of whose hats and caps were generally snatched away by the grinning beast, and regarded as the lawful plunder of his conductors.[390]

Then followed a company of fair children, with garlands on their heads, singing hymns and litanies of the Church; and sometimes companies of men and women with castanets, dancing the national dances. Two or more huge Moorish or negro giants, commonly called the Gigantones, made of pasteboard, came next, jumping about grotesquely, to the great alarm of some of the less experienced part of the crowd, and to the great amusement of the rest. Then, with much pomp and fine music, appeared the priests, bearing the Host under a splendid canopy; and after them a long and devout procession, where was seen, in Madrid, the king, with a taper in his hand, like the meanest of his subjects, together with the great officers of state and foreign ambassadors, who all crowded in to swell the splendor of the scene.[391] Last of all came showy cars, filled with actors from the public theatres, who were to figure on the occasion, and add to its attractions, if not to its solemnity;—personages who constituted so important a part of the day’s festivity, that the whole was often called, in popular phrase, The Festival of the Cars,—“La Fiesta de los Carros.”[392]

This procession—not, indeed, magnificent in the towns and hamlets of the provinces, as it was in the capital, but always as imposing as the resources of the place where it occurred could make it—stopped from time to time under awnings in front of the house of some distinguished person,—perhaps that of the President of the Council of Castile at Madrid; perhaps that of the alcalde of a village,—and there waited reverently till certain religious offices could be performed by the ecclesiastics; the multitude, all the while, kneeling, as if in church. As soon as these duties were over, or at a later hour of the day, the actors from the cars appeared on a neighbouring stage, in the open air, and performed, according to their limited service, the sacramental auto prepared for the occasion, and always alluding to it directly. Of such autos, we know, on good authority, that Lope wrote about four hundred,[393] though no more than twelve or thirteen of the whole number are now extant, and these, we are told, were published only that the towns and villages of the interior might enjoy the same devout pleasures that were enjoyed by the court and capital;—so universal was the fanaticism for this strange form of amusement, and so deeply was it seated in the popular character.[394]

At an earlier period, and perhaps as late as the time of Lope’s first appearance, this part of the festival consisted of a very simple exhibition, accompanied with rustic songs, eclogues, and dancing, such as we find it in a large collection of manuscript autos, of which two that have been published are slight and rude in their structure and dialogue, and seem to date from a period as early as that of Lope;[395] but during his lifetime, and chiefly under his influence, it became a formal and well-defined popular entertainment, divided into three parts, each of which was quite distinct in its character from the others, and all of them dramatic.

First of all, in its more completed state, came the loa. This was always of the nature of a prologue; but sometimes, in form, it was a dialogue spoken by two or more actors. One of the best of Lope’s is of this kind. It is filled with the troubles of a peasant who has come to Madrid in order to see these very shows, and has lost his wife in the crowd; but, just as he has quite consoled himself and satisfied his conscience by determining to have her cried once or twice, and then to give her up as a lucky loss and take another, she comes in and describes with much spirit the wonders of the procession she had seen, precisely as her audience themselves had just seen it; thus making, in the form of a prologue, a most amusing and appropriate introduction for the drama that was to follow.[396] Another of Lope’s loas is a discussion between a gay gallant and a peasant, who talks, in his rustic dialect, on the subject of the doctrine of transubstantiation.[397] Another is given in the character of a Morisco, and is a monologue, in the dialect of the speaker, on the advantages and disadvantages of his turning Christian in earnest, after having for some time made his living fraudulently by begging in the assumed character of a Christian pilgrim.[398] All of them are amusing, though burlesque; but some of them are any thing rather than religious.

After the loa came an entremes. All that remain to us of Lope’s entremeses are mere farces, like the interludes used every day in the secular theatres. In one instance he makes an entremes a satire upon lawyers, in which a member of the craft, as in the old French “Maistre Pathelin,” is cheated and robbed by a seemingly simple peasant, who first renders him extremely ridiculous, and then escapes by disguising himself as a blind ballad-singer, and dancing and singing in honor of the festival,—a conclusion which seems to be peculiarly irreverent for this particular occasion.[399] In another instance, he ridicules the poets of his time by bringing on the stage a lady who pretends she has just come from the Indies, with a fortune, in order to marry a poet, and succeeds in her purpose; but both find themselves deceived, for the lady has no income but such as is gained by a pair of castanets, and her husband turns out to be a ballad-maker. Both, however, have good sense enough to be content with each other, and to agree to go through the world together singing and dancing ballads, of which, by way of finale to the entremes, they at once give the crowd a specimen.[400] Yet another of Lope’s successful attempts in this way is an interlude containing within itself the representation of a play on the story of Helen, which reminds us of the similar entertainment of Pyramus and Thisbe in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream”; but it breaks off in the middle,—the actor who plays Paris running off in earnest with the actress who plays Helen, and the piece ending with a burlesque scene of confusions and reconciliations.[401] And finally, another is a parody of the procession itself, with its giants, cars, and all; treating the whole with the gayest ridicule.[402]

Thus far, all has been avowedly comic in the dramatic exhibitions of these religious festivals. But the autos or sacramental acts themselves, with which the whole concluded, and to which all that preceded was only introductory, claim to be more grave in their general tone, though in some cases, like the prologues and interludes, parts of them are too whimsical and extravagant to be any thing but amusing. “The Bridge of the World” is one of this class.[403] It represents the Prince of Darkness placing the giant Leviathan on the bridge of the world, to defend its passage against all comers who do not confess his supremacy. Adam and Eve, who, we are told in the directions to the players, appear “dressed very gallantly after the French fashion,” are naturally the first that present themselves.[404] They subscribe to the hard condition, and pass over in sight of the audience. In the same manner, as the dialogue informs us, the patriarchs, with Moses, David, and Solomon, go over; but at last the Knight of the Cross, “the Celestial Amadis of Greece,” as he is called, appears in person, overthrows the pretensions of the Prince of Darkness, and leads the Soul of Man in triumph across the fatal passage. The whole is obviously a parody of the old story of the Giant defending the Bridge of Mantible;[405] and when to this are added parodies of the ballad of “Count Claros” applied to Adam,[406] and of other old ballads applied to the Saviour,[407] the confusion of allegory and farce, of religion and folly, seems to be complete.

Others of the autos are more uniformly grave. “The Harvest” is a spiritualized version of the parable in Saint Matthew on the Field that was sowed with Good Seed and with Tares,[408] and is carried through with some degree of solemnity; but the unhappy tares, that are threatened with being cut down and cast into the fire, are nothing less than Judaism, Idolatry, Heresy, and all Sectarianism, who are hardly saved from their fate by the mercy of the Lord of the Harvest and his fair spouse, the Church. However, notwithstanding a few such absurdities and awkwardnesses in the allegory, and some very misplaced compliments to the reigning Spanish family, this is one of the best of the class to which it belongs, and one of the most solemn. Another of those open to less reproach than usual is called “The Return from Egypt,”[409] which, with its shepherds and gypsies, has quite the grace of an eclogue, and, with its ballads and popular songs, has some of the charms that belong to Lope’s secular dramas. These two, with “The Wolf turned Shepherd,”[410]—which is an allegory on the subject of the Devil taking upon himself the character of the true shepherd of the flock,—constitute as fair, or perhaps, rather, as favorable, specimens of the genuine Spanish auto as can be found in the elder school. All of them rest on the grossest of the prevailing notions in religion; all of them appeal, in every way they can, whether light or serious, to the popular feelings and prejudices; many of them are imbued with the spirit of the old national poetry; and these, taken together, are the foundation on which their success rested,—a success which, if we consider the religious object of the festival, was undoubtedly of extraordinary extent and extraordinary duration.

But the entremeses or interludes that were used to enliven the dramatic part of this rude, but gorgeous ceremonial, were by no means confined to it. They were, as has been intimated, acted daily in the public theatres, where, from the time when the full-length dramas were introduced, they had been inserted between their different divisions or acts, to afford a lighter amusement to the audience. Lope wrote a great number of them; how many is not known. From their slight character, however, hardly more than thirty have been preserved. But we have enough to show that in this, as in the other departments of his drama, popular effect was chiefly sought, and that, as everywhere else, the flexibility of his genius is manifested in the variety of forms in which it exhibits its resources. Generally speaking, those we possess are written in prose, are very short, and have no plot; being merely farcical dialogues drawn from common or vulgar life.

The “Melisendra,” however, one of the first he published, is an exception to this remark. It is composed almost entirely in verse, is divided into acts, and has a loa or prologue;—in short, it is a parody in the form of a regular play, founded on the story of Gayferos and Melisendra in the old ballads.[411] The “Padre Engañado,” which Holcroft brought upon the English stage under the name of “The Father Outwitted,” is another exception, and is a lively farce of eight or ten pages, on the ridiculous troubles of a father who gives his own daughter in disguise to the very lover from whom he supposed he had carefully shut her up.[412] But most of them, like “The Indian,” “The Cradle,” and “The Robbers Cheated,” would occupy hardly more than fifteen minutes each in their representation,—slight dialogues of the broadest farce, continued as long as the time between the acts would conveniently permit, and then abruptly terminated to give place to the principal drama.[413] A vigorous spirit, and a popular, rude humor are rarely wanting in them.

But Lope, whenever he wrote for the theatre, seems to have remembered its old foundations, and to have shown a tendency to rest upon them as much as possible of his own drama. This is apparent in the very entremeses we have just noticed. They are to be traced back to Lope de Rueda, whose short farces were of the same nature, and were used, after the introduction of dramas of three acts, in the same way.[414] It is apparent, too, as we have seen, in his moral and allegorical plays, in his sacramental acts, and in his dramas taken from the Scripture and the lives of the saints; all founded on the earlier Mysteries and Moralities. And now we find the same tendency again in yet one more class, that of his eclogues and pastorals,—a form of the drama which may be recognized at least as early as the time of Juan de la Enzina.[415] Of these Lope wrote a considerable number, that are still extant,—twenty or more,—not a few of which bear distinct marks of their origin in that singular mixture of a bucolic and a religious tone that is seen in the first beginnings of a public theatre in Spain.

Some of the eclogues of Lope, we know, were performed; as, for instance, “The Wood and no Love in it,”—Selva sin Amor,—which was represented with costly pomp and much ingenious apparatus before the king and the royal family.[416] Others, like seven or eight in his “Pastores de Belen,” and one published under the name of “Tomé de Burguillos,”—all of which claim to have been arranged for Christmas and different religious festivals,—so much resemble such as we know were really performed on these occasions, that we can hardly doubt, that, like those just mentioned, they also were represented.[417] While yet others, like the first he ever published, called the “Amorosa,” and his last, addressed to Philis, together with one on the death of his wife, and one on the death of his son, were probably intended only to be read.[418] But all may have been acted, if we are to judge from the habits of the age, when, as we know, eclogues never destined for the stage were represented, as much as if they had been expressly written for it.[419] At any rate, all Lope’s compositions of this kind show how gladly and freely his genius overflowed into the remotest of the many forms of the drama that were recognized or permitted in his time.

CHAPTER XVIII.

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED. — HIS CHARACTERISTICS AS A DRAMATIC WRITER. — HIS STORIES, CHARACTERS, AND DIALOGUE. — HIS DISREGARD OF RULES, OF HISTORICAL TRUTH, AND MORAL PROPRIETY. — HIS COMIC UNDERPLOT AND GRACIOSO. — HIS POETICAL STYLE AND MANNER. — HIS FITNESS TO WIN GENERAL FAVOR. — HIS SUCCESS. — HIS FORTUNE, AND THE VAST AMOUNT OF HIS WORKS.

THE extraordinary variety in the character of Lope’s dramas is as remarkable as their number, and contributed not a little to render him the monarch of the stage while he lived, and the great master of the national theatre ever since. But though this vast variety and inexhaustible fertility constitute, as it were, the two great corner-stones on which his success rested, still there were other circumstances attending it that should by no means be overlooked, when we are examining, not only the surprising results themselves, but the means by which they were obtained.

The first of these is the principle which may be considered as running through the whole of his full-length plays,—that of making all other interests subordinate to the interest of the story. Thus, the characters are a matter evidently of inferior moment with him; so that the idea of exhibiting a single passion giving a consistent direction to all the energies of a strong will, as in the case of Richard the Third, or, as in the case of Macbeth, distracting them all no less consistently, does not occur in the whole range of his dramas. Sometimes, it is true, though rarely, as in Sancho Ortiz, he develops a marked and generous spirit, with distinctive lineaments; but in no case is this the main object, and in no case is it done with the appearance of an artist-like skill or a deliberate purpose. On the contrary, a great majority of his characters are almost as much standing masks as Pantalone is on the Venetian stage, or Scapin on the French. The primer galan, or hero, all love, honor, and jealousy; the dama, or heroine, no less loving and jealous, but yet more rash and heedless; and the brother, or if not the brother, then the barba, or old man and father, ready to cover the stage with blood, if the lover has even been seen in the house of the heroine,—these recur continually, and serve, not only in the secular, but often in the religious pieces, as the fixed points round which the different actions, with their different incidents, are made to revolve.

In the same way, the dialogue is used chiefly to bring out the plot, and hardly at all to bring out the characters. This is obvious in the long speeches, sometimes consisting of two or three hundred verses, which are as purely narrative as an Italian novella, and often much like one; and it is seen, too, in the crowd of incidents that compose the action, which not infrequently fails to find space sufficient to spread out all its ingenious involutions and make them easily intelligible; a difficulty of which Lope once gives his audience fair warning, telling them at the outset of the piece, that they must not lose a syllable of the first explanation, or they will certainly fail to understand the curious plot that follows.

Obeying the same principle, he sacrifices regularity and congruity in his stories, if he can but make them interesting. His longer plays, indeed, are regularly divided into three jornadas, or acts; but this, though he claims it as a merit, is not an arrangement of his own invention, and is, moreover, merely an arbitrary mode of producing the pauses necessary to the convenience of the actors and spectators; pauses which, in Lope’s theatre, have too often nothing to do with the structure and proportions of the piece itself.[420] As for the six plays which, as he intimates, were written according to the rules, Spanish criticism has sought for them in vain;[421] nor does any of them, probably, exist now, if any ever existed, unless “La Melindrosa”—The Prude—may have been one of them. But he avows very honestly that he regards rules of all kinds only as obstacles to his success. “When I am going to write a play,” he says, “I lock up all precepts, and cast Terence and Plautus out of my study, lest they should cry out against me, as truth is wont to do even from such dumb volumes; for I write according to the art invented by those who sought the applause of the multitude, whom it is but just to humor in their folly, since it is they who pay for it.”[422]

The extent to which, following this principle, Lope sacrificed dramatic probabilities and possibilities, geography, history, and a decent morality, can be properly understood only by reading a large number of his plays. But a few instances will partially illustrate it. In his “First King of Castile,” the events fill thirty-six years in the middle of the eleventh century, and a Gypsy is introduced four hundred years before Gypsies were known in Europe.[423] The whole romantic story of the Seven Infantes of Lara is put into the play of “Mudarra.”[424] In “Spotless Purity,” Job, David, Jeremiah, Saint John the Baptist, and the University of Salamanca figure together;[425] and in “The Birth of Christ” we have, for the two extremes, the creation of the world and the Nativity.[426] So much for history. Geography is treated no better, when Constantinople is declared to be four thousand leagues from Madrid,[427] and Spaniards are made to disembark from a ship in Hungary.[428] And as to morals, it is not easy to tell how Lope reconciled his opinions to his practice. In the Preface to the twentieth volume of his Theatre, he declares, in reference to his own “Wise Vengeance,” that “its title is absurd, because all revenge is unwise and unlawful”; and yet it seems as if one half of his plays go to justify it. It is made a merit in San Isidro, that he stole his master’s grain to give it to the starving birds.[429] The prayers of Nicolas de Tolentino are accounted sufficient for the salvation of a kinsman who, after a dissolute life, had died in an act of mortal sin;[430] and the cruel and atrocious conquest of Arauco is claimed as an honor to a noble family and a grace to the national escutcheon.[431]

But all these violations of the truth of fact and of the commonest rules of Christian morals, of which nobody was more aware than their perpetrator, were overlooked by Lope himself, and by his audiences, in the general interest of the plot. A dramatized novel was the form he chose to give to his plays, and he succeeded in settling it as the main principle of the Spanish stage. “Tales,” he declares, “have the same rules with dramas, the purpose of whose authors is to content and please the public, though the rules of art may be strangled by it.”[432] And elsewhere, when defending his opinions, he says: “Keep the explanation of the story doubtful till the last scene; for, as soon as the public know how it will end, they turn their faces to the door and their backs to the stage.”[433] This had never been said before; and though some traces of intriguing plots are to be found from the time of Torres de Naharro, yet nobody ever thought of relying upon them, in this way, for success, till Lope had set the example, which his school have so faithfully followed.

Another element which he established in the Spanish drama was the comic underplot. All his plays, with the signal exception of the “Star of Seville,” and a few others of less note, have it;—sometimes in a pastoral form, but generally as a simple admixture of farce. The characters contained in this portion of each of his dramas are as much standing masks as those in the graver portion, and were perfectly well known under the name of the graciosos and graciosas, or drolls, to which was afterwards added the vegete, or a little, old, testy esquire, who is always boasting of his descent, and is often employed in teasing the gracioso. In most cases, they constitute a parody on the dialogue and adventures of the hero and heroine, as Sancho is partly a parody of Don Quixote, and in most cases they are the servants of the respective parties;—the men being good-humored cowards and gluttons, the women mischievous and coquettish, and both full of wit, malice, and an affected simplicity. Slight traces of such characters are to be found on the Spanish stage as far back as the servants in the “Serafina” of Torres Naharro; and in the middle of that century, the bobo, or fool, figures freely in the farces of Lope de Rueda, as the simplé had done before in those of Enzina. But the variously witty gracioso, the full-blown parody of the heroic characters of the play, the dramatic pícaro, is the work of Lope de Vega. He first introduced it into the “Francesilla,” where the oldest of the tribe, under the name of Tristan, was represented by Rios, a famous actor of his time, and produced a great effect;[434]—an event which, Lope tells us, in the Dedication of the drama itself, in 1620, to his friend Montalvan, occurred before that friend was born, and therefore before the year 1602.

From this time the gracioso is found in nearly all of his plays, and in nearly every other play produced on the Spanish stage, from which it passed, first to the French, and then to all the other theatres of modern times. Excellent specimens of it may be found in the sacristan of the “Captives of Algiers,” in the servants of the “Saint John’s Eve,” and in the servants of the “Ugly Beauty”; in all which, as well as in many more, the gracioso is skilfully turned to account, by being made partly to ridicule the heroic extravagances and rhodomontade of the leading personages, and partly to shield the author himself from rebuke by good-humoredly confessing for him that he was quite aware he deserved it. Of such we may say, as Don Quixote did, when speaking of the whole class to the Bachelor Samson Carrasco, that they are the shrewdest fellows in their respective plays. But of others, whose ill-advised wit is inopportunely thrust, with their foolscaps and bawbles, into the gravest and most tragic scenes of plays like “Marriage in Death,” we can only avow, that, though they were demanded by the taste of the age, nothing in any age can suffice for their justification.

The last among the circumstances which should not be overlooked, when considering the means of Lope’s great success, is his poetical style, the metres he adopted, and especially the use he made of the elder poetry of his country. In all these respects, he is to be praised; always excepting the occasions when, to obtain universal applause, he permitted himself the use of that obscure and affected style which the courtly part of his audience demanded, and which he himself elsewhere condemned and ridiculed.[435]

No doubt, indeed, much of his power over the mass of the people of his time is to be sought in the charm that belonged to his versification; not unfrequently careless, but almost always fresh, flowing, and effective. Its variety, too, was remarkable. No metre of which the language was susceptible escaped him. The Italian octave stanzas are frequent; the terza rima, though more sparingly used, occurs often; and hardly a play is without one or more sonnets. All this was to please the more fashionable and cultivated among his audience, who had long been enamoured of whatever was Italian; and though some of it was unhappy enough, like sonnets with echoes,[436] it was all fluent and all successful.

Still, as far as his verse was concerned,—besides the silvas, or masses of irregular lines, the quintillas, or five-line stanzas, and the liras, or six-line,—he relied, above every thing else, upon the old national ballad-measure;—both the proper romance, with asonantes, and the redondilla, with rhymes between the first and fourth lines and between the second and third. In this he was unquestionably right. The earliest attempts at dramatic representation in Spain had been somewhat lyrical in their tone, and the more artificial forms of verse, therefore, especially those with short lines interposed at regular intervals, had been used by Juan de la Enzina, by Torres Naharro, and by others; though, latterly, in these, as in many respects, much confusion had been introduced into Spanish dramatic poetry. But Lope, making his drama more narrative than it had been before, settled it at once and finally on the true national narrative measure. He went farther. He introduced into it much old ballad-poetry, and many separate ballads of his own composition. Thus, in “The Sun Delayed,” the Master of Santiago, who has lost his way, stops and sings a ballad;[437] and in his “Poverty no Disgrace,” he has inserted a beautiful one, beginning,

O noble Spanish cavalier,

You hasten to the fight;

The trumpet rings upon your ear,

And victory claims her right.[438]

Probably, however, he produced a still greater effect when he brought in passages, not of his own, but of old and well-known ballads, or allusions to them. Of these his plays are full. For instance, his “Sun Delayed,” and his “Envy of Nobility,” are all-redolent of the Morisco ballads, that were so much admired in his time; the first taking those that relate to the loves of Gazul and Zayda,[439] and the last those from the “Civil Wars of Granada,” about the wild feuds of the Zegris and the Abencerrages.[440] Hardly less marked is the use he makes of the old ballads on Roderic, in his “Last Goth”;[441] of those concerning the Infantes of Lara, in his several plays relating to their tragical story;[442] and of those about Bernardo del Carpio, in “Marriage and Death.”[443] Occasionally, the effect of their introduction must have been very great. Thus, when, in his drama of “Santa Fé,” crowded with the achievements of Hernando del Pulgar, Garcilasso de la Vega, and whatever was most glorious and picturesque in the siege of Granada, one of his personages breaks out with a variation of the familiar and grand old ballad,—

Now Santa Fé is circled round

With canvas walls so fair,

And tents that cover all the ground

With silks and velvets rare,—[444]

it must have stirred his audience as with the sound of a trumpet.

Indeed, in all respects, Lope well understood how to win the general favor, and how to build up and strengthen his fortunate position as the leading dramatic poet of his time. The ancient foundations of the theatre, as far as any existed when he appeared, were little disturbed by him. He carried on the drama, he says, as he found it; not venturing to observe the rules of art, because, if he had done so, the public never would have listened to him.[445] The elements that were floating about, crude and unsettled, he used freely; but only so far as they suited his general purpose. The division into three acts, known so little, that he attributed it to Virues, though it was made much earlier; the ballad-measure, which had been timidly used by Tarraga and two or three others, but relied upon by nobody; the intriguing story, and the amusing underplot, of which the slight traces that existed in Torres Naharro had been long forgotten,—all these he seized with the instinct of genius, and formed from them, and from the abundant and rich inventions of his own overflowing fancy, a drama which, as a whole, was unlike any thing that had preceded it, and yet was so truly national and rested so faithfully on tradition, that it was never afterwards disturbed, till the whole literature, of which it was so brilliant a part, was swept away with it.

Lope de Vega’s immediate success, as we have seen, was in proportion to his rare powers and favorable opportunities. For a long time, nobody else was willingly heard on the stage; and during the whole of the forty or fifty years that he wrote for it, he stood quite unapproached in general popularity. His unnumbered plays and farces, in all the forms that were demanded by the fashions of the age, or permitted by religious authority, filled the theatres both of the capital and the provinces; and so extraordinary was the impulse he gave to dramatic representations, that, though there were only two companies of strolling players at Madrid when he began, there were, about the period of his death, no less than forty, comprehending nearly a thousand persons.[446]

Abroad, too, his fame was hardly less remarkable. In Rome, Naples, and Milan, his dramas were performed in their original language; in France and Italy, his name was announced in order to fill the theatres when no play of his was to be performed;[447] and once even, and probably oftener, one of his dramas was represented in the seraglio at Constantinople.[448] But perhaps neither all this popularity, nor yet the crowds that followed him in the streets and gathered in the balconies to watch him as he passed along,[449] nor the name of Lope, that was given to whatever was esteemed singularly good in its kind,[450] is so striking a proof of his dramatic success, as the fact, so often complained of by himself and his friends, that multitudes of his plays were fraudulently noted down as they were acted, and then printed for profit throughout Spain; and that multitudes of other plays appeared under his name, and were represented all over the provinces, that he had never even heard of till they were published and performed.[451]

A large income naturally followed such popularity, for his plays were liberally paid for by the actors;[452] and he had patrons of a munificence unknown in our days, and always undesirable.[453] But he was thriftless and wasteful; exceedingly charitable; and, in hospitality to his friends, prodigal. He was, therefore, almost always embarrassed. At the end of his “Jerusalem,” printed as early as 1609, he complains of the pressure of his domestic affairs;[454] and in his old age he addressed some verses, in the nature of a petition, to the still more thriftless Philip the Fourth, asking the means of living for himself and his daughter.[455] After his death, his poverty was fully admitted by his executor; and yet, considering the relative value of money, no poet, perhaps, ever received so large a compensation for his works.

It should, however, be remembered, that no other poet ever wrote so much with popular effect. For, if we begin with his dramatic compositions, which are the best of his efforts, and go down to his epics, which, on the whole, are the worst,[456] we shall find the amount of what was received with favor, as it came from the press, quite unparalleled. And when to this we are compelled to add his own assurance, just before his death, that the greater part of his works still remained in manuscript,[457] we pause in astonishment, and, before we are able to believe the account, demand some explanation that will make it credible;—an explanation which is the more important, because it is the key to much of his personal character, as well as of his poetical success. And it is this. No poet of any considerable reputation ever had a genius so nearly related to that of an improvisator, or ever indulged his genius so freely in the spirit of improvisation. This talent has always existed in the southern countries of Europe; and in Spain has, from the first, produced, in different ways, the most extraordinary results. We owe to it the invention and perfection of the old ballads, which were originally improvisated and then preserved by tradition; and we owe to it the seguidillas, the boleros, and all the other forms of popular poetry that still exist in Spain, and are daily poured forth by the fervent imaginations of the uncultivated classes of the people, and sung to the national music, that sometimes seems to fill the air by night as the light of the sun does by day.

In the time of Lope de Vega, the passion for such improvisation had risen higher than it ever rose before, if it had not spread out more widely. Actors were expected sometimes to improvisate on themes given to them by the audience.[458] Extemporaneous dramas, with all the varieties of verse demanded by a taste formed in the theatres, were not of rare occurrence. Philip the Fourth, Lope’s patron, had such performed in his presence, and bore a part in them himself.[459] And the famous Count de Lemos, the viceroy of Naples, to whom Cervantes was indebted for so much kindness, kept, as an apanage to his viceroyalty, a poetical court, of which the two Argensolas were the chief ornaments, and in which extemporaneous plays were acted with brilliant success.[460]

Lope de Vega’s talent was undoubtedly of near kindred to this genius of improvisation, and produced its extraordinary results by a similar process, and in the same spirit. He dictated verse, we are told, with ease, more rapidly than an amanuensis could take it down;[461] and wrote out an entire play in two days, which could with difficulty be transcribed by a copyist in the same time. He was not absolutely an improvisator, for his education and position naturally led him to devote himself to written composition, but he was continually on the borders of whatever belongs to an improvisator’s peculiar province; he was continually showing, in his merits and defects, in his ease, grace, and sudden resource, in his wildness and extravagance, in the happiness of his versification and the prodigal abundance of his imagery, that a very little more freedom, a very little more indulgence given to his feelings and his fancy, would have made him at once and entirely, not only an improvisator, but the most remarkable one that ever lived.

CHAPTER XIX.

QUEVEDO. — HIS LIFE, PUBLIC SERVICE, AND PERSECUTIONS. — HIS WORKS, PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED. — HIS POETRY. — THE BACHILLER FRANCISCO DE LA TORRE. — HIS PROSE WORKS, RELIGIOUS AND DIDACTIC. — HIS PAUL THE SHARPER, PROSE SATIRES, AND VISIONS. — HIS CHARACTER.

FRANCISCO GOMEZ DE QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS, the contemporary of both Lope de Vega and Cervantes, was born at Madrid, in 1580.[462] His family came from that mountainous region at the northwest, to which, like other Spaniards, he was well pleased to trace his origin;[463] but his father held an office of some dignity at the court of Philip the Second, which led to his residence in the capital at the period of his son’s birth;—a circumstance which was no doubt favorable to the development of the young man’s talents. But whatever were his opportunities, we know, that, when he was only fifteen years old, he was graduated in theology at the University of Alcalá, where he not only made himself master of such of the ancient and modern languages as would be most useful to him, but extended his studies into the civil and canon law, mathematics, medicine, politics, and other still more various branches of knowledge, showing that he was thus early possessed with the ambition of becoming a universal scholar. His accumulations, in fact, were vast, as the learning scattered through his works plainly proves, and bear witness, not less to his extreme industry than to his extraordinary natural endowments.

On his return to Madrid, he seems to have been associated both with the distinguished scholars and with the fashionable cavaliers of the time; and an adventure, in which, as a man of honor, he found himself accidentally involved, had wellnigh proved fatal to his better aspirations. A woman of respectable appearance, while at her devotions in one of the parish churches of Madrid, during Holy Week, was grossly insulted in his presence. He defended her, though both parties were quite unknown to him. A duel followed on the spot; and, at its conclusion, it was found he had killed a person of rank. He fled, of course, and, taking refuge in Sicily, was invited to the splendid court then held there by the Duke of Ossuna, viceroy of Philip the Third, and was soon afterwards employed in important affairs of state,—sometimes, as we are told by his nephew, in such as required personal courage and involved danger to his life.

At the conclusion of the Duke of Ossuna’s administration of Sicily, Quevedo was sent, in 1615, to Madrid, as a sort of plenipotentiary to confirm to the crown all past grants of revenue from the island, and to offer still further subsidies. So welcome a messenger was not ungraciously received. His former offence was overlooked; a pension of four hundred ducats was given him; and he returned, in great honor, to the Duke, his patron, who was already transferred to the more important and agreeable viceroyalty of Naples.

Quevedo now became minister of finance at Naples, and fulfilled the duties of his place so skilfully and honestly, that, without increasing the burdens of the people, he added to the revenues of the state. An important negotiation with Rome was also intrusted to his management; and in 1617 he was again in Madrid, and stood before the king with such favor, that he was made a knight of the Order of Santiago. On his return to Naples, or, at least, during the nine years he was absent from Spain, he made treaties with Venice and Savoy, as well as with the Pope, and was almost constantly occupied in difficult and delicate affairs connected with the administration of the Duke of Ossuna.

But in 1620 all this was changed. The Duke fell from power, and those who had been his ministers shared his fate. Quevedo was exiled to his patrimonial estate of Torre de Juan Abad, where he endured an imprisonment or detention of three years and a half; and then was released without trial and without having had any definite offence laid to his charge. He was, however, cured of all desire for public honors or royal favor. He refused the place of Secretary of State, and that of Ambassador to Genoa, both of which were offered him, accepting the merely titular rank of Secretary to the King. He, in fact, was now determined to give himself to letters; and did so for the rest of his life.

In 1634, he was married; but his wife soon died, and left him to contend alone with the troubles of life that still pursued him. In 1639, some satirical verses were placed under the king’s napkin at dinner-time; and, without proper inquiry, they were attributed to Quevedo. In consequence of this he was seized, late at night, with great suddenness and secrecy, in the palace of the Duke of Medina-Cœli, and thrown into rigorous confinement in the royal convent of San Márcos de Leon. There, in a damp and unwholesome cell, his health was soon broken down by diseases from which he never recovered; and the little that remained to him of his property was wasted away till he was obliged to depend on charity for support. With all these cruelties the unprincipled favorite of the time, the Count Duke Olivares, seems to have been connected; and the anger they naturally excited in the mind of Quevedo may well account for two papers against that minister which have generally been attributed to him, and which are full of personal severity and bitterness.[464] A heart-rending letter, too, which, when he had been nearly two years in prison, he wrote to Olivares, should be taken into the account, in which he in vain appeals to his persecutor’s sense of justice, telling him, in his despair, “No clemency can add many years to my life; no rigor can take many away.”[465] At last, the hour of the favorite’s disgrace arrived; and, amidst the jubilee of Madrid, he was driven into exile. The release of Quevedo followed as a matter of course, since it was already admitted that another had written the verses[466] for which he had been punished by above four years of the most unjust suffering.

But justice came too late. Quevedo remained, indeed, a little time at Madrid, among his friends, endeavouring to recover some of his lost property; but failing in this, and unable to subsist in the capital, he retired to the mountains from which his race had descended. His infirmities, however, accompanied him wherever he went; his spirits sunk under his trials and sorrows; and he died, wearied out with life, in 1645.[467]

Quevedo sought success, as a man of letters, in a great number of departments,—from theology and metaphysics down to stories of vulgar life and Gypsy ballads. But many of his manuscripts were taken from him when his papers were twice seized by the government, and many others seem to have been accidentally lost in the course of a life full of change and adventure. In consequence of this, his friend Antonio de Tarsia tells us that the greater part of his works could not be published; and we know that many are still to be found in his own handwriting, both in the National Library of Madrid and in other collections, public and private.[468] Those already printed fill eleven considerable volumes, eight of prose and three of poetry; leaving us probably little to regret concerning the fate of the rest, unless, perhaps, it be the loss of his dramas, of which two are said to have been represented with applause at Madrid, during his lifetime.[469]

Of his poetry, so far as we know, he himself published nothing with his name, except such as occurs in his poor translations from Epictetus and Phocylides; but in the tasteful and curious collection of his friend Pedro de Espinosa, called “Flowers of Illustrious Poets,” printed when Quevedo was only twenty-five years old, a few of his minor poems are to be found. This was, probably, his first appearance as an author; and it is worthy of notice, that, taken together, these few poems announce much of his future poetical character, and that two or three of them, like the one beginning,

A wight of might

Is Don Money, the knight,[470]

are among his happy efforts. But though he himself published scarcely any of them, the amount of his verses found after his death is represented to have been very great; much greater, we are assured, than could be discovered among his papers a few years later,[471]—probably because, just before he died, “he denounced,” as we are told, “all his works to the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition, in order that the parts less becoming a modest reserve might be reduced, as they were, to just measure by serious and prudent reflection.”[472]

Such of his poetry as was easily found was, however, published;—the first part by his friend Gonzalez de Salas, in 1648, and the rest, in a most careless and crude manner, by his nephew, Pedro Alderete, in 1670, under the conceited title of “The Spanish Parnassus, divided into its Two Summits, with the Nine Castilian Muses.” The collection itself is very miscellaneous, and it is not always easy to determine why the particular pieces of which it is composed were assigned rather to the protection of one Muse than of another. In general, they are short. Sonnets and ballads are far more numerous than any thing else; though canciones, odes, elegies, epistles, satires of all kinds, idyls, quintillas, and redondillas are in great abundance. There are, besides, four entremeses of little value, and the fragment of a poem on the subject of Orlando Furioso, intended to be in the manner of Berni, but running too much into caricature.

The longest of the nine divisions is that which passes under the name and authority of Thalia, the goddess who presided over rustic wit, as well as over comedy. Indeed, the more prominent characteristics of the whole collection are a broad, grotesque humor, and a satire sometimes marked with imitations of the ancients, especially of Juvenal and Persius, but oftener overrun with puns, and crowded with conceits and allusions, not easily understood at the time they first appeared, and now quite unintelligible.[473] His burlesque sonnets, in imitation of the Italian poems of that class, are the best in the language, and have a bitterness rarely found in company with so much wit. Some of his lighter ballads, too, are to be placed in the very first rank, and fifteen that he wrote in the wild dialect of the Gypsies have been ever since the delight of the lower classes of his countrymen, and are still, or were lately, to be heard, among their other popular poetry, sung to the guitars of the peasants and the soldiery throughout Spain.[474] In regular satire he has generally followed the path trodden by Juvenal; and, in the instances of his complaint “Against the existing Manners of the Castilians,” and “The Dangers of Marriage,” has proved himself a bold and successful disciple.[475] Some of his amatory poems, and some of those on religious subjects, especially when they are in a melancholy tone, are full of beauty and tenderness;[476] and once or twice, when most didactic, he is no less powerful than grave and lofty.[477]

His chief fault—besides the indecency of some of his poetry, and the obscurity and extravagance that pervade yet more of it—is the use of words and phrases that are low and essentially unpoetical. This, as far as we can now judge, was the result partly of haste and carelessness, and partly of a false theory. He sought for strength, and he became affected and rude. But we should not judge him too severely. He wrote a great deal, and with extraordinary facility, but refused to print; professing his intention to correct and prepare his poems for the press when he should have more leisure and a less anxious mind. That time, however, never came. We should, therefore, rather wonder that we find in his works so many passages of the purest and most brilliant wit and poetry, than complain that they are scattered through so very large a mass of what is idle, unsatisfactory, and sometimes unintelligible.

Once, and once only, Quevedo published a small volume of poetry, which has been supposed to be his own, though not originally appearing as such. The occasion was worthy of his genius, and his success was equal to the occasion. For some time, Spanish literature had been overrun with a species of affectation resembling the euphuism that prevailed in England a little earlier. It passed under the name of cultismo, or the polite style; and when we come to speak of its more distinguished votaries, we shall have occasion fully to explain its characteristic extravagances. At present, it is enough to say, that, in Quevedo’s time, this fashionable fanaticism was at the height of its folly; and that, perceiving its absurdity, he launched against it the shafts of his unsparing ridicule, in several shorter pieces of poetry, as well as in a trifle called “A Compass for the Polite to steer by,” and in a prose satire called “A Catechism of Phrases to teach Ladies how to talk Latinized Spanish.”[478]

But finding the disease deeply fixed in the national taste, and models of a purer style of poetry wanting to resist it, he printed, in 1631,—the same year in which, for the same purpose, he published a collection of the poetry of Luis de Leon,—a small volume which he announced as “Poems by the Bachiller Francisco de la Torre,”—a person of whom he professed, in his Preface, to know nothing, except that he had accidentally found his manuscripts in the hands of a bookseller, with the Approbation of Alonso de Ercilla attached to them; and that he supposed him to be the ancient Spanish poet referred to by Boscan nearly a hundred years before. But this little volume is a work of no small consequence. It contains sonnets, odes, canciones, elegies, and eclogues; many of them written with antique grace and simplicity, and all in a style of thought easy and natural, and in a versification of great exactness and harmony. It is, in short, one of the best volumes of miscellaneous poems in the Spanish language.[479]

No suspicion seems to have been whispered, either at the moment of their first publication, or for a long time afterwards, that these poems were the productions of any other than the unknown personage whose name appeared on their title-page. In 1753, however, a second edition of them was published by Velazquez, the author of the “Essay on Spanish Poetry,” claiming them to be entirely the work of Quevedo;[480]—a claim which has been frequently noticed since, some admitting and some denying it, but none, in any instance, fairly discussing the grounds on which it is placed by Velazquez, or settling their validity.[481]

The question certainly is among the more curious of those that involve literary authorship; but it can hardly be brought to an absolute decision. The argument, that the poems thus published by Quevedo are really the work of an unknown Bachiller de la Torre, is founded, first, on the alleged approbation of them by Ercilla,[482] which, though referred to by Valdivielso, as well as by Quevedo, has never been printed; and, secondly, on the fact, that, in their general tone, they are unlike the recognized poetry of Quevedo, being all on grave subjects and in a severely simple and pure style, whereas he himself not unfrequently runs into the affected style he undoubtedly intended by this work to counteract and condemn.

On the other hand, it may be alleged, that the pretended Bachiller de la Torre is clearly not the Bachiller de la Torre referred to by Boscan and Quevedo, who lived in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and whose rude verses are found in the old Cancioneros from 1511 to 1573;[483] that, on the contrary, the forms of the poems published by Quevedo, their tone, their thoughts, their imitations of Petrarch and of the ancients, their versification, and their language,—except a few antiquated words which could easily have been inserted,—all belong to his own age; that among Quevedo’s recognized poems are some, at least, which prove he was capable of writing any one among those attributed to the Bachiller de la Torre; and finally, that the name of the Bachiller Francisco de la Torre is merely an ingenious disguise of his own, since he was himself a Bachelor at Alcalá, had been baptized Francisco, and was the owner of Torre de la Abad, in which he sometimes resided, and which was twice the place of his exile.[484]

There is, therefore, no doubt, a mystery about the whole matter which will probably never be cleared up; and we can now come to only one of two conclusions:—either that the poems in question are the work of some contemporary and friend of Quevedo, whose name he knew and concealed; or that they were selected by himself out of the great mass of his own unpublished manuscripts, choosing such as would be least likely to betray their origin, and most likely, by their exact finish and good taste, to rebuke the folly of the affected and fashionable poetry of his time. But whoever may be their author, one thing is certain,—they are not unworthy the genius of any poet belonging to the brilliant age in which they appeared.[485]

Quevedo’s principal works, however,—those on which his reputation mainly rests, both at home and abroad,—are in prose. The more grave will hardly come under our cognizance. They consist of a treatise on the Providence of God, including an essay on the Immortality of the Soul; a treatise addressed to Philip the Fourth, singularly called “God’s Politics and Christ’s Government,” in which he endeavours to collect a complete body of political philosophy from the example of the Saviour; treatises on a Holy Life and on the Militant Life of a Christian; and biographies of Saint Paul and Saint Thomas of Villanueva. These, with translations of Epictetus and the false Phocylides, of Anacreon, of Seneca “De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ,” of Plutarch’s “Marcus Brutus,” and other similar works, seem to have been chiefly produced by his sufferings, and to have constituted the occupation of his weary hours during his different imprisonments. As their titles indicate, they belong to theology and metaphysics rather than to elegant literature. They, however, sometimes show the spirit and the style that mark his serious poetry;—the same love of brilliancy, and the same extravagance and hyperbole, with occasional didactic passages full of dignity and eloquence. Their learning is generally abundant, but it is, at the same time, often very pedantic and cumbersome.[486]

Not so his prose satires. By these he is remembered and will always be remembered throughout the world. The longest of them, called “The History and Life of the Great Sharper, Paul of Segovia,” was first printed in 1627. It belongs to the style of fiction invented by Mendoza, in his “Lazarillo,” and has most of the characteristics of its class; showing, notwithstanding the evident haste and carelessness with which it was written, more talent and spirit than any of them, except its prototype. Like the rest, it sets forth the life of an adventurer, cowardly, insolent, and full of resources, who begins in the lowest and most infamous ranks of society, but, unlike most others of his class, never fairly rises above his original condition; for all his ingenuity, wit, and spirit only enable him to struggle up, as it were by accident, to some brilliant success, from which he is immediately precipitated by the discovery of his true character. Parts of it are very coarse. Once or twice it becomes—at least, according to the notions of the Romish Church—blasphemous. And almost always it is of the nature of a caricature, overrun with conceits, puns, and a reckless, fierce humor. But everywhere it teems with wit and the most cruel sarcasm against all orders and conditions of society. Some of its love adventures are excellent. Many of the disasters it records are extremely ludicrous. But there is nothing genial in it; and it is hardly possible to read even its scenes of frolic and riot at the University, or those among the gay rogues of the capital or the gayer vagabonds of a strolling company of actors, with any thing like real satisfaction. It is a satire too hard, coarse, and unrelenting to be amusing.[487]

This, too, is the character of most of his other prose satires, which were chiefly written, or at least published, nearly at the same period of his life;—the interval between his two great imprisonments, when the first had roused up all his indignation against a condition of society which could permit such intolerable injustice as he had suffered, and before the crushing severity of the last had broken down alike his health and his courage. Among them are the treatise “On all Things and many more,”—an attack on pretension and cant; “The Tale of Tales,” which is in ridicule of the too frequent use of proverbs; and “Time’s Proclamation,” which is apparently directed against whatever came uppermost in its author’s thoughts when he was writing it. These, however, with several more of the same sort, may be passed over to speak of a few better known and of more importance.[488]

The first is called the “Letters of the Knight of the Forceps,” and consists of two-and-twenty notes of a miser to his lady-love, refusing all her applications and hints for money, or for amusements that involve the slightest expense. Nothing can exceed their dexterity, or the ingenuity and wit that seem anxious to defend and vindicate the mean vice, which, after all, they are only making so much the more ridiculous and odious.[489]

The next is called “Fortune no Fool, and the Hour of All”;—a long apologue, in which Jupiter, surrounded by the deities of Heaven, calls Fortune to account for her gross injustice in the affairs of the world; and, having received from her a defence no less spirited than amusing, determines to try the experiment, for a single hour, of apportioning to every human being exactly what he deserves. The substance of the fiction, therefore, is an exhibition of the scenes of intolerable confusion which this single hour brings into the affairs of the world; turning a physician instantly into an executioner; marrying a match-maker to the ugly phantom she was endeavouring to pass off upon another; and, in the larger concerns of nations, like France and Muscovy, introducing such violence and uproar, that, at last, by the decision of Jupiter and with the consent of all, the empire of Fortune is restored, and things are allowed to go on as they always had done. Many parts of it are written in the gayest spirit, and show a great happiness of invention; but, from the absence of much of Quevedo’s accustomed bitterness, it may be suspected, that, though it was not printed till several years after his death, it was probably written before either of his imprisonments.[490]

But what is wanting of severity in this whimsical fiction is fully made up in his Visions, six or seven in number, some of which seem to have been published separately soon after his first persecution, and all of them in 1635.[491] Nothing can well be more free and miscellaneous than their subjects and contents. One, called “El Alguazil alguazilado,” or The Catchpole Caught, is a satire on the inferior officers of justice, one of whom being possessed, the demon complains bitterly of his disgrace in being sent to inhabit the body of a creature so infamous. Another, called “Visita de los Chistes,” A Visit in Jest, is a visit to the empire of Death, who comes sweeping in surrounded by physicians, surgeons, and especially a great crowd of idle talkers and slanderers, and leads them all to a sight of the infernal regions, with which Quevedo at once declares he is already familiar, in the crimes and follies to which he has long been accustomed on earth. But a more distinct idea of his free and bold manner will probably be obtained from the opening of his “Dream of Skulls,” or “Dream of the Judgment,” than from any enumeration of the subjects and contents of his Visions; especially since, in this instance, it is a specimen of that mixture of the solemn and the ludicrous in which he so much delighted.

“Methought I saw,” he says, “a fair youth borne with prodigious speed through the heavens, who gave a blast to his trumpet so violent, that the radiant beauty of his countenance was in part disfigured by it. But the sound was of such power, that it found obedience in marble and hearing among the dead; for the whole earth began straightway to move, and to give free permission to the bones it contained to come forth in search of each other. And thereupon I presently saw those who had been soldiers and captains start fiercely from their graves, thinking it a signal for battle; and misers coming forth, full of anxiety and alarm, dreading some onslaught; while those who were given to vanity and feasting thought, from the shrillness of the sound, that it was a call to the dance or the chase. At least, so I interpreted the looks of each of them, as they started forth; nor did I see one, to whose ears the sound of that trumpet came, who understood it to be what it really was. Soon, however, I noted the way in which certain souls fled from their former bodies; some with loathing, and others with fear. In one an arm was missing, in another an eye; and while I was moved to laughter as I saw the varieties of their appearance, I was filled with wonder at the wise providence which prevented any one of them, all shuffled together as they were, from putting on the legs or other limbs of his neighbours. In one grave-yard alone I thought that there was some changing of heads, and I saw a notary whose soul did not quite suit him, and who wanted to get rid of it by declaring it to be none of his.

“But when it was fairly understood of all that this was the Day of Judgment, it was worth seeing how the voluptuous tried to avoid having their eyes found for them, that they need not bring into court witnesses against themselves,—how the malicious tried to avoid their own tongues, and how robbers and assassins seemed willing to wear out their feet in running away from their hands. And turning partly round, I saw one miser asking another, (who, having been embalmed and his bowels left at a distance, was waiting silently till they should arrive), whether, because the dead were to rise that day, certain money-bags of his must also rise. I should have laughed heartily at this, if I had not, on the other side, pitied the eagerness with which a great rout of notaries rushed by, flying from their own ears, in order to avoid hearing what awaited them, though none succeeded in escaping, except those who in this world had lost their ears as thieves, which, owing to the neglect of justice, was by no means the majority. But what I most wondered at was, to see the bodies of two or three shop-keepers, that had put on their souls wrong side out, and crowded all five of their senses under the nails of their right hands.”

The “Casa de los Locos de Amor,” the Lovers’ Mad-house,—which is placed among Quevedo’s Visions, though it is the work of his friend Lorenzo Vander Hammen, to whom it is dedicated,—lacks, no doubt, the freedom and force which characterize the Vision of the Judgment.[492] But this is a remark that can by no means be extended to the Vision of “Las Zahurdas de Pluton,” Pluto’s Pigsties, which is a show of what may be called the rabble of Pandemonium; “El Mundo por de Dentro,” The World Inside Out; and “El Entremetido, la Dueña, y el Soplon,” The Busy-body, the Duenna, and the Informer;—all of which are full of the most truculent sarcasm, recklessly cast about, by one to whom the world had not been a friend, nor the world’s law.

In these Visions, as well as in nearly all that Quevedo wrote, much is to be found that indicates a bold, original, and independent spirit. His age and the circumstances amidst which he was placed have, however, left their traces both on his poetry and on his prose. Thus, his long residence in Italy is seen in his frequent imitations of the Italian poets, and once, at least, in the composition of an original Italian sonnet;[493]—his cruel sufferings during his different persecutions are apparent in the bitterness of his invectives everywhere, and especially in one of his Visions, dated from his prison, against the administration of justice and the order of society;—while the influence of the false taste of his times, which, in some of its forms, he manfully resisted, is yet no less apparent in others, and persecutes him with a perpetual desire to be brilliant, to say something quaint or startling, and to be pointed and epigrammatic. But over these, and over all his other defects, his genius from time to time rises, and reveals itself with great power. He has not, indeed, that sure perception of the ridiculous which leads Cervantes, as if by instinct, to the exact measure of satirical retribution; but he perceives quickly and strongly; and though he often errs, from the exaggeration and coarseness to which he so much tended, yet, even in the passages where these faults most occur, we often find touches of a solemn and tender beauty, that show he had higher powers and better qualities than his extraordinary wit, and add to the effect of the whole, though without reconciling us to the broad and gross farce that is too often mingled with his satire.[494]

CHAPTER XX.

THE DRAMA. — MADRID AND ITS THEATRES. — DAMIAN DE VEGAS. — FRANCISCO DE TARREGA. — GASPAR DE AGUILAR. — GUILLEN DE CASTRO. — LUIS VÉLEZ DE GUEVARA. — JUAN PEREZ DE MONTALVAN.

THE want of a great capital, as a common centre for letters and literary men, was long felt in Spain. Until the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, the country, broken into separate kingdoms and occupied by continual conflicts with a hated enemy, had no leisure for the projects that belong to a period of peace; and even later, when there was tranquillity at home, the foreign wars and engrossing interests of Charles the Fifth in Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands led him so much abroad, that there was still little tendency to settle the rival claims of the great cities; and the court resided occasionally in each of them, as it had from the time of Saint Ferdinand. But already it was plain that the preponderance which for a time had been enjoyed by Seville was gone. Castile had prevailed in this, as it had in the greater contest for giving a language to the country; and Madrid, which had been a favorite residence of the Emperor, because he thought its climate dealt gently with his infirmities, began, from 1560, under the arrangements of Philip the Second, to be regarded as the real capital of the whole monarchy.[495]

On no department of Spanish literature did this circumstance produce so considerable an influence as it did on the drama. In 1583, the foundations for the two regular theatres that have continued such ever since were already laid; and from about 1590, Lope de Vega, if not the absolute monarch of the stage that Cervantes describes him to have been, was, at least, its controlling spirit. The natural consequences followed. Under the influence of the nobility, who thronged to the royal residence, and led by the example of one of the most popular writers and men that ever lived, the Spanish theatre rose like an exhalation; and a school of poets—many of whom had hastened from Seville, Valencia, and other parts of the country, and thus extinguished the hopes of an independent drama in the cities they deserted—was collected around him in the new capital, until the dramatic writers of Madrid became suddenly more numerous, and in many respects more remarkable, than any other similar body of poets in modern times.

The period of this transition of the drama is well marked by a single provincial play, the “Comedia Jacobina,” printed at Toledo in 1590, but written, as its author intimates, some years earlier. It was the work of Damian de Vegas, an ecclesiastic of that city, and is on the subject of the blessing of Jacob by Isaac. Its structure is simple, and its action direct and unembarrassed. As it is religious throughout, it belongs, in this respect, to the elder school of the drama; but, on the other hand, as it is divided into three acts, has a prologue and epilogue, a chorus, and much lyrical poetry in various measures, including the terza rima and blank verse, it is not unlike what was attempted about the same time, on the secular stage, by Cervantes and Argensola. Though uninteresting in its plot, and dry and hard in its versification, it is not wholly without poetical merit; but we have no proof that it ever was acted in Madrid, or, indeed, that it was known on the stage beyond the limits of Toledo; a city to which its author was much attached, and where he seems always to have lived.[496]

Whether Francisco de Tarrega, who can be traced from 1591 to 1608, was one of those who early came from Valencia to Madrid as writers for the theatre is uncertain. But we have proof that he was a canon of the cathedral in the first-named city, and yet was well known in the new capital, where his plays were acted and printed.[497] One of them is important, because it shows the modes of representation in his time, as well as the peculiarities of his own drama. It begins with a loa, which in this case is truly a compliment, as its name implies; but it is, at the same time, a witty and quaint ballad in praise of ugly women. Then comes what is called a “Dance at Leganitos,”—a popular resort in the suburbs of Madrid, which here gives its name to a rude farce founded on a contest in the open street between two lackeys.[498]

After the audience have thus been put in good-humor, we have the principal play, called “The Well-disposed Enemy”; a wild, but not uninteresting, heroic drama, of which the scene is laid at the court of Naples, and the plot turns on the jealousy of the Neapolitan king and queen. Some attempt is made to compress the action within probable limits of time and space; but the character of Laura—at first in love with the king and exciting him to poison the queen, and at last coming out in disguise as an armed champion to defend the same queen when she is in danger of being put to death on a false accusation of infidelity—destroys all regularity of movement, and is a blemish that extends through the whole piece. Parts of it, however, are spirited, like the opening,—a scene full of life and nature,—where the court rush in from a bull-fight, that had been suddenly broken up by the personal danger of the king; and parts of it are poetical, like the first interview between Laura and Belisardo, whom she finally marries.[499] But the impression left by the whole is, that, though the path opened by Lope de Vega is the one that is followed, it is followed with footsteps ill-assured and a somewhat uncertain purpose.

Gaspar de Aguilar was, as Lope tells us, the rival of Tarrega.[500] He was secretary to the Viscount Chelva, and afterwards major-domo to the Duke of Gandia, one of the most prominent noblemen at the court of Philip the Third. But an allegorical poem which Aguilar wrote, in honor of his last patron’s marriage, found so little favor, that its unhappy author, discouraged and repulsed, died of mortification. He lived, as Tarrega probably did, both in Valencia and in Madrid, and wrote several minor poems, besides one of some length on the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, which was printed in 1610. The last date we have relating to his unfortunate career is 1623.

Of the nine or ten plays he published, only two can claim our notice. The first is “The Merchant Lover,” praised by Cervantes, who, like Lope de Vega, mentions Aguilar more than once with respect. It is the story of a rich merchant, who pretends to have lost his fortune in order to see whether either of two ladies to whose favor he aspires loved him for his own sake rather than for that of his money; and he finally marries the one who, on this hard trial, proves herself to be disinterested. It is preceded by a prólogo, or loa, which in this case is a mere jesting tale; and it ends with six stanzas, sung for the amusement of the audience, about a man who, having tried unsuccessfully many vocations, and, among the rest, those of fencing-master, poet, actor, and tapster, threatens, in despair, to enlist for the wars. Neither the beginning nor the end, therefore, has any thing to do with the subject of the play itself, which is written in a spirited style, but sometimes shows bad taste and extravagance, and sometimes runs into conceits.

One character is happily hit,—that of the lady who loses the rich merchant by her selfishness. When he first tells her of his pretended loss of fortune, and seems to bear it with courage and equanimity, she goes out saying,—

Heaven save me from a husband such as this,

Who finds himself so easily consoled!

Why, he would be as gay, if it were me

That he had lost, and not his money!

And again, in the second act, where she finally rejects him, she says, in the same jesting spirit,—

Would you, Sir, see that you are not a man,—

Since all that ever made you one is gone,—

(The figure that remains availing but

To bear the empty name that marked you once),—

Go and proclaim aloud your loss, my friend,

And then inquire of your own memory

What has become of you, and where you are;

And you will learn, at once, that you are not

The man to whom I lately gave my heart.[501]

What, perhaps, is most remarkable about this drama is, that the unity of place is observed, and possibly the unity of time; a circumstance which shows that the freedom of the Spanish stage from such restraints was not yet universally acknowledged.

Quite different from this, however, is “The Unforeseen Fortune”; a play which, if it have only one action, has one whose scene is laid at Saragossa, at Valencia, and along the road between these two cities, while the events it relates fill up several years. The hero, just at the moment he is married by proxy in Valencia, is accidentally injured in the streets of Saragossa, and carried into the house of a stranger, where he falls in love with the fair sister of the owner, and is threatened with instant death by her brother, if he does not marry her. He yields to the threat. They are married and set out for Valencia. On the way, he confesses his unhappy position to his bride, and very coolly proposes to adjust all his difficulties by putting her to death. From this, however, he is turned aside, and they arrive in Valencia, where she serves him, from blind affection, as a voluntary slave; even taking care of a child that is borne to him by his Valencian wife.

Other absurdities follow. At last, she is driven to declare publicly who she is. Her ungrateful husband then attempts to kill her, and thinks he has succeeded. He is arrested for the supposed murder; but at the same instant her brother arrives, and claims his right to single combat with the offender. Nobody will serve as the base seducer’s second. At the last moment, the injured lady herself, supposed till then to be dead, appears in the lists, disguised in complete armour, not to protect her guilty husband, but to vindicate her own honor and prowess. Ferdinand, the king, who presides over the combat, interferes; and the strange show ends by her marriage to a former lover, who has hardly been seen at all on the stage,—a truly “Unforeseen Fortune,”—which gives its name to the ill-constructed drama.

The poetry, though not absolutely good, is better than the action. It is generally in flowing quintillas, or stanzas of five short lines each, but not without long portions in the old ballad-measure. The scene of an entertainment on the sea-shore near Valencia, where all the parties meet for the first time, is good. So are portions of the last act. But, in general, the whole play abounds in conceits and puns, and is poor. It opens with a loa, whose object is to assert the universal empire of man; and it ends with an address to the audience from King Ferdinand, in which he declares that nothing can give him so much pleasure as the settlement of all these troubles of the lovers, except the conquest of Granada. Both are grotesquely inappropriate.[502]

Better known than either of the last authors is another Valencian poet, Guillen de Castro, who, like them, was respected at home, but sought his fortunes in the capital. He was born of a noble family, in 1567, and seems to have been early distinguished, in his native city, as a man of letters; for, in 1591, he was a member of the Nocturnos, one of the most successful of the fantastic associations established in Spain, in imitation of the Academias that had been for some time fashionable in Italy. His literary tendencies were further cultivated at the meetings of this society, where he found among his associates Tarrega, Aguilar, and Artieda.[503]

His life, however, was not wholly devoted to letters. At one time, he was a captain of cavalry; at another, he stood in such favor with Benavente, the munificent viceroy of Naples, that he had a place of consequence intrusted to his government; and at Madrid he was so well received, that the Duke of Ossuna gave him an annuity of nearly a thousand crowns, to which the reigning favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, added a royal pension. But his unequal humor, his discontented spirit, and his hard obstinacy ruined his fortunes, and he was soon obliged to write for a living. Cervantes speaks of him, in 1615, as among the popular authors for the theatre, and in 1620 he assisted Lope at the festival of the canonization of San Isidro, wrote several of the pieces that were exhibited, and gained one of the prizes. Six years later, he was still earning a painful subsistence as a dramatic writer; and in 1631 he died so poor, that he was buried by charity.[504]

Very few of his works have been published, except his plays. Of these we have twenty-seven or twenty-eight, printed between 1614 and 1625. They belong decidedly to the school of Lope, between whom and Guillen de Castro there was a friendship, which can be traced back, by the Dedication of one of Lope’s plays and by several passages in his miscellaneous works, to the period of Lope’s exile to Valencia; while, on the side of Guillen de Castro, a similar testimony is borne to the same kindly regard by a volume of his own plays addressed to Marcela, Lope’s favorite daughter.

The marks of Guillen de Castro’s personal condition, and of the age in which he lived and wrote, are no less distinct in his dramas than the marks of his poetical allegiance. His “Mismatches in Valencia” seems as if its story might have been constructed out of facts within the poet’s own knowledge. It is a series of love intrigues, like those in Lope’s plays, and ends with the dissolution of two marriages by the influence of a lady, who, disguised as a page, lives in the same house with her lover and his wife, but whose machinations are at last exposed, and she herself driven to the usual resort of entering a convent. His “Don Quixote,” on the other hand, is taken from the First Part of Cervantes’s romance, then as fresh as any Valencian tale. The loves of Dorothea and Fernando, and the madness of Cardenio, form the materials for its principal plot; and the dénouement is the transportation of the knight, in a cage, to his own house, by the curate and barber, just as he is carried home by them in the romance;—parts of the story being slightly altered to give it a more dramatic turn, though the language of the original fiction is often retained, and the obligations to it are fully recognized. Both of these dramas are written chiefly in the old redondillas, with a careful versification; but there is little poetical invention in either of them, and the first act of the “Mismatches in Valencia” is disfigured by a game of wits, fashionable, no doubt, in society at the time, but one that gives occasion, in the play, to nothing but a series of poor tricks and puns.[505]

Very unlike them, though no less characteristic of the times, is his “Mercy and Justice”; the shocking story of a prince of Hungary condemned to death by his father for the most atrocious crimes, but rescued from punishment by the multitude, because his loyalty has survived the wreck of all his other principles, and led him to refuse the throne offered to him by rebellion. It is written in a greater variety of measures than either of the dramas just mentioned, and shows more freedom of style and movement; relying chiefly for success on the story, and on that sense of loyalty which, though originally a great virtue in the relations of the Spanish kings and their people, was now become so exaggerated, that it was undermining much of what was most valuable in the national character.[506]

“Santa Bárbara, or the Mountain Miracle and Heaven’s Martyr,” belongs, again, to another division of the popular drama as settled by Lope de Vega. It is one of those plays where human and Divine love, in tones too much resembling each other, are exhibited in their strongest light, and, like the rest of its class, was no doubt a result of the severe legislation in relation to the theatre at that period, and of the influence of the clergy on which that legislation was founded. The scene is laid in Nicomedia, in the third century, when it was still a crime to profess Christianity; and the story is that of Saint Barbara, according to the legend that represents her to have been a contemporary of Origen, who, in fact, appears on the stage as one of the principal personages. At the opening of the drama, the heroine declares that she is already, in her heart, attached to the new sect; and at the end, she is its triumphant martyr, carrying with her, in a public profession of its faith, not only her lover, but all the leading men of her native city.

One of the scenes of this play is particularly in the spirit and faith of the age when it was written; and was afterwards imitated by Calderon in his “Wonder-working Magician.” The lady is represented as confined by her father in a tower, where, in solitude, she gives herself up to Christian meditations. Suddenly the arch-enemy of the human race presents himself before her, in the dress of a fashionable Spanish gallant. He gives an account of his adventures in a fanciful allegory, but does not so effectually conceal the truth that she fails to suspect who he is. In the mean time, her father and her lover enter. To her father the mysterious gallant is quite invisible, but he is plainly seen by the lover, whose jealousy is thus excited to the highest degree; and the first act ends with the confusion and reproaches which such a state of things necessarily brings on, and with the persuasion of the father that the lover may be fit for a mad-house, but would make a very poor husband for his gentle daughter.[507]

The most important of the plays of Guillen de Castro are two which he wrote on the subject of Rodrigo the Cid,—“Las Mocedades del Cid,” The Youth, or Youthful Adventures, of the Cid;—both founded on the old ballads of the country, which, as we know from Santos, as well as in other ways, continued long after the time of Castro to be sung in the streets.[508] The first of these two dramas embraces the earlier portion of the hero’s life. It opens with a solemn scene of his arming as a knight, and with the insult immediately afterwards offered to his aged father at the royal council-board; and then goes on with the trial of the spirit and courage of Rodrigo, and the death of the proud Count Lozano, who had outraged the venerable old man by a blow on the cheek;—all according to the traditions in the old chronicles.

Now, however, comes the dramatic part of the action, which was so happily invented by Guillen de Castro. Ximena, the daughter of Count Lozano, is represented in the drama as already attached to the young knight; and a contest, therefore, arises between her sense of what she owes to the memory of her father and what she may yield to her own affection; a contest that continues through the whole of the play, and constitutes its chief interest. She comes, indeed, at once to the king, full of a passionate grief, that struggles with success, for a moment, against the dictates of her heart, and claims the punishment of her lover according to the ancient laws of the realm. He escapes, however, in consequence of the prodigious victories he gains over the Moors, who, at the moment when these events occurred, were assaulting the city. Subsequently, by the contrivance of false news of the Cid’s death, a confession of her love is extorted from her; and at last her full consent to marry him is obtained, partly by Divine intimations, and partly by the natural progress of her admiration and attachment during a series of exploits achieved in her honor and in defence of her king and country.

This drama of Guillen de Castro has become better known throughout Europe than any other of his works; not only because it is the best of them all, but because Corneille, who was his contemporary, made it the basis of his own brilliant tragedy of “The Cid”; a drama which did more than any other to determine for two centuries the character of the theatre all over the continent of Europe. But though Corneille—not unmindful of the angry discussions carried on about the unities, under the influence of Cardinal Richelieu—has made alterations in the action of his play, which are fortunate and judicious, still he has relied, for its main interest, on that contest between the duties and the affections of the heroine which was first imagined by Guillen de Castro.

Nor has he shown in this exhibition more spirit or power than his Spanish predecessor. Indeed, sometimes he has fallen into considerable errors, which are wholly his own. By compressing the time of the action within twenty-four hours, instead of suffering it to extend through many months, as it does in the original, he is guilty of the absurdity of overcoming Ximena’s natural feelings in relation to the person who had killed her father, while her father’s dead body is still before her eyes. By changing the scene of the quarrel, which in Guillen occurs in presence of the king, he has made it less grave and natural. By a mistake in chronology, he establishes the Spanish court at Seville two centuries before that city was wrested from the Moors. And by a general straitening of the action within the conventional limits which were then beginning to bind down the French stage, he has, it is true, avoided the extravagance of introducing, as Guillen does, so incongruous an episode out of the old ballads as the miracle of Saint Lazarus; but he has hindered the free and easy movement of the incidents, and diminished their general effect.

Guillen, on the contrary, by taking the traditions of his country just as he found them, instantly conciliated the good-will of his audience, and at the same time imparted the freshness of the old ballad spirit to his action, and gave to it throughout a strong national air and coloring. Thus, the scene in the royal council, where the father of the Cid is struck by the haughty Count Lozano, several of the scenes between the Cid and Ximena, and several between both of them and the king, are managed with great dramatic skill and a genuine poetical fervor.

The following passage, where the Cid’s father is waiting for him in the evening twilight at the place appointed for their meeting after the duel, is as characteristic, if not as striking, as any in the drama, and is superior to the corresponding passage in the French play, which occurs in the fifth and sixth scenes of the third act.

The timid ewe bleats not so mournfully,

Its shepherd lost, nor cries the angry lion

With such a fierceness for its stolen young,

As I for Roderic.—My son! my son!

Each shade I pass, amid the closing night,

Seems still to wear thy form and mock my arms!

O, why, why comes he not? I gave the sign,—

I marked the spot,—and yet he is not here!

Has he neglected? Can he disobey?

It may not be! A thousand terrors seize me.

Perhaps some injury or accident

Has made him turn aside his hastening step;—

Perhaps he may be slain, or hurt, or seized.

The very thought freezes my breaking heart.

O holy Heaven, how many ways for fear

Can grief find out!—But hark! What do I hear?

Is it his footstep? Can it be? O, no!

I am not worthy such a happiness!

’T is but the echo of my grief I hear.—

But hark again! Methinks there comes a gallop

On the flinty stones. He springs from off his steed!

Is there such happiness vouchsafed to me?

Is it my son?

The Cid.

My father?

The Father.

May I truly

Trust myself, my child? O, am I, am I, then,

Once more within thine arms? Then let me thus

Compose myself, that I may honor thee

As greatly as thou hast deserved. But why

Hast thou delayed? And yet, since thou art here,

Why should I weary thee with questioning?—

O, bravely hast thou borne thyself, my son;

Hast bravely stood the proof; hast vindicated well

Mine ancient name and strength; and well hast paid

The debt of life which thou receivedst from me.

Come near to me, my son. Touch the white hairs

Whose honor thou hast saved from infamy,

And kiss, in love, the cheek whose stain thy valor

Hath in blood washed out.—My son! my son!

The pride within my soul is humbled now,

And bows before the power that has preserved

From shame the race so many kings have owned

And honored.[509]

The Second Part, which gives the adventures of the siege of Zamora, the assassination of King Sancho beneath its walls, and the defiance and duels that were the consequence, is not equal in merit to the First Part. Portions of it, such as some of the circumstances attending the death of the king, are quite incapable of dramatic representation, so gross and revolting are they; but even here, as well as in the more fortunate passages, Guillen has faithfully followed the popular belief concerning the heroic age he represents, just as it had come down to him, and has thus given to his scenes a life and reality that could hardly have been given by any thing else.

Indeed, it is a great charm of this drama, that the popular traditions everywhere break through so picturesquely, imparting to it their peculiar tone and character. Thus, the insult offered to old Laynez in the council; the complaints of Ximena to the king on the death of her father, and the conduct of the Cid to herself; the story of the Leper; the base treason of Bellido Dolfos; the reproaches of Queen Urraca from the walls of the beleaguered city, and the defiance and duels that follow,[510]—all are taken from the old ballads; often in their very words, and generally in their fresh spirit and with their picture-like details. The effect must have been great on a Castilian audience, always sensible to the power of the old popular poetry, and always stirred as with a battle-cry when the achievements of their earlier national heroes were recalled to them.[511]

In his other dramas we find traces of the same principles and the same habits of theatrical composition that we have seen in those we have already noticed. The “Impertinent Curiosity” is taken from the tale which Cervantes originally printed in the First Part of his Don Quixote. The “Count Alarcos,” and the “Count d’ Irlos,” are founded on the fine old ballads that bear these names. And the “Wonders of Babylon” is a religious play, in which the story of Susanna and the Elders fills a space somewhat too large, and in which King Nebuchadnezzar is introduced eating grass, like the beasts of the field.[512] But everywhere there is shown a desire to satisfy the demands of the national taste; and everywhere it is plain Guillen is a follower of Lope de Vega, and is distinguished from his rivals more by the sweetness of his versification than by any more prominent or original attribute.

Another of the early followers of Lope de Vega, and one recognized as such at the time by Cervantes, is Luis Vélez de Guevara. He was born at Ecija in Andalusia, in 1570, but seems to have lived almost entirely at Madrid, where he died in 1644. Twelve years before his death, he is said, on good authority, to have written already four hundred pieces for the theatre; and as neither the public favor nor that of the court seems to have deserted him during the rest of his long life, we may feel assured that he was one of the most successful authors of his time.[513]

His plays, however, were never collected for publication, and few of them have come down to us. One of those that have been preserved is fortunately one of the best, if we are to judge of its relative rank by the sensation it produced on its first appearance, or by the hold it has since maintained on the national regard. Its subject is taken from a well-known passage in the history of Sancho the Brave, when, in 1293, the city of Tarifa, near Gibraltar, was besieged by that king’s rebellious brother, Don John, at the head of a Moorish army, and defended by Alonso Perez, chief of the great house of the Guzmans. “And,” says the old Chronicle, “right well did he defend it. But the Infante Don John had with him a young son of Alonso Perez, and sent and warned him that he must either surrender that city, or else he would put to death this child whom he had with him. And Don Alonso Perez answered, that he held that city for the king, and that he could not give it up; but that as for the death of his child, he would give him a dagger wherewith to slay him; and so saying, he cast down a dagger from the rampart in defiance, and added that it would be better he should kill this son and yet five others, if he had them, than that he should himself basely yield up a city of the king, his lord, for which he had done homage. And the Infante Don John, in great fury, caused that child to be put to death before him. But neither with all this could he take the city.”[514]

Other accounts add to this atrocious story, that, after casting down his dagger, Alonso Perez, smothering his grief, sat down to his noon-day meal with his wife, and that, his people on the walls of the city witnessing the death of the innocent child and bursting forth into cries of horror and indignation, he rushed out, but, having heard what was the cause of the disturbance, returned quietly again to the table, saying only, “I thought, from their outcry, that the Moors had made their way into the city.”[515]

For thus sacrificing his other duties to his loyalty, in a way so well fitted to excite the imagination of the age in which he lived, Guzman received an appropriate addition to his armorial bearings, still seen in the escutcheon of his family, and the surname of “El Bueno,”—the Good, or the Faithful,—a title rarely forgotten in Spanish history, whenever he is mentioned.

This is the subject, and, in fact, the substance, of Guevara’s play, “Mas pesa el Rey que la Sangre,” or King before Kin. A good deal of skill, however, is shown in putting it into a dramatic form. Thus, King Sancho, at the opening, is represented as treating his great vassal, Perez de Guzman, with harshness and injustice, in order that the faithful devotion of the vassal, at the end of the drama, may be brought out with so much the more brilliant effect. And again, the scene in which Guzman goes from the king in anger, but with perfect submission to the royal authority; the scene between the father and the son, in which they mutually sustain each other, by the persuasions of duty and honor, to submit to any thing rather than give up the city; and the closing scene, in which, after the siege has been abandoned, Guzman offers the dead body of his child as a proof of his fidelity and obedience to an unjust sovereign,—are worthy of a place in the best of the earlier English tragedies, and not unlike some passages in Greene and Webster. But it was as an expression of boundless loyalty—that great virtue of the heroic times of Spain—that this drama won universal admiration, and so became of consequence, not only in the history of the national stage, but as an illustration of the national character. Regarded in each of these points of view, it is one of the most striking and solemn exhibitions of the modern theatre.[516]

In most of his other plays, Guevara deviated less from the beaten track than he did in this deep tragedy. “The Diana of the Mountains,” for instance, is a poetical picture of the loyalty, dignity, and passionate force of character of the lower classes of the Spanish people, set forth in the person of a bold and independent peasant, who marries the beauty of his mountain region, but has the misfortune immediately afterwards to find her pursued by the love of a man of rank, from whose designs she is rescued by the frank and manly appeal of her husband to Queen Isabella, the royal mistress of the offender.[517] “The Potter of Ocaña,” too, which, like the last, is an intriguing drama, is quite within the limits of its class;—and so is “Empire after Death,” a tragedy full of a melancholy, idyl-like softness, which well harmonizes with the fate of Inez de Castro, on whose sad story it is founded.

In Guevara’s religious dramas we have, as usual, the disturbing element of love adventures, mingled with what ought to be most spiritual and most separate from the dross of human passion. Thus, in his “Three Divine Prodigies” we have the whole history of Saint Paul, who yet first appears on the stage as a lover of Mary Magdalen; and in his “Satan’s Court” we have a similar history of Jonah, who is announced as a son of the widow of Sarepta, and lives at the court of Nineveh, during the reign of Ninus and Semiramis, in the midst of atrocities which it seems impossible could have been hinted at before any respectable audience in Christendom.

Once, indeed, Guevara stepped beyond the wide privileges granted to the Spanish theatre; but his offence was not against the rules of the drama, but against the authority of the Inquisition. In “The Lawsuit of the Devil against the Curate of Madrilejos,” which he wrote with Roxas and Mira de Mescua, he gives an account of the case of a poor mad girl who was treated as a witch, and escaped death only by confessing that she was full of demons, who are driven out of her on the stage, before the audience, by conjurations and exorcisms. The story has every appearance of being founded in fact, and is curious on account of the strange details it involves. But the whole subject of witchcraft, its exhibition and punishment, belonged exclusively to the Holy Office. The drama of Guevara was, therefore, forbidden to be represented or read, and soon disappeared quietly from public notice. Such cases, however, are rare in the history of the Spanish theatre, at any period of its existence.[518]

The most strict, perhaps, of the followers of Lope de Vega was his biographer and eulogist, Juan Perez de Montalvan. He was a son of the king’s bookseller at Madrid, and was born in 1602.[519] At the age of seventeen he was already a licentiate in theology and a successful writer for the public stage, and at eighteen he contended with the principal poets of the time at the festival of San Isidro at Madrid, and gained, with Lope’s assent, one of the prizes that were there offered.[520] Soon after this, he took the degree of Doctor in Divinity, and, like his friend and master, joined a fraternity of priests in Madrid, and received an office in the Inquisition. In 1626, a princely merchant of Peru, with whom he was in no way connected, and who had never even seen him, sent him, from the opposite side of the world, a pension as his private chaplain to pray for him in Madrid; all out of admiration for his genius and writings.[521]

In 1627, he published a small work on “The Life and Purgatory of Saint Patrick”; a subject popular in his Church, and on which he now wrote, probably, to satisfy the demands of his ecclesiastical position. But his nature breaks forth, as it were, in spite of himself, and he has added to the common legends of Saint Patrick a wild tale, wholly of his own invention, and yet so interwoven with his principal subject as to seem to be a part of it, and even to make equal claims on the faith of the reader.[522]

In 1632, he says he had composed thirty-six dramas and twelve sacramental autos;[523] and in 1636, soon after Lope’s death, he published the extravagant panegyric on him which has been already noticed. This was probably the last work he gave to the press; for, not long after it appeared, he became hopelessly deranged, from the excess of his labors, and died on the 25th of June, 1638, when only thirty-six years old. One of his friends showed the same pious care for his memory which he had shown for that of his master; and, gathering together short poems and other eulogies on him by above a hundred and fifty of the known and unknown authors of his time, published them under the title of “Panegyrical Tears on the Death of Doctor Juan Perez de Montalvan”;—a poor collection, in which, though we meet the names of Antonio de Solís, Gaspar de Avila, Tirso de Molina, Calderon, and others of note, we find very few lines worthy either of their authors or of their subject.[524]

Montalvan’s life was short, but it was brilliant. He early attached himself to Lope de Vega with sincere affection, and continued to the last the most devoted of his admirers; deserving in many ways the title given him by Valdivielso,—“the first-born of Lope de Vega’s genius.” Lope, on his side, was sensible to the homage thus frankly offered him; and not only assisted and encouraged his youthful follower, but received him almost as a member of his household and family. It has even been said, that the “Orfeo”—a poem on the subject of Orpheus and Eurydice, which Montalvan published in August, 1624, in rivalship with one under the same title published by Jauregui in the June preceding—was, in fact, the work of Lope himself, who was willing thus to give his disciple an advantage over a formidable competitor. But this is probably only the scandal of the next succeeding generation. The poem itself, which fills about two hundred and thirty octave stanzas, though as easy and spirited as if it were from Lope’s hand, bears the marks rather of a young writer than of an old one; besides which the verses prefixed to it by Lope, and especially his extravagant praise of it when afterwards speaking of his own drama on the same subject, render the suggestion that he wrote the work a grave imputation on his character.[525] But however this may be, Montalvan and Lope were, as we know from different passages in their works, constantly together; and the faithful admiration of the disciple was well returned by the kindness and patronage of the master.

Montalvan’s chief success was on the stage, where his popularity was so considerable, that the booksellers found it for their interest to print under his name many plays that were none of his.[526] He himself prepared for publication two complete volumes of his dramatic works, which appeared in 1638 and 1639, and were reprinted in 1652; but besides this, he had earlier inserted several plays in one of his works of fiction, and printed many more in other ways, making in all about sixty; the whole of which seem to have been published, as far as they were published by himself, during the last seven years of his life.[527]

If we take the first volume of his collection, which is more likely to have received his careful revision than the last, and examine it, as an illustration of his theories and style, we shall easily understand the character of his drama. Six of the plays contained in it, or one half of the whole number, are of the class of capa y espada, and rely for their interest on some exhibition of jealousy, or some intrigue involving the point of honor. They are generally, like the one entitled “Fulfilment of Duty,” not skilfully put together, though never uninteresting; and they all contain passages of poetical feeling, injured in their effect by other passages, in which taste seems to be set at defiance,—a remark particularly applicable to the play called “What’s done can’t be helped.” Four of the remaining six are historical. One of them is on the suppression of the Templars, which Raynouard, referring to Montalvan, took as a subject for one of the few successful French tragedies of the first half of the nineteenth century. Another is on Sejanus, not as he is represented in Tacitus, but as he appears in the “General Chronicle of Spain.” And yet another is on Don John of Austria, which has no dénouement, except a sketch of Don John’s life given by himself, and making out above three hundred lines. A single play of the twelve is an extravagant specimen of the dramas written to satisfy the requisitions of the Church, and is founded on the legends relating to San Pedro de Alcántara.[528]

The last drama in the volume, and the only one that has enjoyed a permanent popularity and been acted and printed ever since it first appeared, is the one called “The Lovers of Teruel.” It is founded on a tradition, that, early in the thirteenth century, in the city of Teruel, in Aragon, there lived two lovers, whose union was prevented by the lady’s family, on the ground that the fortune of the cavalier was not so considerable as they ought to claim for her. They, however, gave him a certain number of years to achieve the position they required of any one who aspired to her hand. He accepted the offer, and became a soldier. His exploits were brilliant, but were long unnoticed. At last he succeeded, and came home in 1217, with fame and fortune. But he arrived too late. The lady had been reluctantly married to his rival, the very night he reached Teruel. Desperate with grief and disappointment, he followed her to the bridal chamber and fell dead at her feet. The next day the lady was found, apparently asleep, on his bier in the church, when the officiating priests came to perform the funeral service. Both had died broken-hearted, and both were buried in the same grave.[529]

A considerable excitement in relation to this story having arisen in the youth of Montalvan, he seized the tradition on which it was founded, and wrought it into a drama. His lovers are placed in the time of Charles the Fifth, in order to connect them with that stirring period of Spanish history. The first act begins with several scenes, in which the difficulties and dangers of their situation are made apparent, and Isabella, the heroine, expresses an attachment which, after some anxiety and misgiving, becomes a passion so devoted that it seems of itself to intimate their coming sorrows. Her father, however, when he learns the truth, consents to their union; but on condition that, within three years, the young man shall place himself in a position worthy the claims of such a bride. Both of the lovers willingly submit, and the act ends with hopes for their happiness.

Nearly the whole of the limited period elapses before we begin the second act, where we find the hero just landing in Africa for the well-known assault on the Goleta at Tunis. He has achieved much, but remains unnoticed and almost broken-hearted with long discouragement. At this moment, he saves the Emperor’s life; but the next, he is forgotten again in the rushing crowd. Still he perseveres, sternly and heroically; and, led on by a passion stronger than death, is the first to mount the walls of Tunis and enter the city. This time, his merit is recognized. Even his forgotten achievements are recollected; and he receives at once the accumulated reward of all his services and sacrifices.

But when the last act opens, we see that he is destined to a fatal disappointment. Isabella, who has been artfully persuaded of his death, is preparing, with sinister forebodings, to fulfil her promise to her father and marry another. The ceremony takes place,—the guests are about to depart,—and her lover stands before her. A heart-rending explanation ensues, and she leaves him, as she thinks, for the last time. But he follows her to her apartment; and in the agony of his grief falls dead, while he yet expostulates and struggles with himself no less than with her. A moment afterwards her husband enters. She explains to him the scene he witnesses, and, unable any longer to sustain the cruel conflict, faints and dies broken-hearted on the body of her lover.

Like nearly all the other pieces of the same class, there is much in the “Lovers of Teruel” to offend us. The inevitable part of the comic servant is peculiarly unwelcome; and so are the long speeches, and the occasionally inflated style. But notwithstanding its blemishes, we feel that it is written in the true spirit of tragedy. As the story was believed to be authentic when it was first acted, it produced the more deep effect; and whether true or not, being a tale of the simple sorrows of two young and loving hearts, whose dark fate is the result of no crime on their part, it can never be read or acted without exciting a sincere interest. Parts of it have a more familiar and domestic character than we are accustomed to find on the Spanish stage, particularly the scene where Isabella sits with her women at her wearisome embroidery, during her lover’s absence; the scene of her discouragement and misgiving just before her marriage; and portions of the scene of horror with which the drama closes.

The two lovers are drawn with no little skill. Our interest in them never falters; and their characters are so set forth and developed, that the dreadful catastrophe is no surprise. It comes rather like the foreseen and irresistible fate of the old Greek tragedy, whose dark shadow is cast over the whole action from its opening.

When Montalvan took historical subjects, he endeavoured, oftener than his contemporaries, to observe historical truth. In two dramas on the life of Don Cárlos, he has introduced that prince substantially in the colors he must at last wear, as an ungoverned madman, dangerous to his family and to the state; and if, in obedience to the persuasions of his time, the poet has represented Philip the Second as more noble and generous than we can regard him to have been, he has not failed to seize and exhibit in a striking manner the severe wariness and wisdom that were such prominent attributes in that monarch’s character.[530] Don John of Austria, too, and Henry the Fourth of France, are happily depicted and fairly sustained in the plays in which they respectively appear as leading personages.[531]

Montalvan’s autos, of which only two or three remain to us, are not to be spoken of in the same manner. His “Polyphemus,” for instance, in which the Saviour and a Christian Church are introduced on one side of the stage, while the principal Cyclops himself comes in as an allegorical representation of Judaism on the other, is as wild and extravagant as any thing in the Spanish drama. A similar remark may be made on the “Escanderbech,” founded on the history of the half-barbarous, half-chivalrous Iskander Beg, and his conversion to Christianity in the middle of the fifteenth century. We find it, in fact, difficult, at the present day, to believe that pieces like the first of these, in which Polyphemus plays on a guitar, and an island in the earliest ages of Greek tradition sinks into the sea amidst a discharge of squibs and rockets, can have been represented anywhere.[532]

But Montalvan followed Lope in every thing, and, like the rest of the dramatic writers of his age, was safe from such censure as he would now receive, because he wrote to satisfy the demands of the popular audiences of Madrid.[533] He made the novela, or tale, the chief basis of interest for his drama, and relied mainly on the passion of jealousy to give it life and movement.[534] Bowing to the authority of the court, he avoided, we are told, representing rebellion on the stage, lest he should seem to encourage it; and was even unwilling to introduce men of rank in degrading situations, for fear disloyalty should be implied or imputed. He would gladly, it is added, have restrained his action to twenty-four hours, and limited each of the three divisions of his full-length dramas to three hundred lines, never leaving the stage empty in either of them. But such rules were not prescribed to him by the popular will, and he wrote too freely and too fast to be more anxious about observing his own theories than his master was.[535]

His “Most Constant Wife,” one of his plays which is particularly pleasing, from the firm, yet tender, character of the heroine, was written, he tells us, in four weeks, prepared by the actors in eight days, and represented again and again, until the great religious festival of the spring closed the theatres.[536] His “Double Vengeance,” with all its horrors, was acted twenty-one days successively.[537] His “No Life like Honor”—one of his more sober efforts—appeared many times on both the principal theatres of Madrid at the same moment;—a distinction to which, it is said, no other play had then arrived in Spain, and in which none succeeded it till long afterwards.[538] And, in general, during the period when his dramas were produced, which was the old age of Lope de Vega, no author was heard on the stage with more pleasure than Montalvan, except his great master.

He had, indeed, his trials and troubles, as all have whose success depends on popular favor. Quevedo, the most unsparing satirist of his time, attacked the less fortunate parts of one of his works of fiction with a spirit and bitterness all his own; and, on another occasion, when one of Montalvan’s plays had been hissed, wrote him a letter which professed to be consolatory, but which is really as little so as can well be imagined.[539] But, notwithstanding such occasional discouragements, his course was, on the whole, fortunate, and he is still to be remembered among the ornaments of the old national drama of his country.

CHAPTER XXI.

DRAMA, CONTINUED. — TIRSO DE MOLINA. — MIRA DE MESCUA. — VALDIVIELSO. — ANTONIO DE MENDOZA. — RUIZ DE ALARCON. — LUIS DE BELMONTE, AND OTHERS. — EL DIABLO PREDICADOR. — OPPOSITION OF LEARNED MEN AND OF THE CHURCH TO THE POPULAR DRAMA. — A LONG STRUGGLE. — TRIUMPH OF THE DRAMA.

ANOTHER of the persons who, at this time, sought popular favor on the public stage was Gabriel Tellez, an ecclesiastic of rank, better known as Tirso de Molina,—the name under which he slightly disguised himself when publishing works of a secular character. Of his life we know little, except that he was born in Madrid; that he was educated at Alcalá; that he entered the Church as early as 1613; and that he died in the convent of Soria, of which he was the head, probably in February, 1648;—some accounts representing him to have been sixty years old at the time of his death, and some eighty.[540]

In other respects we know more of him. As a writer for the theatre, we have five volumes of his dramas, published between 1616 and 1636; besides which, a considerable number of his plays can be found scattered through his other works, or printed each by itself. His talent seems to have been decidedly dramatic; but the moral tone of his plots is lower than common, and many of his plays contain passages whose indecency has caused them to be so hunted down by the confessional and the Inquisition, that copies of them are among the rarest of Spanish books.[541] Not a few of the less offensive, however, have maintained their place on the stage, and are still familiar, as popular favorites.

Of these, the best known out of Spain is “El Burlador de Sevilla,” or The Seville Deceiver,—the earliest distinct exhibition of that Don Juan who is now seen on every stage in Europe, and known to the lowest classes of Germany, Italy, and Spain, in puppet-shows and street-ballads. The first rudiments for this character—which, it is said, may be traced historically to the great Tenorio family of Seville—had, indeed, been brought upon the stage by Lope de Vega, in the second and third acts of “Money makes the Man”; where the hero shows a similar firmness and wit amidst the most awful visitations of the unseen world.[542] But in the character as sketched by Lope there is nothing revolting. Tirso, therefore, is the first who showed it with all its original undaunted courage united to an unmingled depravity that asks only for selfish gratifications, and a cold, relentless humor that continues to jest when surrounded by the terrors of a supernatural retribution.

This conception of the character is picturesque, notwithstanding the moral atrocities it involves. It was, therefore, soon carried to Naples, and from Naples to Paris, where the Italian actors took possession of it. The piece thus produced, which was little more than an Italian translation of Tirso’s, had great success in 1656 on the boards of that company, then very fashionable at the French court. Two or three French translations followed, and in 1665 Molière brought out his “Festin de Pierre,” in which, taking not only the incidents of Tirso, but often his dialogue, he made the real Spanish fiction known to Europe as it had not been known before.[543] From this time, the strange and wild character conceived by the Spanish poet has gone through the world under the name of Don Juan, followed by a reluctant and shuddering interest, that at once marks what is most peculiar in its conception, and confounds all theories of dramatic interest. Zamora, a writer of the next half-century in Spain, Thomas Corneille in France, and Lord Byron in England, are the prominent poets to whom it is most indebted for its fame; though perhaps the genius of Mozart has done more than any or all of them to reconcile the refined and elegant to its dark and disgusting horrors.[544]

At home, “The Deceiver of Seville” has never been the most favored of Tirso de Molina’s works. That distinction belongs to “Don Gil in the Green Pantaloons,” perhaps the most strongly marked specimen of an intriguing comedy in the language. Doña Juana, its heroine, a lady of Valladolid, who has been shamefully deserted by her lover, follows him to Madrid, whither he had gone to arrange for himself a more ambitious match. In Madrid, during the fortnight the action lasts, she appears sometimes as a lady named Elvira, and sometimes as a cavalier named Don Gil; but never once, till the last moment, in her own proper person. In these two assumed characters, she confounds all the plans and plots of her faithless lover; makes his new mistress fall in love with her; writes letters to herself, as a cavalier, from herself as a lady; and passes herself off, sometimes for her own lover, and sometimes for other personages merely imaginary.

Her family at Valladolid, meantime, are made to believe she is dead; and two cavaliers appearing in Madrid, the one from design and the other by accident, in a green dress like the one she wears, all three are taken to be one and the same individual, and the confusion becomes so unintelligible, that her alarmed lover and her own man-servant—the last of whom had never seen her but in masculine attire at Madrid—are persuaded it is some spirit come among them in the fated green costume, to work out a dire revenge for the wrongs it had suffered in the flesh. At this moment, when the uproar and alarm are at their height, the relations of the parties are detected, and three matches are made instead of the one that had been broken off;—the servant, who had been most frightened, coming in at the instant every thing is settled, with his hat stuck full of tapers and his clothes covered with pictures of saints, and crying out, as he scatters holy water in every body’s face,—

Who prays, who prays for my master’s poor soul,—

His soul now suffering purgatory’s pains

Within those selfsame pantaloons of green?

And when his mistress turns suddenly round and asks him if he is mad, the servant, horror-struck at seeing a lady, instead of a cavalier, with the countenance and voice he at once recognizes, exclaims in horror,—

I do conjure thee by the wounds—of all

Who suffer in the hospital’s worst ward,—

Abrenuntio!—Get thee behind me!

Juana.

Fool! Don’t you see that I am your Don Gil,

Alive in body, and in mind most sound?—

That I am talking here with all these friends,

And none is frightened but your foolish self?

Servant.

Well, then, what are you, Sir,—a man or woman?

Just tell me that.

Juana.

A woman, to be sure.

Servant.

No more! enough! That word explains the whole;—

Ay, and if thirty worlds were going mad,

It would be reason good for all the uproar.

The chief characteristic of this play is its extremely ingenious and involved plot. Few foreigners, perhaps not one, ever comprehended all its intrigue on first reading it, or on first seeing it acted. Yet it has always been one of the most popular plays on the Spanish stage; and the commonest and most ignorant in the audiences of the great cities of Spain do not find its ingenuities and involutions otherwise than diverting.

Quite different from either of the preceding dramas, and in some respects better than either, is Tirso’s “Bashful Man at Court,”—a play often acted, on its first appearance, in Italy, as well as in Spain, and one in which, as its author tells us, a prince of Castile once performed the part of the hero. It is not properly historical, though partly founded on the story of Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who, in 1449, after having been regent of Portugal, was finally despoiled of his power and defeated in an open rebellion.[545] Tirso supposes him to have retired to the mountains, and there, disguised as a shepherd, to have educated a son in complete ignorance of his rank. This son, under the name of Mireno, is the hero of the piece. Finding himself possessed of nobler sentiments and higher intelligence than those of the rustics among whom he lives, he half suspects that he is of noble origin; and, escaping from his solitude, appears at court, determined to try his fortune. Accident favors him. He enters the service of the royal favorite, and wins the love of his daughter, who is as free and bold, from an excessive knowledge of the world, as her lover is humble and gentle in his ignorance of it. There his rank is discovered, and the play ends happily.

A story like this, even with the usual accompaniment of an underplot, is too slight and simple to produce much effect. But the character of the principal personage, and its gradual development, rendered it long a favorite on the Spanish stage. Nor was this preference unreasonable. His noble pride, struggling against the humble circumstances in which he finds himself placed; the suspicion he hardly dares to indulge, that his real rank is equal to his aspirations,—a suspicion which yet governs his life; and the modesty which tempers the most ambitious of his thoughts, form, when taken together, one of the most lofty and beautiful ideals of the old Castilian character.[546]

Some of Tirso’s secular dramas deal chiefly in recent events and well-settled history, like his trilogy on the achievements of the Pizarros in the New World, and their love-adventures at home. Others are founded on facts, but with a larger admixture of fiction, like the two on the election and pontificate of Sixtus Quintus. His religious dramas and autos are as extravagant as those of the other poets of his time, and could hardly be more so.

His mode of treating his subjects seems to be capricious. Sometimes he begins his dramas with great naturalness and life, as in one that opens with the accidents of a bull-fight,[547] and in another, with the confusion consequent on the upsetting of a coach;[548] while, at other times, he seems not to care how tedious he is, and once breaks ground in the first act with a speech above four hundred lines long.[549] Perhaps the most characteristic of his openings is in his “Love for Reasons of State,” where we have, at the outset, a scene before a lady’s balcony, a rope-ladder, and a duel, all full of Castilian spirit. His more obvious defects are the too great similarity of his characters and incidents; the too frequent introduction of disguised ladies to help on the intrigue; and the needless and shameless indelicacy of some of his stories,—a fault rendered more remarkable by the circumstance, that he himself was an ecclesiastic of rank, and honored in Madrid as a public preacher. His more uniform merits are a most happy power of gay narration; an extraordinary command of his native Castilian; and a rich and flowing versification in all the many varieties of metre demanded by the audiences of the capital, who were become more nice and exacting in this, perhaps, than in any other single accessory of the drama.

But however various and capricious were the forms of Tirso’s drama, he was, in substance, always a follower of Lope de Vega. This he himself distinctly announces, boasting of the school to which he belongs, and entering, at the same time, into an ingenious and elaborate defence of its principles and practice, as opposed to those of the classical school; a defence which, it is worthy of notice, was published twelve years before the appearance of Corneille’s “Cid,” and which, therefore, to a considerable extent, anticipated in Madrid the remarkable controversy about the unities occasioned by that tragedy in Paris after 1636[550] and subsequently made the foundation of the dramatic schools of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire.

Contemporary with these events and discussions lived Antonio Mira de Mescua, well known from 1602 to 1635 as a writer for the stage, and much praised by Cervantes and Lope de Vega. He was a native of Guadix in the kingdom of Granada, and in his youth became archdeacon of its cathedral; but in 1610 he was at Naples, attached to the poetical court of the Count de Lemos, and in 1620 he gained a prize in Madrid, where he seems to have died while in the office of chaplain to Philip the Fourth. He wrote secular plays, autos, and lyrical poetry; but his works were never collected and are now found with difficulty, though not a few of his lighter compositions are in nearly all the respectable selections of the national poetry from his own time to the present.

He, like Tirso de Molina, was an ecclesiastic of rank, but did not escape the troubles common to writers for the stage. One of his dramas, “The Unfortunate Rachel,” founded on the fable which represents Alfonso the Eighth as having nearly sacrificed his crown to his passion for a Jewess of Toledo, was much altered, by authority, before it could be acted, though Lope de Vega had been permitted to treat the same subject at large in the same way, in the nineteenth book of his “Jerusalem Conquered.” Mira de Mescua, too, was concerned in the drama of “The Curate of Madrilejos,” which, as we have seen, was forbidden to be read or acted even after it had been printed. Still, there is no reason to suppose he did not enjoy the consideration usually granted to successful writers for the theatre. At least, we know he was much imitated. His “Slave of the Devil” was not only remodelled and reproduced by Moreto in “Fall to rise again,” but was freely used by Calderon in two of his best-known dramas. His “Gallant both Brave and True” was employed by Alarcon in “The Trial of Husbands.” And his “Palace in Confusion” is the groundwork of Corneille’s “Don Sancho of Aragon.”[551]

Joseph de Valdivielso, another ecclesiastic of high condition, was also a writer for the stage at the same time. He was connected with the great cathedral of Toledo and with its princely primate, the Cardinal Infante, but he lived in Madrid, where he was a member of the same religious congregation with Cervantes and Lope, and where he was intimately associated with the principal men of letters of his time. He flourished from about 1607 to about 1633, and can be traced, during the whole of that period, by his certificates of approbation and by commendatory verses which were prefixed to the works of his friends as they successively appeared. His own publications are almost entirely religious;—those for the stage consisting of a single volume printed in 1622, and containing twelve autos and two religious plays.

The twelve autos seem, from internal evidence, to have been written for the city of Toledo, and certainly to have been performed there, as well as in other cities of Spain. He selected them from a large number, and they undoubtedly enjoyed, during his lifetime, a wide popularity. Some, perhaps, deserved it. “The Prodigal Son,” long a tempting subject wherever religious dramas were known, was treated with more than usual skill. “Psyche and Cupid,” too, is better managed for Christian purposes than that mystical fancy commonly was by the poets of the Spanish theatre. And “The Tree of Life” is a well-sustained allegory, in which the old theological contest between Divine Justice and Divine Mercy is carried through in the old theological spirit, beginning with scenes in Paradise and ending with the appearance of the Saviour. But, in general, the autos of Valdivielso are not better than those of his contemporaries.

His two plays are not so good. “The Birth of the Best,” as the Madonna is often technically called, and “The Guardian Angel,” which is, again, an allegory, not unlike that of “The Tree of Life,” are both of them crude and wild compositions, even within the broad limits permitted to the religious drama. One reason of their success may, perhaps, be found in the fact, that they have more of the tone of the elder poetry than almost any of the sacred plays of the time;—a remark that may be extended to the autos of Valdivielso, in one of which there is a spirited parody of the well-known ballad on the challenge of Zamora after the murder of Sancho the Brave. But the social position of their author, and, perhaps, his quibbles and quaintnesses, which humored the bad taste of his age, must be taken into consideration before we can account for the extensive popularity he undoubtedly enjoyed.[552]

Another sort of favor fell to the share of Antonio de Mendoza, who wrote much for the court between 1623 and 1643. His Works—besides a number of ballads and short poems addressed to the Duke of Lerma and other principal persons of the kingdom—contain a Life of Our Lady, in nearly eight hundred redondillas, and five plays, to which two or three more may be added from different miscellaneous collections. The poems are of little value; the plays are better. “He deserves most who loves most” may have contributed materials to Moreto’s “Disdain met with Disdain,” and is certainly a pleasant drama, with natural situations and an easy dialogue. “Society changes Manners” is another real comedy with much life and gayety. And “Love for Love’s Sake,” which, has been called its author’s happiest effort, enjoyed the distinction of being acted before the court by the queen’s maids of honor, who took all the parts,—those of the cavaliers, as well as those of the women.[553]

Ruiz de Alarcon, who was his contemporary, was less favored during his lifetime than Mendoza, but has much more merit. He was born in the province of Tasco, in Mexico, but was descended from a family that belonged to Alarcon in the mother country. As early as 1622 he was in Madrid, and assisted in the composition of a play in honor of the Marquis of Cañete for his victories in Arauco, which was the joint work of nine persons. In 1628, he published the first volume of his Dramas, on the title-page of which he calls himself Prolocutor of the Royal Council for the Indies; a place of both trust and profit. It is dedicated to the Público Vulgar, or the Rabble, in a tone of savage contempt for the audiences of Madrid, which, if it intimates that he had been ill-treated on the stage, proves, also, that he felt strong enough to defy his enemies. To the eight plays contained in this volume he added twelve more in 1635, with a Preface, which, again, leaves little doubt that his merit was undervalued, as he says he found it difficult to vindicate for himself even the authorship of not a few of the plays he had written. He died in 1639.[554]

His “Domingo de Don Blas,” one of the few among his works not found in the collection printed by himself, is a sketch of the character of a gentleman sunk into luxury and effeminacy by the possession of a large fortune suddenly won from the Moors in the time of Alfonso the Third of Leon; but who, at the call of duty, rouses himself again to his earlier energy, and shows the old Castilian character in all its loyalty and generosity. The scene where he refuses to risk his person in a bull-fight, merely to amuse the Infante, is full of humor, and is finely contrasted, first, with the scene where he runs all risks in defence of the same prince, and afterwards, still more finely, with that where he sacrifices the prince, because he had failed in loyalty to his father.

“How to gain Friends” gives us another exhibition of the principle of loyalty in the time of Peter the Cruel, who is here represented only as a severe, but just, administrator of the law in seasons of great trouble. His minister and favorite, Pedro de Luna, is one of the most noble characters offered to us in the whole range of the Spanish drama;—a character belonging to a class in which Alarcon has several times succeeded.

A better-known play than either, however, is the “Weaver of Segovia.” It is in two parts. In the first, its hero, Fernando Ramirez, is represented as suffering the most cruel injustice at the hands of his sovereign, who has put his father to death under a false imputation of treason, and reduced Ramirez himself to the misery of earning his subsistence, disguised as a weaver. Six years elapse, and, in the second part, he appears again, stung by new wrongs and associated with a band of robbers, at whose head, after spreading terror through the mountain range of the Guadarrama, he renders such service to his ungrateful king, in the crisis of a battle against the Moors, and extorts such confessions of his own and his father’s innocence from their dying enemy, that he is restored to favor, and becomes, in the Oriental style, the chief person in the kingdom he has rescued. He is, in fact, another Charles de Mohr, but has the advantage of being placed in a period of the world and a state of society where such a character is more possible than in the period assigned to it by Schiller, though it can never be one fitted for exhibition in a drama that claims to have a moral purpose.

“Truth itself Suspected” is, on the other hand, obviously written for such a purpose. It gives us the character of a young man, the son of a high-minded father, and himself otherwise amiable and interesting, who comes from the University of Salamanca to begin the world at Madrid, with an invincible habit of lying. The humor of the drama, which is really great, consists in the prodigious fluency with which he invents all sorts of fictions to suit his momentary purposes; the ingenuity with which he struggles against the true current of facts, which yet runs every moment more and more strongly against him; and the final result, when, nobody believing him, he is reduced to the necessity of telling the truth, and—by a mistake which he now finds it impossible to persuade any one he has really committed—loses the lady he had won, and is overwhelmed with shame and disgrace.

Parts of this drama are full of spirit; such as the description of a student’s life at the university, and that of a brilliant festival given to a lady on the banks of the Manzanares. These, with the exhortations of the young man’s father, intended to cure him of his shameful fault, and not a little of the dialogue between the hero—if he may be so called—and his servant, are excellent. It is the piece from which Corneille took the materials for his “Menteur,” and thus, in 1642, laid the foundations of classical French comedy in a play of Alarcon, as, six years before, he had laid the foundations for its tragedy in the “Cid” of Guillen de Castro. Alarcon, however, was then so little known, that Corneille supposed himself to be using a play of Lope de Vega; though it should be remembered, that, when, some years afterwards, he found out his mistake, he did Alarcon the justice to restore to him his rights, adding that he would gladly give the two best plays he had ever written to be the author of the one he had so freely used.

It would not be difficult to find other dramas of Alarcon showing equal judgment and spirit. Such, in fact, is the one entitled “Walls have Ears,” which, from its mode of exhibiting the ill consequences of slander and mischief-making, may be regarded as the counterpart to “Truth itself Suspected.” And such, too, is the “Trial of Husbands,” which has had the fortune to pass under the names of Lope de Vega and Montalvan, as well as of its true author, and would cast no discredit on either of them. But it is enough to add to what we have already said of Alarcon, that his style is excellent,—generally better than that of any but the very best of his contemporaries,—with less richness, indeed, than that of Tirso de Molina, and adhering more to the old redondilla measure than that of Lope, but purer in versification than either of them, more simple and more natural; so that, on the whole, he is to be ranked with the best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the national theatre.[555]

Other writers who devoted themselves to the drama were, however, as well known at the time they lived as he was, if not always as much valued. Among them may be mentioned Luis de Belmonte, whose “Renegade of Valladolid” and “God the best Guardian” are singular mixtures of what is sacred with what is profane; Jacinto Cordero, whose “Victory through Love” was long a favorite on the stage; Andres Gil Enriquez, the author of a pleasant play called “The Net, the Scarf, and the Picture”; Diego Ximenez de Enciso, who wrote grave historical plays on the life of Charles the Fifth at San Yuste, and on the death of Don Carlos; Gerónimo de Villaizan, whose best play is “A Great Remedy for a Great Wrong”; and many others, such as Felipe Godinez, Miguel Sanchez, and Rodrigo de Herrera, who shared, in an inferior degree, the favor of the popular audiences at Madrid.[556]

Writers distinguished in other branches of literature were also tempted by the success of those devoted to the stage to adventure for the brilliant prizes it scattered on all sides. Salas Barbadillo, who wrote many pleasant tales and died in 1630, left behind him two dramas, of which one claims to be in the manner of Terence.[557] Solorzano, who died ten years later and was known in the same forms of elegant literature with Barbadillo, is the author of a spirited play, founded on the story of a lady, who, after having accepted a noble lover from interested motives, gives him up for the servant of that lover, put forward in disguise, as if he were possessor of the very estates for which she had accepted his master.[558] Góngora wrote one play, and parts of two others, still preserved in the collection of his works;[559] and Quevedo, to please the great favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, assisted in the composition of at least a single drama, which is now lost, if it be not preserved, under another name, in the works of Antonio de Mendoza.[560] But the circumstances of chief consequence in relation to all these writers are, that they belonged to the school of Lope de Vega, and that they bear witness to the vast popularity of his drama in their time.

Indeed, so attractive was the theatre now become, that ecclesiastics and the higher nobility, who, from their position in society, did not wish to be known as dramatic authors, still wrote for the stage, sending their plays to the actors or to the press anonymously. Such persons generally announced their dramas as written by “A Wit of this Court,”—Un Ingenio de esta Corte,—and a large collection of pieces could now be made, which are known only under this mask; a mask, it may be observed, often significant of the pretensions of those whom it claims partly to conceal. Even Philip the Fourth, who was an enlightened lover of the arts and of letters, is said to have sometimes used it; and there is a tradition that “Giving my Life for my Lady,” “The Earl of Essex,” and perhaps one or two other plays, were either entirely his, or that he contributed materially to their composition.[561]

One of the most remarkable of these “Comedias de un Ingenio” is that called “The Devil turned Preacher.” Its scene is laid in Lucca, and its original purpose seems to have been to glorify Saint Francis, and to strengthen the influence of his followers. At any rate, in the long introductory speech of Lucifer, that potentate represents himself as most happy at having so far triumphed over these his great enemies, that a poor community of Franciscans, established in Lucca, is likely to be starved out of the city by the universal ill-will he has excited against them. But his triumph is short. Saint Michael descends with the infant Saviour in his arms, and requires Satan himself immediately to reconvert the same inhabitants whose hearts he had hardened; to build up the very convent of the holy brotherhood which he had so nearly overthrown; and to place the poor friars, who were now pelted by the boys in the streets, upon a foundation of respectability safer than that from which he had driven them. The humor of the piece consists in his conduct while executing the unwelcome task thus imposed upon him. To do it, he takes, at once, the habit of the monks he detests; he goes round to beg for them; he superintends the erection of an ampler edifice for their accommodation; he preaches; he prays; he works miracles;—and all with the greatest earnestness and unction, in order the sooner to be rid of a business so thoroughly disagreeable to him, and of which he is constantly complaining in equivocal phrases and bitter side-speeches, that give him the comfort of expressing a vexation he cannot entirely control, but dares not openly make known. At last he succeeds. The hateful work is done. But the agent is not dismissed with honor. On the contrary, he is obliged, in the closing scene, to confess who he is, and to avow that nothing, after all, awaits him but the flames of perdition, into which he visibly sinks, like another Don Juan, before the edified audience.

The action occupies above five months. It has an intriguing underplot, which hardly disturbs the course of the main story, and one of whose personages—the heroine herself—is very gentle and attractive. The character of the Father Guardian of the Franciscan monks, full of simplicity, humble, trustful, and submissive, is also finely drawn; and so is the opposite one,—the gracioso of the piece,—a liar, a coward, and a glutton; ignorant and cunning; whom Lucifer amuses himself with teasing, in every possible way, whenever he has a moment to spare from the grave work he is so anxious to finish.

In some of the early copies, this drama, so characteristic of the age to which it belongs, is attributed to Luis de Belmonte, and in some of them to Antonio de Coello. Later, it is declared, though on what authority we are not told, to have been written by Francisco Damian de Cornejo, a Franciscan monk. But all this is uncertain. We only know, that, for a long time after it appeared, it used to be acted as a devout work, favorable to the interests of the Franciscans, who then possessed great influence in Spain. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, however, this state of things was partly changed, and its public performance, for some reason or other, was forbidden. About 1800, it reappeared on the stage, and was again acted, with great profit, all over the country,—the Franciscan monks lending the needful monastic dresses for an exhibition they thought so honorable to their order. But in 1804 it was put anew under the ban of the Inquisition, and so remained until after the political revolution of 1820, which gave absolute liberty to the theatre.[562]

The school of Lope, to which all the writers we have just enumerated, and many more, belonged, was not received with an absolutely universal applause. Men of learning, from time to time, refused to be reconciled to it; and severe or captious critics found in its gross irregularities and extravagances abundant opportunity for the exercise of a spirit of complaint. Alonso Lopez, commonly called El Pinciano, in his “Art of Poetry founded on the Doctrines of the Ancients,”—a modest treatise, which he printed as early as 1596,—shows plainly, in his discussions on the nature of tragedy and comedy, that he was far from consenting to the forms of the drama then beginning to prevail in the theatre. The Argensolas, who, about ten years earlier, had attempted to introduce another and more classical type, would, of course, be even less satisfied with the tendency of things in their time; and one of them, Bartolomé, speaks his opinion very openly in his didactic satires. Others joined them, among whom were Artieda, in a poetical epistle to the Marquis of Cuellar; Villegas, the sweet lyrical poet, in his seventh elegy; and Christóval de Mesa, in different passages of his minor poems, and in the Preface to his ill-constructed tragedy of “Pompey.” If to these we add a scientific discussion on the True Structure of Tragedy and Comedy, in the third and fourth of the Poetical Tables of Cascales, and a harsh attack on the whole popular Spanish stage, by Suarez de Figueroa, in which little is noticed but its follies, we shall have, if not every thing that was said on the subject, at least every thing that needs now to be remembered. The whole is of less consequence than the frank admissions of Lope de Vega, in his “New Art of the Drama.”[563]

The opposition of the Church, more formidable than that of the scholars of the time, was, in some respects, better founded, since many of the plays of this period were indecent, and more of them immoral. The ecclesiastical influence, as we have seen, had, therefore, been early directed against the theatre, partly on this account and partly because the secular drama had superseded those representations in the churches which had so long been among the means used by the priesthood to sustain their power with the mass of the people. On these grounds, in fact, the plays of Torres Naharro were suppressed in 1545, and a petition was sent, in 1548, by the Cortes, to Charles the Fifth, against the printing and publishing of all indecent farces.[564] For a long time, however, little was done but to suspend dramatic representations in seasons of court mourning, and on other occasions of public sorrow or trouble;—this being, perhaps, thought by the clergy an exercise of their influence that would, in the course of events, lead to more important concessions.

But as the theatre rose into importance with the popularity of Lope de Vega, the discussions on its character and consequences grew graver. Even just before that time, in 1587, Philip the Second consulted some of the leading theologians of the kingdom, and was urged to suppress altogether the acted drama; but, after much deliberation, followed the milder opinion of Alonso de Mendoza, a professor at Salamanca, and determined still to tolerate it, but to subject it constantly to a careful and even strict supervision. In 1590, Mariana, the historian, in his treatise “De Spectaculis,” written with great fervor and eloquence, made a bold attack on the whole body of the theatres, particularly on their costumes and dances, and thus gave a new impulse to the discussion, which was not wholly lost when, in 1597, Philip the Second, according to the custom of the time, ordered the public representations at Madrid to be suspended, in consequence of the death of his daughter, the Duchess of Savoy. But Philip was now old and infirm. The opposers of the theatre, among whom was Lupercio de Argensola, gathered around him.[565] The discussion was renewed with increased earnestness, and in 1598, not long before he breathed his last in the Escurial, with his dying eyes fastened on its high altar, he forbade theatrical representations altogether.

Little, however, was really effected by this struggle on the part of the Church, except that the dramatic poets were compelled to discover ingenious modes for evading the authority exercised against them, and that the character of the actors was degraded by it. To drive the drama from ground where it was so well intrenched behind the general favor of the people was impossible. The city of Madrid, already the acknowledged capital of the country, begged that the theatres might again be opened; giving, as one reason for their request, that many religious plays were performed, by some of which both actors and spectators had been so moved to penitence as to hasten directly from the theatre to enter religious houses;[566] and as another reason, that the rent paid by the companies of actors to the hospitals of Madrid was important to the very existence of those great and beneficent charities.[567]

Moved by such arguments, Philip the Third, in 1600, when the theatres had been shut hardly two years, summoned a council of ecclesiastics and four of the principal lay authorities of the kingdom, and laid the whole subject before them. Under their advice,—which still condemned in the strongest manner the theatres as they had heretofore existed in Spain,—he permitted them to be opened anew; diminishing, however, the number of actors, forbidding all immorality in the plays, and allowing representations only on Sundays and three other days in the week, which were required to be Church festivals, if such festivals should occur. This decision has, on the whole, been hardly yet disturbed, and the theatre in Spain, with occasional alterations and additions of privilege, has continued to rest safely on its foundations ever since;—closed, indeed, sometimes, in seasons of public mourning, as it was three months on the death of Philip the Third, and again in 1665, by the bigotry of the queen regent, but never interrupted for any long period, and never again called to contend for its existence.

The truth is, that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, the popular Spanish drama was too strong to be subjected either to classical criticism or to ecclesiastical control. In the “Amusing Journey” of Roxas, an actor who travelled over much of the country in 1602, visiting Seville, Granada, Toledo, Valladolid, and many other places, we find plays acted everywhere, even in the smallest villages, and the drama, in all its forms and arrangements, accommodated to the public taste far beyond any other popular amusement.[568] In 1632, Montalvan—the best authority on such a subject—gives us the names of a crowd of writers for Castile alone; and three years later, Fabio Franchi, an Italian, who had lived in Spain, published a eulogy on Lope, which enumerates nearly thirty of the same dramatists, and shows anew how completely the country was imbued with their influence. There can, therefore, be no doubt, that, at the time of his death, Lope’s name was the great poetical name that filled the whole breadth of the land with its glory, and that the forms of the drama originated by him were established, beyond the reach of successful opposition, as the national and popular forms of the drama for all Spain.[569]

CHAPTER XXII.

CALDERON. — HIS LIFE AND VARIOUS WORKS. — DRAMAS FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO HIM. — HIS SACRAMENTAL AUTOS. — HOW REPRESENTED. — THEIR CHARACTER. — THE DIVINE ORPHEUS. — GREAT POPULARITY OF SUCH EXHIBITIONS. — HIS FULL-LENGTH RELIGIOUS PLAYS. — PURGATORY OF SAINT PATRICK. — DEVOTION TO THE CROSS. — WONDER-WORKING MAGICIAN. — OTHER SIMILAR PLAYS.

TURNING from Lope de Vega and his school, we come now to his great successor and rival, Pedro Calderon de la Barca, who, if he invented no new form of the drama, was yet so eminently a poet in the national temper, and had a success so brilliant, that he must necessarily fill a large space in all inquiries concerning the history of the Spanish theatre.

He was born at Madrid, on the 17th of January, 1600;[570] and one of his friends claims kindred for him with nearly all the old kings of the different Spanish monarchies, and even with most of the crowned heads of his time, throughout Europe.[571] This is absurd. But it is of consequence to know that his family was respectable, and its position in society such as to give him an opportunity for early intellectual culture;—his father being Secretary to the Treasury Board under Philip the Second and Philip the Third, and his mother of a noble family, that came from the Low Countries long before. Perhaps, however, the most curious circumstance connected with his origin is to be found in the fact, that, while the two masters of the Spanish drama, Lope de Vega and Calderon, were both born in Madrid, the families of both are to be sought for, at an earlier period, in the same little picturesque valley of Carriedo, where each possessed an ancestral fief.[572]

When only nine years old, he was placed under the Jesuits, and from them received instructions which, like those Corneille was receiving at the same moment, in the same way, on the other side of the Pyrenees, imparted their coloring to the whole of his life, and especially to its latter years. After leaving the Jesuits, he went to Salamanca, where he studied with distinction the scholastic theology and philosophy then in fashion, and the civil and canon law. But when he left the University in 1619, he was already known as a writer for the theatre; and when he arrived at Madrid, he seems, probably on this account, to have been at once noticed by some of those persons about the court who could best promote his advancement and success.

In 1620, he entered, with the leading spirits of his time, into the first poetical contest opened by the city of Madrid in honor of San Isidro, and received for his efforts the public compliment of Lope de Vega’s praise.[573] In 1622, he appeared at the second and greater contest proposed by the capital, on the canonization of the same saint; and gained—all that could be gained by one individual—a single prize, with still further and more emphatic praises from the presiding spirit of the show.[574] In the same year, too, when Lope published a considerable volume containing an account of all these ceremonies and rejoicings, we find that the youthful Calderon approached him as a friend, with a few not ungraceful lines, which Lope, to show that he admitted the claim, prefixed to his book. But, from that time, we entirely lose sight of Calderon as an author, for ten years, except that in 1630 he figures in Lope de Vega’s “Laurel of Apollo,” among the crowd of poets born in Madrid.[575]

Much of this interval seems to have been filled with service in the armies of his country. At least, he was in the Milanese in 1625, and afterwards, as we are told, went to Flanders, where a disastrous war was still carried on with unrelenting hatred, both national and religious. That he was not a careless observer of men and manners during his campaigns, we see by the plots of some of his plays, and by the lively local descriptions with which they abound, as well as by the characters of his heroes, who often come fresh from these same wars, and talk of their adventures with an air of reality that leaves no doubt that they speak of what had absolutely happened. But we soon find him in the more appropriate career of letters. In 1632, Montalvan tells us that Calderon was already the author of many dramas, which had been acted with applause; that he had gained many public prizes; that he had written a great deal of lyrical verse; and that he had begun a poem on the General Deluge. His reputation as a poet, therefore, at the age of thirty-two, was an enviable one, and was fast rising.[576]

A dramatic author of such promise could not be overlooked in the reign of Philip the Fourth, especially when the death of Lope, in 1635, had left the theatre without a master. In 1636, therefore, Calderon was formally attached to the court, for the purpose of furnishing dramas to be represented in the royal theatres, and in 1637, as a further honor, he was made a knight of the Order of Santiago. His very distinctions, however, threw him back once more into a military life. When he was just entering on his brilliant career as a poet, the rebellion excited by France in Catalonia burst forth with great violence, and all the members of the four great military orders of the kingdom were required, in 1640, to appear in the field and sustain the royal authority. Calderon, like a true knight, presented himself at once to fulfil his duty. But the king was so anxious to enjoy his services in the palace, that he was willing to excuse him from the field, and asked from him yet another drama. In great haste, the poet finished his “Contest of Love and Jealousy,”[577] and then joined the army; serving loyally through the campaign in the body of troops commanded by the Count Duke Olivares in person, and remaining in the field till the rebellion was quelled.

After his return, the king testified his increased regard for Calderon by giving him a pension of thirty gold crowns a month, and by employing him in the arrangements for the festivities of the court, when, in 1649, the new queen, Anna Maria of Austria, made her entrance into Madrid. From this period, he uniformly enjoyed a high degree of the royal favor; and, till the death of Philip the Fourth, he had a controlling influence over whatever related to the drama, writing secular plays for the theatres and autos for the Church with uninterrupted applause.

In 1651, he followed the example of Lope de Vega and other men of letters of his time, by entering a religious brotherhood; and the king two years afterwards gave him the place of chaplain in a chapel consecrated to the “New Kings” at Toledo;—a burial-place set apart for royalty, and richly endowed from the time of Henry of Trastamara. But it was found that his duties there kept him too much from the court, to whose entertainment he had become important. In 1663, therefore, he was created chaplain of honor to the king, who thus secured his regular presence at Madrid; though, at the same time, he was permitted to retain his former place, and even had a second added to it. In the same year, he became a Priest of the Congregation of Saint Peter, and soon rose to be its head; an office of some importance, which he held during the last fifteen years of his life, and exercised with great gentleness and dignity.[578]

This accumulation of religious benefices, however, did not lead him to intermit in any degree his dramatic labors. On the contrary, it was rather intended to stimulate him to further exertion; and his fame was now so great, that the cathedrals of Toledo, Granada, and Seville constantly solicited from him religious plays to be performed on the day of the Corpus Christi,—that great festival, for which, during nearly thirty-seven years, he furnished similar entertainments regularly, at the charge of the city of Madrid. For these services, as well as for his services at court, he was richly rewarded, so that he accumulated an ample fortune.

After the death of Philip the Fourth, which happened in 1665, he seems to have enjoyed less of the royal patronage. Charles the Second had a temper totally different from that of his predecessor; and Solís, the historian, speaking of Calderon, with reference to these circumstances, says pointedly, “He died without a Mæcenas.”[579] But still he continued to write as before for the public theatres, for the court, and for the churches; and retained, through his whole life, the extraordinary general popularity of his best years. He died in 1681, on the 25th of May,—the Feast of the Pentecost,—while all Spain was ringing with the performance of his autos, in the composition of one more of which he was himself occupied almost to the last moment of his life.[580]

The next day, he was borne, as his will required, without any show, to his grave in the church of San Salvador, by the Priests of the Congregation over which he had so long presided, and to which he now left the whole of his fortune. A more gorgeous funeral ceremony followed a few days later, to satisfy the claims of the popular admiration; and even at Valencia, Naples, Lisbon, Milan, and Rome, public notice was taken of his death by his countrymen, as of a national calamity.[581] A monument to his memory was soon erected in the church where he was buried; but in 1840 his remains were removed to the more splendid church of the Atocha, where they now rest.[582]

Calderon, we are told, was remarkable for his personal beauty, which he long preserved by the serenity and cheerfulness of his spirit. The engraving published soon after his death shows, at least, a strongly marked and venerable countenance, to which in fancy we may easily add the brilliant eye and gentle voice given to him by his friendly eulogist, while, in its ample and finely turned brow, we are reminded of that with which we are familiar in the portraits of our own great dramatic poet.[583] His character, throughout, seems to have been benevolent and kindly. In his old age, we learn that he used to collect his friends round him on his birthdays, and tell them amusing stories of his childhood;[584] and during the whole of the active part of his life, he enjoyed the regard of many of the distinguished persons of his time, who, like the Count Duke Olivares and the Duke of Veraguas, seem to have been attracted to him quite as much by the gentleness of his nature as by his genius and fame.

In a life thus extending to above fourscore years, nearly the whole of which was devoted to letters, Calderon produced a large number of works. Except, however, a panegyric on the Duke of Medina de Rioseco, who died in 1647, and a single volume of autos, which he printed in 1676, he published hardly any thing of what he wrote;[585] and yet, besides several longer works,[586] he prepared for the academies of which he was a member, and for the poetical festivals and joustings then so common in Spain, a great number of odes, songs, ballads, and other poems, which gave him not a little of his fame with his contemporaries.[587] His brother, indeed, printed some of his full-length dramas between 1640 and 1674;[588] but we are expressly told that Calderon himself never sent any of them to the press;[589] and even in the case of the autos, where he deviated from his established custom, he says he did it unwillingly, and only lest their sacred character should be impaired by imperfect and surreptitious publications.

For forty-five years of his life, however, the press teemed with dramatic works bearing his name on their titles. As early as 1633, they began to appear in the popular collections; but many of them were not his, and the rest were so disfigured by the imperfect manner in which they had been written down during their representations, that he says he could often hardly recognize them himself.[590] His editor and friend, Vera Tassis, gives several lists of plays, amounting in all to a hundred and fifteen, printed by the cupidity of the booksellers as Calderon’s, without having any claim whatsoever to that honor; and he adds, that many others, which Calderon had never seen, were sent from Seville to the Spanish possessions in America.[591]

By means like these, the confusion became at last so great, that the Duke of Veraguas, then the honored head of the family of Columbus, and Captain-general of the kingdom of Valencia, wrote a letter to Calderon in 1680, asking for a list of his dramas, by which, as a friend and admirer, he might venture to make a collection of them for himself. The reply of the poet, complaining bitterly of the conduct of the booksellers which had made such a request necessary, is accompanied by a list of one hundred and eleven full-length dramas and seventy sacramental autos which he claims as his own.[592] This catalogue constitutes the proper basis for a knowledge of Calderon’s dramatic works, down to the present day. All the plays mentioned in it have not, indeed, been found. Nine are not in the editions of Vera Tassis, in 1682, and of Apontes, in 1760; but, on the other hand, a few not in Calderon’s list have been added to theirs upon what has seemed sufficient authority; so that we have now seventy-three sacramental autos, with their introductory loas,[593] and one hundred and eight comedias, on which his reputation as a dramatic poet is hereafter to rest.[594]

In examining this large mass of Calderon’s dramatic works, it will be most convenient to take first, and by themselves, those which are quite distinct from the rest, and which alone he thought worthy of his care in publication,—his autos or dramas for the Corpus Christi day. Nor are they undeserving of this separate notice. There is little in the dramatic literature of any nation more characteristic of the people that produced it than this department of the Spanish theatre; and among the many poets who devoted themselves to it, none had such success as Calderon.

Of the early character and condition of the autos and their connection with the Church we have already spoken, when noticing Juan de la Enzina, Gil Vicente, Lope de Vega, and Valdivielso. They were, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, among the favorite amusements of the mass of the people; but at the period at which we are now arrived, they had gradually risen to be of great importance. That they were spread through the whole country, even into the small villages, we may see in the Travels of Augustin Roxas,[595] and in the Second Part of Don Quixote, where the mad knight is represented as meeting a car that was carrying the actors for the Festival of the Sacrament from one hamlet to another.[596] This, it will be remembered, was all before 1615. During the next thirty years, and especially during the last portion of Calderon’s life, the number and consequence of the autos were much increased, and they were represented with great luxury and at great expense in the streets of all the larger cities;—so important were they deemed to the influence of the clergy, and so attractive had they become to all classes of society; to the noble and the cultivated no less than to the multitude.

In 1654, when they were at the height of their success, Aarsens de Somerdyck, an accomplished Dutch traveller, gives us an account of them as he witnessed their exhibition at Madrid.[597] In the forenoon of the festival, he says, a procession occurred such as we have seen was usual in the time of Lope de Vega, where the king and court appeared without distinction of rank, preceded by two fantastic figures of giants, and sometimes by the grotesque form of the Tarasca,—one of which, we are told, in a pleasant story of Santos, passing by night from a place where it had been exhibited the preceding day to one where it was to be exhibited the day following, so alarmed a body of muleteers who accidentally met it, that they roused up the country, as if a real monster were come among them to lay waste the land.[598] These misshapen figures and all this strange procession, with music of hautboys, tambourines, and castanets, with banners, and religious shows, followed the sacrament through the streets for some hours, and then returned to the principal church, and were dismissed.

In the afternoon they assembled again and performed the autos, on that and many successive days, before the houses of the great officers of state, where the audience stood either in the balconies that would command a view of the exhibition, or else in the streets. The giants and the Tarascas were there to make sport for the multitude; the music came, that all might dance who chose; torches were added to give effect to the scene, though the performance was only by daylight; and the king and the royal family enjoyed the exhibition, sitting in state under a magnificent canopy in front of the stage prepared for the occasion.

As soon as the principal personages were seated, the loa was spoken or sung; then came a farcical entremes; afterwards the auto itself; and finally, something by way of conclusion that would contribute to the general amusement, like music or dancing. And this was continued, in different parts of the city, daily for a month, during which the theatres were shut and the regular actors were employed in the streets, in the service of the Church.[599]

Of the entertainments of this sort which Calderon furnished for Madrid, Toledo, and Seville, he has left, as has been said, no less than seventy-three. They are all allegorical, and all, by the music and show with which they abounded, are nearer to operas than any other class of dramas then known in Spain; some of them reminding us, by their religious extravagance, of the treatment of the gods in the plays of Aristophanes, and others, by their spirit and richness, of the poetical masques of Ben Jonson. They are upon a great variety of subjects, and show, by their structure, that elaborate and costly machinery must have been used in their representation.

Including the loa that accompanied each, those of Calderon are nearly or quite as long as the full-length plays which he wrote for the secular theatre. Some of them indicate their subjects by their titles, like “The First and Second Isaac,” “God’s Vineyard,” and “Ruth’s Gleanings.” Others, like “The True God Pan” and “The First Flower of Carmel,” give no such intimations. All are crowded with shadowy personages, such as Sin, Death, Mohammedanism, Judaism, Justice, Mercy, and Charity; and the uniform purpose and end of all is to set forth and glorify the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. The great Enemy of man, of course, fills a large space in them,—Quevedo says too large, adding, that, at last, he had grown to be quite a presuming and vainglorious personage, coming on the stage dressed finely, and talking as if the theatre were altogether his own.[600]

There is necessarily a good deal of sameness in the structure of dramas like these; but it is wonderful with what ingenuity Calderon has varied his allegories, sometimes mingling them with the national history, as in the case of the two autos on Saint Ferdinand; oftener with incidents and stories from Scripture, like “The Brazen Serpent” and “The Captivity of the Ark”; and always, where he could, seizing any popular occasion to produce an effect, as he did after the completion of the Escurial and of the Buen Retiro, and after the marriage of the Infanta María Teresa; each of which events contributed materials for a separate auto. Almost all of them have passages of striking lyrical poetry; and a few, of which “Devotion to the Mass” is the chief, make a free use of the old ballads.

One of the most characteristic of the collection, and one that has considerable poetical merit in separate passages, is “The Divine Orpheus.”[601] It opens with the entrance of a huge black car, in the shape of a boat, which is drawn along the street toward the stage where the auto is to be acted, and contains the Prince of Darkness, set forth as a pirate, and Envy, as his steersman; both supposed to be thus navigating through a portion of chaos. They hear, at a distance, sweet music which proceeds from another car, advancing from the opposite quarter in the form of a celestial globe, covered with the signs of the planets and constellations, and containing Orpheus, who represents allegorically the Creator of all things. This is followed by a third car, setting forth the terrestrial globe, within which are the Seven Days of the Week, and Human Nature, all asleep. These cars open, so that the personages they contain can come upon the stage and retire back again, as if behind the scenes, at their pleasure;—the machines themselves constituting, in this as in all such representations, an important part of the scenic arrangements of the exhibition, and, in the popular estimation, not unfrequently the most important part.

On their arrival at the stage, the Divine Orpheus, with lyric poetry and music, begins the work of creation, using always language borrowed from Scripture; and at the suitable moment, as he advances, each Day presents itself, roused from its ancient sleep and clothed with symbols indicating the nature of the work that has been accomplished; after which, Human Nature is, in the same way, summoned forth, and appears in the form of a beautiful woman, who is the Eurydice of the fable. Pleasure dwells with her in Paradise; and, in her exuberant happiness, she sings a hymn in honor of her Creator, founded on the hundred and thirty-sixth Psalm, the poetical effect of which is destroyed by an unbecoming scene of allegorical gallantry that immediately follows between the Divine Orpheus himself and Human Nature.

The temptation and fall succeed; and then the graceful Days, which had before always accompanied Human Nature and scattered gladness in her path, disappear one by one, and leave her to her trials and her sins. She is overwhelmed with remorse, and, endeavouring to escape from the consequences of her guilt, is conveyed by the bark of Lethe to the realms of the Prince of Darkness, who, from his first appearance on the scene, has been laboring, with his coadjutor, Envy, for this very triumph. But his triumph is short. The Divine Orpheus, who has, for some time, represented the character of our Saviour, comes upon the stage, weeping over the fall, and sings a song of love and grief to the accompaniment of a harp made partly in the form of a cross; after which, rousing himself in his omnipotence, he enters the realms of darkness, amidst thunders and earthquakes; overcomes all opposition; rescues Human Nature from perdition; places her, with the seven redeemed Days of the Week, on a fourth car, in the form of a ship, so ornamented as to represent the Christian Church and the mystery of the Eucharist; and then, as the gorgeous machine sweeps away, the exhibition ends with the shouts of the actors in the drama, accompanied by the answering shouts of the spectators on their knees wishing the good ship a good voyage and a happy arrival at her destined port.

That these Sacramental Acts produced a great effect, there can be no doubt. Allegory of all kinds, which, from the earliest periods, had been attractive to the Spanish people, still continued so to an extraordinary degree; and the imposing show of the autos, their music, and the fact that they were represented in seasons of solemn leisure, at the expense of the government, and with the sanction of the Church, gave them claims on the popular favor which were enjoyed by no other form of popular amusement. They were written and acted everywhere throughout the country, and by all classes of people, because they were everywhere demanded. How humble were some of their exhibitions in the villages and hamlets may be seen in Roxas, who gives an account of an auto of Cain and Abel, in which two actors performed all the parts;[602] and from Lope de Vega[603] and Cervantes,[604] who speak of their being written by barbers and acted by shepherds. On the other hand, we know that in Madrid no expense was spared to add to their solemnity and effect, and that everywhere they had the countenance and support of the public authorities. Nor has their influence even yet entirely ceased. In 1765, Charles the Third forbade their public representation; but the popular will and the habits of five centuries could not be immediately broken down by a royal decree. Autos, therefore, or dramatic religious farces resembling them, are still heard in some of the remote villages of the country; while, in the former dependencies of Spain, exhibitions of the same class and nature, if not precisely of the same form, have never been interfered with.[605]

Of full-length religious plays and plays of saints Calderon wrote, in all, thirteen or fourteen. This was, no doubt, necessary to his success; for at one time during his career, such plays were much demanded. The death of Queen Isabella, in 1644, and of Balthasar, the heir-apparent, in 1646, caused a suspension of public representations on the theatres, and revived the question of their lawfulness. New rules were prescribed about the number of actors and their costumes, and an attempt was made even to drive from the theatre all plays involving the passion of love, and especially all the plays of Lope de Vega. This irritable state of things continued till 1649. But nothing of consequence followed. The regulations that were made were not executed in the spirit in which they were conceived. Many plays were announced and acted as religious which had no claim whatever to the title; and others, religious in their external framework, were filled up with an intriguing love-plot, as free as any thing in the secular drama had been. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the attempts thus made to constrain the theatre were successfully opposed or evaded, especially by private representations in the houses of the nobility;[606] and that, when these attempts were given up, the drama, with all its old attributes and attractions, broke forth with a greater extravagance of popularity than ever;[607]—a fact apparent from the crowd of dramatists that became famous, and from the circumstance that so many of the clergy, like Tarraga, Mira de Mescua, Montalvan, Tirso de Molina, and Calderon, to say nothing of Lope de Vega, who was particularly exact in his duties as a priest, were all successful writers for the stage.[608]

Of the religious plays of Calderon, one of the most remarkable is “The Purgatory of Saint Patrick.” It is founded on the little volume by Montalvan, already referred to, in which the old traditions of an entrance into Purgatory from a cave in an island off the coast of Ireland, or in Ireland itself, are united to the fictitious history of Ludovico Enio, a Spaniard, who, except that he is converted by Saint Patrick and “makes a good ending,” is no better than another Don Juan.[609] The strange play in which these are principal figures opens with a shipwreck. Saint Patrick and the godless Enio drift ashore and find themselves in Ireland,—the sinner being saved from drowning by the vigorous exertions of the saint. The king of the country, who immediately appears on the stage, is an atheist, furious against Christianity; and after an exhibition, which is not without poetry, of the horrors of savage heathendom, Saint Patrick is sent as a slave into the interior of the island, to work for this brutal master. The first act ends with his arrival at his destination, where, in the open fields, after a fervent prayer, he is comforted by an angel, and warned of the will of Heaven, that he should convert his oppressors.

Before the second act opens, three years elapse, during which Saint Patrick has visited Rome and been regularly commissioned for his great work in Ireland, where he now appears, ready to undertake it. He immediately performs miracles of all kinds, and, among the rest, raises the dead before the audience; but still the old heathen king refuses to be converted, unless the very Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise preached to him are made sure to the senses of some well-known witness. This, therefore, is Divinely vouchsafed to the intercession of Saint Patrick. A communication with the unseen world is opened through a dark and frightful cave. Enio, the godless Spaniard, already converted by an alarming vision, enters it and witnesses its dread secrets; after which he returns, and effects the conversion of the king and court by a long description of what he had seen,—a description which is the only catastrophe to the play.

Besides its religious story, the Purgatory of Saint Patrick has a love-plot, such as might become the most secular drama, and a gracioso as rude and free-spoken as the rudest of his class.[610] But the whole was intended to produce what was then regarded as a religious effect; and there is no reason to suppose that it failed of its purpose. There is, however, much in it that would be grotesque and unseemly under any system of faith; some wearying metaphysics; and two speeches of Enio’s, each above three hundred lines long,—the first an account of his shameful life before his conversion, and the last a narrative of all he had witnessed in the cave, absurdly citing for its truth fourteen or fifteen obscure monkish authorities, all of which belong to a period subsequent to his own.[611] Such as it is, however, the Purgatory of Saint Patrick is commonly ranked among the best religious plays of the Spanish theatre in the seventeenth century.

It is, indeed, on many accounts, less offensive than the more famous drama, “Devotion to the Cross,” which is founded on the adventures of a man who, though his life is a tissue of gross and atrocious crimes, is yet made an object of the especial favor of God, because he shows a uniform external reverence for whatever has the form of a cross; and who, dying in a ruffian brawl, as a robber, is yet, in consequence of this devotion to the cross, miraculously restored to life, that he may confess his sins, be absolved, and then be transported directly to heaven. The whole seems to be absolutely an invention of Calderon, and, from the fervent poetical tone of some of its devotional passages, it has always been a favorite in Spain, and, what is yet more remarkable, has found admirers in Protestant Christendom.[612]

“The Wonder-working Magician,” founded on the story of Saint Cyprian,—the same legend on which Milman has founded his “Martyr of Antioch,”—is, however, more attractive than either of the dramas just mentioned, and, like “El Joseph de las Mugeres,” reminds us of Goethe’s “Faust.” It opens—after one of those pleasing descriptions of natural scenery in which Calderon loves to indulge—with an account by Cyprian, still unconverted, of his retirement, on a day devoted to the service of Jupiter, from the bustle and confusion of the city of Antioch, in order to spend the time in inquiries concerning the existence of One Supreme Deity. As he seems likely to arrive at conclusions not far from the truth, Satan, to whom such a result would be particularly unwelcome, breaks in upon his studies, and, in the dress of a fine gentleman, announces himself to be a man of learning, who has accidentally lost his way. In imitation of a fashion not rare among scholars at European universities, in the poet’s time, this personage offers to hold a dispute with Cyprian on any subject whatever. Cyprian naturally chooses the one that then troubled his thoughts; and after a long, logical discussion, according to the discipline of the schools, obtains a clear victory,—though not without feeling enough of his adversary’s power and genius to express a sincere admiration for both. The evil spirit, however, though defeated, is not discouraged, and goes away, determined to try the power of temptation.

For this purpose he brings upon the stage Lelius, son of the governor of Antioch, and Florus,—both friends of Cyprian,—who come to fight a duel, near the place of his present retirement, concerning a fair lady named Justina, against whose gentle innocence the Spirit of all Evil is particularly incensed. Cyprian interferes; the parties refer their quarrel to him; he visits Justina, who is secretly a Christian, and supposes herself to be the daughter of a Christian priest; but, unhappily, Cyprian, instead of executing his commission, falls desperately in love with her; while, in order to make out the running parody on the principal action, common in Spanish plays, the two lackeys of Cyprian are both found to be in love with Justina’s maid.

Now, of course, begins the complication of a truly Spanish intrigue, for which all that precedes it is only a preparation. That same night, Lelius and Floras, the two original rivals for the love of Justina, who favors neither of them, come separately before her window to offer her a serenade, and while there, Satan deceives them both into a confident belief that the lady is disgracefully attached to some other person; for he himself, in the guise of a gallant, descends from her balcony, before their eyes, by a rope-ladder, and, having reached the bottom, sinks into the ground between the two. As they did not see each other till after his disappearance, though both had seen him, each takes the other to be this favored rival, and a duel ensues on the spot. Cyprian again opportunely interferes, but, having understood nothing of the vision or the rope-ladder, is astonished to find that both renounce Justina, as no longer worthy their regard. And thus ends the first act.

In the other two acts, Satan is still a busy, bustling personage. He appears in different forms; first, as if just escaped from shipwreck; and afterwards, as a fashionable gallant; but uniformly for mischief. The Christians, meantime, through his influence, are persecuted. Cyprian’s love grows desperate; and he sells his soul to the Spirit of Evil for the possession of Justina. The temptation of the fair Christian maiden is then carried on in all possible ways; especially in a beautiful lyrical allegory, where all things about her—the birds, the flowers, the balmy air—are made to solicit her to love with gentle and winning voices. But in every way the temptation fails. Satan’s utmost power is defied and defeated by the mere spirit of innocence. Cyprian, too, yields, and becomes a Christian, and with Justina is immediately brought before the governor, already exasperated by discovering that his own son is a lover of the fair convert. Both are ordered to instant execution; the buffoon servants make many poor jests on the occasion; and the piece ends by the appearance on a dragon of Satan himself, who is compelled to confess the power of the Supreme Deity, which, in the first scenes, he had denied, and to proclaim, amidst thunder and earthquakes, that Cyprian and Justina are already enjoying the happiness won by their glorious martyrdom.[613]

Few pieces contain more that is characteristic of the old Spanish stage than this one; and fewer still show so plainly how the civil restraints laid on the theatre were evaded, and the Church was conciliated, while the popular audiences lost nothing of the forbidden amusement to which they had been long accustomed from the secular drama.[614] Of such plays Calderon wrote fifteen, if we include in the number his “Aurora in Copacabana,” which is on the conquest and conversion of the Indians in Peru; and his “Origin, Loss, and Recovery of the Virgin of the Reliquary,”—a strange collection of legends, extending over above four centuries, full of the spirit of the old ballads, and relating to an image of the Madonna still devoutly worshipped in the great cathedral at Toledo.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CALDERON, CONTINUED. — HIS SECULAR PLAYS. — DIFFICULTY OF CLASSIFYING THEM. — THEIR PRINCIPAL INTEREST. — NATURE OF THEIR PLOTS. — LOVE SURVIVES LIFE. — PHYSICIAN OF HIS OWN HONOR. — PAINTER OF HIS OWN DISHONOR. — NO MONSTER LIKE JEALOUSY. — FIRM-HEARTED PRINCE.

PASSING from the religious plays of Calderon to the secular, we at once encounter an embarrassment which we have already felt in other cases,—that of dividing them all into distinct and appropriate classes. It is even difficult to determine, in every instance, whether the piece we are considering belongs to one of the religious subdivisions of his dramas or not; for the “Wonder-working Magician,” for instance, is hardly less an intriguing play than “First of all my Lady”; and “Aurora in Copacabana” is as full of spiritual personages and miracles, as if it were not, in the main, a love-story. But, even after setting this difficulty aside, as we have done, by examining separately all the dramas of Calderon that can, in any way, be accounted religious, it is not possible to make a definite classification of the remainder.

Some of them, such as “Nothing like Silence,” are absolutely intriguing comedies, and belong strictly to the school of the capa y espada; others, like “A Friend Loving and Loyal,” are purely heroic, both in their structure and their tone; and a few others, such as “Love survives Life,” and “The Physician of his own Honor,” belong to the most terrible inspirations of genuine tragedy. Twice, in a different direction, we have operas, which are yet nothing but plays in the national taste, with music added;[615] and once we have a burlesque drama,—“Cephalus and Procris,”—in which, using the language of the populace, he parodies an earlier and successful performance of his own.[616] But, in the great majority of cases, the boundaries of no class are respected; and in many of them even more than two forms of the drama melt imperceptibly into each other. Especially in those pieces whose subjects are taken from known history, sacred or profane, or from the recognized fictions of mythology or romance, there is frequently a confusion that seems as though it were intended to set all classification at defiance.[617]

Still, in this confusion there was a principle of order, and perhaps even a dramatic theory. For—if we except “Luis Perez the Galician,” which is a series of sketches to bring out the character of a notorious robber, and a few show pieces, presented on particular occasions to the court with great magnificence—all Calderon’s full-length dramas depend for their success on the interest excited by an involved plot, constructed out of surprising incidents.[618] He avows this himself, when he declares one of them to be—

The most surprising tale

Which, in the dramas of Castile, a wit

Acute hath yet traced out, and on the stage

With tasteful skill produced.[619]

And again, where he says of another,—

This is a play of Pedro Calderon,

Upon whose scene you never fail to find

A hidden lover or a lady fair

Most cunningly disguised.[620]

But to this principle of making a story which shall sustain an eager interest throughout Calderon has sacrificed almost as much as Lope de Vega did. The facts of history and geography are not felt for a moment as limits or obstacles. Coriolanus is a general who has served under Romulus; and Veturia, his wife, is one of the ravished Sabines.[621] The Danube, which must have been almost as well known to a Madrid audience from the time of Charles the Fifth as the Tagus, is placed between Russia and Sweden.[622] Jerusalem is on the sea-coast.[623] Herodotus is made to describe America.[624]

How absurd all this was Calderon knew as well as any body. Once, indeed, he makes a jest of it all; for one of his ancient Roman clowns, who is about to tell a story, begins,—

A friar,—but that ’s not right,—there are no friars

As yet in Rome.[625]

Nor is the preservation of national or individual character, except perhaps the Moorish, a matter of any more moment in his eyes. Ulysses and Circe sit down, as if in a saloon at Madrid, and, gathering an academy of cavaliers and ladies about them, discuss questions of metaphysical gallantry. Saint Eugenia does the same thing at Alexandria in the third century. And Judas Maccabæus, Herod the tetrarch of Judea, Jupangui the Inca of Peru, and Zenobia, are all, in their general air, as much Spaniards of the time of Philip the Fourth, as if they had never lived anywhere except at his court.[626] But we rarely miss the interest and charm of a dramatic story, sustained by a rich and flowing versification, and by long narrative passages, in which the most ingenious turns of phraseology are employed in order to provoke curiosity and enchain attention.

No doubt, this is not the dramatic interest to which we are most accustomed and which we most value. But still it is a dramatic interest, and dramatic effects are produced by it. We are not to judge Calderon by the example of Shakspeare, any more than we are to judge Shakspeare by the example of Sophocles. The “Arabian Nights” are not the less brilliant because the admirable practical fictions of Miss Edgeworth are so different. The gallant audiences of Madrid still give the full measure of an intelligent admiration to the dramas of Calderon, as their fathers did; and even the poor Alguacil, who sat as a guard of ceremony on the stage while the “Niña de Gomez Arias” was acting, was so deluded by the cunning of the scene, that, when a noble Spanish lady was dragged forward to be sold to the Moors, he sprang, sword in hand, among the performers to prevent it.[627] It is in vain to say that dramas which produce such effects are not dramatic. The testimony of two centuries and of a whole nation proves the contrary.

Admitting, then, that the plays of Calderon are really dramas, and that their basis is to be sought in the structure of their plots, we can examine them in the spirit, at least, in which they were originally written. And if, while thus inquiring into their character and merits, we fix our attention on the different degrees in which love, jealousy, and a lofty and sensitive honor and loyalty enter into their composition and give life and movement to their respective actions, we shall hardly fail to form a right estimate of what Calderon did for the Spanish secular theatre in its highest departments.

Under the first head,—that of the passion of love,—one of the most prominent of Calderon’s plays occurs early in the collection of his works, and is entitled “Love survives Life.” It is founded on events that happened in the rebellion of the Moors of Granada which broke out in 1568, and though some passages in it bear traces of the history of Mendoza,[628] yet it is mainly taken from the half fanciful, half-serious narrative of Hita, where its chief details are recorded as unquestionable facts.[629] The action occupies about five years, beginning three years before the absolute outbreak of the insurgents, and ending with their final overthrow.

The first act passes in the city of Granada, and explains the intention of the conspirators to throw off the Spanish yoke, which had become intolerable. Tuzani, the hero, is quickly brought to the foreground of the piece by his attachment to Clara Malec, whose aged father, dishonored by a blow from a Spaniard, causes the rebellion to break out somewhat prematurely. Tuzani at once seeks the haughty offender. A duel follows, and is described with great spirit; but it is interrupted,[630] and the parties separate, to renew their quarrel on a bloodier theatre.

The second act opens three years afterwards, in the mountains south of Granada, where the insurgents are strongly posted, and where they are attacked by Don John of Austria, represented as coming fresh from the great victory at Lepanto, which yet happened, as Calderon and his audience well knew, a year after this rebellion was quelled. The marriage of Tuzani and Clara is hardly celebrated, when he is hurried away from her by one of the chances of war; the fortress where the ceremonies had taken place falling suddenly into the hands of the Spaniards. Clara, who had remained in it, is murdered in the mêlée by a Spanish soldier, for the sake of her rich bridal jewels; and though Tuzani arrives in season to witness her death, he is too late to intercept or recognize the murderer.

From this moment, darkness settles on the scene. Tuzani’s character changes, or seems to change, in an instant, and his whole Moorish nature is stirred to its deepest foundations. The surface, it is true, remains, for a time, as calm as ever. He disguises himself carefully in Castilian armour, and glides into the enemy’s camp in quest of vengeance, with that fearfully cool resolution which marks, indeed, the predominance of one great passion, but shows that all the others are roused to contribute to its concentrated energy. The ornaments of Clara enable her lover to trace out the murderer. But he makes himself perfectly sure of his proper victim by coolly listening to a minute description of Clara’s beauty and of the circumstances attending her death; and when the Spaniard ends by saying, “I pierced her heart,” Tuzani springs upon him like a tiger, crying out, “And was the blow like this?” and strikes him dead at his feet. The Moor is surrounded, and is recognized by the Spaniards as the fiercest of their enemies; but, even from the very presence of Don John of Austria, he cuts his way through all opposition, and escapes to the mountains. Hita says he afterwards knew him personally.

The power of this painful tragedy consists in the living impression it gives us of a pure and elevated love, contrasted with the wild elements of the age in which it is placed;—the whole being idealized by passing through Calderon’s excited imagination, but still, in the main, taken from history and resting on known facts. Regarded in this light, it is a solemn exhibition of violence, disaster, and hopeless rebellion, through whose darkening scenes we are led by that burning love which has marked the Arab wherever he has been found, and by that proud sense of honor which did not forsake him as he slowly retired, disheartened and defeated, from the rich empire he had so long enjoyed in Western Europe. We are even hurried by the course of the drama into the presence of whatever is most odious in war, and should be revolted, as we are made to witness, with our own eyes, its guiltiest horrors; but in the midst of all, the form of Clara rises, a beautiful vision of womanly love, before whose gentleness the tumults of the conflict seem, at least, to be hushed; while, from first to last, in the characters of Don John of Austria, Lope de Figueroa,[631] and Garcés, on one side, and the venerable Malec and the fiery Tuzani, on the other, we are dazzled by a show of the times that Calderon brings before us, and of the passions which deeply marked the two most romantic nations that were ever brought into a conflict so direct.

The play of “Love survives Life,” so far as its plot is concerned, is founded on the passionate love of Tuzani and Clara, without any intermixture of the workings of jealousy, or any questions arising, in the course of that love, from an over-excited feeling of honor. This is rare in Calderon, whose dramas are almost always complicated in their intrigue by the addition of one or both of these principles; giving the story sometimes a tragic and sometimes a happy conclusion.

One of the best-known and most admired of these mixed dramas is “The Physician of his own Honor,”—a play whose scene is laid in the time of Peter the Cruel, but one which seems to have no foundation in known facts, and in which the monarch has an elevation given to his character not warranted by history.[632] His brother, Henry of Trastamara, is represented as having been in love with a lady who, notwithstanding his lofty pretensions, is given in marriage to Don Gutierre de Solís, a Spanish nobleman of high rank and sensitive honor. She is sincerely attached to her husband, and true to him. But the prince is accidentally thrown into her presence. His passion is revived; he visits her again, contrary to her will; he leaves his dagger, by chance, in her apartment; and, the suspicions of the husband being roused, she is anxious to avert any further danger, and begins, for this purpose, a letter to her lover, which her husband seizes before it is finished. His decision is instantly taken. Nothing can be more deep and tender than his love; but his honor is unable to endure the idea, that his wife, even before her marriage, had been interested in another, and that, after it, she had seen him privately. When, therefore, she awakes from the swoon into which she had fallen at the moment he tore from her the equivocal beginning of her letter, she finds at her side a note containing only these fearful words:—

My love adores thee, but my honor hates;

And while the one must strike, the other warns.

Two hours hast thou of life. Thy soul is Christ’s;

O, save it, for thy life thou canst not save![633]

At the end of these two fatal hours, Gutierre returns with a surgeon, whom he brings to the door of the room in which he had left his wife.

Don Gutierre.

Look in upon this room. What seest thou there?

Surgeon.

A death-like image, pale and still, I see,

That rests upon a couch. On either side

A taper lit, while right before her stands

The holy crucifix. Who it may be

I cannot say; the face with gauze-like silk

Is covered quite.[634]

Gutierre, with the most violent threats, requires him to enter the room and bleed to death the person who has thus laid herself out for interment. He goes in and accomplishes the will of her husband, without the least resistance on the part of his victim. But when he is conducted away, blindfold as he came, he impresses his bloody hand upon the door of the house, that he may recognize it again, and immediately reveals to the king the horrors of the scene he has just passed through.

The king rushes to the house of Gutierre, who ascribes the death of his wife to accident, not from the least desire to conceal the part he himself had in it, but from an unwillingness to explain his conduct, by revealing reasons for it which involved his honor. The king makes no direct reply, but requires him instantly to marry Leonore, a lady then present, whom Gutierre was bound in honor to have married long before, and who had already made known to the king her complaints of his falsehood. Gutierre hesitates, and asks what he should do, if the prince should visit his wife secretly and she should venture afterwards to write to him; intending by these intimations to inform the king what were the real causes of the bloody sacrifice before him, and that he would not willingly expose himself to their recurrence. But the king is peremptory, and the drama ends with the following extraordinary scene.

King.

There is a remedy for every wrong.

Don Gutierre.

A remedy for such a wrong as this?

King.

Yes, Gutierre.

Don Gutierre.

My lord! what is it?

King.

’T is of your own invention, Sir!

Don Gutierre.

But what?

King.

’T is blood.

Don Gutierre.

What mean your royal words, my lord?

King.

No more but this; cleanse straight your doors,—

A bloody hand is on them.

Don Gutierre.

My lord, when men

In any business and its duties deal,

They place their arms escutcheoned on their doors.

I deal, my lord, in honor, and so place

A bloody hand upon my door to mark

My honor is by blood made good.

King.

Then give thy hand to Leonore.

I know her virtue hath deserved it long.

Don Gutierre.

I give it, Sire. But, mark me, Leonore,

It comes all bathed in blood.

Leonore.

I heed it not;

And neither fear nor wonder at the sight.

Don Gutierre.

And mark me, too, that, if already once

Unto mine honor I have proved a leech,

I do not mean to lose my skill.

Leonore.

Nay, rather,

If my life prove tainted, use that same skill

To heal it.

Don Gutierre.

I give my hand; but give it

On these terms alone.[635]

Undoubtedly such a scene could be acted only on the Spanish stage; but undoubtedly, too, notwithstanding its violation of every principle of Christian morality, it is entirely in the national temper, and has been received with applause down to our own times.[636]

“The Painter of his own Dishonor” is another of the dramas founded on love, jealousy, and the point of honor, in which a husband sacrifices his faithless wife and her lover, and yet receives the thanks of each of their fathers, who, in the spirit of Spanish chivalry, not only approve the sacrifice of their own children, but offer their persons to the injured husband to defend him against any dangers to which he may be exposed in consequence of the murder he has committed.[637] “For a Secret Wrong, Secret Revenge,” is yet a third piece, belonging to the same class, and ending tragically like the two others.[638]

But as a specimen of the effects of mere jealousy, and of the power with which Calderon could bring on the stage its terrible workings, the drama he has called “No Monster like Jealousy” is to be preferred to any thing else he has left us.[639] It is founded on the well-known story, in Josephus, of the cruel jealousy of Herod, tetrarch of Judea, who twice gave orders to have his wife, Mariamne, destroyed, in case he himself should not escape alive from the perils to which he was exposed in his successive contests with Antony and Octavius;—all out of dread lest, after his death, she should be possessed by another.[640]

In the early scenes of Calderon’s drama, we find Herod, with this passionately cherished wife, alarmed by a prediction that he should destroy, with his own dagger, what he most loved in the world, and that Mariamne should be sacrificed to the most formidable of monsters. At the same time we are informed, that the tetrarch, in the excess of his passion for his fair and lovely wife, aspires to nothing less than the mastery of the world,—then in dispute between Antony and Octavius Cæsar,—an empire which he covets only to be able to lay it at her feet. To obtain this end, he partly joins his fortunes to those of Antony, and fails. Octavius, discovering his purpose, summons him to Egypt to render an account of his government. But among the plunder which, after the defeat of Antony, fell into the hands of his rival, is a portrait of Mariamne, with which the Roman becomes so enamoured, though falsely advised that the original is dead, that, when Herod arrives in Egypt, he finds the picture of his wife multiplied on all sides, and Octavius full of love and despair.

Herod’s jealousy is now equal to his unmeasured affection; and, finding that Octavius is about to move towards Jerusalem, he gives himself up to its terrible power. In his blind fear and grief, he sends an old and trusty friend, with written orders to destroy Mariamne in case of his own death, but adds passionately,—

Let her not know the mandate comes from me

That bids her die. Let her not—while she cries

To heaven for vengeance—name me as she falls.

His faithful follower would remonstrate, but Herod interrupts him:—

Be silent. You are right;—

But still I cannot listen to your words;

and then goes off in despair, exclaiming,—

O mighty spheres above! O sun! O moon

And stars! O clouds, with hail and sharp frost charged!

Is there no fiery thunderbolt in store

For such a wretch as I? O mighty Jove!

For what canst thou thy vengeance still reserve,

If now it strike not?[641]

But Mariamne obtains secretly a knowledge of his purpose; and, when he arrives in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, gracefully and successfully begs his life of Octavius, who is well pleased to do a favor to the fair original of the portrait he had ignorantly loved, and is magnanimous enough not to destroy a rival, who had yet by treason forfeited all right to his forbearance.

As soon, however, as Mariamne has secured the promise of her husband’s safety, she retires with him to the most private part of her palace, and there, in her grieved and outraged love, upbraids him with his design upon her life; announcing, at the same time, her resolution to shut herself up from that moment, with her women, in widowed solitude and perpetual mourning. But the same night Octavius gains access to her retirement, in order to protect her from the violence of her husband, which he, too, had discovered. She refuses, however, to admit to him that her husband can have any design against her life; and defends both her lord and herself with heroic love. She then escapes, pursued by Octavius, and, at the same instant, her husband enters. He follows them, and a conflict ensues instantly. The lights are extinguished, and in the confusion Mariamne falls under a blow from her husband’s hand, intended for his rival; thus fulfilling the prophecy at the opening of the play, that she should perish by his dagger and by the most formidable of monsters, which is now interpreted to be Jealousy.

The result, though foreseen, is artfully brought about at last, and produces a great shock on the spectator, and even on the reader. Indeed, it does not seem as if this fierce and relentless passion could be carried, on the stage, to a more terrible extremity. Othello’s jealousy—with which it is most readily compared—is of a lower kind, and appeals to grosser fears. But that of Herod is admitted, from the beginning, to be without any foundation, except the dread that his wife, after his death, should be possessed by a rival, whom, before his death, she could never have seen;—a transcendental jealousy to which he is yet willing to sacrifice her innocent life.

Still, different as are the two dramas, there are several points of accidental coincidence between them. Thus, we have, in the Spanish play, a night scene, in which her women undress Mariamne, and, while her thoughts are full of forebodings of her fate, sing to her those lines of Escriva which are among the choice snatches of old poetry found in the earliest of the General Cancioneros:—

Come, Death, but gently come and still;—

All sound of thine approach restrain,

Lest joy of thee my heart should fill,

And turn it back to life again;[642]—

beautiful words, which remind us of the scene immediately preceding the death of Desdemona, when she is undressing and talks with Emilia, singing, at the same time, the old song of “Willow, Willow.”

Again, we are reminded of the defence of Othello by Desdemona down to the instant of her death, in the answer of Mariamne to Octavius, when he urges her to escape with him from the violence of her husband:—

My lips were dumb, when I beheld thy form;

And now I hear thy words, my breath returns

Only to tell thee, ’t is some traitor foul

And perjured that has dared to fill thy mind

With this abhorred conceit. For, Sire, my husband

Is my husband; and if he slay me,

I am guiltless, which, in the flight you urge,

I could not be. I dwell in safety here,

And you are ill informed about my griefs;

Or, if you are not, and the dagger’s point

Should seek my life, I die not through my fault,

But through my star’s malignant potency,

Preferring in my heart a guiltless death

Before a life held up to vulgar scorn.

If, therefore, you vouchsafe me any grace,

Let me presume the greatest grace would be

That you should straightway leave me.[643]

Other passages might be adduced; but, though striking, they do not enter into the essential interest of the drama. This consists in the exhibition of the heroic character of Herod, broken down by a cruel jealousy, over which the beautiful innocence of his wife triumphs only at the moment of her death; while above them both the fatal dagger, like the unrelenting destiny of the ancient Greek tragedy, hangs suspended, seen only by the spectators, who witness the unavailing struggles of its victims to escape from a fate in which, with every effort, they become more and more involved.

Other dramas of Calderon rely for their success on a high sense of loyalty, with little or no admixture of love or jealousy. The most prominent of these is “The Firm-hearted Prince.”[644] Its plot is founded on the expedition against the Moors in Africa by the Portuguese Infante Don Ferdinand, in 1438, which ended with the total defeat of the invaders before Tangier, and the captivity of the prince himself, who died in a miserable bondage in 1443;—his very bones resting for thirty years among the misbelievers, till they were at last brought home to Lisbon and buried with reverence, as those of a saint and martyr. This story Calderon found in the old and beautiful Portuguese chronicles of Joam Alvares and Ruy de Pina; but he makes the sufferings of the prince voluntary, thus adding to Ferdinand’s character the self-devotion of Regulus, and so fitting it to be the subject of a deep tragedy, founded on the honor of a Christian patriot.[645]

The first scene is one of lyrical beauty, in the gardens of the king of Fez, whose daughter is introduced as enamoured of Muley Hassan, her father’s principal general. Immediately afterwards, Hassan enters and announces the approach of a Christian armament commanded by the two Portuguese Infantes. He is despatched to prevent their landing, but fails, and is himself taken prisoner by Don Ferdinand in person. A long dialogue follows between the captive and his conqueror, entirely formed by an unfortunate amplification of a beautiful ballad of Góngora, which is made to explain the attachment of the Moorish general to the king’s daughter, and the probability—if he continues in captivity—that she will be compelled to marry the Prince of Morocco. The Portuguese Infante, with chivalrous generosity, gives up his prisoner without ransom, but has hardly done so, before he is attacked by a large army under the Prince of Morocco, and made prisoner himself.

From this moment begins that trial of Don Ferdinand’s patience and fortitude which gives its title to the drama. At first, indeed, the king treats him generously, thinking to exchange him for Ceuta, an important fortress recently won by the Portuguese, and their earliest foothold in Africa. But this constitutes the great obstacle. The king of Portugal, who had died of grief on receiving the news of his brother’s captivity, had, it is true, left an injunction in his will that Ceuta should be surrendered and the prince ransomed. But when Henry, one of his brothers, appears on the stage, and announces that he has come to fulfil this solemn command, Ferdinand suddenly interrupts him in the offer, and reveals at once the whole of his character:—

Cease, Henry, cease!—no farther shalt thou go;—

For words like these should not alone be deemed

Unworthy of a prince of Portugal,—

A Master of the Order of the Cross,—

But of the meanest serf that sits beneath

The throne, or the barbarian hind whose eyes

Have never seen the light of Christian faith.

No doubt, my brother—who is now with God—

May in his will have placed the words you bring,

But never with a thought they should be read

And carried through to absolute fulfilment;

But only to set forth his strong desire,

That, by all means which peace or war can urge,

My life should be enfranchised. When he says,

“Surrender Ceuta,” he but means to say,

“Work miracles to bring my brother home.”

But that a Catholic and faithful king

Should yield to Moorish and to heathen hands

A city his own blood had dearly bought,

When, with no weapon save a shield and sword,

He raised his country’s standards on its walls,—

It cannot be!—It cannot be![646]

On this resolute decision, for which the old chronicle gives no authority, the remainder of the drama rests; its deep enthusiasm being set forth in a single word of the Infante, in reply to the renewed question of the Moorish king, “And why not give up Ceuta?” to which Ferdinand firmly and simply answers,—

Because it is not mine to give.

A Christian city,—it belongs to God.

In consequence of this final determination, he is reduced to the condition of a common slave; and it is not one of the least moving incidents of the drama, that he finds the other Portuguese captives among whom he is sent to work, and who do not recognize him, promising freedom to themselves from the effort they know his noble nature will make on their behalf, when the exchange which they consider so reasonable shall have restored him to his country.

At this point, however, comes in the operation of the Moorish general’s gratitude. He offers Don Ferdinand the means of escape; but the king, detecting the connection between them, binds his general to an honorable fidelity by making him the prince’s only keeper. This leads Don Ferdinand to a new sacrifice of himself. He not only advises his generous friend to preserve his loyalty, but assures him, that, even if foreign means of escape are offered him, he will not take advantage of them, if, by doing so, his friend’s honor would be endangered. In the mean time, the sufferings of the unhappy prince are increased by cruel treatment and unreasonable labor, till his strength is broken down. Still he does not yield. Ceuta remains in his eyes a consecrated place, over which religion prevents him from exercising the control by which his freedom might be restored. The Moorish general and the king’s daughter, on the other side, intercede for mercy in vain. The king is inflexible, and Don Ferdinand dies, at length, of mortification, misery, and want; but with a mind unshaken, and with an heroic constancy that sustains our interest in his fate to the last extremity. Just after his death, a Portuguese army, destined to rescue him, arrives. In a night scene of great dramatic effect, he appears at their head, clad in the habiliments of the religious and military order in which he had desired to be buried, and, with a torch in his hand, beckons them on to victory. They obey the supernatural summons, entire success follows, and the marvellous conclusion of the whole, by which his consecrated remains are saved from Moorish contamination, is in full keeping with the romantic pathos and high-wrought enthusiasm of the scenes that lead to it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CALDERON, CONTINUED. — COMEDIAS DE CAPA Y ESPADA. — FIRST OF ALL MY LADY. — FAIRY LADY. — THE SCARF AND THE FLOWER, AND OTHERS. — HIS DISREGARD OF HISTORY. — ORIGIN OF THE EXTRAVAGANT IDEAS OF HONOR AND DOMESTIC RIGHTS IN THE SPANISH DRAMA. — ATTACKS ON CALDERON. — HIS ALLUSIONS TO PASSING EVENTS. — HIS BRILLIANT STYLE. — HIS LONG AUTHORITY ON THE STAGE. — AND THE CHARACTER OF HIS POETICAL AND IDEALIZED DRAMA.

WE must now turn to some of Calderon’s plays which are more characteristic of his times, if not of his peculiar genius,—his comedias de capa y espada. He has left us many of this class, and not a few of them seem to have been the work of his early, but ripe, manhood, when his faculties were in all their strength, as well as in all their freshness. Nearly or quite thirty can be enumerated, and still more may be added, if we take into the account those which, with varying characteristics, yet belong to this particular division rather than to any other. Among the more prominent are two, entitled “It is Worse than it was” and “It is Better than it was,” which, probably, were translated by Lord Bristol in his lost plays, “Worse and Worse” and “Better and Better”;[647]—“The Pretended Astrologer,” which Dryden used in his “Mock Astrologer”;[648]—“Beware of Smooth Water”;—and “It is ill keeping a House with Two Doors”;—which all indicate by their names something of the spirit of the entire class to which they belong, and of which they are favorable examples.

Another of the same division of the drama is entitled “First of all my Lady.” A young cavalier from Granada arrives at Madrid, and immediately falls in love with a lady, whose father mistakes him for another person, who, though intended for his daughter, is already enamoured elsewhere. Strange confusions are ingeniously multiplied out of this mistake, and strange jealousies naturally follow. The two gentlemen are found in the houses of their respective ladies,—a mortal offence to Spanish dramatic honor,—and things are pushed to the most dangerous and confounding extremities. The principle on which so many Spanish dramas turn, that

A sword-thrust heals more quickly than a wound

Inflicted by a word,[649]

is abundantly exemplified. More than once the lady’s secret is protected rather than the friend of the lover, though the friend is in mortal danger at the moment;—the circumstance which gives its name to the drama. At last, the confusion is cleared up by a simple explanation of the original mistakes of all the parties, and a double marriage brings a happy ending to the troubled scene, which frequently seemed quite incapable of it.[650]

“The Fairy Lady”[651] is another of Calderon’s dramas that is full of life, spirit, and ingenuity. Its scene is laid on the day of the baptism of Prince Balthasar, heir-apparent of Philip the Fourth, which, as we know, occurred on the 4th of November, 1629; and the piece itself was, therefore, probably written and acted soon afterwards.[652] If we may judge by the number of times Calderon complacently refers to it, we cannot doubt that it was a favorite with him; and if we judge by its intrinsic merits, we may be sure it was a favorite with the public.[653]

Doña Angela, the heroine of the intrigue, a widow, young, beautiful, and rich, lives at Madrid, in the house of her two brothers; but, from circumstances connected with her affairs, her life there is so retired, that nothing is known of it abroad. Don Manuel, a friend, arrives in the city to visit one of these brothers; and, as he approaches the house, a lady strictly veiled stops him in the street, and conjures him, if he be a cavalier of honor, to prevent her from being further pursued by a gentleman already close behind. This lady is Doña Angela, and the gentleman is her brother, Don Luis, who is pursuing her only because he observes that she carefully conceals herself from him. The two cavaliers not being acquainted with each other,—for Don Manuel had come to visit the other brother,—a dispute is easily excited, and a duel follows, which is interrupted by the arrival of this other brother, and an explanation of his friendship for Don Manuel.

Don Manuel is now brought home, and established in the house of the two cavaliers, with all the courtesy due to a distinguished guest. His apartments, however, are connected with those of Doña Angela by a secret door, known only to herself and her confidential maid; and finding she is thus unexpectedly brought near a person who has risked his life to save her, she determines to put herself into a mysterious communication with him.

But Doña Angela is young and thoughtless. When she enters the stranger’s apartment, she is tempted to be mischievous, and leaves behind marks of her wild humor that are not to be mistaken. The servant of Don Manuel thinks it is an evil spirit, or at best a fairy, that plays such fantastic tricks; disturbing the private papers of his master, leaving notes on his table, throwing the furniture of the room into confusion, and—from an accident—once jostling its occupants in the dark. At last, the master himself is confounded; and though he once catches a glimpse of the mischievous lady, as she escapes to her own part of the house, he knows not what to make of the apparition. He says:—

She glided like a spirit, and her light

Did all fantastic seem. But still her form

Was human; I touched and felt its substance,

And she had mortal fears, and, woman-like,

Shrunk back again with dainty modesty.

At last, like an illusion, all dissolved,

And, like a phantasm, melted quite away.

If, then, to my conjectures I give rein,

By heaven above, I neither know nor guess

What I must doubt or what I may believe.[654]

But the tricksy lady, who has fairly frolicked herself in love with the handsome young cavalier, is tempted too far by her brilliant successes, and, being at last detected in the presence of her astonished brothers, the intrigue, which is one of the most complicated and gay to be found on any theatre, ends with an explanation of her fairy humors and her marriage with Don Manuel.

“The Scarf and the Flower,”[655] which, from internal evidence, is to be placed in the year 1632, is another of the happy specimens of Calderon’s manner in this class of dramas; but, unlike the last, love-jealousies constitute the chief complication of its intrigue.[656] The scene is laid at the court of the Duke of Florence. Two ladies give the hero of the piece, one a scarf and the other a flower; but they are both so completely veiled when they do it, that he is unable to distinguish one of them from the other. The mistakes, which arise from attributing each of these marks of favor to the wrong lady, constitute the first series of troubles and suspicions. These are further aggravated by the conduct of the Grand Duke, who, for his own princely convenience, requires the hero to show marked attentions to a third lady; so that the relations of the lover are thrown into the greatest possible confusion, until a sudden danger to his life brings out an involuntary expression of the true lady’s attachment, which is answered with a delight so sincere on his part as to leave no doubt of his affection. This restores the confidence of the parties, and the dénouement is of course happy.

There are in this, as in most of the dramas of Calderon belonging to the same class, great freshness and life, and a tone truly Castilian, courtly, and graceful. Lisida, who loves Henry, the hero, and gave him the flower, finds him wearing her rival’s scarf, and, from this and other circumstances, naturally accuses him of being devoted to that rival;—an accusation which he denies, and explains the delusive appearance on the ground, that he approached one lady, as the only way to reach the other. The dialogue in which he defends himself is extremely characteristic of the gallant style of the Spanish drama, especially in that ingenious turn and repetition of the same idea in different figures of speech, which grows more and more condensed as it approaches its conclusion.

Lisida.

But how can you deny the very thing

Which, with my very eyes, I now behold?

Henry.

By full denial that you see such thing.

Lisida.

Were you not, like the shadow of her house,

Still ever in the street before it?

Henry.

I was.

Lisida.

At each returning dawn, were you not found

A statue on her terrace?

Henry.

I do confess it.

Lisida.

Did you not write to her?

Henry.

I can’t deny

I wrote.

Lisida.

Served not the murky cloak of night

To hide your stolen loves?

Henry.

That, under cover

Of the friendly night, I sometimes spoke to her,

I do confess.

Lisida.

And is not this her scarf?

Henry.

It was hers once, I think.

Lisida.

Then what means this?

If seeing, talking, writing, be not making love,—

If wearing on your neck her very scarf,

If following her and watching, be not love,

Pray tell me, Sir, what ’t is you call it?

And let me not in longer doubt be left

Of what can be with so much ease explained.

Henry.

A timely illustration will make clear

What seems so difficult. The cunning fowler,

As the bird glances by him, watches for

The feathery form he aims at, not where it is,

But on one side; for well he knows that he

Shall fail to reach his fleeting mark, unless

He cheat the wind to give its helpful tribute

To his shot. The careful, hardy sailor,—

He who hath laid a yoke and placed a rein

Upon the fierce and furious sea, curbing

Its wild and monstrous nature,—even he

Steers not right onward to the port he seeks,

But bears away, deludes the opposing waves,

And wins the wished-for haven by his skill.

The warrior, who a fortress would besiege,

First sounds the alarm before a neighbour fort,

Deceives, with military art, the place

He seeks to win, and takes it unawares,

Force yielding up its vantage-ground to craft.

The mine that works its central, winding way

Volcanic, and, built deep by artifice,

Like Mongibello, shows not its effect

In those abysses where its pregnant powers

Lie hid, concealing all their horrors dark

E’en from the fire itself; but there begins

The task which here in ruin ends and woe,—

Lightning beneath and thunderbolts above.—

Now, if my love, amidst the realms of air,

Aim, like the fowler, at its proper quarry;

Or sail a mariner upon the sea,

Tempting a doubtful fortune as it goes;

Or chieftainlike contends in arms,

Nor fails to conquer even baseless jealousy;

Or, like a mine sunk in the bosom’s depths,

Bursts forth above with fury uncontrolled;—

Can it seem strange that I should still conceal

My many loving feelings with false shows?

Let, then, this scarf bear witness to the truth,

That I, a hidden mine, a mariner,

A chieftain, fowler, still in fire and water,

Earth and air, would hit, would reach, would conquer,

And would crush, my game, my port, my fortress,

And my foe.

[Gives her the scarf.

Lisida.

You deem, perchance, that, flattered

With such shallow compliment, my injuries

May be passed over in your open folly.

But no, Sir, no!—you do mistake me quite.

I am a woman; I am proud,—so proud,

That I will neither have a love that comes

From pique, from fear of being first cast off,

Nor from contempt that galls the secret heart.

He who wins me must love me for myself,

And seek no other guerdon for his love

But what that love itself will give.[657]

As may be gathered, perhaps, from what has been said concerning the few dramas we have examined, the plots of Calderon are almost always marked with great ingenuity. Extraordinary adventures and unexpected turns of fortune, disguises, duels, and mistakes of all kinds, are put in constant requisition, and keep up an eager interest in the concerns of the personages whom he brings to the foreground of the scene. Yet many of his stories are not wholly invented by him. Several are taken from the books of the Old Testament, as is that on the rebellion of Absalom, which ends with an exhibition of the unhappy prince hanging by his hair and dying amidst reproaches on his personal beauty. A few are from Greek and Roman history, like “The Second Scipio” and “Contests of Love and Loyalty,”—the last being on the story of Alexander the Great. Still more are from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,”[658] like “Apollo and Climene” and “The Fortunes of Andromeda.” And occasionally, but rarely, he seems to have sought, with painstaking care, in obscure sources for his materials, as in “Zenobia the Great,” where he has used Trebellius Pollio and Flavius Vopiscus.[659]

But, as we have already noticed, Calderon makes every thing bend to his ideas of dramatic effect; so that what he has borrowed from history comes forth upon the stage with the brilliant attributes of a masque, almost as much as what is drawn from the rich resources of his own imagination. If the subject he has chosen falls naturally into the only forms he recognizes, he indeed takes the facts much as he finds them. This is the case with “The Siege of Breda,” which he has set forth with an approach to statistical accuracy, as it happened in 1624-1625;—all in honor of the commanding general, Spinola, who may well have furnished some of the curious details of the piece,[660] and who, no doubt, witnessed its representation. This is the case, too, with “The Last Duel in Spain,” founded on the last single combat held there under royal authority, which was fought at Valladolid, in the presence of Charles the Fifth, in 1522; and which, by its showy ceremonies and chivalrous spirit, was admirably adapted to Calderon’s purposes.[661]

But where the subject he selected was not thus fully fitted, by its own incidents, to his theory of the drama, he accommodated it to his end as freely as if it were of imagination all compact. “The Weapons of Beauty” and “Love the Most Powerful of Enchantments” are abundant proofs of this;[662] and so is “Hate and Love,” where he has altered the facts in the life of Christina of Sweden, his whimsical contemporary, till it is not easy to recognize her,—a remark which may be extended to the character of Peter of Aragon in his “Tres Justicias en Uno,” and to the personages in Portuguese history whom he has so strikingly idealized in his “Weal and Woe,”[663] and in his “Firm-hearted Prince.” To an English reader, however, the “Cisma de Inglaterra,” on the fortunes and fate of Anne Boleyn and Cardinal Wolsey, is probably the most obvious perversion of history; for the Cardinal, after his fall from power, comes on the stage begging his bread of Catherine of Aragon, while, at the same time, Henry, repenting of the religious schism he has countenanced, promises to marry his daughter Mary to Philip the Second of Spain.[664]

Nor is Calderon more careful in matters of morals than in matters of fact. Duels and homicides occur constantly in his plays, under the slightest pretences, as if there were no question about their propriety. The authority of a father or brother to put to death a daughter or sister who has been guilty of secreting her lover under her own roof is fully recognized.[665] It is made a ground of glory for the king, Don Pedro, that he justified Gutierre in the atrocious murder of his wife; and even the lady Leonore, who is to succeed to the blood-stained bed, desires, as we have seen, that no other measure of justice should be applied to herself than had been applied to the innocent and beautiful victim who lay dead before her. Indeed, it is impossible to read far in Calderon without perceiving that his object is mainly to excite a high and feverish interest by his plot and story; and that to do this, he relies almost constantly upon an exaggerated sense of honor, which, in its more refined attributes, certainly did not give its tone to the courts of Philip the Fourth and Charles the Second, and which, with the wide claims he makes for it, could never have been the rule of conduct and intercourse anywhere, without shaking all the foundations of society and poisoning the best and dearest relations of life.

Here, therefore, we find pressed upon us the question, What was the origin of these extravagant ideas of domestic honor and domestic rights, which are found in the old Spanish drama from the beginning of the full-length plays in Torres Naharro, and which are thus exhibited in all their excess in the plays of Calderon?

The question is certainly difficult to answer, as are all like it that depend on the origin and traditions of national character; but—setting aside as quite groundless the suggestion sometimes made, that the old Spanish ideas of domestic authority might be derived from the Arabs—we find that the ancient Gothic laws, which date back to a period long before the Moorish invasion, and which fully represented the national character till they were supplanted by the “Partidas” in the fourteenth century, recognized the same fearfully cruel system that is found in the old drama. Every thing relating to domestic honor was left by these laws, as it is by Calderon, to domestic authority. The father had power to put to death his wife or daughter who was dishonored under his roof; and if the father were dead, the same terrible power was transferred to the brother in relation to his sister, or even to the lover, where the offending party had been betrothed to him.

No doubt, these wild laws, though formally renewed and reënacted as late as the reign of Saint Ferdinand, had ceased in the time of Calderon to have any force; and the infliction of death under circumstances in which they fully justified it would then have been murder in Spain, as it would have been in any other civilized country of Christendom. But, on the other hand, no doubt these laws were in operation during many more centuries than had elapsed between their abrogation and the age of Calderon and Philip the Fourth. The tradition of their power, therefore, was not yet lost on the popular character, and poetry was permitted to preserve their fearful principles long after their enactments had ceased to be acknowledged anywhere else.[666]

Similar remarks may be made concerning duels. That duels were of constant recurrence in Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as well as earlier, we have abundant proof. But we know, too, that the last which was countenanced by royal authority occurred in the youth of Charles the Fifth; and there is no reason to suppose that private encounters were much more common among the cavaliers at Madrid in the time of Lope de Vega and Calderon than they were at London and Paris.[667] But the traditions that had come down from the times when they prevailed were quite sufficient warrant for a drama which sought to excite a strong and anxious interest more than any thing else. In one of the plays of Barrios there are eight, and in another twelve duels;[668] an exhibition that, on any other supposition, would have been absurd.

Perhaps the very extravagance of such representations made them comparatively harmless. It was, in the days of the Austrian dynasty, so incredible that a brother should put his sister to death merely because she had been found under his roof with her lover, or that one cavalier should fight another in the street simply because a lady did not wish to be followed, that there was no great danger of contagion from the theatrical example. Still, the immoral tendency of the Spanish drama was not overlooked, even at the time when Calderon’s fame was at the highest. Guerra, one of his great admirers, in an Aprobacion prefixed to Calderon’s plays in 1682, praised, not only his friend, but the great body of the dramas to whose brilliancy that friend had so much contributed; and the war against the theatre broke out in consequence, as it had twice before in the time of Lope. Four anonymous attacks were made on the injudicious remarks of Guerra, and two more by persons who gave their names,—Puente de Mendoza and Navarro;—the last, oddly enough, replying in print to a defence of himself by Guerra, which had then been seen only in manuscript. But the whole of this discussion proceeded on the authority of the Church and the Fathers, rather than upon the grounds of public morality and social order; and therefore it ended, as previous attacks of the same kind had done, by the triumph of the theatre;[669]—Calderon’s plays and those of his school being performed and admired quite as much after it as before.

Calderon, however, not only relied on the interest he could thus excite by an extravagant story full of domestic violence and duels, but often introduced flattering allusions to living persons and passing events, which he thought would be welcome to his audience, whether of the court or the city. Thus, in “The Scarf and the Flower,” the hero, just returned from Madrid, gives his master, the Duke of Florence, a glowing description, extending through above two hundred lines, of the ceremony of swearing fealty, in 1632, to Prince Balthasar, as prince of Asturias; a passage which, from its spirit, as well as its compliments to the king and the royal family, must have produced no small effect on the stage.[670] Again, in “El Escondido y la Tapada,” we have a stirring intimation of the siege of Valencia on the Po, in 1635;[671] and in “Nothing like Silence,” repeated allusions to the victory over the Prince of Condé at Fontarabia, in 1639.[672] In “Beware of Smooth Water,” there is a dazzling account of the public reception of the second wife of Philip the Fourth at Madrid, in 1649, for a part of whose pageant, it will be recollected, Calderon was employed to furnish inscriptions.[673] In “The Blood-stain of the Rose”—founded on the fable of Venus and Adonis, and written in honor of the Peace of the Pyrenees and the marriage of the Infanta with Louis the Fourteenth, in 1659—we have whatever was thought proper to be said on such subjects by a favorite poet, both in the loa, which is fortunately preserved, and in the play itself.[674] But there is no need of multiplying examples. Calderon nowhere fails to consult the fashionable and courtly, as well as the truly national, feeling of his time; and in “The Second Scipio” he stoops even to gross flattery of the poor and imbecile Charles the Second, declaring him equal to that great patriot whom Milton pronounces to have been “the height of Rome.”[675]

In style and versification, Calderon has high merits, though they are occasionally mingled with the defects of his age. Brilliancy is one of his great objects, and he easily attains it. But he frequently falls, and with apparent willingness, into the showy folly of his time, the absurd sort of euphuism, which Góngora and his followers called “the cultivated style.” This is the case, for instance, in his “Love and Fortune,” and in his “Conflicts of Love and Loyalty.” But in “April and May Mornings,” on the contrary, and in “No Jesting with Love,” he ridicules the same style with great severity; and in such charming plays as “The Lady and the Maid,” and “The Loud Secret,” he wholly avoids it,—thus adding another to the many instances of distinguished men who have sometimes accommodated themselves to their age and its fashions, which at other times they have rebuked and controlled. Everywhere his verses charm us by their delicious melody; everywhere he indulges himself in the rich variety of measures which Spanish or Italian poetry offered him,—octave stanzas, terza rima, sonnets, silvas, liras, and the different forms of the redondilla, with the ballad asonantes and consonantes;—showing a mastery over his language extraordinary in itself, and one which, while it sometimes enables him to rise to the loftiest tones of the national drama, seduces him at other times to seek popular favor by fantastic tricks that were wholly unworthy of his genius.[676]

But we are not to measure Calderon as his contemporaries did. We stand at a distance too remote and impartial for such indulgence; and must neither pass over his failures nor exaggerate his merits. We must look on the whole mass of his efforts for the theatre, and inquire what he really effected for its advancement,—or rather what changes it underwent in his hands, both in its more gay and in its more serious portions.

Certainly Calderon appeared as a writer for the Spanish stage under peculiarly favorable circumstances; and, by the preservation of his faculties to an age beyond that commonly allotted to man, was enabled long to maintain the ascendency he had early established. His genius took its direction from the very first, and preserved it to the last. When he was fourteen years old he had written a piece for the stage, which, sixty years later, he thought worthy to be put into the list of dramas that he furnished to the Admiral of Castile.[677] When he was thirty-five, the death of Lope de Vega left him without a rival. The next year, he was called to court by Philip the Fourth, the most munificent patron the Spanish theatre ever knew; and from this time till his death, the destinies of the drama were in his hands nearly as much as they had been before in those of Lope. Forty-five of his longer pieces, and probably more, were acted in magnificent theatres in the different royal palaces in Madrid and its neighbourhood. Some must have been exhibited with great pomp and at great expense, like “The Three Greatest Wonders,” each of whose three acts was represented in the open air on a separate stage by a different company of performers;[678] and “Love the Greatest Enchantment,” brought out in a floating theatre which the wasteful extravagance of the Count Duke Olivares had erected on the artificial waters in the gardens of the Buen Retiro.[679] Indeed, every thing shows that the patronage, both of the court and capital, placed Calderon forward, as the favored dramatic poet of his time. This rank he maintained for nearly half a century, and wrote his last drama, “Hado y Devisa,” founded on the brilliant fictions of Boiardo and Ariosto, when he was eighty-one years of age.[680] He therefore was not only the successor of Lope de Vega, but enjoyed the same kind of popular influence. Between them, they held the empire of the Spanish drama for ninety years; during which, partly by the number of their imitators and disciples, but chiefly by their own personal resources, they gave to it all the extent and consideration it ever possessed.

Calderon, however, neither effected nor attempted any great changes in its forms. Two or three times, indeed, he prepared dramas that were either wholly sung, or partly sung and partly spoken; but even these, in their structure, were no more operas than his other plays, and were only a courtly luxury, which it was attempted to introduce, in imitation of the genuine opera just brought into France by Louis the Fourteenth, with whose court that of Spain was now intimately connected.[681] But this was all. Calderon has added to the stage no new form of dramatic composition. Nor has he much modified those forms which had been already arranged and settled by Lope de Vega. But he has shown more technical exactness in combining his incidents, and arranged every thing more skilfully for stage-effect.[682] He has given to the whole a new coloring, and, in some respects, a new physiognomy. His drama is more poetical in its tone and tendencies, and has less the air of truth and reality, than that of his great predecessor. In its more successful portions,—which are rarely objectionable from their moral tone,—it seems almost as if we were transported to another and more gorgeous world, where the scenery is lighted up with unknown and preternatural splendor, and where the motives and passions of the personages that pass before us are so highly wrought, that we must have our own feelings not a little stirred and excited before we can take an earnest interest in what we witness or sympathize in its results. But even in this he is successful. The buoyancy of life and spirit that he has infused into the gayer divisions of his drama, and the moving tenderness that pervades its graver and more tragical portions, lift us unconsciously to the height where alone his brilliant exhibitions can prevail with our imaginations,—where alone we can be interested and deluded, when we find ourselves in the midst, not only of such a confusion of the different forms of the drama, but of such a confusion of the proper limits of dramatic and lyrical poetry.

To this elevated tone, and to the constant effort necessary in order to sustain it, we owe much of what distinguishes Calderon from his predecessors, and nearly all that is most individual and characteristic in his separate merits and defects. It makes him less easy, graceful, and natural than Lope. It imparts to his style a mannerism, which, notwithstanding the marvellous richness and fluency of his versification, sometimes wearies and sometimes offends us. It leads him to repeat from himself till many of his personages become standing characters, and his heroes and their servants, his ladies and their confidants, his old men and his buffoons,[683] seem to be produced, like the masked figures of the ancient theatre, to represent, with the same attributes and in the same costume, the different intrigues of his various plots. It leads him, in short, to regard the whole of the Spanish drama as a form, within whose limits his imagination may be indulged without restraint; and in which Greeks and Romans, heathen divinities, and the supernatural fictions of Christian tradition, may be all brought out in Spanish fashions and with Spanish feelings, and led, through a succession of ingenious and interesting adventures, to the catastrophes their stories happen to require.

In carrying out this theory of the Spanish drama, Calderon, as we have seen, often succeeds, and often fails. But when he succeeds, his success is sometimes of no common character. He then sets before us only models of ideal beauty, perfection, and splendor;—a world, he would have it, into which nothing should enter but the highest elements of the national genius. There, the fervid, yet grave, enthusiasm of the old Castilian heroism; the chivalrous adventures of modern, courtly honor; the generous self-devotion of individual loyalty; and that reserved, but passionate love, which, in a state of society where it was so rigorously withdrawn from notice, became a kind of unacknowledged religion of the heart;—all seem to find their appropriate home. And when he has once brought us into this land of enchantment, whose glowing impossibilities his own genius has created, and has called around him forms of such grace and loveliness as those of Clara and Doña Angela, or heroic forms like those of Tuzani, Mariamne, and Don Ferdinand, then he has reached the highest point he ever attained, or ever proposed to himself;—he has set before us the grand show of an idealized drama, resting on the purest and noblest elements of the Spanish national character, and one which, with all its unquestionable defects, is to be placed among the extraordinary phenomena of modern poetry.[684]

CHAPTER XXV.

DRAMA AFTER CALDERON. — MORETO. — COMEDIAS DE FIGURON. — ROXAS. — PLAYS BY MORE THAN ONE AUTHOR. — CUBILLO. — LEYBA. — CANCER. — ENRIQUEZ GOMEZ. — SIGLER. — ZARATE. — BARRIOS. — DIAMANTE. — HOZ. — MATOS FRAGOSO. — SOLÍS. — CANDAMO. — ZARZUELAS. — ZAMORA. — CAÑIZARES, AND OTHERS. — DECLINE OF THE SPANISH DRAMA.

THE most brilliant period of the Spanish drama falls within the reign of Philip the Fourth, which extended from 1621 to 1665, and embraced the last fourteen years of the life of Lope de Vega and the thirty most fortunate years of the life of Calderon. But after this period a change begins to be apparent; for the school of Lope was that of a drama in the freshness and buoyancy of youth, while the school of Calderon belongs to the season of its maturity and gradual decay. Not that this change is strongly marked during Calderon’s life. On the contrary, so long as he lived, and especially during the reign of his great patron, there is little visible decline in the dramatic poetry of Spain; though still, through the crowd of its disciples and amidst the shouts of admiration that followed it on the stage, the symptoms of its coming fate may be discerned.

Of those that divided the favor of the public with their great master, none stood so near to him as Agustin Moreto, of whom we know hardly any thing, except that he lived retired in a religious house at Toledo from 1657, and that he died there in 1669.[685] Three volumes of his plays, however, and a number more never collected into a volume, were printed between 1654 and 1681, though he himself seems to have regarded them, during the greater part of that time, only as specious follies or sins. They are in all the different forms known to the age to which they belong, and, as in the case of Calderon, each form melts imperceptibly into the character of some other. But the theatre was not then so strictly watched as it had been; and the small number of religious plays Moreto has left us are generally connected with known events in history, like “The Most Fortunate Brothers,” which contains the story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, both before they were inclosed in the cave and when they awoke from their miraculous repose of two centuries.[686] A few are heroic, such as “The Brave Justiciary of Castile,”—a drama of spirit and power, on the character of Peter the Cruel, though, like most other plays in which he appears, not one in which the truth of history is respected. But, in general, Moreto’s dramas are of the old cavalier class; and when they are not, they take, in order to suit the humor of the time, many of the characteristics of this truly national form.

In one point, however, he made, if not a change in the direction of the drama of his predecessors, yet an advance upon it. He devoted himself more to character-drawing, and often succeeded better in it than they had. His first play of this kind was “The Aunt and the Niece,” printed as early as 1654. The characters are a widow extremely anxious to be married, but foolishly jealous of the charms of her niece, and a vaporing, epicurean officer in the army, who cheats the elder lady with flattery, while he wins the younger. It is curious to observe, however, that the hint for this drama—which is the oldest of the class called figuron, from the prominence of one not very dignified figure in it—is yet to be found in Lope de Vega, to whom, as we have seen, is to be traced, directly or indirectly, almost every form of dramatic composition that finally succeeded on the Spanish stage.[687]

Moreto’s next attempt of the same sort is even better known, “The Handsome Don Diego,”—a phrase that has become a national proverb. It sets forth with great spirit the character of a fop, who believes every lady he looks upon must fall in love with him. The very first sketch of him at his morning toilet, and the exhibition of the sincere contempt he feels for the more sensible lover, who refuses to take such frivolous care of his person, are full of life and truth; and the whole ends, with appropriate justice, by his being deluded into a marriage with a cunning waiting-maid, who is passed off upon him as a rich countess.

Some of Moreto’s plays, as, for instance, his “Trampa Adelante,” obtained the name of gracioso, because the buffoon is made the character upon whom the action turns; and in one case, at least, he wrote a burlesque farce of no value, taking his subject from the achievements of the Cid. But his general tone is that of the old intriguing comedy; and though he is sometimes indebted for his plots to his predecessors, and especially to Lope, yet, in nearly every instance, and perhaps in every one, he surpassed his model, and the drama he wrote superseded on the public stage the one he imitated.[688]

This was the case with the best of all his plays, “Disdain met with Disdain,” for the idea of which he was indebted to Lope, whose “Miracles of Contempt” has long been forgotten as an acting play, while Moreto’s still maintains its place on the Spanish stage, of which it is one of the brightest ornaments.[689] The plot is remarkably simple and well contrived. Diana, heiress to the county of Barcelona, laughs at love and refuses marriage, under whatever form it may be urged upon her. Her father, whose projects are unreasonably thwarted by such conduct, induces the best and gayest of the neighbouring princes to come to his court, and engage in tournaments and other knightly sports, in order to win her favor. She, however, treats them all with an equal coldness, and even with a pettish disdain, until, at last, she is piqued into admiration of the Count of Urgel, by his apparent neglect of her charms,—a neglect which he skilfully places on the ground of a contempt like her own for all love, but which, in fact, only conceals a deep and faithful passion for herself.

The charm of the piece consists in the poetical spirit with which this design is wrought out. The character of the gracioso is well drawn and well defined, and, as in most Spanish plays, he is his lord’s confidant, and by his shrewdness materially helps on the action. At the opening, after having heard from his master the position of affairs and the humors of the lady, he gives his advice in the following lines, which embody the entire argument of the drama.

My lord, your case I have discreetly heard,

And find it neither wonderful nor new;—

In short, it is an every-day affair.

Why, look ye, now! In my young boyhood, Sir,—

When the full vintage came and grapes were strewed,

Yea, wasted, on the ground,—I had, be sure,

No appetite at all. But afterwards,

When they were gathered in for winter’s use,

And hung aloft upon the kitchen rafters,

Then nothing looked so tempting half as they;

And, climbing cunningly to reach them there,

I caught a pretty fall and broke my ribs.

Now, this, Sir, is your case,—the very same.[690]

There is an excellent scene, in which the Count, perceiving he has made an impression on the lady’s heart, fairly confesses his love, while she, who is not yet entirely subdued, is able to turn round and treat him with her accustomed disdain; from all which he recovers himself with an address greater than her own, protesting his very confession to have been only a part of the show they were by agreement carrying on. But this confirms the lady’s passion, which at last becomes uncontrollable, and the catastrophe immediately follows. She pleads guilty to a desperate love, and marries him.

Contemporary with Moreto, and nearly as successful as he was among the earlier writers for the stage, was Francisco de Roxas, who flourished during the greater part of Calderon’s life, and may have survived him. He was born in Toledo, and in 1641 was made a knight of the Order of Santiago, but when he died is not known. Two volumes of his plays were published in 1640 and 1645, and in the Prologue to the second he speaks of publishing yet a third, which never appeared; so that we have still only the twenty-four plays contained in these volumes, and a few others that at different times were printed separately.[691] He belongs decidedly to Calderon’s school,—unless, indeed, he began his career too early to be a mere follower; and in poetical merit, if not in dramatic skill, takes one of the next places after Moreto. But he is very careless and unequal. His plays entitled “He who is a King must not be a Father” and “The Aspics of Cleopatra” are as extravagant as almost any thing in the Spanish heroic drama; while, on the other hand, “What Women really are” and “Folly rules here” are among the most effective of the class of intriguing plays.[692]

His best, however, and one that has always kept its place on the stage, is called “None below the King.” The scene is laid in the troublesome times of Alfonso the Eleventh, and is in many respects true to them. Don Garcia, the hero, is a son of Garci Bermudo, who had conspired against the father of the reigning monarch, and, in consequence of this circumstance, Garcia lives concealed as a peasant at Castañar, near Toledo, very rich, but unsuspected by the government. In a period of great anxiety, when the king wishes to take Algeziras from the Moors, and demands, for that purpose, free contributions from his subjects, those of Garcia are so ample as to attract especial attention. The king inquires who is this rich and loyal peasant; and his curiosity being still further excited by the answer, he determines to visit him at Castañar, incognito, accompanied by only two or three favored courtiers. Garcia, however, is privately advised of the honor that awaits him, but, from an error in the description, mistakes the person of one of the attendants for that of the king himself.

On this mistake the plot turns. The courtier whom Garcia wrongly supposes to be the king falls in love with Blanca, Garcia’s wife; and, in attempting to enter her apartments by night, when he believes her husband to be away, is detected by the husband in person. Now, of course, comes the struggle between Spanish loyalty and Spanish honor. Garcia can visit no vengeance on a person whom he believes to be his king; and he has not the slightest suspicion of his wife, whom he knows to be faithfully and fondly attached to him. But the remotest appearance of an intrigue demands a bloody satisfaction. He determines, therefore, at once, on the death of his loving wife. Amidst his misgivings and delays, however, she escapes, and is carried to court, whither he himself is, at the same moment, called to receive the greatest honors that can be conferred on a subject. In the royal presence, he necessarily discovers his mistake regarding the king’s person. From this moment, the case becomes perfectly plain to him, and his course perfectly simple. He passes instantly into the antechamber. With a single blow his victim is laid at his feet; and he returns, sheathing his bloody dagger, and offering, as his only and sufficient defence, an account of all that had happened, and the declaration, which gives its name to the play, that “none below the king” can be permitted to stand between him and the claims of his honor.

Few dramas in the Spanish language are more poetical; fewer still, more national in their tone. The character of Garcia is drawn with great vigor, and with a sharply defined outline. That of his wife is equally well designed, but is full of gentleness and patience. Even the clown is a more than commonly happy specimen of the sort of parody suitable to his position. Some of the descriptions, too, are excellent. There is a charming one of rustic life, such as it was fancied to be under the most favorable circumstances in Spain’s best days; and, at the end of the second act, there is a scene between Garcia and the courtier, at the moment the courtier is stealthily entering his wife’s apartment, in which we have the struggle between Spanish honor and Spanish loyalty given with a picturesqueness and spirit that leave little to be desired. In short, if we set aside the best plays of Lope de Vega and Calderon, it is one of the most effective of the old Spanish dramas.[693]

Roxas was well known in France. Thomas Corneille imitated, and almost translated, one of his plays; and as Scarron, in his “Jodelet,” did the same with “Where there are real Wrongs there is no Jealousy,” the second comedy that has kept its place on the French stage is due to Spain, as the first tragedy and the first comedy had been before it.[694]

Like many writers for the Spanish theatre, Roxas prepared several of his plays in conjunction with others. Franchi, in his eulogy on Lope de Vega, who indulged in this practice as the rest did, complains of it, and says a drama thus compounded is more like a conspiracy than a comedy, and that such performances were, in their different parts, necessarily unequal and dissimilar. But this was not the general opinion of his age; and that the complaint is not always well founded, we know, not only from the example of Beaumont and Fletcher, but from the success that has attended the composition of many dramas in France in the nineteenth century by more than one person. It should not be forgotten, also, that in Spain, where, from the very structure of the national drama, the story was of so much consequence, and where so many of the characters had standing attributes assigned to them, such joint partnerships were more easily carried through with success than they could be on any other stage. At any rate, they were more common there than they have ever been elsewhere.[695]

Alvaro Cubillo, who alludes to Moreto as his contemporary, and who was perhaps known even earlier as a successful dramatist, says, in 1654, that he had already written a hundred plays. But the whole of this great number, except ten published by himself, and two or three others that appeared, if we may judge by his complaints, without his permission, are now lost. Of those he published himself, “The Thunderbolt of Andalusia,” in two parts, taken from the old ballads about the Children of Lara, was much admired in his lifetime; but “The Bracelets of Marcela,” a simple comedy, resting on the first childlike love of a young girl, has since quite supplanted it. One of his plays, “El Señor de Noches Buenas,” was early printed as Antonio de Mendoza’s, but Cubillo at once made good his title to it; and yet, after the death of both, it was inserted anew in Mendoza’s works;—a striking proof of the great carelessness long common in Spain on the subject of authorship.

None of Cubillo’s plays has high poetical merit, though several of them are pleasant, easy, and natural. The best is “The Perfect Wife,” in which the gentle and faithful character of the heroine is drawn with skill, and with a true conception of what is lovely in woman’s nature. Two of his religious plays, on the other hand, are more than commonly extravagant and absurd; one of them—“Saint Michael”—containing, in the first act, the story of Cain and Abel; in the second, that of Jonah; and in the third, that of the Visigoth king, Bamba, with a sort of separate conclusion in the form of a vision of the times of Charles the Fifth and his three successors.[696]

But the Spanish stage, as we advance in Calderon’s life, becomes more and more crowded with dramatic authors, all eager in their struggles for popular favor. One of them was Antonio de Leyba, whose “Mutius Scævola” is an absurdly constructed and wild historical play; while, on the contrary, his “Honor the First Thing” and “The Lady President” are pleasant comedies, enlivened with short stories and apologues, which he wrote with great naturalness and point.[697] Another dramatist was Cancer y Velasco, whose poems are better known than his plays, and whose “Muerte de Baldovinos” runs more into caricature and broad farce than was commonly tolerated in the court theatre.[698] And yet others were Antonio Enriquez Gomez, son of a Portuguese Jew, who inserted in his “Moral Evenings with the Muses”[699] four plays, all of little value, except “The Duties of Honor”;—Antonio Sigler de Huerta, who wrote “No Good to Ourselves without Harm to Somebody Else”;—and Zabaleta, who, though he made a satirical and harsh attack upon the theatre, could not refuse himself the indulgence of writing for it.[700]

If we now turn from these to a few whose success was more strongly marked, none presents himself earlier than Fernando de Zarate, a poet who was occasionally misled by the fashion and bad taste of his time, and occasionally resisted and rebuked it. Thus, in his best play, “What Jealousy drives Men to do,” there is no trace of Gongorism, while this eminently Spanish folly is very obvious in his otherwise good drama, “He that talks Most does Least,” and even in his “Presumptuous and Beautiful,” which has continued to be acted down to our own days.[701]

Another of the writers for the theatre at this time was Miguel de Barrios, one of those unhappy children of Israel, who, under the terrors of the Inquisition, concealed their religion and suffered some of the worst penalties of unbelief from the jealous intolerance which everywhere watched them. His family was Portuguese, but he himself was born in Spain, and served long in the Spanish armies. At last, however, when he was in Flanders, the temptations to a peaceful conscience were too strong for him. He escaped to Amsterdam, and died there in the open profession of the faith of his fathers about the year 1699. His plays were printed as early as 1665, but the only one worth notice is “The Spaniard in Oran”; longer than it should be, but not without merit.[702]

Diamante was among those who wrote dramas especially accommodated to the popular taste, while Calderon was still at the height of his reputation. Their number is considerable. Two volumes were collected by him and published in 1670 and 1674, and yet others still remain in scattered pamphlets and in manuscript.[703] They are in all the forms, and in all the varieties of tone, then in favor. Some of them, like “Santa Teresa,” are religious. Others are historical, like “Mary Stuart.” Others are taken from the old national traditions, like “The Siege of Zamora,” which is on the same subject with the second part of Guillen de Castro’s “Cid,” but much less poetical. Others are zarzuelas, or dramas chiefly sung, of which the best specimen by Diamante is his “Alpheus and Arethusa,” prepared with an amusing loa in honor of the Constable of Castile. There are more in the style of the capa y espada than in any other. But none of them has any marked merit. The one that has attracted most attention, out of Spain, is “The Son honoring his Father”; a play on the quarrel of the Cid with Count Lozano, which, from a mistake of Voltaire, was long thought to have been the model of Corneille’s “Cid,” while in fact the reverse is true; since Diamante’s play was produced above twenty years after the great French tragedy, and is deeply indebted to it.[704] Like most of the dramatists of his time, Diamante was a follower of Calderon, and inclined to the more romantic side of his character and school; and, like so many Spanish poets of all times, he finished his career in religious seclusion. Of the precise period of his death no notice has been found, but it was probably near the end of the century.

Passing over such writers of plays as Monroy, Monteser, Cuellar, and not a few others, who flourished in the latter half of the seventeenth century, we come to a pleasant comedy entitled “The Punishment of Avarice,” written by Juan de la Hoz, a native of Madrid, who was made a knight of Santiago in 1653, and Regidor of Burgos in 1657, after which he rose to good offices about the court, and was living there as late as 1689. How many plays he wrote, we are not told; but the only one now remembered is “The Punishment of Avarice.” It is founded on the third tale of María de Zayas, which bears the same name, and from which its general outline and all the principal incidents are taken.[705] But the miser’s character is much more fully and poetically drawn in the drama than it is in the story. Indeed, the play is one of the best specimens of character-drawing on the Spanish stage, and may, in many respects, bear a comparison with the “Aulularia” of Plautus, and the “Avare” of Molière.

The sketch of the miser by one of his acquaintance in the first act, ending with “He it was who first weakened water,” is excellent; and, even to the last scene, where he goes to a conjurer to recover his lost money, the character is consistently maintained and well developed.[706] He is a miser throughout; and, what is more, he is a Spanish miser. The moral is better in the prose tale, as the intrigante, who cheats him into a marriage with herself, is there made a victim of her crimes no less than he is; while in the drama she profits by them, and comes off with success at last,—a strange perversion of the original story, which it is not easy to explain. But in poetical merit there is no comparison between the two.

Juan de Matos Fragoso, a Portuguese, who lived in Madrid at the same time with Diamante and Hoz, and died in 1692, enjoyed quite as much reputation with the public as they did, though he often writes in the very bad taste of the age. But he never printed more than one volume of his dramas, so that they are now to be sought chiefly in separate pamphlets, and in collections made for other purposes than the claims of the individual authors found in them. Those of his dramas which are most known are his “Mistaken Experiment,” founded on the “Impertinent Curiosity” of the first part of Don Quixote; his “Fortune through Contempt,” a better-managed dramatic fiction; and his “Wise Man in Retirement and Peasant by his own Fireside,” which is commonly accounted the best of his works.

“The Captive Redeemer,” however, in which he was assisted by another well-known author of his time, Sebastian de Villaviciosa, is on many accounts more picturesque and attractive. It is, he says, a true story. It is certainly a heart-rending one, founded on an incident not uncommon during the barbarous wars carried on between the Christians in Spain and the Moors in Africa,—relics of the fierce hatreds of a thousand years.[707] A Spanish lady is carried into captivity by a marauding party, who land on the coast for plunder and instantly escape with their prey. Her lover, in despair, follows her, and the drama consists of their adventures till both are found and released. Mingled with this sad story, there is a sort of underplot, which gives its name to the piece, and is very characteristic of the state of the theatre and the demands of the public, or at least of the Church. A large bronze statue of the Saviour is discovered to be in the hands of the infidels. The captive Christians immediately offer the money, sent as the price of their own freedom, to rescue it from such sacrilege; and, at last, the Moors agree to give it up for its weight in gold; but when the value of the thirty pieces of silver, originally paid for the person of the Saviour himself, has been counted into one scale, it is found to outweigh the massive statue in the other, and enough is still left to purchase the freedom of the captives, who, in offering their ransoms, had, in fact, as they supposed, offered their own lives. With this triumphant miracle the piece ends. Like the other dramas of Fragoso, it is written in a great variety of measures, which are managed with skill and are full of sweetness.[708]

The last of the good writers for the Spanish stage with its old attributes is Antonio de Solís, the historian of Mexico. He was born on the 18th of July, 1610, in Alcalá de Henares, and completed his studies at the University of Salamanca, where, when only seventeen years old, he wrote a drama. Five years later he had given to the theatre his “Gitanilla” or “The Pretty Gypsy Girl,” founded on the story of Cervantes, or rather on a play of Montalvan borrowed from that story;—a graceful fiction, which has been constantly reproduced in one shape or another, ever since it first appeared from the hand of the great master. “One Fool makes a Hundred”—a pleasant figuron play of Solís, which was soon afterwards acted before the court—has less merit, and is somewhat indebted to the “Don Diego” of Moreto. But, on the other hand, his “Love à la Mode,” which is all his own, is among the good plays of the Spanish stage, and furnished materials for one of the best of Thomas Corneille’s.

In 1642, Solís prepared, for a festival at Pamplona, a dramatic entertainment on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the tone of the Spanish national theatre is fantastically confounded with the genius of the old Grecian mythology, even more than was common in similar cases; but the whole ends, quite contrary to all poetical tradition, by the rescue of Eurydice from the infernal regions, with an intimation that a second part would follow, whose conclusion would be tragical;—a promise which, like so many others of the same sort in Spanish literature, was never fulfilled.

As his reputation increased, Solís was made one of the royal secretaries, and, while acting in this capacity, wrote an allegorical drama, partly resembling a morality of the elder period, and partly a modern masque, in honor of the birth of one of the princes, which was acted in the palace of the Buen Retiro. The title of this wild, but not unpoetical, opera is “Triumphs of Love and Fortune”; and Diana and Endymion, Psyche and Venus, Happiness and Adversity, are among its dramatic personages; though a tone of honor and gallantry is as consistently maintained in it, as if its scene were laid at Madrid, and its characters taken from the audience that witnessed the performance. It is the more curious, however, from the circumstance, that the loa, the entremeses, and the saynete, with which it was originally accompanied, are still attached to it, all written by Solís himself.[709]

In this way he continued, during the greater part of his life, one of the favored writers for the private theatre of the king and the public theatres of the capital; the dramas he produced being almost uniformly marked by a skilful complication of their plots, which were not always original, and by a purity of style and harmony of versification which were quite his own. But at last, like many other Spanish poets, he began to think such occupations sinful; and, after much deliberation, he resolved on a life of religious retirement, and submitted to the tonsure. From this time he renounced the theatre. He even refused to write autos sacramentales, when he was applied to, in the hope that he might be willing to become a successor to the fame and fortunes of his great master; and, giving up his mind to devout meditation and historical studies, seems to have lived contentedly, though in seclusion and poverty, till his death, which happened in 1686. A volume of his minor poems, published afterwards, which are in all the forms then fashionable, has little value, except in a few short dramatic entertainments, several of which are characteristic and amusing.[710]

Later than Solís, but still partly his contemporary, was Francisco Banzes Candamo. He was a gentleman of ancient family, and was born in 1662, in Asturias,—that true soil of the old Spanish cavaliers. His education was careful, if not wise; and he was early sent to court, where he received, first a pension, and afterwards several important offices in the financial administration, whose duties, it is said, he fulfilled with good faith and efficiency. But at last the favor of the court deserted him; and he died in 1704, under circumstances of so much wretchedness, that he was buried at the charge of a religious society in the place to which he had been sent in disgrace.

His plays, or rather two volumes of them, were printed in 1722; but in relation to his other poems, a large mass of which he left to the Duke of Alva, we only know, that, long after their author’s death, a bundle of them was sold for a few pence, and that an inconsiderable collection of such of them as could be picked up from different sources was printed in a small volume in 1729.[711] Of his plays, those which he most valued are on historical subjects,[712] such as “The Recovery of Buda” and “For his King and his Lady.” He wrote for the theatre, however, in other forms, and several of his dramas are curious, from the circumstance that they are tricked out with the loas and entremeses which served originally to render them more attractive to the multitude. Nearly all his plots are ingenious, and, though involved, are more regular in their structure than was common at the time. But his style is swollen and presumptuous, and there is, notwithstanding their ingenuity, a want of life and movement in most of his plays that prevented them from being effective on the stage.

Candamo, however, should be noted as having given a decisive impulse to a form of the drama which was known before his time, and which served at last to introduce the genuine opera; I mean the zarzuela, which took its name from that of one of the royal residences near Madrid, where they were represented with great splendor for the amusement of Philip the Fourth, by command of his brother Ferdinand.[713] They are, in fact, plays of various kinds,—shorter or longer; entremeses or full-length comedies;—but all in the national tone, and yet all accompanied with music.

The first attempt to introduce dramatic performances with music was made, as we have seen, about 1630, by Lope de Vega, whose eclogue “Selva sin Amor,” wholly sung, was played before the court, with a showy apparatus of scenery prepared by Cosmo Lotti, an Italian architect, and “was a thing,” says the poet, “new in Spain.” Short pieces followed soon afterward, entremeses, that were sung in place of the ballads between the acts of the plays, and of which Benavente was the most successful composer before 1645, when his works were first published. But the earliest of the full-length plays that was ever sung was Calderon’s “Púrpura de la Rosa,” which was produced before the court in 1659, on occasion of the marriage of Louis the Fourteenth with the Infanta Maria Theresa,—a compliment to the distinguished personages of France who had come to Spain in honor of that great solemnity, and whom it was thought no more than gallant to amuse with something like the operas of Quinault and Lulli, which were then the most admired entertainments of the court of France.

From this time, as was natural, there was a tendency to introduce singing on the Spanish stage, both in full-length comedies and in farces of all kinds;—a tendency which is apparent in Matos Fragoso, in Solís, and in most of the other writers contemporary with the latter part of Calderon’s career. At last, under the management of Diamante and Candamo, a separate form of the drama grew up, the subjects for which were generally taken from ancient mythology, like those of the “Circe” and “Arethusa”; and when they were not so taken, as in Diamante’s “Birth of Christ,” they were still treated in a manner much like that observed in the treatment of their fabulous predecessors.

From this form of the drama to that of the proper Italian opera was but a step, and one the more easily taken, as, from the period when the Bourbon family succeeded the Austrian on the throne, the national characteristics heretofore demanded in whatever appeared on the Spanish stage had ceased to enjoy the favor of the court and the higher classes. As early as 1705, therefore, something like an Italian opera was established at Madrid, where, with occasional intervals of suspension and neglect, it has ever since maintained a doubtful existence, and where, of course, the old zarzuelas and their kindred musical farces have been more and more discountenanced, until, in their original forms, at least, they have ceased to be heard.[714]

Another of the poets who lived at this time and wrote dramas that mark the decline of the Spanish theatre is Antonio de Zamora, who seems originally to have been an actor; who was afterwards in the office of the Indies and in the royal household; and whose dramatic career begins before the year 1700, though he did not die till after 1730, and probably had his principal success in the reign of Philip the Fifth, before whom his plays were occasionally performed in the Buen Retiro, as late as 1744.

Two volumes of his dramas were collected and published, with a solemn dedication and consecration of them to their author’s memory, on the ground of rendering unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s. They are only sixteen in number, each longer than had been common on the Spanish stage in its best days, and, in general, very heavy. Those that are on religious subjects sink into farce, with the exception of “Judas Iscariot,” which is too full of wild horrors to permit it to be amusing. The best of the whole number is, probably, the one entitled “All Debts must be paid at Last,” which is an alteration of Tirso de Molina’s “Don Juan,” skilfully made;—a remarkable drama, in which the tread of the marble statue is heard with more solemn effect than it is in any other of the many plays on the same subject.

But notwithstanding the merit of this and two or three others, it must be admitted that Zamora’s plays—of which above forty are extant, and of which many were acted at the court with applause—are very wearisome. They are crowded with long directions to the actors, and imply the use of much imperfect machinery;—both of them unwelcome symptoms of a declining dramatic literature. Still, Zamora writes with facility, and shows, that, under favorable circumstances, he might have trodden with more success in the footsteps of Calderon, whom he plainly took for his model. But he came too late, and, while striving to imitate the old masters, fell into their faults and extravagances, without giving token of the fresh spirit and marvellous invention in which their peculiar power resides.[715]

Others followed the same direction with even less success, like Pedro Francisco Lanini, Antonio Martinez, Pedro de Rosete, and Francisco de Villegas;[716] but the person who continued longest in the paths opened by Lope and Calderon was Joseph de Cañizares, a poet of Madrid, born in 1676, who began to write for the stage when he was only fourteen years old,—who was known as one of its more favored authors for above forty years, pushing his success far into the eighteenth century,—and who died in 1750. His plays are in all the old forms.[717] A few of those on historical subjects are not without interest, such as “The Tales of the Great Captain,” “Charles the Fifth at Tunis,” and “The Suit of Fernando Cortés.” The best of his efforts in this class is, however, “El Picarillo en España,” on the adventures of a sort of Falconbridge, Frederic de Bracamonte, who, in the reign of John the Second, discovered the Canaries, and held them for some time, as if he were their king. But Cañizares, on the whole, had most success in plays founded on character-drawing, introduced a little before his time by Moreto and Roxas, and commonly called, as we have noticed, “Comedias de Figuron.” His happiest specimens in this class are “The Famous Kitchen-Wench,” taken from the story of Cervantes, “The Mountaineer at Court,” and “Dómine Lucas,” where he drew from the life about him, and selected his subjects from the poor, presumptuous, decayed nobility, with which the court of Madrid was then infested.[718]

Still, with this partial success as a poet, and with a popularity that made him of consequence to the actors, Cañizares shows more distinctly than any of his predecessors or contemporaries the marks of a declining drama. As we turn over the seventy or eighty plays he has left us, we are constantly reminded of the towers and temples of the South of Europe, which, during the Middle Ages, were built from fragments of the nobler edifices that had preceded them, proving at once the magnificence of the age in which the original structures were reared, and the decay of that of which such relics and fragments were the chief glory. The plots, intrigues, and situations in the dramas of Cañizares are generally taken from Lope, Calderon, Moreto, Matos Fragoso, and his other distinguished predecessors, to whom, not without the warrant of many examples on the Spanish stage, he resorted as to rich and ancient monuments, which could still yield to the demands of his age materials such as the age itself could no longer furnish from its own resources.[719]

It would be easy to add the names of not a few other writers for the Spanish stage who were contemporary with Cañizares, and, like him, shared in the common decline of the national drama, or contributed to it. Such were Juan de Vera y Villarroel, Inez de la Cruz, Melchior Fernandez de Leon, Antonio Tellez de Azevedo, and others yet less distinguished while they lived, and long ago forgotten. But writers like these had no real influence on the character of the theatre to which they attached themselves. This, in its proper outlines, always remained as it was left by Lope de Vega and Calderon, who, by a remarkable concurrence of circumstances, maintained, as far as it was in secular hands, an almost unquestioned control over it, while they lived, and, at their death, left a character impressed upon it which it never lost, till it ceased to exist altogether.[720]

CHAPTER XXVI.

CHARACTER OF THE SPANISH DRAMA. — THE AUTOR, OR MANAGER. — THE WRITERS FOR THE STAGE. — THE ACTORS, THEIR NUMBER, SUCCESS, AND CONDITION. — PERFORMANCES BY DAYLIGHT. — THE STAGE. — THE COURT-YARD, MOSQUETEROS, GRADAS, CAZUELA, AND APOSENTOS. — THE AUDIENCES. — PLAY-BILLS, AND TITLES OF PLAYS. — REPRESENTATIONS, BALLADS, LOAS, JORNADAS, ENTREMESES, SAYNETES, AND DANCES. — BALLADS DANCED AND SUNG. — XACARAS, ZARABANDAS, AND ALEMANAS. — POPULAR CHARACTER OF THE WHOLE. — GREAT NUMBER OF WRITERS AND PLAYS.

THE most prominent, if not the most important, characteristic of the Spanish drama, at the period of its widest success, was its nationality. In all its various forms, including the religious plays, and in all its manifold subsidiary attractions, down to the recitation of old ballads and the exhibition of popular dances, it addressed itself more to the whole people of the country which produced it than any other theatre of modern times. The Church, as we have seen, occasionally interfered, and endeavoured to silence or to restrict it. But the drama was too deeply seated in the general favor, to be much modified, even by a power that overshadowed nearly every thing else in the state; and during the whole of the seventeenth century,—the century which immediately followed the severe legislation of Philip the Second and his attempts to control the character of the stage,—the Spanish drama was really in the hands of the mass of the people, and its writers and actors were such as the popular will required them to be.[721]

At the head of each company of actors was their Autor. The name descended from the time of Lope de Rueda, when the writer of the rude farces then in favor collected about him a body of players to perform what should rather be called his dramatic dialogues than his proper dramas, in the public squares;—a practice soon imitated in France, where Hardy, the “Author,” as he styled himself, of his own company, produced, between 1600 and 1630, about five hundred rude plays and farces, often taken from Lope de Vega, and whatever was most popular at the same period in Spain.[722] But while Hardy was at the height of his success and preparing the way for Corneille, the canon in Don Quixote had already recognized in Spain the existence of two kinds of authors;—the authors who wrote, and the authors who acted;[723]—a distinction familiar from the time when Lope de Vega appeared, and one that was never afterwards overlooked. At any rate, from that time actors and managers were quite as rarely writers for the stage in Spain as in other countries.[724]

The relations between the dramatic poets and the managers and actors were not more agreeable in Spain than elsewhere. Figueroa, who was familiar with the subject, says that the writers for the theatre were obliged to flatter the heads of companies, in order to obtain a hearing from the public, and that they were often treated with coarseness and contempt, especially when their plays were read and adapted to the stage in presence of the actors who were to perform them.[725] Solorzano—himself a dramatist—gives similar accounts, and adds the story of a poet, who was not only rudely, but cruelly, abused by a company of players, to whose humors their autor or manager had abandoned him.[726] And even Lope de Vega and Calderon, the master-spirits of the time, complain bitterly of the way in which they were trifled with and defrauded of their rights and reputation, both by the managers and by the booksellers.[727] At the end of the drama, its author therefore sometimes announced his name, and, with more or less of affected humility, claimed the work as his own.[728] But this was not a custom. Almost uniformly, however, when the audience was addressed at all,—and that was seldom neglected at the conclusion of a drama,—it was saluted with the grave and flattering title of “Senate.”

Nor does the condition of the actors seem to have been one which could be envied by the poets who wrote for them. Their numbers and influence, indeed, soon became imposing under the great impulse given to the drama in the beginning of the seventeenth century. When Lope de Vega first appeared as a dramatic writer at Madrid, the only theatres he found were two unsheltered court-yards, which depended on such strolling companies of players as occasionally deemed it for their interest to visit the capital. Before he died, there were, besides the court-yards in Madrid, several theatres of great magnificence in the royal palaces, and multitudinous bodies of actors, comprehending in all above a thousand persons.[729] And half a century later, at the time of Calderon’s death, when the Spanish drama had taken all its attributes, the passion for its representations had spread into every part of the kingdom, until there was hardly a village, we are told, that did not possess some kind of a theatre.[730] Nay, so pervading and uncontrolled was the eagerness for dramatic exhibitions, that, notwithstanding the scandal it excited, secular comedies of a very equivocal complexion were represented by performers from the public theatres in some of the principal monasteries of the kingdom.[731]

Of course, out of so large a body of actors, all struggling for public favor, some became famous. Among the more distinguished were Agustin de Roxas, who wrote the gay travels of a company of comedians; Roque de Figueroa and Rios, Lope’s favorites; Pinedo, much praised by Tirso de Molina; Alonso de Olmedo and Sebastian Prado, who were rivals for public applause in the time of Calderon; Juan Rana, who was the best comic actor during the reigns of Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth, and amused the audiences by his own extemporaneous wit; the two Morales and Josefa Vaca, wife of the elder of them; Barbara Coronel, the Amazon, who preferred to appear as a man; María de Córdoba, praised by Quevedo and the Count Villamediana; and María Calderon, who, as the mother of the second Don John of Austria, figured in affairs of state, as well as in those of the stage. These and some others enjoyed, no doubt, that ephemeral, but brilliant, reputation which is generally the only reward of the best of their class; and enjoyed it to as high a degree, perhaps, as any persons that have appeared on the stage in more modern times.[732]

But, regarded as a body, the Spanish actors seem to have been any thing but respectable. In general, they were of a low and vulgar caste in society,—so low, that, for this reason, they were at one period forbidden to have women associated with them.[733] The rabble, indeed, sympathized with them, and sometimes, when their conduct called for punishment, protected them by force from the arm of the law; but, between 1644 and 1649, when their number in the metropolis had become very great, and they constituted no less than forty companies, full of disorderly persons and vagabonds, their character did more than any thing else to endanger the privileges of the drama, which with difficulty evaded the restrictions their riotous lives brought upon it.[734] One proof of their gross conduct is to be found in its results. Many of them, filled with compunction at their own shocking excesses, took refuge at last in a religious life, like Prado, who became a devout priest, and Francisca Baltasara, who died a hermit, almost in the odor of sanctity, and was afterwards made the subject of a religious play.[735]

They had, besides, many trials. They were obliged to learn a great number of pieces to satisfy the demands for novelty, which were more exacting on the Spanish stage than on any other; their rehearsals were severe, and their audiences rude. Cervantes says that their life was as hard as that of the Gypsies;[736] and Roxas, who knew all there was to be known on the subject, says that slaves in Algiers were better off than they were.[737]

To all this we must add that they were poorly paid, and that their managers were almost always in debt. But, like other forms of vagabond life, its freedom from restraints made it attractive to not a few loose persons, in a country like Spain, where it was difficult to find liberty of any sort. This attraction, however, did not last long. The drama fell in its consequence and popularity as rapidly as it had risen. Long before the end of the century, it ceased to encourage or protect such numbers of idlers as were at one time needed to sustain its success;[738] and in the reign of Charles the Second it was not easy to collect three companies for the festivities occasioned by his marriage.[739] Half a century earlier, twenty would have striven for the honor.

During the whole of the successful period of the drama in Spain, its exhibitions took place in the day-time. On the stages of the different palaces, where, when Howell was in Madrid, in 1623,[740] there were representations once a week, it was sometimes otherwise; but the religious plays and autos, with all that were intended to be really popular, were represented in broad daylight,—in the winter at two, and in the summer at three, in the afternoon, every day in the week.[741] Till near the middle of the seventeenth century, the scenery and general arrangements of the theatre were probably as good as they were in France when Corneille appeared, or perhaps better; but in the latter part of it, the French stage was undoubtedly in advance of that at Madrid, and Madame d’Aulnoy makes herself merry by telling her friends that the Spanish sun was made of oiled paper, and that in the play of “Alcina” she saw the devils quietly climbing ladders out of the infernal regions, to reach their places on the stage.[742] Plays that required more elaborate arrangements and machinery were called comedias de ruido,—noisy or showy dramas,—and are treated with little respect by Figueroa and Luis Vélez de Guevara, because it was thought unworthy of a poetical spirit to depend for success on means so mechanical.[743]

The stage itself, in the two principal theatres of Madrid, was raised only a little from the ground of the court-yard where it was erected, and there was no attempt at a separate orchestra,—the musicians coming to the forepart of the scene whenever they were wanted. Immediately in front of the stage were a few benches, which afforded the best places for those who bought single tickets, and behind them was the unencumbered portion of the court-yard, where the common file were obliged to stand in the open air. The crowd there was generally great, and the persons composing it were called, from their standing posture and their rude bearing, mosqueteros, or infantry. They constituted the most formidable and disorderly part of the audience, and were the portion that generally determined the success of new plays.[744] One of their body, a shoemaker, who in 1680 reigned supreme in the court-yard over the opinions of those around him, reminds us at once of the critical trunk-maker in Addison.[745] Another, who was offered a hundred rials to favor a play about to be acted, answered proudly that he would first see whether it was good or not, and, after all, hissed it.[746] Sometimes the author himself addressed them at the end of his play, and stooped to ask the applause of this lowest portion of the audience. But this was rare.[747]

Behind the sturdy mosqueteros were the gradas, or rising seats, for the men, and the cazuela, or “stewpan,” where the women were strictly inclosed, and sat crowded together by themselves. Above all these different classes were the desvanes and aposentos, or balconies and rooms, whose open, shop-like windows extended round three sides of the court-yard in different stories, and were filled by those persons of both sexes who could afford such a luxury, and who not unfrequently thought it one of so much consequence, that they held it as an heirloom from generation to generation.[748] The aposentos were, in fact, commodious rooms, and the ladies who resorted to them generally went masked, as neither the actors nor the audience were always so decent that the ladylike modesty of the more courtly portion of society might be willing to countenance them.[749]

It was deemed a distinction to have free access to the theatre; and persons who cared little about the price of a ticket struggled hard to obtain it.[750] Those who paid at all paid twice,—at the outer door, where the manager sometimes collected his claims in person, and at the inner one, where an ecclesiastic collected what belonged to the hospitals, under the gentler name of alms.[751] The audiences were often noisy and unjust. Cervantes intimates this, and Lope directly complains of it. Suarez de Figueroa says, that rattles, crackers, bells, whistles, and keys were all put in requisition, when it was desired to make an uproar; and Benavente, in a loa spoken at the opening of a theatrical campaign at Madrid by Roque, the friend of Lope de Vega, deprecates the ill-humor of all the various classes of his audience, from the fashionable world in the aposentos to the mosqueteros in the court-yard; though, he adds, with some mock dignity, that he little fears the hisses which he is aware must follow such a defiance.[752] When the audience meant to applaud, they cried “Victor!” and were no less tumultuous and unruly than when they hissed.[753] In Cervantes’s time, after the play was over, if it had been successful, the author stood at the door to receive the congratulations of the crowd as they came out; and, later, his name was placarded and paraded at the corners of the streets with an annunciation of his triumph.[754]

Cosmé de Oviedo, a well-known manager at Granada, was the first who used advertisements for announcing the play that was to be acted. This was about the year 1600. Half a century afterwards, the condition of such persons was still so humble, that one of the best of them went round the city and posted his play-bills himself, which were, probably, written, and not printed.[755] From an early period they seem to have given to acted plays the title which full-length Spanish dramas almost uniformly bore during the seventeenth century and even afterwards,—that of comedia famosa;—though we must except from this remark the case of Tirso de Molina, who amused himself with calling more than one of his successful performances “Comedia sin fama,”[756]—a play without repute. But this was, in truth, a matter of mere form, soon understood by the public, who needed no especial excitement to bring them to theatrical entertainments, for which they were constitutionally eager. Some of the audience went early to secure good places, and amused themselves with the fruit and confectionery carried round the court-yard for sale, or with watching the movements of the laughing dames who were inclosed within the balustrade of the cazuela, and who were but too ready to flirt with all in their neighbourhood. Others came late; and if they were persons of authority or consequence, the actors waited for their appearance till the disorderly murmurs of the groundlings compelled them to begin.[757]

At last, though not always till the rabble had been composed by the recitation of a favorite ballad or by some popular air on the guitars, one of the more respectable actors, and often the manager himself, appeared on the stage, and, in the technical phrase, “threw out the loa” or compliment,[758]—a peculiarly Spanish form of the prologue, of which we have abundant specimens from the time of Naharro, who calls them intróytos, or overtures, down to the final fall of the old drama. They are prefixed to all the autos of Lope and Calderon; and though, in the case of the multitudinous secular plays of the Spanish theatre, the appropriate loas are no longer found regularly attached to each, yet we have them occasionally with the dramas of Tirso de Molina, Calderon, Antonio de Mendoza, and not a few others.

The best are those of Agustin de Roxas, whose “Amusing Travels” are full of them, and those of Quiñones de Benavente, found among his “Jests in Earnest.” They were in different forms, dramatic, narrative, and lyrical, and on very various subjects and in very various measures. One of Tirso’s is in praise of the beautiful ladies who were present at its representation;[759]—one of Mendoza’s is in honor of the capture of Breda, and flatters the national vanity upon the recent successes of the Marquis of Spinola;[760]—one by Roxas is on the glories of Seville, where he made it serve as a conciliatory introduction for himself and his company, when they were about to act there;[761]—one by Sanchez is a jesting account of the actors who were to perform in the play that was to follow it;[762]—and one by Benavente was spoken by Roque de Figueroa, when he began a series of representations at court, and is devoted to a pleasant exposition of the strength of his company, and a boastful announcement of the new dramas they were able to produce.[763]

Gradually, however, the loas, whose grand object was to conciliate the audience, took more and more the popular dramatic form; and at last, like several by Roxas, Mira de Mescua, Moreto, and Lope de Vega,[764] differed little from the farces that followed them.[765] Indeed, they were almost always fitted to the particular occasions that called them forth, or to the known demands of the audience;—some of them being accompanied with singing and dancing, and others ending with rude practical jests.[766] They are, therefore, as various in their tone as they are in their forms; and, from this circumstance, as well as from their easy national humor, they became at last an important part of all dramatic representations.

The first jornada or act of the principal performance followed the loa, almost as a matter of course, though, in some instances, a dance was interposed; and in others, Figueroa complains, that he had been obliged still to listen to a ballad before he was permitted to reach the regular drama which he had come to hear;[767]—so importunate were the audience for what was lightest and most amusing. At the end of the first act, though perhaps preceded by another dance, came the first of the two entremeses,—a sort of “crutches,” as the editor of Benavente well calls them, “that were given to the heavy comedias to keep them from falling.”

Nothing can well be gayer or more free than these favorite entertainments, which were generally written in the genuine Castilian idiom and spirit.[768] At first, they were farces, or parts of farces, taken from Lope de Rueda and his school; but afterwards, Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and the other writers for the theatre composed entremeses better suited to the changed character of the dramas in their times.[769] Their subjects were generally chosen from the adventures of the lower classes of society, whose manners and follies they ridiculed; many of the earlier of the sort ending, as one of the Dogs in Cervantes’s dialogue complains that they did too often, with vulgar scuffles and blows.[770] But later, they became more poetical, and were mingled with allegory, song, and dance; taking, in fact, whatever forms and tone were deemed most attractive. They seldom exceeded a few minutes in length, and never had any other purpose than to relieve the attention of the audience, which it was supposed might have been taxed too much by the graver action that had preceded them.[771] With this action they had, properly, nothing to do;—though in one instance Calderon has ingeniously made his entremes serve as a graceful conclusion to one of the acts of the principal drama.[772]

The second act was followed by a similar entremes, music, and dancing;[773] and after the third, the poetical part of the entertainment was ended with a saynete or bonne bouche, first so called by Benavente, but differing from the entremeses only in name, and written best by Cancer, Deza y Avila, and Benavente himself,—in short, by those who best succeeded in the entremeses.[774] Last of all came a national dance, which never failed to delight the audience of all classes, and served to send them home in good-humor when the entertainment was over.[775]

Dancing, indeed, was very early an important part of theatrical exhibitions in Spain, even of the religious, and its importance has continued down to the present day. This was natural. From the first intimations of history and tradition in antiquity, dancing was the favorite amusement of the rude inhabitants of the country;[776] and, so far as modern times are concerned, dancing has been to Spain what music has been to Italy, a passion with the whole population. In consequence of this, it finds a place in the dramas of Enzina, Vicente, and Naharro; and, from the time of Lope de Rueda and Lope de Vega, appears in some part, and often in several parts, of all theatrical exhibitions. An amusing instance of the slight grounds on which it was introduced may be found in “The Grand Sultana” of Lope de Vega, where one of the actors says,—

There ne’er was born a Spanish woman yet

But she was born to dance;

and a specimen is immediately given in proof of the assertion.[777]

Many of these dances, and probably nearly all of them that were introduced on the stage, were accompanied with words, and were what Cervantes calls “recited dances.”[778] Such were the well-known “Xacaras,”—roystering ballads, in the dialect of the rogues,—which took their name from the bullies who sung them, and were at one time rivals for favor with the regular entremeses.[779] Such, too, were the more famous “Zarabandas”; graceful, but voluptuous dances, that were known from about 1588, and, as Mariana says, received their name from a devil in woman’s shape at Seville, though elsewhere they are said to have derived it from a similar personage found at Guayaquil in America.[780] Another dance, full of a mad revelry, in which the audience were ready sometimes to join, was called “Alemana,” probably from its German origin, and was one of those whose discontinuance Lope, himself a great lover of dancing, always regretted.[781] Another was “Don Alonso el Bueno,” so named from the ballad that accompanied it; and yet others were called “El Caballero,” “La Carretería,” “Las Gambetas,” “Hermano Bartolo,” and “La Zapateta.”[782]

Most of them were free or licentious in their tendency. Guevara says that the Devil invented them all; and Cervantes, in one of his farces, admits that the Zarabanda, which was the most obnoxious to censure, could, indeed, have had no better origin.[783] Lope, however, was not so severe in his judgment. He declares that the dances accompanied by singing were better than the entremeses, which, he adds disparagingly, dealt only in hungry men, thieves, and brawlers.[784] But whatever may have been individual opinions about them, they occasioned great scandal, and, in 1621, kept their place on the theatre only by a vigorous exertion of the popular will in opposition to the will of the government. As it was, they were for a time restrained and modified; but still no one of them was absolutely exiled, except the licentious Zarabanda,—many of the crowds that thronged the court-yards thinking, with one of their leaders, that the dances were the salt of the plays, and that the theatre would be good for nothing without them.[785]

Indeed, in all its forms, and in all its subsidiary attractions of ballads, entremeses and saynetes, music, and dancing, the old Spanish drama was essentially a popular entertainment, governed by the popular will. In any other country, under the same circumstances, it would hardly have risen above the condition in which it was left by Lope de Rueda, when it was the amusement of the lowest classes of the populace. But the Spaniards have always been a poetical people. There is a romance in their early history, and a picturesqueness in their very costume and manners, that cannot be mistaken. A deep enthusiasm runs, like a vein of pure and rich ore, at the bottom of their character, and the workings of strong passions and an original imagination are everywhere visible among the wild elements that break out on its surface. The same energy, the same fancy, the same excited feelings, which, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, produced the most various and rich popular ballads of modern times, were not yet stilled or quenched in the seventeenth. The same national character, which, under Saint Ferdinand and his successors, drove the Moorish crescent through the plains of Andalusia, and found utterance for its exultation in poetry of such remarkable sweetness and power, was still active under the Philips, and called forth, directed, and controlled a dramatic literature which grew out of the national genius and the condition of the mass of the people, and which, therefore, in all its forms and varieties, is essentially and peculiarly Spanish.

Under an impulse so wide and deep, the number of dramatic authors would naturally be great. As early as 1605, when the theatre, such as it had been constituted by Lope de Vega, had existed hardly more than fifteen years, we can easily see, by the discussions in the first part of Don Quixote, that it already filled a large space in the interests of the time; and from the Prólogo prefixed by Cervantes to his plays in 1615, it is quite plain that its character and success were already settled, and that no inconsiderable number of its best authors had already appeared. Even as early as this, dramas were composed in the lower classes of society. Villegas tells us of a tailor of Toledo who wrote many; Guevara gives a similar account of a sheep-shearer at Ecija; and Figueroa, of a well-known tradesman of Seville;—all in full accordance with the representations made in Don Quixote concerning the shepherd Chrisóstomo, and the whole current of the story and conversations of the actors in the “Journey” of Roxas.[786] In this state of things, the number of writers for the theatre went on increasing out of all proportion to their increase in other countries, as appears from the lists given by Lope de Vega, in 1630; by Montalvan, in 1632, when we find seventy-six dramatic poets living in Castile alone; and by Antonio, about 1660. During the whole of this century, therefore, we may regard the theatre as a part of the popular character in Spain, and as having become, in the proper sense of the word, more truly a national theatre than any other that has been produced in modern times.

It might naturally have been foreseen, that, upon a movement like this, imparted and sustained by all the force of the national genius, any accidents of patronage or opposition would produce little effect. And so in fact it proved. The ecclesiastical authorities always frowned upon it, and sometimes placed themselves so as directly to resist its progress; but its sway and impulse were so heavy, that it passed over their opposition, in every instance, as over a slight obstacle. Nor was it more affected by the seductions of patronage. Philip the Fourth, for above forty years, favored and supported it with princely munificence. He built splendid saloons for it in his palaces; he wrote for it; he acted in improvisated dramas. The reigning favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, to flatter the royal taste, invented new dramatic luxuries, such as that of magnificent floating theatres on the stream of the Tormés, and on the sheets of water in the gardens of the Buen Retiro. All royal entertainments seemed, in fact, for a time, to take a dramatic tone, or tend to it. But still the popular character of the theatre itself was unchecked and unaffected;—still the plays acted in the royal theatres, before the principal persons in the kingdom, were the same with those performed before the populace in the court-yards of Madrid;—and when other times and other princes came, the old Spanish drama left the halls and palaces, where it had been so long flattered, with as little of a courtly air as that with which it had originally entered them.[787]

The same impulse that made it so powerful in other respects filled the old Spanish theatre with an almost incredible number of cavalier and heroic dramas, dramas for saints, sacramental autos, entremeses, and farces of all names. Their whole amount, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, has been estimated to exceed thirty thousand, of which four thousand eight hundred by unknown authors had been, at one time, collected by a single person in Madrid.[788] Their character and merit were, as we have seen, very various. Still, the circumstance, that they were all written substantially for one object and under one system of opinions, gave them a stronger air of general resemblance than might otherwise have been anticipated. For it should never be forgotten, that the Spanish drama in its highest and most heroic forms was still a popular entertainment, just as it was in its farces and ballads. Its purpose was, not only to please all classes, but to please all equally;—those who paid three maravedís, and stood crowded together under a hot sun in the court-yard, as well as the rank and fashion, that lounged in their costly apartments above, and amused themselves hardly less with the picturesque scene of the audiences in the patio than with that of the actors on the stage. Whether the story this mass of people saw enacted were probable or not was to them a matter of small consequence. But it was necessary that it should be interesting. Above all, it was necessary that it should be Spanish; and therefore, though its subject might be Greek or Roman, Oriental or mythological, the characters represented were always Castilian, and Castilian after the fashion of the seventeenth century,—governed by Castilian notions of gallantry and the Castilian point of honor.

It was the same with their costumes. Coriolanus was dressed like Don John of Austria; Aristotle came on the stage with a curled periwig and buckles in his shoes, like a Spanish Abbé; and Madame d’Aulnoy says, the Devil she saw was dressed like any other Castilian gentleman, except that his stockings were flame-colored and he wore horns.[789] But however the actors might be dressed, or however the play might confound geography and history, or degrade heroism by caricature, still, in a great majority of cases, dramatic situations are skilfully produced; the story, full of bustle and incident, grows more and more urgent as it advances; and the result of the whole is, that, though we may sometimes have been much offended, we are sorry we have reached the conclusion, and find on looking back that we have almost always been excited, and often pleased.

The Spanish theatre, in many of its attributes and characteristics, stands, therefore, by itself. It takes no cognizance of ancient example; for the spirit of antiquity could have little in common with materials so modern, Christian, and romantic. It borrowed nothing from the drama of France or of Italy; for it was in advance of both when its final character was not only developed, but settled. And as for England, though Shakspeare and Lope were contemporaries, and there are points of resemblance between them which it is pleasant to trace and difficult to explain, still they and their schools, undoubtedly, had not the least influence on each other. The Spanish drama is, therefore, entirely national. Many of its best subjects are taken from the chronicles and traditions familiar to the audience that listened to them, and its prevalent versification reminded the hearers, by its sweetness and power, of what had so often moved their hearts in the earliest outpourings of the national genius. With all its faults, then, this old Spanish drama, founded on the great traits of the national character, maintained itself in the popular favor as long as that character existed in its original attributes; and even now it remains one of the most striking and one of the most interesting portions of modern literature.

CHAPTER XXVII.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE POEMS. — SEMPERE. — ÇAPATA. — AYLLON. — SANZ. — FERNANDEZ. — ESPINOSA. — COLOMA. — ERCILLA AND HIS ARAUCANA, WITH OSORIO’S CONTINUATION. — OÑA. — GABRIEL LASSO DE LA VEGA. — SAAVEDRA. — CASTELLANOS. — CENTENERA. — VILLAGRA. — RELIGIOUS NARRATIVE POEMS. — BLASCO. — MATA. — VIRUES AND HIS MONSERRATE. — BRAVO. — VALDIVIELSO. — HOJEDA. — DIAZ AND OTHERS. — IMAGINATIVE NARRATIVE POEMS. — ESPINOSA AND OTHERS. — BARAHONA DE SOTO. — BALBUENA AND HIS BERNARDO.

EPIC poetry, from its general dignity and pretensions, is almost uniformly placed at the head of the different divisions of a nation’s literature. But in Spain, though the series of efforts in that direction begins early and boldly, and has been continued with diligence down to our own times, little has been achieved that is worthy of memory. The Poem of the Cid is, indeed, the oldest attempt at narrative poetry in the languages of modern Europe that deserves the name; and, composed, as it must have been, above a century before the appearance of Dante and two centuries before the time of Chaucer, it is to be regarded as one of the most remarkable outbreaks of poetical and national enthusiasm on record. But the few similar attempts that were made at long intervals in the periods immediately subsequent, like those we witness in “The Chronicle of Fernan Gonzalez,” in “The Life of Alexander,” and in “The Labyrinth” of Juan de Mena, deserve to be mentioned chiefly in order to mark the progress of Spanish culture during the lapse of three centuries. No one of them showed the power of the old half-epic Poem of the Cid.

At last, when we reach the reign of Charles the Fifth, or rather, when we come to the immediate results of that reign, it seems as if the national genius had been inspired with a poetical ambition no less extravagant than the ambition for military glory which their foreign successes had stirred up in the masters of the state. The poets of the time, or those who regarded themselves as such, evidently imagined that to them was assigned the task of worthily celebrating the achievements, in the Old World and in the New, which had really raised their country to the first place among the powers of Europe, and which it was then thought not presumptuous to hope would lay the foundation for a universal monarchy.

In the reign of Philip the Second, therefore, we have an extraordinary number of epic and narrative poems,—in all above twenty,—full of the feelings which then animated the nation, and devoted to subjects connected with Spanish glory, both ancient and recent,—poems in which their authors endeavoured to imitate the great Italian epics, already at the height of their reputation, and fondly believed they had succeeded. But the works they thus produced, with hardly more than a single exception, belong rather to patriotism than to poetry; the best of them being so closely confined to matters of fact, that they come with nearly equal pretensions into the province of history, while the rest fall into a dull, chronicling style, which makes it of little consequence under what class they may chance to be arranged.

The first of these historical epics is the “Carolea” of Hierónimo Sempere, published in 1560, and devoted to the victories and glories of Charles the Fifth, whose name, in fact, it bears. The author was a merchant,—a circumstance strange in Spanish literature,—and it is written in the Italian ottava rima; the first part, which consists of eleven cantos, being devoted to the first wars in Italy, and ending with the captivity of Francis the First; while the second, which consists of nineteen more, contains the contest in Germany, the Emperor’s visit to Flanders, and his coronation at Bologna. The whole fills two volumes, and ends abruptly with the promise of another, devoted to the capture of Tunis; a promise which, happily, was never redeemed.[790]

The next narrative poem in the order of time was published by Luis de Çapata, only five years later. It is the “Carlo Famoso,” devoted, like the last, to the fame of Charles the Fifth, and, like that, more praised than it deserves to be by Cervantes, when he places both of them among the best poetry in Don Quixote’s library. Its author declares that he was thirteen years in writing it; and it fills fifty cantos, comprehending above forty thousand lines in octave stanzas. But never was poem avowedly written in a spirit so prosaic. It gives year by year the life of the Emperor, from 1522 to his death at San Yuste in 1558; and, to prevent the possibility of mistake, the date is placed at the top of each page, and every thing of an imaginative nature or of doubtful authority is distinguished by asterisks from the chronicle of ascertained facts. Two passages in it are interesting, one of which gives the circumstances of the death of Garcilasso, and the other an ample account of Torralva, the great magician of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella;—the same person who is commemorated by Don Quixote when he rides among the stars. Such, however, as the poem is, Çapata had great confidence in its merits, and boastfully published it at his own expense. But it was unsuccessful, and he died regretting his folly.[791]

Diego Ximenez de Ayllon, of Arcos de la Frontera, who served as a soldier under the Duke of Alva, wrote a poem on the history of the Cid, and of some other of the early Spanish heroes, and dedicated it, in 1579, to his great leader. But this, too, was little regarded at the time, and is now hardly remembered.[792] Nor was more favor shown to Hippólito Sanz, a knight of the Order of Saint John, in Malta, who shared in the brave defence of that island against the Turks in 1565, and wrote a poetical history of that defence, under the name of “La Maltea,” which was published in 1582.[793]

Other poems were produced during the same period, not unlike those we have just noticed;—such as the “Historia Parthenopea” of Alfonso Fernandez, whose hero is Gonzalvo de Córdova; Espinosa’s continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” which is not entirely without merit; “The Decade on the Passion of Christ,” by Coloma, which is grave and dignified, if nothing else;—all in the manner of the contemporary Italian heroic and narrative poems. But no one of them obtained much regard when it first appeared, and none of them can now be said to be remembered. Indeed, there is but one long poem of the age of Philip the Second which obtained an acknowledged reputation from the first, and has preserved it ever since, both at home and abroad;—I mean the “Araucana.”[794]

Its author, whose personal character is impressed on every part of his poem, was Alonso de Ercilla, third son of a gentleman of Biscayan origin,—a proud circumstance, to which the poet himself alludes more than once.[795] He was born in 1533, at Madrid, and his father, a member of the council of Charles the Fifth, was able, from his influence at court, to have his son educated as one of the pages of the prince who was afterwards Philip the Second, and whom the young Ercilla accompanied in his journeys to different parts of Europe between 1547 and 1551. In 1554, he was with Philip in England, when that prince married Queen Mary; and news having arrived there, as he tells us in his poem, of an outbreak of the natives in Chili which threatened to give trouble to their conquerors, many noble Spaniards then at the English court volunteered, in the old spirit of their country, to serve against the infidels.

Among those who presented themselves to join in this romantic expedition was Ercilla, then twenty-one years old. By permission of the prince, he says, he exchanged his civil for military service, and for the first time girded on his sword in earnest. But the beginning of the expedition was not auspicious. Aldrete, a person of military experience, who was in the suite of Philip, and under whose standard they had embarked in the enterprise, died on the way; and after their arrival, Ercilla and his friends were sent, under the less competent leading of a son of the viceroy of Peru, to achieve the subjugation of the territory of Arauco,—an inconsiderable spot of earth, but one which had been so bravely defended by its inhabitants against the Spaniards as to excite respect for their heroism in many parts of Europe.[796] The contest was a bloody one; for the Araucans were desperate and the Spaniards cruel. Ercilla went through his part of it with honor, meeting the enemy in seven severe battles, and suffering still more severely from wanderings in the wilderness, and from long exposure to the harassing warfare of savages.

Once he was in greater danger from his countrymen and from his own fiery temper than he was, perhaps, at any moment from the common enemy. In an interval of the war, when a public tournament was held in honor of the accession of Philip the Second to the throne, some cause of offence occurred during the jousting between Ercilla and another of the cavaliers. The mimic fight, as had not unfrequently happened on similar occasions in the mother country, was changed into a real one; and, in the confusion that followed, the young commander, who presided at the festival, rashly ordered both the principal offenders to be put to death,—a sentence which he reluctantly changed into imprisonment and exile, though not until after Ercilla had been actually placed on the scaffold for execution.

When he was released he seems to have engaged in the romantic enterprise of hunting down the cruel and savage adventurer, Lope de Aguirre, but he did not arrive in the monster’s neighbourhood till the moment when his career of blood was ended. From this time we know only, that, after suffering from a long illness, Ercilla returned to Spain in 1562, at the age of twenty-nine, having been eight years in America. At first, his unsettled habits made him restless, and he visited Italy and other parts of Europe; but in 1570 he married a lady connected with the great family of Santa Cruz, Doña María de Bazan, whom he celebrates at the end of the eighteenth canto of his poem. About 1576, he was made gentleman of the bed-chamber to the Emperor of Germany,—perhaps a merely titular office; and about 1580, he was again in Madrid and in poverty, complaining loudly of the neglect and ingratitude of the king whom he had so long served, and who seemed now to have forgotten him. During the latter part of his life, however, we almost entirely lose sight of him, and know only that he began a poem in honor of the family of Santa Cruz, and that he died as early as 1595.

Ercilla is to be counted among the many instances in which Spanish poetical genius and heroism were one feeling. He wrote in the spirit in which he fought; and his principal work is as military as any portion of his adventurous life. Its subject is the very expedition against Arauco which occupied eight or nine years of his youth; and he has simply called it “La Araucana,” making it a long heroic poem in thirty-seven cantos, which, with the exception of two or three trifles of no value, is all that remains of his works. Fortunately, it has proved a sufficient foundation for his fame. But though it is unquestionably a poem that discovers much of the sensibility of genius, it has great defects; for it was written when the elements of epic poetry were singularly misunderstood in Spain, and Ercilla, misled by such models as the “Carolea” and “Carlo Famoso,” fell easily into serious mistakes.

The first division of the Araucana is, in fact, a versified history of the early part of the war. It is geographically and statistically accurate. It is a poem, thus far, that should be read with a map, and one whose connecting principle is merely the succession of events. Of this rigid accuracy he more than once boasts; and, to observe it, he begins with a description of Arauco and its people, amidst whom he lays his scene, and then goes on through fifteen cantos of consecutive battles, negotiations, conspiracies, and adventures, just as they occurred. He composed this part of his poem, he tells us, in the wilderness, where he fought and suffered; taking the night to describe what the day had brought to pass, and writing his verses on fragments of paper, or, when these failed, on scraps of skins; so that it is, in truth, a poetical journal, in octave rhymes, of the expedition in which he was engaged. These fifteen cantos, written between 1555 and 1563, constitute the first part, which ends abruptly in the midst of a violent tempest, and which was printed by itself in 1569.

Ercilla intimates that he soon discovered such a description of successive events to be monotonous; and he determined to intersperse it with incidents more interesting and poetical. In his second part, therefore, which was not printed till 1578, we have, it is true, the same historical fidelity in the main thread of the narrative, but it is broken with something like epic machinery; such as a vision of Bellona, in the seventeenth and eighteenth cantos, where the poet witnesses in South America the victory of Philip the Second at Saint Quentin, the day it was won in France;—the cave of the magician Fiton, in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth cantos, where he sees the battle of Lepanto, which happened long afterwards, fought by anticipation;—the romantic story of Tegualda in the twentieth, and that of Glaura in the twenty-fourth: so that, when we come to the end of the second part,—which concludes, again, with needless abruptness, we find that we have enjoyed more poetry than we had in the first, if we have made less rapid progress in the history.

In the third part, which appeared in 1590, we have again a continuation of the events of the war, though with episodes such as that in the thirty-second and thirty-third cantos,—which the poet strangely devotes to a defence, after the manner of the old Spanish chronicles, of the character of Queen Dido from the imputations cast on it by Virgil,—and that in the thirty-sixth, in which he pleasantly gives us much of what little we know concerning his own personal history.[797] In the thirty-seventh and last, he leaves all his previous subjects, and discusses the right of public and private war, and the claims of Philip the Second to the crown of Portugal; ending the whole poem, as far as he himself ended it, with touching complaints of his own miserable condition and disappointed hopes, and his determination to give the rest of his life to penitence and devotion.

This can hardly be called an epic. It is an historical poem, partly in the manner of Silius Italicus, yet seeking to imitate the sudden transitions and easy style of the Italian masters, and struggling awkwardly to incorporate with different parts of its structure some of the supernatural machinery of Homer and Virgil. But this is the unfortunate side of the work. In other respects Ercilla is more successful. His descriptive powers, except in relation to natural scenery, are remarkable, and, whether devoted to battles or to the wild manners of the unfortunate Indians, have not been exceeded by any other Spanish poet. His speeches, too, are often excellent, especially the remarkable one in the second canto, given to Colócolo, the eldest of the Caciques, where the poet has been willing to place himself in direct rivalship with the speech which Homer, under similar circumstances, has given to Ulysses in the first book of the Iliad.[798] And his characters, so far as the Araucan chiefs are concerned, are drawn with force and distinctness, and lead us to sympathize with the cause of the Indians rather than with that of the invading Spaniards. Besides all this, his genius and sensibility often break through, where we should least expect it, and his Castilian feelings and character still oftener; the whole poem being pervaded with that deep sense of loyalty which was always a chief ingredient in Spanish honor and heroism, and which, in Ercilla, seems never to have been chilled by the ingratitude of the master to whom he devoted his life, and to whose glory he consecrated this poem.[799]

The Araucana, though one third longer than the Iliad, is a fragment; but, as far as the war of Arauco is concerned, it was soon completed by the addition of two more parts, embracing thirty-three additional cantos,—the work of a poet by the name of Osorio, who published it in 1597. Of its author, a native of Leon, we know only that he describes himself to have been young when he wrote it, and that in 1598 he gave the world another poem, on the wars of the knights of Malta and the capture of Rhodes. His continuation of the Araucana was several times printed, but has long since ceased to be read. Its more interesting portions are those in which the poet relates, with apparent accuracy, many of the exploits of Ercilla among the Indians;—the more absurd are those in which, under the pretext of visions of Bellona, an account is given of the conquest of Oran by Cardinal Ximenes, and that of Peru by the Pizarros, neither of which has any thing to do with the main subject of the poem. Taken as a whole, it is nearly as dull and chronicling as any thing of its class that preceded it.[800]

But there is one difficulty about both parts of this poem, which must have been very obvious at the time. Neither shows any purpose of doing honor to the commander in the war of Arauco, who was yet a representative of the great Mendoza family, and a leading personage at the courts of Philip the Second and Philip the Third. Why Osorio should have passed him over so slightly is not apparent; but Ercilla was evidently offended by the punishment inflicted on him after the unfortunate tournament, and took this mode of expressing his displeasure.[801] A poet of Chili, therefore, Pedro de Oña, attempted, so far as Ercilla was concerned, to repair the wrong, and, in 1596, published his “Arauco Subjugated,” in nineteen cantos, which he devoted expressly to the honor of the neglected commander. Oña’s success was inconsiderable, but was quite as much as he deserved. His poem was once reprinted; but, though it contains sixteen thousand lines, it stops in the middle of the events it undertakes to record, and has never been finished. It contains consultations of the infernal powers, like those in Tasso, and a love-story, in imitation of the one in Ercilla; but it is mainly historical, and ends at last with an account of the capture of “that English pirate Richerte Aquines,”—no doubt Sir Richard Hawkins, who was taken in the Pacific in 1594, under circumstances not more unlike those which Oña describes than might be expected in a poetical version of them by a Spaniard.[802]

But as the marvellous discoveries of the conquerors of America continued to fill the world with their fame, and to claim at home no small part of the interest that had so long been given to the national achievements in the Moorish wars, it was natural that the greatest of all the adventurers, Hernando Cortés, should come in for his share of the poetical honors that were lavishly scattered on all sides. In fact, as early as 1588, Gabriel Lasso de la Vega, a young cavalier of Madrid, stirred up by the example of Ercilla, published a poem, entitled “The Valiant Cortés,” which six years later he enlarged and printed anew under the name of “La Mexicana”; and in 1599, Antonio de Saavedra, a native of Mexico, published his “Indian Pilgrim,” which contains a regular life of Cortés in above sixteen thousand lines, written, as the author assures us, on the ocean, and in seventy days. Both are mere chronicling histories; but the last is not without freshness and truth, from the circumstance that it was the work of one familiar with the scenes he describes, and with the manners of the unhappy race of men whose disastrous fate he records.[803]

In the same year with the “Valiant Cortés” appeared the first volume of the lives of some of the early discoverers and adventurers in America, by Juan de Castellanos, an ecclesiastic of Tunja in the kingdom of New Granada; but one who, like many others that entered the Church in their old age, had been a soldier in his youth, and had visited many of the countries, and shared in many of the battles, he describes. It begins with an account of Columbus, and ends, about 1560, with the expedition of Orsua and the crimes of Aguirre, which Humboldt has called the most dramatic episode in the history of the Spanish conquests, and of which Southey has made an interesting, though painful, story. Why no more of the poem of Castellanos was published does not appear. More was known to exist; and at last, the second and third parts were found, and, with the testimony of Ercilla to the truth of their narratives, were published in 1847, bringing their broken accounts of the Spanish conquests in America, and especially in that part of it since known as Colombia, down to about 1588. The whole, except the conclusion, is written in the Italian octave stanza, and extends to nearly ninety thousand lines, in pure, fluent Castilian, which soon afterwards became rare, but in a chronicling spirit, which, though it adds to its value as history, takes from it all the best characteristics of poetry.[804]

Other poems of the same general character followed. One on the discovery and settlement of La Plata is by Centenera, who shared in the trials and sufferings of the original conquest,—a long, dull poem, in twenty-eight cantos, full of credulity, and yet not without value as a record of what its author saw and learned in his wild adventures. It contains, in the earlier parts, much irrelevant matter concerning Peru, and is throughout a strange mixture of history and geography, ending with three cantos devoted to “Captain Thomas Candis, captain-general of the queen of England,”—in other words, Thomas Cavendish, half gentleman, half pirate, whose overthrow in Brazil, in 1592, Centenera thinks a sufficiently glorious catastrophe for his long poem.[805] Another similar work on an expedition into New Mexico was written by Gaspar de Villagra, a captain of infantry, who served in the adventures he describes, and published his account in 1610, after his return to Spain. But both belong to the domain of history rather than to that of poetry.[806]

No less characteristic of the national temper and genius than these historical and heroic poems were the long religious narratives in verse produced during the same period and later. To one of these—that of Coloma on “The Passion of Christ,” printed in 1576—we have already alluded. Another, “The Universal Redemption,” by Blasco, first printed in 1584, should also be mentioned. It fills fifty-six cantos, and contains nearly thirty thousand lines, embracing the history of man from the creation to the descent of the Holy Spirit, and reading in many parts like one of the old Mysteries.[807] A third poem, by Mata, not unlike the last, extends through two volumes, and is devoted to the glories of Saint Francis and five of his followers; a collection of legends in octave stanzas, put together without order or picturesqueness, the first of which sets forth the meek Saint Francis in the disguise of a knight-errant. None of the three has any value.[808]

The next in the list, as we descend, is one of the best of its class, if not the very best. It is the “Monserrate” of Virues, the dramatic and lyric poet, so much praised by Lope de Vega and Cervantes. The subject is taken from the legends of the Spanish Church in the ninth century. Garin, a hermit living on the desolate mountain of Monserrate, in Catalonia, is guilty of one of the grossest and most atrocious crimes of which human nature is capable. Remorse seizes him. He goes to Rome for absolution, and obtains it only on the most degrading conditions. His penitence, however, is sincere and complete. In proof of it, the person he has murdered is restored to life, and the Madonna, appearing on the wild mountain where the unhappy man had committed his crime, consecrates its deep solitudes by founding there the magnificent sanctuary which has ever since made the Monserrate holy ground to all devout Spaniards.

That such a legend should be taken by a soldier and a man of the world as the subject of an epic would hardly have been possible in the sixteenth century in any country except Spain. But many a soldier there, even in our own times, has ended a life of excesses in a hermitage as rude and solitary as that of Garin;[809] and in the time of Philip the Second, it seemed nothing marvellous that one who had fought at the battle of Lepanto, and who, by way of distinction, was commonly called “the Captain Virues,” should yet devote the leisure of his best years to a poem on Garin’s deplorable life and revolting adventures. Such, at least, was the fact. The “Monserrate,” from the moment of its appearance, was successful. Nor has its success been materially diminished at any period since. It has more of the proper arrangement and proportions of an epic than any other of the serious poems of its class in the language; and in the richness and finish of its versification, it is not surpassed, if it is equalled, by any of those of its age. The difficulties Virues had to encounter lay in the nature of his subject and the low character of his hero; but in the course of twenty cantos, interspersed with occasional episodes, like those on the battle of Lepanto and the glories of Monserrate, these disadvantages are not always felt as blemishes, and, as we know, have not prevented the “Monserrate” from being read and admired in an age little inclined to believe the legend on which it is founded.[810]

The “Benedictina,” by Nicholas Bravo, was published in 1604, and seems to have been intended to give the lives of Saint Benedict and his principal followers, in the way in which Castellanos had given the lives of Columbus and the early American adventurers, but was probably regarded rather as a book of devotion for the monks of the brotherhood, in which the author held a high place, than as a book of poetry. Certainly, to the worldly that is its true character. Nor can any other than a similar merit be assigned to two poems for which the social position of their author, Valdivielso, insured a wider temporary reputation. The first is on the history of Joseph, the husband of Mary, written, apparently, because Valdivielso himself had received in baptism the name of that saint. The other is on the peculiarly sacred image of the Madonna, preserved by a series of miracles from contamination during the subjugation of Spain by the Moors, and ever since venerated in the cathedral of Toledo, to whose princely archbishop Valdivielso was attached as a chaplain. Both of these poems are full of learning and of dulness, enormously long, and comprehend together a large part of the history, not only of the Spanish Church, but of the kingdom of Spain.[811]

Lope’s religious epic and narrative poems, of which we have already spoken, appeared at about the same time with those of Valdivielso, and enjoyed the success that attended whatever bore the name of the great popular author of his age. But better than any thing of this class produced by him was the “Christiada” of Diego de Hojeda, printed in 1611, and taken in a slight degree from the Latin poem with the same title by Vida, but not enough indebted to it to impair the author’s claims to originality. Its subject is very simple. It opens with the Last Supper, and it closes with the Crucifixion. The episodes are few and appropriate, except one,—that in which the dress of the Saviour in the garden is made an occasion for describing all human sins, whose allegorical history is represented as if woven with curses into the seven ample folds of the mantle laid on the shoulders of the expiatory victim, who thus bears them for our sake. The vision of the future glories of his Church granted to the sufferer is, on the contrary, happily conceived and well suited to its place; and still better are the gentle and touching consolations offered him in prophecy. Indeed, not a little skill is shown, in the general epic structure of the poem, and its verse is uncommonly sweet and graceful. If the characters were drawn with a firmer hand, and if the language were always sustained with the dignity its subject demands, the “Christiada” would stand deservedly at the side of the “Monserrate” of Virues. Even after making this deduction from its merits, no other religious poem in the language is to be placed before it.[812]

In the same year, Alonso Diaz, of Seville, published a pious poem on another of the consecrated images of the Madonna; and afterwards, in rapid succession, we have heroic poems, as they are called, on Loyola, and on the Madonna, both by Antonio de Escobar;—one on the creation of the world, by Azevedo, but no more an epic than the “Week” of Du Bartas, from which it is imitated;—and one on “The Brotherhood of the Five Martyrs of Arabia,” by Rodriguez de Vargas; the last being the result of a vow to two of their number, through whose intercession the author believed himself to have been cured of a mortal disease. But all these, and all of the same class that followed them,—the “David” of Uziel,—Calvo’s poem on “The Virgin,”—Vivas’s “Life of Christ,”—Juan Dávila’s “Passion of the Man-God,”—the “Samson” of Enriquez Gomez,—another heroic poem on Loyola, by Camargo,—and another “Christiad,” by Encisso,—which bring the list down to the end of the century,—add nothing to the claims or character of Spanish religious narrative poetry, though they add much to its cumbersome amount.[813]

Of an opposite character to these religious poems are the purely, or almost purely, imaginative epics of the same period, whose form yet brings them into the same class. Their number is not large, and nearly all of them are connected more or less with the fictions which Ariosto, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, had thrown up like brilliant fireworks into the Italian sky, and which had drawn to them the admiration of all Europe, and especially of all Spain. There a translation of the “Orlando Furioso,” poor, indeed, but popular, had been published by Urrea as early as 1550. An imitation soon followed,—the one already alluded to, as made by Espinosa in 1555. It is called “The Second Part of the Orlando, with the True Event of the Famous Battle of Roncesvalles, and the End and Death of the Twelve Peers of France.” But at the very outset, its author tells us that “he sings the great glory of Spaniards and the overthrow of Charlemagne and his followers,” adding significantly, “This history will relate the truth, and not give the story as it is told by that Frenchman, Turpin.” Of course, we have, instead of the fictions to which we are accustomed in Ariosto, the Spanish fictions of Bernardo del Carpio and the rout of the Twelve Peers at Roncesvalles,—all very little to the credit of Charlemagne, who, at the end, retreats, disgraced, to Germany. But still, the whole is ingeniously connected with the stories of the “Orlando Furioso,” and carries on, to a considerable extent, the adventures of the personages who are its heroes and heroines.

Some of the fictions of Espinosa, however, are very extravagant and absurd. Thus, in the twenty-second canto, Bernardo goes to Paris and overthrows several of the paladins; and in the thirty-third, whose scene is laid in Ireland, he disenchants Olympia and becomes king of the island;—both of them needless and worthless innovations on the story of Bernardo, as it comes to us in the old Spanish ballads and chronicles. But in general, though it is certainly not wanting in giants and enchantments, Espinosa’s continuation of the Orlando is less encumbered with impossibilities and absurdities than the similar poem of Lope de Vega; and, in some parts, is very easy and graceful in its story-telling spirit. It ends with the thirty-fifth canto, after going through above fourteen thousand lines in ottava rima; and yet, after all, the conclusion is abrupt, and we have an intimation that more may follow.[814]

But no more came from the pen of Espinosa. Others, however, continued the same series of fictions, if they did not take up the thread where he left it. An Aragonese nobleman, Abarca de Bolea, wrote two different poems,—“Orlando the Lover” and “Orlando the Bold”;—and Garrido de Villena of Alcalá, who, in 1577, had made known to his countrymen the “Orlando Innamorato” of Boiardo, in a Spanish dress, published, six years afterwards, his “Battle of Roncesvalles”; a poem which was followed, in 1585, by one of Augustin Alonso, on substantially the same subject. But all of them are now neglected or forgotten.[815]

Not so the “Angelica” of Luis Barahona de Soto, or, as it is commonly called, “The Tears of Angelica.” The first twelve cantos were published in 1586, and received by the men of letters of that age with an extraordinary applause, which has continued to be echoed and reëchoed down to our own times. Its author was a physician in an obscure village near Seville, but he was known as a poet throughout Spain, and praised alike by Diego de Mendoza, Silvestre, Herrera, Cetina, Mesa, Lope de Vega, and Cervantes,—the last of whom makes the curate hasten to save “The Tears of Angelica” from the flames, when Don Quixote’s library was carried to the court-yard, crying out, “Truly, I should shed tears myself, if such a book had been burnt; for its author was one of the most famous poets, not only of Spain, but of the whole world.” All this admiration, however, was extravagant; and in Cervantes, who more than once steps aside from the subject on which he happens to be engaged to praise Soto, it seems to have been the result of a sincere personal friendship.

The truth is, that the Angelica, although so much praised, was never finished or reprinted, and is now rarely seen and more rarely read. It is a continuation of the “Orlando Furioso,” and relates the story of the heroine after her marriage, down to the time when she recovers her kingdom of Cathay, which had been violently wrested from her by a rival queen. It is extravagant in its adventures, and awkward in its machinery, especially in whatever relates to Demogorgon and the agencies under his control. But its chief fault is its dulness. Its whole movement is as far as possible removed from the life and gayety of its great prototype; and, as if to add to the wearisomeness of its uninteresting characters and languid style, one of De Soto’s friends has added to each canto a prose explanation of its imagined moral meanings and tendency, which, in a great majority of cases, it seems impossible should have been in the author’s mind when he wrote the poem.[816]

Of the still more extravagant continuation of the “Orlando” by Lope de Vega we have already spoken; and of the fragment on the same subject by Quevedo it is not necessary to speak at all. But the “Bernardo” of Balbuena, which belongs to the same period, must not be overlooked. It is one of the two or three favored poems of its class in the language; written in the fervor of the author’s youth, and published in 1624, when his age and ecclesiastical honors made him doubt whether his dignity would permit him any longer to claim it as his own.

It is on the constantly recurring subject of Bernardo del Carpio; but it takes from the old traditions only the slight outline of that hero’s history, and then fills up the space between his first presentation at the court of his uncle, Alfonso the Chaste, and the death of Roland at Roncesvalles, with enchantments and giants, travels through the air and over the sea, in countries known and in countries impossible, amidst adventures as wild as the fancies of Ariosto, and more akin to his free and joyous spirit than any thing else of the sort in the language. Many of the descriptions are rich and beautiful; worthy of the author of “The Age of Gold” and “The Grandeur of Mexico.” Some of the episodes are full of interest in themselves, and happy in their position. Its general structure is suited to the rules of its class,—if rules there be for such a poem as the “Orlando Furioso.” And the versification is almost always good;—easy where facility is required, and grave or solemn, as the subject changes and becomes more lofty. But it has one capital defect. It is fatally long;—thrice as long as the Iliad. There seems, in truth, as we read on, no end to its episodes, which are involved in each other till we entirely lose the thread that connects them; and as for its crowds of characters, they come like shadows, and so depart, leaving often no trace behind them, except a most indistinct recollection of their wild adventures.[817]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

NARRATIVE POEMS ON SUBJECTS FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY. — BOSCAN, MENDOZA, SILVESTRE, MONTEMAYOR, VILLEGAS, PEREZ, CEPEDA, GÓNGORA, VILLAMEDIANA, PANTALEON, AND OTHERS. — NARRATIVE POEMS ON MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS. — SALAS, SILVEIRA, ZARATE. — MOCK-HEROIC NARRATIVE POEMS. — ALDANA, CHRESPO, VILLAVICIOSA AND HIS MOSQUEA. — SERIOUS HISTORICAL POEMS. — CORTEREAL, RUFO, VEZILLA CASTELLANOS AND OTHERS, MESA, CUEVA, EL PINCIANO, MOSQUERA, VASCONCELLOS, FERREIRA, FIGUEROA, ESQUILACHE. — FAILURE OF NARRATIVE AND HEROIC POETRY ON NATIONAL SUBJECTS.

THERE was little tendency in Spain, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to take subjects for the long narrative and heroic poems that were so characteristic of the country from ancient history or fable. Shorter and in general more interesting tales, imbued with the old national spirit, were, however, early attempted out of classical materials. The “Leander” of Boscan, a gentle and pleasing poem, in about three thousand lines of blank verse, is to be dated as early as 1540, and is one of them. Diego de Mendoza, Boscan’s friend, followed, with his “Adonis, Hippomenes, and Atalanta,” but in the Italian octave stanza, and with less success. Silvestre’s “Daphne and Apollo” and his “Pyramus and Thisbe,” both of them written in the old Castilian verse, are of the same period and more genial, but they were unfortunate in their effects, if they provoked the poems on “Pyramus and Thisbe” by Montemayor and by Antonio Villegas, or that on “Daphne” by Perez, in the second book of his continuation of the “Diana.”[818]

The more formal effort of Romero de Cepeda on “The Destruction of Troy,” published in 1582, is not better than the rest. It has, however, the merit of being written more in the old national tone than almost any thing of the kind; for it is in the ancient stanza of ten short lines, and has a fluency and facility that make it sound sometimes like the elder ballad poetry. But it extends to ten cantos, and is, after all, the story to which we have always been accustomed, except that it makes Æneas—against whom the Spanish poets and chroniclers seem to have entertained a thorough ill-will—a traitor to his country and an accomplice in its ruin.[819]

But with the appearance of Góngora, simplicity such as Cepeda’s ceased in this class of poems almost entirely. Nothing, indeed, was more characteristic of the extravagance in which this great poetical heresiarch indulged himself than his monstrous poem,—half lyrical, half narrative, and wholly absurd,—which he called “The Fable of Polyphemus”; and nothing became more characteristic of his school than the similar poems in imitation of the Polyphemus which commonly passed under the designation he gave them,—that of Fábulas. Such were the “Phaeton,” the “Daphne,” and the “Europa” of his great admirer, Count Villamediana. Such were several poems by Pantaleon, and, among them, his “Fábula de Eco,” which he dedicated to Góngora. Such was Moncayo’s “Atalanta,” a long heroic poem in twelve cantos, published as a separate work; and his “Venus and Adonis,” found among his miscellanies. And such, too, were Villalpando’s “Love Enamoured, or Cupid and Psyche”; Salazar’s “Eurydice”; and several more of the same class and with the same name;—all worthless, and all published between the time when Góngora appeared and the end of the century.[820]

Of heroic poems on miscellaneous subjects, a few were produced during the same period, but none of value. The first that needs to be mentioned is that of Yague de Salas, on “The Lovers of Teruel,” published in 1616, and preceded by an extraordinary array of laudatory verses, among which are sonnets by Lope de Vega and Cervantes. It is on the tragical fate of two young and faithful lovers, who, after the most cruel trials, died at almost the same moment, victims of their passion for each other,—the story on which, as we have already noticed, Montalvan founded one of his best dramas. Salas calls his poem a tragic epic, and it consists of twenty-six long cantos, comprehending, not only the sad tale of the lovers themselves, which really ends in the seventeenth canto, but a large part of the history of the kingdom of Aragon and the whole history of the little town of Teruel. He declares his story to be absolutely authentic; and in the Preface he appeals for the truth of his assertion to the traditions of Teruel, of whose municipality he had formerly been syndic and was then secretary.

But his statements were early called in question, and, to sustain them, he produced, in 1619, the copy of a paper which he professed to have found in the archives of Teruel, and which contains, under the date of 1217, a full account of the two lovers, with a notice of the discovery and reinterment of their unchanged bodies in the church of San Pedro, in 1555. This seems to have quieted the doubts that had been raised; and for a long time afterwards, poets and tragic writers resorted freely to a story so truly Spanish in its union of love and religion, as if its authenticity were no longer questionable. But since 1806, when the facts and documents in relation to it were collected and published, there seems no reasonable doubt that the whole is a fiction, founded on a tradition already used by Artieda in a dull drama, and still floating about at the time when Salas lived, to which, when urged by his skeptical neighbours, he gave a distinct form. But the popular faith was too well settled to be disturbed by antiquarian investigations, and the remains of the lovers of Teruel in the cloisters of Saint Peter are still visited by faithful and devout hearts, who look upon them with sincere awe, as mysterious witnesses left there by Heaven, that they may testify, through all generations, to the truth and beauty of a love stronger than the grave.[821]

The attempt of Lope de Vega, in his “Jerusalem Conquered,” to rival Tasso, turned the thoughts of other ambitious poets in the same direction, and the result was two epics that are not yet quite forgotten. The first is the “Macabeo” of Silveira, a Portuguese, who, after living long at the court of Spain, accompanied the head of the great house of the Guzmans when that nobleman was made viceroy of Naples, and published there, in 1638, this poem, to the composition of which he had given twenty-two years. The subject is the restoration of Jerusalem by Judas Maccabæus,—the same which Tasso had at one time chosen for his own epic. But Silveira had not the genius of Tasso. He has, it is true, succeeded in filling twenty cantos with octave stanzas, as Tasso did; but there the resemblance stops. The “Macabeo,” besides being written in the affected style of Góngora, is wanting in spirit, interest, and poetry throughout.[822]

The other contemporary poem of the same class is better, but does not rise to the dignity of success. It is by Zarate, a poet long attached to Rodrigo Calderon, the adventurer who, under the title of Marques de Siete Iglesias, rose to the first places in the state in the time of Philip the Third, and employed Zarate as one of his secretaries. Zarate, however, was gentle and wise, and, having occupied himself much with poetry in the days of his prosperity, found it a pleasant resource in the days of adversity. In 1648, he published “The Discovery of the Cross,” which, if we may trust an intimation in the “Persiles and Sigismunda” of Cervantes, he must have begun thirty years before, and which had undoubtedly been finished and licensed twenty years when it appeared in print. But Zarate mistook the nature of his subject. Instead of confining himself to the pious traditions of the Empress Helena and the ascertained achievements of Constantine against Maxentius, he has filled up his canvas with an impossible and uninteresting contest between Constantine and an imaginary king of Persia on the banks of the Euphrates, and so made out a long poem, little connected in its different parts, and, though dry and monotonous in its general tone, unequal in its execution; some portions of it being simple and dignified, while others show a taste almost as bad as that which disfigures the “Macabeo” of Silveira, and of quite the same sort.[823]

But there was always a tendency to a spirit of caricature in Spanish literature,—perhaps owing to its inherent stateliness and dignity; for these are qualities which, when carried to excess, almost surely provoke ridicule. At least, as we know, parody appeared early among the ballads, and was always prominent in the theatres; to say nothing of romantic fiction, where Don Quixote is the great monument of its glory for all countries and for all ages.[824]

That the long and multitudinous narrative poems of Spain should call forth mock-heroics was, therefore, in keeping with the rest of the national character; and though the number of such caricatures is not large, they have a merit quite equal to that of their serious prototypes. The first in the order of time seems to be lost. It was written by Cosmé de Aldana, who, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, was attached to the Grand Constable Velasco, when he was sent to govern Milan. In his capacity of poet, Aldana, it is said, plied his master with flattery and sonnets, till one day the Constable jestingly besought him to desist, and called him “an ass.” The cavalier could not draw his sword on his friend and patron, but the poet determined to avenge the affront offered to his genius. He did so in a long poem, entitled the “Asneida,” which, on every page, seemed to cry out to the governor, “You are a greater ass than I am.” But it was hardly finished when the unhappy Aldana died, and the copies of his poem were so diligently sought for and so faithfully destroyed, that it seems to be one of the few books we should be curious to see, which, after having been once printed, have entirely disappeared from the world.[825]

The next mock-heroic has also something mysterious about it. It is called “The Death, Burial, and Honors of Chrespina Maranzmana, the Cat of Juan Chrespo,” and was published at Paris in 1604, under what seems to be the pseudonyme of “Cintio Merctisso.” The first canto gives an account of Chrespina’s death; the second, of the pésames or condolences offered to her children; and the third and last, of the public tributes to her memory, including the sermon preached at her interment. The whole is done in the true spirit of such a poem,—grave in form, and quaint and amusing in its details. Thus, when the children are gathered round the death-bed of their venerable mother, among other directions and commands, she tells them very solemnly:—

Up in the concave of the tiles, and near

That firm-set wall the north wind whistles by,

Close to the spot the cricket chose last year,

In a blind corner, far from every eye,

Beneath a brick that hides the treasure dear,

Five choice sardines in secret darkness lie;—

These, brethren-like, I charge you, take by shares,

And also all the rest, to which you may be heirs.

Moreover, you will find, in heaps piled fair,—

Proofs of successful toil to build a name,—

A thousand wings and legs of birds picked bare,

And cloaks of quadrupeds, both wild and tame,

All which your father had collected there,

To serve as trophies of an honest fame;—

These keep, and count them better than all prey;

Nor give them, e’en for ease, or sleep, or life, away.[826]

It is probably a satire on some event notorious at the time and long since forgotten; but however its origin may be explained, it is one of the best imitations extant of the Italian mock-heroics. It has, too, the rare merit of being short.[827]

Much better known than the Chrespina is the “Mosquea,” by Villaviciosa;—a rich and fortunate ecclesiastic, who was born at Siguenza in 1589, and died at Cuenca in 1658. The Mosquea, which is the war of the flies and the ants, was printed in 1615; but though the author lived so long afterwards, he left nothing else to mark the genius of which this poem gives unquestionable proof. It is, as may be imagined, an imitation of the “Batrachomyomachia,” attributed to Homer, and the storm in the third canto is taken, with some minuteness in the spirit of its parody, from the storm in the first book of the Æneid. Still the Mosquea is as original as the nature of such a poem requires it to be. It has, besides, a simple and well-constructed fable; and notwithstanding it is protracted to twelve cantos, the curiosity of the reader is sustained to the last.

A war breaks out in the midst of the festivities of a tournament in the capital city of the flies, which the false ants had chosen as a moment when they could advantageously interrupt the peace that had long subsisted between them and their ancient enemies. The heathen gods are introduced, as they are in the Iliad,—the other insects become allies in the great quarrel, after the manner of all heroic poems,—the neighbouring chiefs come in,—there is an Achilles on one side, and an Æneas on the other,—the characters of the principal personages are skilfully drawn and sharply distinguished,—and the catastrophe is a tremendous battle, filling the last two cantos, in which the flies are defeated and their brilliant leader made the victim of his own rashness. The faults of the poem are its pedantry and length. Its merits are the richness and variety of its poetical conceptions, the ingenious delicacy with which the minutest circumstances in the condition of its insect heroes are described, and the air of reality, which, notwithstanding the secret satire that is never entirely absent, is given to the whole by the seeming earnestness of its tone. It ends, precisely where it should, with the expiring breath of the principal hero.[828]

No other mock-heroic poem followed that of Villaviciosa during this period, except “The War of the Cats,” by Lope de Vega, who, in his ambition for universal conquest, seized on this, as he did on every other department of the national literature. But the “Gatomachia,” which is one of the very best of his efforts, has already been noticed. We turn, therefore, again to the true heroic poems, devoted to national subjects, whose current flows no less amply and gravely, down to the middle of the seventeenth century, than it did when it first began, and continues through its whole course no less characteristic of the national genius and temper than we have seen it in the poems on Charles the Fifth and his achievements.

The favorite hero of the next age, Don John of Austria, son of the Emperor, was the occasion of two poems, with which we naturally resume the examination of this curious series.[829] The first of them is on the battle of Lepanto, and was published in 1578, the year of Don John’s untimely death. The author, Cortereal, was a Portuguese gentleman of rank and fortune, who distinguished himself as the commander of an expedition against the infidels on the coasts of Africa and Asia, in 1571, and died before 1593; but, being tired of fame, passed the last twenty years of his life at Evora, and devoted himself to poetry and to the kindred arts of music and painting.

It was amidst the beautiful and romantic nature that surrounded him during the quiet conclusion of his bustling life, that he wrote three long poems;—two in Portuguese, which were soon translated into Spanish and published; and one, originally composed in Spanish, and entitled “The Most Happy Victory granted by Heaven to the Lord Don John of Austria, in the Gulf of Lepanto, over the Mighty Ottoman Armada.” It is in fifteen cantos of blank verse, and is dedicated to Philip the Second, who, contrary to his custom, acknowledged the compliment by a flattering letter. The poem opens with a dream brought to the Sultan from the infernal regions by the goddess of war, and inciting him to make an attack on the Christians; but excepting this, and the occasional use of similar machinery afterwards, it is merely a dull historical account of the war, ending with the great sea-fight itself, which is the subject of the last three cantos.[830]

The other contemporary poem on Don John of Austria was still more solemnly devoted to his memory. It was written by Juan Rufo Gutierrez, a person much trusted in the government of Córdova, and expressly sent by that city to Don John, whose service he seems never afterwards to have left. He was, as he tells us, especially charged by that prince to write his history, and received from him the materials for his task. The result, after ten years of labor, was a long chronicling poem called the “Austriada,” printed in 1584. It begins, in the first four cantos, with the rebellion of the Moors in the Alpuxarras; and then, after giving us the birth and education of Don John, as the general sent to subdue them, goes on with his subsequent life and adventures, and ends, in the twenty-fourth canto, with the battle of Lepanto and the promise of a continuation.

When it was thus far finished, which was not till after the death of the prince to whose glory it is dedicated, it was solemnly presented, both by the city of Córdova and by the Cortes of the kingdom, in separate letters, to Philip the Second, asking for it his especial favor, as for a work “that it seemed to them must last for many ages.” The king received it graciously, and gave the author five hundred ducats, regarding it, perhaps, with secret satisfaction, as a funeral monument to one whose life had been so brilliant that his death was not unwelcome. With such patronage, it soon passed through three editions; but it had no real merit, except in the skilful construction of its octave stanzas, and in some of its picturesque historical details, and was, therefore, soon forgotten.[831]

In the neighbourhood of the city of Leon there are,—or in the sixteenth century there were—three imperfect Roman inscriptions cut into the living rock; two of them referring to Curienus, a Spaniard, who had successfully resisted the Imperial armies in the reign of Domitian, and the third to Polma, a lady, whose marriage to her lover, Canioseco, is thus singularly recorded. On these inscriptions, Vezilla Castellanos, a native of the territory where the persons they commemorate are supposed to have lived, has constructed a romantic poem, in twenty-nine cantos, called “Leon in Spain,” which he published in 1586.

Its main subject, however, in the last fifteen cantos, is the tribute of a hundred damsels, which the usurper Mauregato covenanted by treaty to pay annually to the Moors, and which, by the assistance of the apostle Saint James, King Ramiro successfully refused to pay any longer. Castellanos, therefore, passes lightly over the long period intervening between the time of Domitian and that of the war of Pelayo, giving only a few sketches from its Christian history, and then, in the twenty-ninth canto, brings to a conclusion so much of his poem as relates to the Moorish tribute, without, however, reaching the ultimate limit he had originally proposed to himself. But it is long enough. Some parts of the Roman fiction are pleasing, but the rest of the poem shows that Castellanos is only what he calls himself in the Preface,—“A modest poetical historian, or historical poet; an imitator and apprentice of those who have employed poetry to record such memorable things as kindle the minds of men and raise them to a Christian and devout reverence for the saints, to an honorable exercise of arms, to the defence of God’s holy law, and to the loyal service of the king.”[832] If his poem have any subject, it is the history of the city of Leon.

In the course of the next four years after the appearance of this rhymed chronicle of Leon, we find no less than three other long poems connected with the national history: one by Miguel Giner, on the siege of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese, who succeeded the unfortunate Don John of Austria as generalissimo of Philip the Second in the war of the Netherlands;—another, in twenty-one cantos, by Edward or Duarte Diaz, a Portuguese, on the taking of Granada by the Catholic sovereigns;—and the third by Lorenzo de Zamora, on the history of Saguntum and of its siege by Hannibal, in which, preserving the outline of that early story so far as it was well settled, he has wildly mixed up love-scenes, tournaments, and adventures, suited only to the age of chivalry. Taken together, they show how strong was the passion for narrative verse in Spain, where, in so short a time, it produced three such poems.[833]

To a similar result we should arrive from the single example of Christóval de Mesa, who, between 1594 and 1612, published three more national heroic poems;—the first on the tradition, that the body of Saint James, after his martyrdom at Jerusalem, was miraculously carried to Spain and deposited at Compostella, where that saint has ever since been worshipped as the especial patron of the whole kingdom;—the second on Pelayo and the recovery of Spain from the Moors down to the battle of Covadonga;—and the third on the battle of Tolosa, which broke the power of Mohammedanism and made sure the emancipation of the whole Peninsula. All three, as well as Mesa’s elaborate translations of the Æneid and Georgics, which followed them, are written in ottava rima, and all three are dedicated to Philip the Third.

Of their author we know little, and that little is told chiefly by himself in his pleasant poetical epistles, and especially in two addressed to the Count of Lemos and one to the Count de Castro. From these we learn, that, in his youth, he was addicted to the study of Fernando de Herrera and Luis de Soto, as well as to the teachings of Sanchez, the first Spanish scholar of his time; but that, later, he lived five years in Italy, much connected with Tasso, and from this time belonged entirely to the Italian school of Spanish poetry, to which, as his works show, he had always been inclined. But, with all his efforts,—and they were not few,—he found little favor or patronage. The Count de Lemos refused to carry him to Naples as a part of his poetical court, and the king took no notice of his long poems, which, indeed, were no more worthy of favor than the rest of their class that were then jostling and crowding one another in their efforts to obtain the royal protection.[834]

Juan de la Cueva followed in the footsteps of Mesa. His “Bética,” printed in 1603, is an heroic poem, in twenty-four cantos, on the conquest of Seville by Saint Ferdinand. Its subject is good, and its hero, who is the king himself, is no less so. But the poem is a failure; heavy and uninteresting in its plan, and cold in its execution;—for Cueva, who took his materials chiefly from the General Chronicle of Saint Ferdinand’s son, was not able to mould them, as he strove to do, into the form of the “Jerusalem Delivered.” The task was, in fact, quite beyond his power. The most agreeable portion of his work is that which involves the character of Tarfira, a personage imitated from Tasso’s Clorinda; but, after all, the romantic episode of which she is the heroine has great defects, and is too much interwoven with the principal thread of the story. The general plan of the poem, however, is less encumbered in its movement and more epic in its structure than is common in those of its class in Spanish literature; and the versification, though careless, is fluent and generally harmonious.[835]

A physician and scholar of Valladolid, Alfonso Lopez,—commonly called El Pinciano, from the Roman name of his native city,—wrote in his youth a poem on the subject of Pelayo, but did not publish it till 1605, when he was already an old man. It supposes Pelayo to have been misled by a dream from Lucifer to undertake a journey to Jerusalem, and, when at the Holy Sepulchre, to have been undeceived by another dream, and sent back for the emancipation of his country. This last is the obvious and real subject of the poem, which has episodes and machinery enough to explain all the history of Spain down to the time of Philip the Third, to whom the “Pelayo” is dedicated. It is long, like the rest of its class, and, though ushered into notice with an air of much scholarship and pretension, it is written with little skill in the versification, and is one of the most wearisome poems in the language.[836]

In 1612 two more similar epics were published. The first is “La Numantina,” which is on the siege of Numantia and the history of Soria, a town standing in the neighbourhood of Numantia, and claiming to be its successor. The author, Francisco Mosquera de Barnuevo, who belonged to an ancient and distinguished family there, not only wrote this poem of fifteen cantos in honor of the territory where he was born, but accompanied it with a prose history, as a sort of running commentary, in which whatever relates to Soria, and especially the Barnuevos, is not forgotten. It is throughout a very solemn piece of pedantry, and its metaphysical agencies, such as Europe talking to Nemesis, and Antiquity teaching the author, seem to be a good deal in the tone of the old Mysteries, and are certainly any thing but poetical. The other epic referred to is by Vasconcellos, a Portuguese, who had an important command and fought bravely against Spain when his country was emancipating itself from the Spanish yoke, but still wrote with purity, in the Castilian, seventeen cantos, nominally on the expulsion of the Moriscos, but really on the history of the whole Peninsula, from the time of the first entrance of the Moors down to the final exile of the last of their hated descendants by Philip the Third. But neither of these poems is now remembered, and neither deserves to be.[837]

From this point of time, such narrative poems, more or less approaching an epic form, and devoted to the glory of Spain, become rare;—a circumstance to be, in part, attributed to the success of Lope de Vega, which gave to the national drama a prominence so brilliant. Still, in the course of the next thirty years, two or three attempts were made that should be noticed.

The first of them is by a Portuguese lady, Bernarda Ferreira, and is called “Spain Emancipated”; a tedious poem, in two parts, the earlier of which appeared in 1618, and the latter in 1673, long after its author’s death. It is, in fact, a rhymed chronicle,—to the first part of which the dates are regularly attached,—and was intended, no doubt, to cover the whole seven centuries of Spanish history from the outbreak of Pelayo to the fall of Granada, but it is finished no farther than the reign of Alfonso the Wise, where it stops abruptly.

The second attempt is one of the most absurd known in literary history. It was made by Vera y Figueroa, Count de la Roca, long the minister of Spain at Venice, and the author of a pleasant prose treatise on the Rights and Duties of an Ambassador. He began by translating Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” but, just as his version was ready to be published, he changed his purpose, and accommodated the whole work—history, poetical ornaments, and all—to the delivery of Seville from the Moors by Saint Ferdinand. The transformation is as complete as any in Ovid, but certainly not as graceful;—a fact singularly apparent in the second book, where Tasso’s beautiful and touching story of Sophronia and Olindo is travestied by the corresponding one of Leocadia and Galindo. As if to make the whole more grotesque and give it the air of a grave caricature, the Spanish poem is composed throughout in the old Castilian redondillas, and carried through exactly twenty books, all running parallel to the twenty of the “Jerusalem Delivered.”

The last of the three attempts just referred to, and the last one of the period that needs to be noticed, is the “Naples Recovered” of Prince Esquilache, which, though written earlier, dates, by its publication, from 1651. It is on the conquest of Naples in the middle of the fifteenth century by Alfonso the Fifth of Aragon, who seems to have been selected as its hero, in part, at least, because the Prince of Esquilache could boast his descent from that truly great monarch.

The poem, however, is little worthy of its subject. The author avowedly took great pains that it should have no more books than the Æneid; that it should violate no historical proprieties; and that, in its episodes, machinery, and style, as well as in its general fable and structure, it should be rigorously conformed to the safest epic models. He even, as he declares, had procured for it the crowning grace of a royal approbation before he ventured to give it to the world. Still it is a failure. It seems to foreshadow some of the severe and impoverishing doctrines of the next century of Spanish literature, and is written with a squeamish nicety in the versification that still further impairs its spirit; so that the last of the class to which it belongs, if it be not one of the most extravagant, is one of the most dull and uninteresting.[838]

It is worth while, as we finish our notice of this remarkable series of Spanish narrative and heroic poems, to recollect how long the passion for them continued in Spain, and how distinctly they retained to the last those ambitious feelings of national greatness which originally gave them birth. For a century, during the reigns of Philip the Second, Philip the Third, and Philip the Fourth, they were continually issuing from the press, and were continually received with the same kind, if not the same degree, of favor that had accompanied the old romances of chivalry, which they had helped to supersede. Nor was this unnatural, though it was extravagant. These old epic attempts were, in general, founded on some of the deepest and noblest traits in the Castilian character; and if that character had gone on rising in dignity and developing itself under the three Philips, as it had under Ferdinand and Isabella, there can be little doubt that the poetry built upon it would have taken rank by the side of that produced under similar impulses in Italy and England. But, unhappily, this was not the case. These Spanish narrative poems devoted to the glory of their country were produced when the national character was on the decline; and as they sprang more directly from the essential elements of that character, and depended more on its spirit, than did the similar poetry of any other people in modern times, so they now more visibly declined with it.

It is in vain, therefore, that the semblance of the feelings which originally gave them birth is continued till the last; for the substance is wanting. We mark, it is true, in nearly every one of them, a proud patriotism, which is just as presumptuous and exclusive under the weakest of the Philips as it was when Charles the Fifth wore half the crowns of Europe; but we feel that it is degenerating into a dreary, ungracious prejudice in favor of their own country, which prevented its poets from looking abroad into the world beyond the Pyrenees, where they could only see their cherished hopes of universal empire disappointed, and other nations rising to the state and power their own was so fast losing. We mark, too, throughout these epic attempts, the indications to which we have been accustomed of what was most peculiar in Spanish loyalty,—bold, turbulent, and encroaching against all other authority exactly in proportion as it was faithful and submissive to the highest; but we find it is now become a loyalty which, largely as it may share the spirit of military glory, has lost much of the sensitiveness of its ancient honor. And finally, though we mark in nearly every one of them that deep feeling of reverence for religion which had come down from the ages of contest with the infidel power of the Moors, yet we find it now constantly mingling the arrogant fierceness of worldly passion with the holiest of its offerings, and submitting, in the spirit of blind faith and devotion, to a bigotry whose decrees were written in blood. These multitudinous Spanish heroic poems, therefore, that were produced out of the elements of the national character when that character was falling into decay, naturally bear the marks of their origin. Instead of reaching, by the fervid enthusiasm of a true patriotism, of a proud loyalty, and of an enlightened religion, the elevation to which they aspire, they sink away, with few exceptions, into tedious, rhyming chronicles, in which the national glory fails to excite the interest that would belong to an earnest narrative of real events, without gaining in its stead any thing from the inspirations of poetical genius.

CHAPTER XXIX.

LYRIC POETRY. — ITS CONDITION FROM THE TIME OF BOSCAN AND GARCILASSO DE LA VEGA. — CANTORÁL, FIGUEROA, ESPINEL, MONTEMAYOR, BARAHONA DE SOTO, RUFO, DAMIAN DE VEGAS, PADILLA, MALDONADO, LUIS DE LEON, FERNANDO DE HERRERA AND HIS POETICAL LANGUAGE, ESPINOSA’S COLLECTION, MANOEL DE PORTUGAL, MESA, LEDESMA AND THE CONCEPTISTAS. — CULTISMO, AND SIMILAR BAD TASTE IN OTHER COUNTRIES. — GÓNGORA AND HIS FOLLOWERS, VILLAMEDIANA, PARAVICINO, ROCA Y SERNA, ANTONIO DE VEGA, PANTALEON, VIOLANTE DEL CIELO, MELO, MONCAYO, LA TORRE, VERGARA, ROZAS, ULLOA, SALAZAR. — FASHION AND PREVALENCE OF THE SCHOOL OF GÓNGORA. — EFFORTS TO OVERTURN IT BY LOPE DE VEGA, QUEVEDO, AND OTHERS. — MEDRANO, ALCAZAR, ARGUIJO, BALVAS.

A DECIDEDLY lyric tendency is perceptible in Spanish literature from the first. The ballads are full of it, and occasionally we find snatches of songs that seem almost as old as the earliest ballads. All this, of course, belongs to a period so remote and rude, that what it produced was national, because Spain had as yet no intercourse with other European countries that drew after it any of their culture and refinement. Later, we have seen how the neighbouring Provençal sometimes gave its measures and tones to the Castilian; and how both, so far as Spain was concerned, were fashioned by the tastes of the different courts of the country down to the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.

But, from the next age, which was that of Boscan and Garcilasso, a new element was introduced into Spanish lyric poetry; for, from that period, not only the forms, but the genius, of the more cultivated Italian are perceptible, in a manner that does not permit us for a moment to question their great influence and final success. Still, the difference between the characters of the two nations was so great, that the poetry of Spain could not be drawn into such relations with the Italian models set before it as was at first attempted. Two currents, therefore, were at once formed; and after the first encounter between them, in which Castillejo was the most prominent, if not the earliest, of those who strove to prevent their union, the respective streams have continued to flow on, side by side, but still separate from each other, down to our own days.

At the end of the sixteenth century, the influence of such poetry as had filled the Cancioneros from the time of John the Second was still acknowledged, and Bibero Costana, Heredia, Sanchez de Badajoz, and their contemporaries, continued to be read, though they no longer enjoyed the fashionable admiration which had once waited on them. But the change that was destined to overthrow the school to which these poets belonged was rapidly advancing; and if it were not the most favorable that could have been made in Spanish lyric poetry, it was one which, as we have seen, the brilliant success of Garcilasso, and the circumstances producing and attending it, rendered inevitable.[839]

Among those who contributed avowedly to this change was Cantorál, who, in 1578, published a volume of verse, in the Preface to which he does not hesitate to say that Spain had hardly produced a poet deserving the name, except Garcilasso;—a poet, as he truly adds, formed on Italian models, and one whose footsteps he himself follows, though at a very humble distance.[840] Another of the lyric poets of the same period, and one who, with better success, took the same direction, was Francisco de Figueroa, a gentleman and a soldier, whose few Castilian poems are still acknowledged in the more choice collections of his native literature, but who lived so long in Italy, and devoted himself so earnestly to the study of its language, that he wrote Italian verse with purity, as well as Spanish.[841] To these should be added Vicente Espinel, who invented the décimas, or renewed the use of them, and who, in a volume of poetry printed in 1591, distinguishes the Italian forms, to which he gives precedence, from the Castilian, in which his efforts, though fewer in number, are occasionally more beautiful than any thing he wrote in the forms he preferred.[842]

But the disposition to follow the great masters of Italy was by no means so general as the examples of Cantorál, Figueroa, and Espinel might seem to imply. Their cases are, in fact, extreme cases, as we can see from the circumstance, that, though Montemayor in his “Diana” was a professed imitator of Sannazaro, still, among the poems scattered through that prose pastoral, and in a volume which he afterwards printed, are found many pieces—and some of them among the best he has left—that belong decidedly to the older and more national school.[843] Similar remarks may be applied to other authors of the same period. Luis Barahona de Soto, of whose lyric poems only a few have reached us, was by no means exclusively of the Italian school, though his principal work, the famous “Tears of Angelica,” is in the manner of Ariosto.[844] And Rufo, while he strove to tread in the footsteps of Petrarch, had yet within him a Castilian genius, which seems to have compelled him, as if against his will, to return to the paths of the elder poets of his own country.[845] A still larger number of the contemporary lyrics of Damian de Vegas[846] and Pedro de Padilla[847] are national in their tone; but best of all is this tone heard, at this period, from Lopez Maldonado, who, sometimes in a gay spirit, and sometimes in one full of tenderness and melancholy, is almost uniformly inspired by the popular feeling and true to the popular instincts.[848]

But it should not be forgotten that during the same period lived the two greatest lyrical poets that Spain has ever produced,—exercising little influence over each other, and still less over their own times. Of one of them, Luis de Leon, who died in 1591, after having given hardly any thing of his poetry to the world, we have already spoken. The other was Fernando de Herrera, an ecclesiastic of Seville,[849] of whom we know only that he lived in the latter part of the sixteenth century; that he died in 1597, at the age of sixty-three years; that Cervantes wrote a sonnet in his honor;[850] and that, in 1619, his friend Francisco Pacheco, the painter, published his works, with a Preface by the kindred spirit of Rioja.[851]

That Herrera was acquainted with some of the unpublished poetry of Luis de Leon is certain, because he cites it in his learned commentary on Garcilasso, printed in 1580; but that he placed Garcilasso de la Vega above Luis de Leon is no less certain from the same commentary, where he often expresses an opinion that Garcilasso was the greatest of all Spanish poets;[852]—an opinion sufficiently obvious in the volume of his own poetry published by himself in 1582, which is altogether in the Italian manner adopted by Garcilasso, and which, increased by poems of a different character in the editions of Pacheco, in 1619, and of Fernandez, in 1808,[853] constitutes all we possess of Herrera’s verse, though certainly not all he wrote.[854]

Some parts of the volume published by himself have little value, such as most of the sonnets,—a form of composition on which he placed an extravagant estimate.[855] Other parts are excellent. Such are his elegies, which are in terza rima, and of which the one addressed to Love beseeching Repose is full of passion, while that in which he expresses his gratitude for the resource of tears is full of tenderness and the gentlest harmony.[856] But his principal success is in his canzones. Of these he wrote sixteen. The least fortunate of them is, perhaps, the one where he most strove to imitate Pindar;—that on the rebellion of the Moors in the Alpuxarras, which he has rendered cold by founding it on the Greek mythology. The best are one on the battle of Lepanto, gained by Herrera’s favorite hero, the young and generous Don John of Austria, and one on the overthrow of Sebastian of Portugal, in his disastrous invasion of Africa. Both were probably written when the minds of men were everywhere stirred by the great events that called them forth; and both were fortunately connected with those feelings of loyalty and religion that always seemed to spring up together in the minds of the Spanish people, and to be of kindred with all their highest poetical inspirations.

The first—that on the battle of Lepanto, which emancipated many thousand Christian captives, and stopped the second westward advance of the Crescent—is a lofty and cheerful hymn of victory, mingling, to a remarkable degree, the jubilant exultation which breaks forth in the Psalms and Prophecies on the conquests of the Jews over their unbelieving enemies, with the feelings of a devout Spaniard at the thought of so decisive an overthrow of the ancient and hated enemy of his faith and country. The other,—an ode on the death of Sebastian of Portugal,—composed, on the contrary, in a vein of despondency, is still romantic and striking, even more, perhaps, than its rival. That unfortunate monarch, who was one of the most chivalrous princes that ever sat on a throne in Christendom, undertook, in 1578, to follow up the great victory of Lepanto by rescuing the whole of the North of Africa from the Moslem yoke, under which it had so long groaned, and to restore to their homes the multitudes of Christians who were there suffering the most cruel servitude. He perished in the generous attempt; hardly fifty of his large army returning to recount the details of the fatal battle, in which he himself had disappeared among the heaps of unrecognized slain. But so fond and fervent was the popular admiration, that, for above a century afterwards, it was believed in Portugal that Don Sebastian would still return and resume the power which, for a time, had so dazzled and deluded the hearts of his subjects.[857]

To the main facts in this melancholy disaster Herrera has happily given a religious turn. He opens his ode with a lament for the affliction of Portugal, and then goes on to show that the generous glory which should have accompanied such an effort against the common enemy of Christendom had been lost in a cruel defeat, because those who undertook the great expedition had been moved only by human ambition, forgetting the higher Christian feelings that should have carried them into a war against the infidel. In this spirit, he cries out,—

But woe to them who, trusting in the strength

Of horses and their chariots’ multitude,

Have hastened, Lybia, to thy desert sands!—

O, woe to them! for theirs is not a hope

That humbly seeks for everlasting light,

But a presumptuous pride, that claims beforehand

The uncertain victory, and ere their eyes

Have looked to Heaven for help, with confident

And hardened hearts divides the unwon spoils.

But He who holds the headstrong back from ruin,—

The God of Israel,—hath relaxed his hand,

And they have rushed—the chariot and the charioteer,

The horse and horseman—down the dread abyss

His anger has prepared for their presumption.[858]

Complaints, not entirely without foundation, have been made against Herrera’s poetry, on the ground that he wants a sufficiently discriminating taste in the choice of his words. Quevedo, who, when he printed the poems of the Bachiller de la Torre as models of purity in style, first made this suggestion, intimates that his objections do not apply to the volume of poetry published by Herrera himself, but to the additions that were made to it after the author’s death by his friend Pacheco.[859] But, without stopping to inquire whether this intimation be strictly true or not, it is enough to say, that, when Herrera’s taste was formed and forming, the Castilian was in the state in which it was described to have been about 1540 by the wise author of the “Dialogue on Languages”;—that is, it was not, in all respects, fitted for the highest efforts of the more cultivated lyric poetry. Herrera felt this difficulty, and somewhat boldly undertook to find a remedy for it.

The course he pursued is sufficiently pointed out in the acute, but pedantic, notes which he has published to his edition of Garcilasso.[860] He began by claiming the right to throw out of the higher poetry all words that gave a common or familiar air to the thought. He introduced and defended inversions and inflections approaching those in the ancient classical languages. And he adopted, and sometimes succeeded in naturalizing in the Castilian, words from the Latin, the Italian, and the Greek. A moderate and cautious use of means like these was, perhaps, desirable in his time, as the author of the “Dialogue on Languages” had already endeavoured to show. But the misfortune with Herrera was, that he carried his practice, if not his doctrines, too far, and has thus occasionally given to his poetry a stiff and formal air, and made it, not only too much an imitation of the Latin or the Italian, but a slight anticipation of the false taste of Góngora, that so soon became fashionable. This is particularly true of his sonnets and sestinas, which are often involved and awkward in their structure; but in his more solemn odes, and especially in those where the stanzas are regular, each consisting of thirteen or more lines, there is a “long-resounding march” and a grand lyric movement, that sweep on their triumphant way in old Castilian dignity, quite unconscious of a spirit of imitation, and quite beyond its reach.

Perhaps a better idea of the lyric poetry in highest favor among the more cultivated classes of Spanish society, at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, can be obtained from the collection of Pedro Espinosa, entitled “Flowers from the Most Famous Poets of Spain,” than from any other single volume, or from any single author.[861] It was printed in 1605, and contains more or less of the works of about sixty poets of that period, including Espinosa himself, of whom we have sixteen pieces that are worthy of their place. Most of the collection consists of lyric verse in the usual forms,—chiefly Italian, but not unfrequently national,—and many of the writers are familiar to us. Among them are Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and others already noticed, together with Góngora, the Argensolas, and some of their contemporaries.

Several of the poets from whom it gives selections or contributions are to be found nowhere else,—such as two ladies named Narvaez, and another called Doña Christovalina; while, from time to time, we find poems by obscure authors, like those of Pedro de Liñan and Agustin de Texada Paez, which, from their considerable merit, it would have been a misfortune to lose.[862] But Fernando de Herrera does not appear there at all; and of more than two thirds of its authors, only one or two short pieces are given. It is to be regarded, therefore, as an exhibition of the taste of the age when it appeared, rather than as a selection of what was really best and highest in the older and more recent Spanish lyric poetry at the opening of the seventeenth century. But, whatever we may think of it in this point of view, it is certainly among the more curious materials for a history of that poetry; and before we condemn Espinosa for selecting less wisely than he might have done, we should remember, that, after all, his taste was probably more refined than that of his age, since a second part of his collection which he proposed to publish was not called for, though he continued to be known as an author many years after the appearance of the first.

But Herrera is not the only lyrical poet of the period who does not appear in Espinosa’s collection. Rey de Artieda, whose sonnets are among the best in the language,—Manoel de Portugal, whose numerous religious poems are often in the national forms,—and Carrillo, a soldier of promise, who died young, and who wrote sometimes with a simplicity and freshness that never fail to be attractive,—are all omitted; though their works, published at just about the same time with the collection of Espinosa, had been known in manuscript long before, as much as those of Luis de Leon and Góngora.[863]

Christóval de Mesa comes a little later. His lyric poems were printed in 1611, and again, more amply, in 1618. He professes to have taken Herrera for his master, or for one of his masters; but he was long in Italy, where, as he tells us, he changed his style, and from this time, at least, he belongs with absolute strictness to the school of Boscan and Garcilasso.[864]

Francisco de Ocaña and Lope de Sosa, on the contrary, are as strictly of the old Spanish school. The reason may be that their poetry is almost all religious,—such as is found among the sacred verses of Silvestre and Castillejo in the preceding century,—and that they wrote for popular effect, seeking to connect themselves with feelings that had grown old in the hearts of the multitude. The little hymns of the former, on the Approach of the Madonna to Bethlehem, vainly asking for Shelter, and one by the latter, on the Love and Grief of a Penitent Soul, are specimens of what is best in this peculiar style of Spanish poetry, which, marked as it is with some rudeness, carries back our thoughts to the spirited old villancicos in which it originated.[865]

Alonso de Ledesma, of Segovia, who was born in 1552, and died in 1623, wrote, or rather attempted to write, in the same style, but failed; though he succeeded in what may be regarded as a corruption of it. His “Spiritual Conceits,” as he called a volume which was first printed in 1600, and which afterwards appeared six times during its author’s life, are so full of quaintnesses and exaggerations as to take from them nearly all poetical merit. They are religious, and owed their success partly to the preservation of the old familiar forms and tones, but more to the perverse ingenuity with which they abound, and which they contributed much to make fashionable. Indeed, at that time, and very much under the leading influence of Ledesma, there was a well-known party in Spanish literature called the “Conceptistas”;—a sect composed, in a considerable degree, of mystics, who expressed themselves in metaphors and puns, alike in the pulpit and in poetry, and whose influence was so extensive, that traces of it may be found in many of the principal writers of the time, including Quevedo and Lope de Vega. Of this school of the Conceptistas, though Quevedo was the more brilliant master, Ledesma was the original head. His “Monstruo Imaginado,” or Fanciful Monster, first printed in 1615, is little else than a series of allegories hidden under the quibbles that are heaped upon them; beginning with ballads, and ending with the short prose fiction that gives its name to the volume. Several of the poems it contains are on the death of Philip the Second, and sound very strangely, from the irreverence with which that important event is treated, both in its political and its religious aspects. Others, which are on secular subjects, are in a tone even more free. But the little he has left that is worth reading is to be sought in his “Spiritual Conceits,” where there are a few sonnets and a few lyrical ballads that are not likely to be forgotten.[866]

But there was a more formidable party in Spanish literature than that of the Conceptistas; one that arose about the same time, and prevailed longer and more injuriously. It was that of the “Cultos”; or the writers who claimed for themselves a peculiarly elegant and cultivated style of composition, and who, while endeavouring to justify their claims, ran into the most ridiculous extravagances, pedantry, and affectations.

That such follies should thrive more in Spain than elsewhere was natural. The broadest and truest paths to intellectual distinction were there closed; and it was not remarkable, therefore, that men should wander into by-ways and obscure recesses. They were forbidden to struggle honestly and openly for truth, and pleased themselves with brilliant follies that were at least free from moral mischiefs. Despotic governments have sometimes sought to amuse an oppressed multitude with holiday shows of rope-dancers and fireworks. Neither the ministers of Philip the Third and Philip the Fourth nor the Inquisition particularly patronized the false style of writing that prevailed in their time, and served to amuse the better educated portions of society. But they tolerated it; and that was enough. It became fashionable at court immediately, and in time struck such root in the soil of the whole country, and so flourished there, that it has not yet been completely eradicated.[867]

It was not, however, in Spain alone that such follies were known. From the middle of the fifteenth century, when a knowledge of the great masters of antiquity had become, for the first time, common among scholars throughout the West, efforts had been made to build up and cultivate a style of writing not unworthy of their example in the languages of the principal countries of Europe. Some of these efforts were wisely made, and resulted in the production of a series of authors that now constitute the recognized poets and prose-writers of Christendom, and emulate the models on which they were more or less formed. Others, misled by pedantry and an unsound judgment, have long since fallen into oblivion. But the period when such efforts were made with the least taste and discretion was the latter part of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth; the period when the Pleiades, as they were called, prevailed in France, the Euphuists in England, and the Marinisti in Italy.

How far the bad taste that was fashionable for a time in these several countries had an effect on the contemporary tendencies of a similar kind in Spain cannot be exactly determined. Probably what was the favored literature of London or Paris was little known at Madrid, and less cared for. But that whatever was done in Italy was immediately carried to Spain, in the times of Philip the Second and Philip the Third, we have abundant proof.[868]

The poet who introduced “the cultivated style” into Spanish literature, and whose name that style has ever since worn, was Luis de Góngora, a gentleman of Córdova, who was born in 1561, and was educated at Salamanca, where it was intended he should qualify himself for the profession of the law, of which his father was a distinguished ornament. But it was too late. The young man’s disposition for poetry was already developed, and the only permanent result of his studies at the University is to be sought in a large number of ballads and other slight compositions, often filled with bitter satire, but written with simplicity and spirit.

In 1584 he is noticed by Cervantes as a known author.[869] He was then only twenty-three years old; but he continued to live in his native city, poor and unpatronized, yet twenty years longer, when, to insure a decent subsistence for his old age, he took the tonsure and became a priest. About the same time, he resorted to the court, then at Valladolid, and was there in 1605, the year in which Espinosa published his collection of poetry, to which Góngora was the largest contributor.[870] But he was not more favored at court than he had been at Córdova; and, after waiting and watching eleven years, we do not find that he had obtained any thing more than a titular chaplaincy to the king, a pleasant note from the patronizing Count de Lemos,[871] the good-natured favor of the Duke de Lerma and the Marquis de Siete Iglesias, and the general reputation of being a wit and a poet. At last he was noticed by the all-powerful favorite, the Count Duke Olivares, and seemed on the point of obtaining the fortune for which he had waited so long. But at this moment his health failed. He returned, languishing, to his native city, and died there in peace soon afterwards, at the age of sixty-six.[872]

Much of the early poetry of Góngora is in short lines, and remarkable for its simplicity. One of his lyrical ballads, beginning,—

The loveliest maiden

Our village has known,

Only yesterday wed,

To-day, widowed, alone,[873]—

contains an admirably natural expression of grief, by a young bride to her mother, on the occasion of her husband’s being suddenly called to the wars. Another yet more lyrical, which begins,—

Ye fresh and soft breezes,

That now for the spring

Unfold your bright garlands,

Sweet violets bring,[874]—

is, again, full of gentle tenderness. And so are some of his religious popular poems, which occasionally approach the character of the old villancicos.

His odes of the same period are more stately. That on the Armada, which must have been written as early as 1588, since it contains the most confident predictions of a victory over England, is one of the best; and that on Saint Hermenegild—a prince, who, in the sixth century, partly for his resistance to Arianism and partly for political rebellion, was put to death by his own father, and afterwards canonized by the Church of Rome—is full of fervor and of the spirit of Catholic devotion. Both are among the good specimens of the more formal Spanish ode.

But this poetry, all of which seems to have been written before he went to court, and while he lived neglected at Córdova, failed to give him the honors to which he aspired. It failed even to give him the means of living. Moved, perhaps, by these circumstances, and perhaps by the success of Ledesma and his conceited school, Góngora adopted another style, and one that he thought more likely to command attention. The most obvious feature in this style is, that it consists almost entirely of metaphors, so heaped one upon another, that it is sometimes as difficult to find out the meaning hidden under their grotesque mass as if it were absolutely a series of confused riddles. Thus, when his friend Luis de Bavia, in 1613, published a volume containing the history of three Popes, Góngora sent him the following words, thrown into the shape of a commendatory sonnet, to be prefixed to the book:—

“This poem, which Bavia has now offered to the world, if not tied up in numbers, yet is filed down into a good arrangement, and licked into shape by learning, is a cultivated history, whose gray-headed style, though not metrical, is well combed, and robs three pilots of the sacred bark from time and rescues them from oblivion. But the pen that thus immortalizes the heavenly turnkeys on the bronze of its history is not a pen, but the key of ages. It opens to their names, not the gates of failing memory, which stamps shadows on masses of foam, but the gates of immortality.”

The meaning of this, as it is set forth in ten pages of commentary by one of his admirers, is as follows:—

“The history which Bavia now offers to the world is not, indeed, in verse, but it is written and finished in the spirit of wise learning and of poetry. Immortalizing three Popes, it becomes the key of ages, opening to them, not the gates of memory, which often give passage to a transient and false fame, but the gates of sure and perpetual renown.”[875]

The extravagance of the metaphors used by Góngora was often as remarkable as their confusion and obscurity. Thus, when, in 1619, just after the appearance of two comets, one of his friends proposed to accompany Philip the Third to Lisbon,—a city founded, according to tradition, by Ulysses,—Góngora wrote to him, “Wilt thou, in a year when a plural comet cuts out mourning of evil augury to crowns, tread in the footsteps of the wily Greek?“[876] And again, in his first “Solitude,” speaking of a lady whom he admired, he calls her “a maiden so beautiful, that she might parch up Norway with her two suns and bleach Ethiopia with her two hands.” But though these are extreme cases, it is not to be denied that the later poems of Góngora are often made unintelligible by similar extravagances.[877]

He did not, however, stop here. He introduced new words into his verse, chiefly taken from the ancient classical languages; he used old Castilian words in new and forced meanings; and he adopted involved and unnatural constructions, quite foreign from the genius of the Spanish. The consequence was, that his poetry, though not without brilliancy, soon became unintelligible. This is the case with one or two of his sonnets, printed as early as 1605;[878] and still more with his longer poems, such as his “Solitudes,” or Deserts, his “Polyphemus,” his “Panegyric on the Duke of Lerma,” and his “Pyramus and Thisbe”; none of which appeared till after his death.

Commentaries, therefore, were necessary to explain them, even while they still circulated only in manuscript. The earliest were prepared, at his own request, by Pellicer, a scholar of much reputation, who published them in 1630, under the title of “Solemn Discourses on the Works of Don Luis de Góngora,” expressing, at the same time, his fears that he might sometimes have failed to detect the meaning of what was often really so obscure.[879] They were followed, in 1636, by a defence and explanation of the “Pyramus and Thisbe,” from Salazar Mardones.[880] And between that year and 1646, the series was closed with an elaborate commentary of above fifteen hundred pages, by Garcia de Salcedo Coronel, himself a poet.[881] To these were added contemporary discussions, by Juan Francisco de Amaya, a jurist; by Martin Angulo, in reply to an attack of Cascales, the rhetorician; and by others, until the amount of the notes on Góngora’s poetry was tenfold greater than that of the text they were intended to elucidate.[882]

Followers, of course, would not be wanting to one who was so famous. Of these, the most distinguished in rank, and perhaps in merit, was the Count of Villamediana,—the same unfortunate nobleman whose very bold and public assassination was attributed to the jealousy of Philip the Third, and created a sensation, at the time it happened, in all the courts of Europe. He was a man of wit and fashion, whose poetry was a part of his pretensions as a courtier, and was not printed till 1629, eight years after his death. Some of it is written without affectation,—probably the earlier portions; but, in general, both by the choice of his subjects,—such as those of Phaeton, of Daphne, and of Europa,—and by his mode of treating them, he bears witness to his imitation of the worst parts of Góngora’s works. His sonnets, of which there are two or three hundred, are in every style, satirical, religious, and sentimental; and a few of his miscellaneous poems have something of the older national air and tone. But he is rarely more intelligible than his master, and never shows his master’s talent.[883]

Another of those that favored and facilitated the success of the new school was Paravicino, who died in 1633, and whose position as the popular court preacher, during the last sixteen years of his life, enabled him to introduce “the cultivated style” into the pulpit, and help its currency among the higher classes of society. His poetical works were not collected and published till 1641, when they appeared under the imperfect disguise of a part of his family name,—Felix de Arteaga. They fill a small volume, which abounds in sonnets, and contains a single drama of no value. The best parts of it are the lyrical ballads, which, though mystical and obscure, are not without poetry; a remark that should be extended to the narrative ballad on the Loves of Alfonso the Eighth and the Jewess of Toledo, which Arteaga seems to have been willing to write in the older and simpler style.[884]

These were the principal persons whose example gave currency to the new style. Its success, however, depended, in a great degree, on the tone of the higher class of society and the favor of the court, to which they all belonged, and in which their works were generally circulated in manuscript long before they were printed,—a practice always common in Spain, from the rigorous supervision exercised over the press, and the formidable obstacles thrown in the way of all who were concerned in its management, whether as authors or as publishers. Fashion was, no doubt, the great means of success for the followers of Góngora, and it was able to push their influence very widely. The inferior poets, almost without exception, bowed to it throughout the country. Roca y Serna published, in 1623, a collection of poems, called “The Light of the Soul,” which was often reprinted between that time and the end of the century.[885] Antonio Lopez de Vega, neither a kinsman nor a countryman of his great namesake, who, however, praises him much beyond his merits, printed his “Perfect Gentleman” in 1620; a political dream, to which he added a small collection of poems of a nature not more substantial.[886]

Anastasio Pantaleon, a young cavalier, who enjoyed great consideration at court, and was assassinated in the streets of Madrid, being mistaken for another person, had his poems collected by the affection of his friends, and published in 1634, five years after his death.[887] A nun at Lisbon, Violante del Cielo, in 1646,[888] and Manoel de Melo, in 1649,[889] gave proofs of a pride in the Castilian which we should hardly have expected just at the time when their native country was emancipating itself from the Spanish yoke; but which enabled them to claim the favor of fashion alike at home and in Madrid. In 1652, Moncayo published a volume of his own extravagant verses;[890] and, two years later, persuaded his friend Francisco de la Torre to publish a similar collection in equally bad taste.[891] Vergara followed, in 1660, under the affected title of “Ideas de Apolo,”[892] and Rozas, in 1662, under one still more affected,—“Conversation without Cards.”[893]

Ulloa, who prepared his poetry for the press as early as 1653, but did not print it till many years afterwards, wrote sometimes pleasantly and in a pure style, but often followed that prevailing in his time.[894] And finally, in 1677, appeared “The Harp of Apollo,” by Salazar, quite as bad as any of its predecessors, and quite worthy in all respects to close up the series.[895] More names might be added, but they would be of persons of less note; and even of those just enumerated little is now remembered, and less read. The whole mass, indeed, is of consequence chiefly to show the wide extent of the evil, and the rapidity with which it spread on all sides.

The depth to which it struck its roots may, however, be better estimated, if we consider two things: the unavailing efforts made by the leading spirits of the age to resist it, and the fact, that, after all, they themselves—Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and Calderon—yielded from time to time to the popular taste, and wrote in the very style they condemned.[896]

Of these distinguished men, the most prominent, whether we consider the influence he exercised over his contemporaries or the interest he took in this particular discussion, was, undoubtedly, Lope de Vega. Góngora had, at some period, been personally known to him, probably when he was in Andalusia in 1599, or earlier, when he was hastening to join the Armada; and from this time Lope always retained an unaffected respect for the Cordovan poet’s genius, and always rendered full justice to his earlier merits. But he did not spare the extravagances of Góngora’s later style; attacking it in his seventh Epistle; in an amusing sonnet, where he represents Boscan and Garcilasso as unable to understand it; in the poetical contest at the canonization of San Isidro; in the verses prefixed to the “Orfeo” of Montalvan; and in many other places; but, above all, in a long letter to a friend, who had formally asked his judgment on the whole subject.[897]

There can be no doubt, then, as to his deliberate opinion in relation to it. Indeed, Góngora assailed him with great severity for it; and though Lope continued to praise the uneasy poet for such of his works as deserved commendation, the attack on his “cultivated style” was never forgiven by Góngora, and a small volume of his unpublished verse still shows that his bitterness continued to the last.[898] And yet Lope himself not unfrequently fell into the very fault he so sharply and wittily reprehended; as may be seen in many of his plays, particularly in his “Wise Man in his own House,” where it is singularly unsuited to the subject; and in many of his poems, especially his “Circe” and his “Festival at Denia,” in which, if they had not been addressed to courtly readers, it can hardly be doubted that he would have used the simple and flowing style most natural to him.

The affected style of Góngora was attacked by others;—by Cascales, the rhetorician, in his “Poetical Tables,” printed in 1616, and in his “Philological Letters,” printed later;[899] by Jauregui, the poet, in his “Discourse on the Cultivated and Obscure Style,” in 1628;[900] and by Salas, in 1633, in his “Inquiries concerning Tragedy.”[901] But the most formidable attack sustained by this style was made by Quevedo, who, in 1631, published both his Bachiller de la Torre, and the poetry of Luis de Leon, intending to show by them what Spanish lyrical verse might become, when, with a preservation of the national spirit, it was founded on pure models, whether ancient or modern, whether Castilian or foreign. From this attack—made, it should be observed, about the time Góngora’s works and those of his most successful followers were published, rather than at the time when they were written and circulated in manuscript—his school never entirely recovered the measure of its former triumphant success.[902]

Quite unconscious of this discussion, if we may judge by his style and manner, lived Francisco de Medrano, one of the purest and most genial of Spanish lyric poets, and one who seemed to be such without an effort to avoid the follies of his time. His poems, few in number, are better than any thing in the “Sestinas” of Venegas, to which they form a sort of supplement, and with which they were printed in 1617. Some of his religious sonnets are especially to be noticed; but his Horatian odes, and, above all, one on the Worthlessness of Human Pursuits, beginning, “We all, we all mistake,” must be regarded as the best of his graceful remains.[903]

Another writer of the same class, who can be traced back to 1584, but who did not die till 1606, is Baltasar de Alcazar, a witty Andalusian, who has left a moderate number of short lyrical poems, most of them gay, and all of them in a better taste than was common when they appeared.[904]

Similar praise, if not the same, may be given to Arguijo, a Sevilian gentleman of fortune, distinguished by his patronage of letters, to whom Lope de Vega dedicated three poems, and whose verses Espinosa—apparently to attract favor for his book—placed at the opening of his selections from the poets of his time. He wrote, if we are to judge from the little that has come down to us, in the Italian forms; for his twenty-nine sonnets,—which, with a singularly antique air, are sometimes quite poetical,—a good cancion on the death of a friend, and another on a religious festival at Cadiz, constitute the greater part of his known works. But his little lyric to his guitar, which he calls simply a “Silva,” is worth all the rest. It is entirely Spanish in its tone, and breathes a gentle sensibility, not unmingled with sadness, that finds its way at once to the heart.[905]

Antonio Balvas, who died in 1629, is of more humble pretensions as a poet than either of the last, but perhaps was more distinctly opposed than either of them to the fashionable taste. When in his old age he had prepared for publication a volume of his verse, he called it, after some hesitation, “The Castilian Poet,” and Lope de Vega pronounced it to be purely written, and well fitted to a period “when,” as he added, “the ancient language of the country was beginning to sound to him like a strange tongue.” Still, in this very volume, humble in size and modest in all its pretensions, Balvas compliments Góngora and praises Ledesma: so necessary was it to conciliate the favored school.[906]

CHAPTER XXX.

LYRIC POETRY, CONTINUED. — THE ARGENSOLAS, JAUREGUI, ESTÉVAN VILLEGAS, BALBUENA, BARBADILLO, POLO, ROJAS, RIOJA, ESQUILACHE, MENDOZA, REBOLLEDO, QUIROS, EVIA, INEZ DE LA CRUZ, SOLÍS, CANDAMO, AND OTHERS. — DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS OF SPANISH LYRICAL POETRY, RELIGIOUS AND SECULAR, POPULAR AND ELEGANT.

AMONG the lyric poets who flourished in Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and who were opposed to what began to be called the “Gongorism” of the time, the first, as far as their general influence was concerned, were the two brothers Argensola,—Aragonese gentlemen of a good Italian family, which had come from Ravenna in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. The eldest of them, Lupercio Leonardo, was born about 1564; and Bartolomé Leonardo, the other, was his junior by only a year. Lupercio was educated for the civil service of his country, and married young. Not far from the year 1587 he wrote the three tragedies which have already been noticed, and two years later was distinguished at Alcalá de Henares in one of the public poetical contests then so common in Spain. In 1591, he was sent as an agent of the government of Philip the Second to Saragossa, when Antonio Perez fled into Aragon; and he subsequently became chronicler of that kingdom, and private secretary of the Empress Maria of Austria.

The happiest part of the life of Lupercio was probably passed at Naples, where he went, in 1610, with the Count de Lemos, when that accomplished nobleman was made its viceroy, and seemed to be hardly less anxious to have poets about him than statesmen,—taking both the brothers, as part of his official suite, and not only giving Lupercio the post of Secretary of State and of War, but authorizing him to appoint his subordinates from among Spanish men of letters. But his life at Naples was short. In March, 1613, he died suddenly, and was buried with much solemnity by the Academy of the Oziosi, which he had himself helped to establish, and of which Manso, the friend of Tasso and of Milton, was then the head.

Bartolomé, who, like his brother, bore the name of Leonardo, was educated for the Church, and, under the patronage of the Duke of Villahermosa, early received a living in Aragon, which finally determined his position in society. But, until 1610, when he went to Naples, he lived a great deal at the University of Salamanca, where he was devoted to literary pursuits and prepared his history of the recent conquest of the Moluccas, which was printed in 1609. At Naples, he was a principal personage in the poetical court of the Count de Lemos, and showed, as did others with whom he was associated, a pleasant facility in acting dramas, that were improvisated as they were performed. At Rome, too, he was favorably known and patronized; and before his return home in 1616, he was made chronicler of Aragon; a place in which he succeeded his brother, and which he continued to enjoy till his own death, in 1631.

There is little in what was most fortunate in the career of these two remarkable brothers that can serve to distinguish them, except the different lengths of their lives and the different amounts of their works; for not only were both of them poets and possessed of intellectual endowments able to command general respect, but both had the good fortune to rise to positions in the world which gave them a wide influence, and enabled them to become patrons of men of letters, some of whom were their superiors. But both are now seldom mentioned, except for a volume of poetry, chiefly lyrical, published in 1634, after their deaths, by a son of Lupercio. It consists, he says, of such of his father’s and his uncle’s poems as he had been able to collect, but by no means of all they had written; for his father had destroyed most of his manuscripts just before he died; and his uncle, though he had given about twenty of his poems to Espinosa in 1605, had not, it is apparent, been careful to preserve what had been only an amusement of his leisure hours, rather than a serious occupation.

Such as it is, however, this collection of their poems shows the same resemblance in their talents and tastes that was apparent in their lives. Italy, a country in which their family had its origin, where they had themselves lived, and some of whose poets they had familiarly known, seems almost always present to their thoughts as they write. Nor is Horace often absent. His philosophical spirit, his careful, but rich, versification, and his tempered enthusiasm, are the characteristic merits to which the Argensolas aspired alike in their formal odes and in the few of their poems that take the freer and more national forms. The elder shows, on the whole, more of original power; but he left only half as many poems, by which to judge his merits, as his brother did. The younger is more graceful, and finishes his compositions with more care and judgment. Both, notwithstanding they were Aragonese, wrote with entire purity of style, so that Lope de Vega said “it seemed as if they had come from Aragon to reform Castilian verse.” Both, therefore, are to be placed high in the list of Spanish lyric poets;—next, perhaps, after the great masters;—a rank which we most readily assign them, when we are considering the shorter poems addressed by the elder to the lady he afterwards married, and the purity of manner and sustained dignity of feeling which mark the longer compositions of each.[907]

Among those who followed the Argensolas, the earliest of their successful imitators was probably Jauregui, a Sevilian gentleman, descended from an old Biscayan family, and born about 1570. Having a talent for painting, as well as poetry,—a fact we learn in many ways, and among the rest from an epigrammatic sonnet of Lope de Vega,—he went to Rome and devoted himself to the study of the art to which, at first, he seems to have given his life. But still poetry drew him away from the path he had chosen. In 1607, while at Rome, he published a translation of the “Aminta” of Tasso, and from that time was numbered among the Spanish poets who were valued at home and abroad. On his return to Spain, he seems to have gone to Madrid, where, heralded by a good reputation, he was kindly received at court. This was probably as early as 1613, for Cervantes in that year mentioned in his “Tales” a portrait of himself, painted, as he says, “by the famous Jauregui.”

In 1618, however, he was again in Seville, and published a collection of his works; but in 1624 his “Orfeo” appeared at Madrid,—a poem in five short cantos, on the story of Orpheus. It is written with much less purity of style than might have been expected from one who afterwards denounced the extravagances of Góngora. Still, it attracted so lively an interest, that Montalvan thought it worth while to publish another on the same subject, in competition with it, as soon as possible;—a rivalship in which he was openly abetted by his great master, Lope de Vega.[908] Both poems seem to have been well received, and both authors continued to enjoy the favor of the capital till their deaths, which happened at about the same time; that of Jauregui as late as 1640, when he finished a too free translation, or rather a presumptuous and distasteful rearrangement, of Lucan’s “Pharsalia.”

The reputation of Jauregui rests on the volume of poems he himself published in 1618. The translation of Tasso’s “Aminta,” with which it opens, is elaborately corrected from the edition he had previously printed at Rome, without being always improved by the changes he introduced. But, in each of its forms, it is probably the most carefully finished and beautiful translation in the Spanish language; marked by great ease and facility in its versification, and especially by the charming lyrical tone that runs with such harmony and sweetness through the Italian.

Jauregui’s original poems are few, and now and then betray the same traces of submission to the influence of Góngora that are to be seen in his “Orfeo” and “Pharsalia.” But the more lyrical portions—which, except those on religious subjects, have a very Italian air—are almost entirely free from such faults. The Ode on Luxury is noble and elevated; and the silva on seeing his mistress bathing, more cautiously managed than the similar scene in Thomson’s “Summer,” is admirable in its diction, and betrays in its beautiful picturesqueness something of its author’s skill and refinement in the kindred art to which he had devoted himself. His sonnets and shorter pieces are less successful.[909]

Another of the followers of the Argensolas—and one who boasted that he had trodden in their footsteps from the days of his boyhood, when Bartolomé had been pointed out to his young admiration in the streets of Madrid—was Estévan Manuel de Villegas.[910] He was born at Naxera, in 1596, and was educated partly at court and partly at Salamanca, where he studied the law. After 1617, or certainly as early as 1626, when he was married, he almost entirely abandoned letters, and gave himself up to such profitable occupations connected with his profession as would afford subsistence to those dependent on his labors. He, however, found leisure to prepare for publication a number of learned dissertations on ancient authors; to make considerable progress in a professional commentary on the “Codex Theodosianus”; and to publish, in 1665, as a consolation for his own sorrows, a translation of Boethius, which, besides its excellent version of the poetical parts, is among the good specimens of Castilian prose. But he remained, during his whole life, unpatronized and poor, and died in 1669, an unfortunate and unhappy man.[911]

The gay and poetical part of the life of Villegas—the period when he presumptuously announced himself as the rising sun, and attacked Cervantes, thinking to please the Argensolas[912]—began very early, and was soon darkened by the cares and troubles of the world. He tells us himself that he wrote much of his poetry when he was only fourteen years old; and he certainly published nearly the whole of it when he was hardly twenty-one.[913] And yet there are few volumes in the Spanish language that afford surer proofs of a poetical temperament. It is divided into two parts. The first contains versions of a number of Odes from the First Book of Horace, and a translation of the whole of Anacreon, followed by imitations of Anacreon’s manner, on subjects relating to their author. The second contains satires and elegies, which are really epistles; idyls in the Italian ottava rima; sonnets, in the manner of Petrarch; and “Latinas,” as he calls them, from the circumstance that they are written in the measures of Roman verse.

A poetical spirit runs through the whole. The translations are generally free, but more than commonly true to the genius of their originals. The “Latinas” are curious. They fill only a few pages; but, except slight specimens of the ancient measures in the choruses of the two tragedies of Bermudez, forty years before, they are the first and the only attempt worthy of notice, to introduce into the Castilian those forms of verse which, a little before the time of Bermudez, had obtained some success in France, and which, a little later, our own Spenser sought to establish in English poetry.

But though Villegas did not succeed in this, he succeeded in his imitations of Anacreon. We seem, indeed, as we read them, to have the simple and joyous spirit of ancient festivity and love revived before us, with nothing, or almost nothing, of what renders that spirit offensive. The ode to a little bird whose nest had been robbed; one to himself, “Love and the Bee”; the imitation of “Ut flos in septis,” by Catullus; and, indeed, nearly every one of the smaller pieces that compose the third book of the first division, with several in the first book, are beautiful in their kind, and give such a faithful impression of the native sweetness of Anacreon as is not easily found elsewhere in modern literature. We close the volume of Villegas, therefore, with sincere regret that he, who, in his boyhood, could write poetry so beautiful,—poetry so imbued with the spirit of antiquity, and yet so full of the tenderness of modern feeling; so classically exact, and yet so fresh and natural,—should have survived its publication above forty years without finding an interval when the cares and disappointments of the world permitted him to return to the occupations that made his youth happy, and that have preserved his name for a posterity of which, when he first lisped in numbers, he could hardly have had a serious thought.[914]

We pass over Balbuena, whose best lyric poetry is found in his prose romance;[915] and Salas Barbadillo, who has scattered similar poetry through his various publications and collected more of it in his “Castilian Rhymes.”[916] Both of them flourished before 1630, and, like Polo,[917] whose talent lay chiefly in lighter compositions, and Rojas, who succeeded best in pastorals of a very lyric tone,[918] they lived at a time when Lope de Vega was pouring forth floods of verse, which were not only sufficient to determine the main current of the literature of the country, but to sweep along, undistinguished in its turbulent flood, the contributions of many a stream, smaller, indeed, than its own, but purer and more graceful.

Among these was the poetry of Francisco de Rioja, a native of Seville, who was born in 1600, and died in 1658. From the circumstance that he occupied a high place in the Inquisition, he might have counted on a shelter from the storms of state, if he had not connected himself too much with the Count Duke Olivares, whose fall drew after it that of nearly all who had shared in his intrigues, or sought the protection of his overshadowing patronage. But the disgrace of Rioja was temporary; and the latter part of his life, which he gave to letters at Seville, seems to have been as happy and fortunate as the first.

The amount of his poetry that has come down to us is small, but it is all valued and read. Some of his sonnets are uncommonly felicitous. So are his ode “To Riches,” imitated from Horace, and the corresponding one “To Poverty,” which is quite original. In that “To the Opening Year,” exhorting his young friend Fonseca, almost in the words of Pericles, not to lose the springtime out of his life, there is much tenderness and melancholy; a reflection, perhaps, of the regrets that he felt for mistakes in his own early and more ambitious career. But his chief distinction has generally come from an ode, full of sadness and genius, “On the Ruins of Italica,”—that Roman city, near Seville, which claims the honor of having given birth to Trajan, and which he celebrates with the enthusiasm of one whose childish fancy had been nourished by wandering among the remains of its decaying amphitheatre and fallen palaces. This distinction has, however, been contested; and the ode in question, or rather a part of it, has been claimed for Rodrigo Caro, known in his time rather as an antiquarian than as a poet, among whose unpublished works a sketch of it is found with the date of 1595, which, if genuine, carries the general conception, and at least one of the best stanzas, back to a period before the birth of Rioja.[919]

Among those who opposed the school of Góngora, and perhaps the person who, from his influence in society, could best have checked its power, if he had not himself been sometimes betrayed into its bad taste, was the Prince Borja y Esquilache. His titles—which are, in fact, corruptions of the great names borne by the Italian principalities of Borgia and Squillace—betray his origin, and explain some of his tendencies. But though, by a strange coincidence, he was great-grandson of Pope Alexander the Sixth, and grandson of one of the heads of the Order of the Jesuits, he was also descended from the old royal family of Aragon, and had a faithful Spanish heart. From his high rank, he easily found a high place in public affairs. He was distinguished both as a soldier and as a diplomatist; and at one time he rose to be viceroy of Peru, and administered its affairs during six years with wisdom and success.

But, like many others of his countrymen, he never forgot letters amidst the anxieties of public life; and, in fact, found leisure enough to write several volumes of poetry. Of these, the best portions are his lyrical ballads. His sonnets, too, are good, especially those in a gayer vein, and so are his madrigals, which, like that “To a Nightingale,” are often graceful and sometimes tender. In general, those of his shorter compositions which are a little epigrammatic in their tone and very simple in their language are the best. They belong to a class constantly reappearing in Spanish literature, of which the following may be taken as a favorable specimen:—

Ye little founts, that laughing flow

And frolic with the sands,

Say, whither, whither do ye go,

And what such speed demands?

From all the tender flowers ye fly,

And haste to rocks,—rocks rude and high;

Yet, if ye here can gently sleep,

Why such a wearying hurry keep?[920]

Borja was much respected during his long life; and died at Madrid, his native city, in 1658, seventy-seven years old. His religious poetry, some of which was first published after his death, has little value.[921]

Antonio de Mendoza, the courtly dramatist, who flourished between 1630 and 1660, is also to be numbered among the lyric poets of his time; and so are Cancer y Velasco, Cubillo, and Zarate, all of whom died in the latter part of the same period. Mendoza and Cancer inclined to the old national measures, and the two others to the Italian. None of them, however, is now often remembered.[922]

Not so the Count Bernardino de Rebolledo, a gentleman of the ancient Castilian stamp, who, though not a great poet, is one of those that are still kept in the memory and regard of their countrymen. He was born at Leon, in 1597, and from the age of fourteen was a soldier; serving first against the Turks and the powers of Barbary, and afterwards, during the Thirty Years’ war, in different parts of Germany, where, from the Emperor Ferdinand, he received the title of Count. In 1647, when peace returned, he was made ambassador to Denmark and lived long in the North, connected, as his poetry often proves him to have been, with the Danish court and with that of Christina of Sweden, in whose conversion one of his letters shows that he bore a part.[923] From 1662 he was a minister of state at Madrid; and when he died, in 1676, he was burdened with offices of all kinds, and enjoyed pensions and salaries to the amount of fifty thousand ducats a year.

It is singular that the poetry of a Spaniard should have first appeared in the North of Europe. But so it was in the case of Count Rebolledo. One volume of his works was published at Cologne in 1650, and another at Copenhagen in 1655. Each contains lyrical poems, both in the national and the Italian forms; and if none of them are remarkable, many are written with simplicity, and a few are beyond the spirit of their time.[924]

The names of several other authors might be added to this list, though they would add nothing to its dignity or value. Among them are Ribero, a Portuguese; Pedro Quiros, a Sevilian of note; Barrios, the persecuted Jew; Lucio y Espinossa, an Aragonese; Evia, a native of Guayaquil in Peru; Inez de la Cruz, a Mexican nun; Solís, the historian; Candamo, the dramatist; and Marcante, Montoro, and Negrete;—all of whom lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and the last three of whom reached the threshold of the eighteenth, when the poetical spirit of their country seems to have become all but absolutely extinct.[925]

But though its latter period is dark and disheartening, lyric poetry in Spain, from the time of Charles the Fifth to the accession of the Bourbons, had, on the whole, a more fortunate career than it enjoyed in any other of the countries of Europe, except Italy and England, and shows, in each of its different classes, traits that are original, striking, and full of the national character.

Perhaps, from the difficulty of satisfying the popular taste in what was matter of such solemn regard, without adhering to the ancient and settled forms, its religious portions, more frequently than any other, bear a marked resemblance to the simplest and oldest movements of the national genius. Generally, they are picturesque, like the little songs we have by Ocaña on the Madonna at Bethlehem, and on the Flight to Egypt. Sometimes they are rude and coarse, recalling the villancicos sung by the shepherds of the early religious dramas. But almost always, even when they grow mystical and fall into bad taste, they are completely imbued with the spirit of the Catholic faith,—a spirit more distinctly impressed on the lyric poetry of Spain, in this department, than it is on any other of modern times.

Nor is the secular portion less strongly marked, though with attributes widely different. In its popular divisions, it is fresh, natural, and often rustic. Some of the short canciones, with which it abounds, and some of its chanzonetas, overflow with tenderness, and yet end waywardly with an epigrammatic point or a jest. Its villancicos, letras, and letrillas are even more true to the nature of the people, and more fully express the popular feeling. Generally they seize a common incident or an obvious thought for their subject. Sometimes it is a little girl, who, in her childish simplicity, confesses to her mother the very passion she is instinctively anxious to conceal. Sometimes it is one older and more severely tried, deprecating a power she is no longer able to control. And sometimes it is a fortunate and happy maiden, openly exulting in her love as the light and glory of her life. Many of these little lyrical snatches are anonymous, and express the feelings of the lower classes of society, from whose hearts they came as freshly as did the old ballads, with which they are often found mingled, and to which they are almost always akin. Their forms, too, are old and characteristic, and there is occasionally a frolicsome and mischievous spirit in them,—not unimbued with the truest tenderness and passion,—which, again, is faithful to their origin, and unlike any thing found in the poetry of other nations.

In the division of secular lyric poetry that is less popular and less faithful to the traditions of the country a large diversity of spirit is exhibited, and exhibited almost always in the Italian measures. Sonnets, above all, were looked upon with extravagant favor during the whole of this period, and their number became enormously large; larger, perhaps, than that of all the ballads in the language. But from this restricted form up to that of long grave odes, in regularly constructed stanzas of nineteen or twenty lines each, we have every variety of manner;—much that is solemn, stately, and imposing, but much, also, that is light, gay, and genial.

Taking all the different classes of Spanish lyric poetry together, the number of authors whose works, or some of them, have been preserved, between the beginning of the reign of Charles the Fifth and the end of that of the last of his race, is not less than a hundred and twenty.[926] But the number of those who were successful is small, as it is everywhere, and the amount of real poetry produced, even by the best, is rarely considerable. A little of what was written by the Argensolas, more of Herrera, and nearly the whole of the Bachiller de la Torre and Luis de Leon,—with occasional efforts of Lope de Vega and Quevedo, and single odes of Figueroa, Jauregui, Arguijo, and Rioja,—make up what gives its character to the graver and less popular portion of Spanish lyric poetry. And if to these we add Villegas, who stands quite separate, uniting the spirit of Greek antiquity to that of a truly Castilian genius, and the fresh, graceful popular songs and roundelays, which, by their very nature, break loose from all forms and submit to no classification, we shall have a body of poetry, not, indeed, large, but one that, for its living national feeling on the one side, and its dignity on the other, may be placed without question among the more successful efforts of modern literature.

END OF VOL. II.

FOOTNOTES

[1]   In the edition of Madrid, 1573, 18mo, we are told, “La Propaladia estava prohibida en estos reynos, años avia”; and Martinez de la Rosa (Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 382) says that this prohibition was laid soon after 1520, and not removed till August, 1573. The period is important; but I suspect the authority of Martinez de la Rosa for its termination is merely the permission to print an edition, which is dated 21 Aug., 1573; an edition, too, which is, after all, expurgated severely.

[2]   These are in the “Catálogo” of L. F. Moratin, Nos. 57 and 63, Obras, Madrid, 1830, 8vo, Tom. I. Parte I.

[3]   The fate of this long heroic and romantic drama of Gil Vicente, in Spanish, is somewhat singular. It was forbidden by the Inquisition, we are told, as early as the Index Expurgatorius of 1549 [1559?]; but it was not printed at all till 1562, and not separately till 1586. By the Index of Lisbon, 1624, it is permitted, if expurgated, and there is an edition of it of that year at Lisbon. As it was never printed in Spain, the prohibition there must have related chiefly to its representation. Barbosa, Bib. Lusitana, Tom. II. p. 384.

[4]   The account of this ceremony, and the facts concerning the dramas in question, are given by Sandoval, “Historia de Carlos V.,” (Anvers, 1681, fol. Tom. I. p. 619, Lib. XVI., § 13), and are of some consequence in the history of the Spanish drama.

[5]   It was printed in 1523, and a sufficient extract from it is to be found in Moratin, Catálogo, No. 36.

[6]   A specimen of the Mysteries of the age of Charles V. may be found in an extremely rare volume, entitled, in its three parts, “Triaca del Alma,” “Triaca de Amor,” and “Triaca de Tristes”;—or Medley for the Soul, for Love, and for Sadness. Its author was Marcelo de Lebrixa, son of the famous scholar Antonio; and the dedication and conclusion of the first part imply that it was composed when the author was forty years old,—after the death of his father, which happened in 1522, and during the reign of the Emperor, which ended in 1556. The first part, to which I particularly allude, consists of a Mystery on the Incarnation, in above eight thousand short verses. It has no other action than such as consists in the appearance of the angel Gabriel to the Madonna, bringing Reason with him in the shape of a woman, and followed by another angel, who leads in the Seven Virtues;—the whole piece being made up out of their successive discourses and exhortations, and ending with a sort of summary, by Reason and by the author, in favor of a pious life. Certainly, so slight a structure, with little merit in its verses, could do nothing to advance the drama of the sixteenth century. It was, however, intended for representation. “It was written,” says its author, “for the praise and solemnization of the Festival of Our Lady’s Incarnation; so that it may be acted as a play [la puedan por farça representar] by devout nuns in their convents, since no men appear in it, but only angels and young damsels.”

The second part of this singular volume, which is more poetical than the first, is against human, and in favor of Divine love; and the third, which is very long, consists of a series of consolations deemed suitable for the different forms of human sorrow and care;—these two parts being necessarily didactic in their character. Each of the three is addressed to a member of the great family of Alva, to which their author seems to have been attached; and the whole is called by him Triaca; a word which means Treacle, or Antidote, but which Lebrixa says he uses in the sense of Ensalada,—Salad or Medley. The volume, taken as a whole, is as strongly marked with the spirit of the age that produced it as the contemporary Cancioneros Generales, and its poetical merit is much like theirs.

[7]   Moratin, Catálogo, No. 35, and ante, Vol. I. p. 503.

[8]   Oliva died in 1533; but his translations were not printed till 1585.

[9]   This extremely curious drama, of which I know no copy, except the one kindly lent to me by M. H. Ternaux-Compans of Paris, is entitled “Egloga nuevamente composta por Juan de Paris, en la qual se introducen cinco personas: un Escudero llamado Estacio, y un Hermitaño, y una Moça, y un Diablo, y dos Pastores, uno llamado Vicente y el otro Cremon” (1536). It is in black letter, small quarto, 12 leaves, without name of place or printer; but, I suppose, printed at Zaragoza, or Medina del Campo.

[10]

Agora reniego de mala fraylia,

Ni quiero hermitaño ni frayle mas ser.

[11]

Huyamos de ser vasallos

Del Amor,

Pues por premio da dolor.

[12]   As another copy of this play can be found, I suppose, only by some rare accident, I give the original of the passage in the text, with its original pointing. It is the opening of the first scene:—

Hermitaño.

La vida peñosa; que nos los mortales

En aqueste mundo; terreno passamos

Si con buen sentido; la consideramos

Fallar la hemos; lleno de muy duros males

De tantos tormentos; tan grandes y tales

Que aver de contallos; es cuento infinita

Y allende de aquesto; tan presto es marchita

Como la rosa; qu’ esta en los rosales.

“Una Farça a Manera de Tragedia,” in prose and partly pastoral, was printed at Valencia, anonymously, in 1537, and seems to have resembled this one in some particulars. It is mentioned in Aribau, “Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” 1846, Tom. II. p. 193, note.

[13]   “Comedia llamada Vidriana, compuesta por Jaume de Huete agora nuevamente,” etc., sm. 4to, black letter, 18 leaves, without year, place, or printer. It has ten interlocutors, and ends with an apology in Latin, that the author cannot write like Mena,—Juan de Mena I suppose,—though I know not why he should have been selected, as the piece is evidently in the manner of Naharro.

[14]   Another drama, from the same volume with the last two. Moratin (Catálogo, No. 47) had found it noticed in the Index Expurgatorius of Valladolid, 1559, and assigns it, at a venture, to the year 1531, but he never saw it. Its title is “Comedia intitulada Tesorina, la materia de la qual es unos amores de un penado por una Señora y otras personas adherentes. Hecha nuevamente por Jaume de Huete. Pero si por ser su natural lengua Aragonesa, no fuere por muy cendrados terminos, quanto a este merece perdon.” Small 4to, black letter, 15 leaves, no year, place, or printer. It has ten interlocutors, and is throughout an imitation of Naharro, who is mentioned in some mean Latin lines at the end, where the author expresses the hope that his Muse may be tolerated, “quamvis non Torris digna Naharro venit.”

[15]   “Comedia intitulada Radiana, compuesta por Agostin Ortiz,” small 4to, black letter, 12 leaves, no year, place, or printer. It is in five jornadas, and has ten personages,—a favorite number apparently. It comes from the volume above alluded to, which contains besides:—1. A poor prose story, interspersed with dialogue, on the tale of Mirrha, taken chiefly from Ovid. It is called “La Tragedia de Mirrha,” and its author is the Bachiller Villalon. It was printed at Medina del Campo, 1536, por Pedro Toraus, small 4to, black letter. 2. An eclogue somewhat in the manner of Juan de la Enzina, for a Nacimiento. It is called a Farza,—“El Farza siguiente hizo Pero Lopez Ranjel,” etc. It is short, filling only 4 ff., and contains three villancicos. On the title-page is a coarse wood-cut of the manger, with Bethlehem in the background. 3. A short, dull farce, entitled “Jacinta”;—not the Jacinta of Naharro. These three, together with the four previously noticed, are, I believe, known to exist only in the copy I have used from the library of M. H. Ternaux-Compans.

[16]   It is known that he was certainly dead as early as that year, because the edition of his “Comedias” then published at Valencia, by his friend Timoneda, contains, at the end of the “Engaños,” a sonnet on his death by Francisco Ledesma. The last, and, indeed, almost the only, date we have about him, is that of his acting in the cathedral at Segovia in 1558; of which we have a distinct account in the learned and elaborate History of Segovia, by Diego de Colmenares, (Segovia, 1627, fol., p. 516), where he says, that, on a stage erected between the choirs, “Lope de Rueda, a well-known actor [famoso comediante] of that age represented an entertaining play [gustosa comedia].”

[17]   The well-known passage about Lope de Rueda, in Cervantes’s Prólogo to his own plays, is of more consequence than all the rest that remains concerning him. Every thing, however, is collected in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” pp. 255-260; and in Casiano Pellicer, “Orígen de la Comedia y del Histrionismo en España,” Madrid, 1804, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 72-84.

[18]   “Las Quatro Comedias y Dos Coloquios Pastorales del excelente poeta y gracioso representante, Lope de Rueda,” etc., impresas en Sevilla, 1576, 8vo,—contains his principal works, with the “Diálogo sobre la Invencion de las Calzas que se usan agora.” From the Epistola prefixed to it by Juan de Timoneda, I infer that he made alterations in the manuscripts, as Lope de Rueda left them; but not, probably, any of much consequence. Of the “Deleytoso,” printed at Valencia, 1577, I have never been able to see more than the very ample extracts given by Moratin, amounting to six Pasos and a Coloquio. The first edition of the Quatro Comedias, etc., was 1567, at Valencia; the last at Logroño, 1588.

[19]   This is the Rufian of the old Spanish dramas and stories,—parcel rowdy, parcel bully, and wholly knave;—a different personage from the Rufian of recent times, who is the elder Alcahuete or pander.

[20]   It may be worth noticing, that both the “Armelina” and the “Eufemia” open with scenes of calling up a lazy young man from bed, in the early morning, much like the first in the “Nubes” of Aristophanes.

[21]   Troico, it should be observed, is a woman in disguise.

[22]   This superstition about Tuesday as an unlucky day is not unfrequent in the old Spanish drama:—

Está escrito,

El Martes es dia aciago.

Lope de Vega, El Cuerdo en su Casa, Acto II. Comedias, Madrid, 1615, 4to, Tom. VI. f. 112. a.

[23]   Rivers in the North of Spain, often mentioned in Spanish poetry, especially the first of them.

[24]

Len.    Ah, Troico! estás acá?

Tro.    Sí, hermano: tu no lo ves?

Len.    Mas valiera que no.

Tro.    Porque, Leno?

Len.    Porque no supieras una desgracia, que ha sucedido harto poco ha.

Tro.    Y que ha sido la desgracia?

Len.    Que es hoy?

Tro.    Jueves.

Len.    Jueves? Quanto le falta para ser Martes?

Tro.    Antes le sobran dos dias.

Len.    Mucho es eso! Mas dime, suele haber dias aziagos así como los Martes?

Tro.    Porque lo dices?

Len.    Pregunto, porque tambien habrá hojaldres desgraciadas, pues hay Jueves desgraciados.

Tro.    Creo que sí!

Len.    Y ven acá: si te la hubiesen comido á ti una en Jueves, en quien habria caido la desgracia, en la hojaldre ó en ti?

Tro.    No hay duda sino que en mí.

Len.    Pues, hermano Troico, aconortaos, y comenzad á sufrir, y ser paciente, que por los hombres (como dicen) suelen venir las desgracias, y estas son cosas de Dios en fin, y tambien segun órden de los dias os podriades vos morir, y (como dicen) ya seria recomplida y allegada la hora postrimera, rescebildo con paciencia, y acórdaos que mañana somos y hoy no.

Tro.    Válame Dios, Leno! Es muerto alguno en casa? O como me consuelas ansí?

Len.    Ojalá, Troico!

Tro.    Pues que fué? No lo dirás sin tantos circunloquios? Para que es tanto preámbulo?

Len.    Quando mi madre murió, para decírmelo él que me llevó la nueva me trajó mas rodeos que tiene bueltas Pisuerga ó Zapardiel.

Tro.    Pues yo no tengo madre, ni la conoscí, ni te entiendo.

Len.    Huele ese pañizuelo.

Tro.    Y bien? Ya está olido.

Len.    A que huele?

Tro.    A cosa de manteca.

Len.    Pues bien puedes decir, aquí hué Troya.

Tro.    Como, Leno?

Len.    Para ti me la habian dado, para ti la embiaba rebestida de piñones la Señora Timbria; pero como yo soy (y lo sabe Dios y todo el mundo) allegado á lo bueno, en viéndola así, se me vinieron los ojos tras ella como milano tras de pollera.

Tro.    Tras quien, traidor? tras Timbria?

Len.    Que no, válame Dios! Que empapada la embiaba de manteca y azúcar!

Tro.    La que?

Len.    La hojaldre: no lo entiendes?

Tro.    Y quien me la embiaba?

Len.    La Señora Timbria.

Tro.    Pues que la heciste?

Len.    Consumióse.

Tro.    De que?

Len.    De ojo.

Tro.    Quien la ojeó?

Len.    Yo, mal punto!

Tro.    De que manera?

Len.    Asentéme en el camino.

Tro.    Y que mas?

Len.    Toméla en la mano.

Tro.    Y luego?

Len.    Prové á que sabia, y como por una vanda y por otra estaba de dar y tomar, quando por ella acordé, ya no habia memoria.

Tro.    En fin, te la comiste?

Len.    Podria ser.

Tro.    Por cierto, que eres hombre de buen recado.

Len.    A fe? que te parezco? De aquí adelante si trugere dos, me las comeré juntas, para hacello mejor.

Tro.    Bueno va el negocio.

Len.    Y bien regido, y con poca costa, y á mi contento. Mas ven acá, si quies que riamos un rato con Timbria?

Tro.    De que suerte?

Len.    Puedes le hacer en creyente, que la comiste tu, y como ella piense que es verdad, podremos despues tu y yo reir acá de la burla; que rebentarás riyendo! Que mas quies?

Tro.    Bien me aconsejas.

Len.    Agora bien; Dios bendiga los hombres acogidos á razon! Pero dime, Troico, sabrás disimular con ella sin reirte?

Tro.    Yo? de que me habia de reir?

Len.    No te paresce, que es manera de reir, hacelle en creyente, que tu te la comiste, habiéndosela comido tu amigo Leno?

Tro.    Dices sabiamente; mas calla, vete en buen hora.

Las Quatro Comedias, etc., de Lope de Rueda, Sevilla, 1576, 8vo.

[25]   This I infer from the fact, that, at the end of the edition of the Comedias and Coloquios, 1576, there is a “Tabla de los pasos graciosos que se pueden sacar de las presentes Comedias y Coloquios y poner en otras obras.” Indeed, paso meant a passage. Pasos were, however, undoubtedly sometimes written as separate works by Lope de Rueda, and were not called entremeses till Timoneda gave them the name. Still, they may have been earlier used as such, or as introductions to the longer dramas.

[26]   There is a Glosa printed at the end of the Comedias; but it is not of much value. The passage preserved by Cervantes is in his “Baños de Argel,” near the end.

[27]

Per.

Señor Fuentes, que mudanza

Habeis hecho en el calzado,

Con que andais tan abultado?

Fuent.

Señor, calzas á la usanza.

Per.

Pense qu’ era verdugado.

Fuent.

Pues yo d’ ellas no me corro.

Que han de ser como las vuesas?

Hermano, ya no usan d’ esas.

Per.

Mas que les hechais de aforro,

Que aun se paran tan tiesas?

Fuent.

D’ eso poco: un sayo viejo

Y toda una ruin capa,

Que á esta calza no escapa.

Per.

Pues, si van á mi consejo,

Hecharan una gualdrapa.

Fuent.

Y aun otros mandan poner

Copia de paja y esparto,

Porque les abulten harto.

Per.

Esos deben de tener

De bestias quizá algun quarto.

Fuent.

Pondrase qualquier alhaja

Por traer calza gallarda.

Per.

Cierto yo no sé que aguarda

Quien va vestido de paja

De hacerse alguna albarda.

I do not know that this dialogue is printed anywhere but at the end of the edition of the Comedias, 1576. It refers evidently to the broad-bottomed stuffed hose, then coming into fashion; such as the daughter of Sancho, in her vanity, when she heard her father was governor of Barrataria, wanted to see him wear; and such as Don Carlos, according to the account of Thuanus, wore, when he used to hide in their strange recesses the pistols that alarmed Philip II.;—“caligis, quæ amplissimæ de more gentis in usu sunt.” They were forbidden by a royal ordinance in 1623. See D. Quixote, (Parte II. c. 50), with two amusing stories told in the notes of Pellicer, and Thuani Historiarum, Lib. XLI., at the beginning.

[28]   Comedias, Prólogo.

[29]   “Auditores, no hagais sino comer, y dad la vuelta á la plaza.”

[30]   In the fifth escena of the “Eufemia,” the place changes, when Valiano comes in. Indeed, it is evident that Lope de Rueda did not know the meaning of the word scene, or did not employ it aright.

[31]   The first traces of these simples, who were afterwards expanded into the graciosos, is to be found in the parvos of Gil Vicente.

[32]   Cervantes, in the Prólogo already cited, calls him “el gran Lope de Rueda,” and, when speaking of the Spanish Comedias, treats him as “el primero que en España las sacó de mantillas y las puso en toldo y vistió de gala y apariencia.” This was in 1615; and Cervantes spoke from his own knowledge and memory. In 1620, in the Prólogo to the thirteenth volume of his Comedias, (Madrid, 4to), Lope de Vega says, “Las comedias no eran mas antiguas que Rueda, á quien oyeron muchos, que hoy viven.”

[33]   Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Tom. I. p. 72, and Fuster, Biblioteca Valenciana, Tom. I. p. 161.

[34]   In the Prologue to the Cornelia, one of the speakers says that one of the principal personages of the piece lives in Valencia, “in this house which you see,” he adds, pointing the spectators picturesquely, and no doubt with comic effect, to some house they could all see. A similar jest about another of the personages is repeated a little farther on.

[35]   “Con privilegio. Comedia llamada Cornelia, nuevamente compuesta, por Juan de Timoneda. Es muy sentida, graciosa, y vozijada. Año 1559.” 8vo.

[36]   It is in the twelfth scene. “Es el mas agudo rapaz del mundo, y es hermano de Lazarillo de Tórmes, el que tuvo trezientos y cincuenta amos.”

[37]   “Con privilegio. La Comedia de los Menennos, traduzida por Juan Timoneda, y puesta en gracioso estilo y elegantes sentencias. Año 1559.” 8vo.

[38]

Devotos cristianos, quien

Manda rezar

Una oracion singular

Nueva de nuestra Señora?

Mandadme rezar, pues que es

Noche santa,

La oracion segun se canta

Del nacimiento de Cristo.

Jesus! nunca tal he visto,

Cosa es esta que me espanta:

Seca tengo la garganta

De pregones

Que voy dando por cantones,

Y nada no me aprovecha:

Es la gente tan estrecha,

Que no cuida de oraciones.

Quien manda sus devociones,

Noble gente,

Que rece devotamente

Los salmos de penitencia,

Por los cuales indulgencia

Otorgó el Papa Clemente?

· · · ·

La oracion del nacimiento

De Cristo.

L. F. Moratin, Obras, Madrid, 1830, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 648.

[39]   This Paso—true to the manners of the times, as we can see from a similar scene in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco VI.—is reprinted by L. F. Moratin, (Obras, 8vo, Madrid, 1830, Tom. I. Parte II. p. 644), who gives (Parte I. Catálogo, Nos. 95, 96, 106-118) the best account of all the works of Timoneda. The habit of singing popular poetry of all kinds in the streets has been common, from the days of the Archpriest Hita (Copla 1488) to our own times. I have often listened to it, and possess many of the ballads and other verses still paid for by an alms as they were in this Paso of Timoneda.

In one of the plays of Cervantes,—that of “Pedro de Urdemalas,”—the hero is introduced enacting the part of a blind beggar, and advertising himself by his chant, just as the beggar in Timoneda does:—

The prayer of the secret soul I know,

That of Pancras the blessed of old;

The prayer of Acacius and Quirce;

One for chilblains, that come from the cold,

One for jaundice that yellows the skin,

And for scrofula working within.

The lines in the original are not consecutive, but those I have selected are as follows:—

Se la del anima sola,

Y se la de San Pancracio,

La de San Quirce y Acacio,

Se la de los sabañones,

La de curar tericia

Y resolver lamparones.

Comedias, Madrid, 1615, 4to, f. 207.

[40]   C. Pellicer, Orígen de la Comedia, Tom. I. p. 111; Tom. II. p. 18; with L. F. Moratin, Obras, Tom. I. Parte II. p. 638, and his Catálogo, Nos. 100, 104, and 105.

[41]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 116; Tom. II. p. 30.

[42]   Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, p. 410.

[43]   L. F. Moratin, Obras, Tom. I. Parte I., Catálogo, Nos. 132-139, 142-145, 147, and 150. Martinez de la Rosa, Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 167, etc.

[44]   “El Saco de Roma” is reprinted in Ochoa, Teatro Español, Paris, 1838, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 251.

[45]   “El Infamador” is reprinted in Ochoa, Tom. I. p. 264.

[46]   One of the plays, not represented in the Huerta de Doña Elvira, is represented “en el Corral de Don Juan,” and another in the Atarazanas,—Arsenal, or Ropewalks. None of them, I suppose, appeared on a public theatre.

[47]   These two pieces are in “Obras de Joachim Romero de Zepeda, Vezino de Badajoz,” (Sevilla, 1582, 4to, ff. 130 and 118), and are reprinted by Ochoa. The opening of the second jornada of the Metamorfosea may be cited for its pleasant and graceful tone of poetry,—lyrical, however, rather than dramatic,—and its air of the olden time. Other authors living in Seville at about the same period are mentioned by La Cueva in his “Exemplar Poético” (Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. VIII. p. 60):—

Los Sevillanos comicos, Guevara,

Gutierre de Cetina, Cozar, Fuentes,

El ingenioso Ortiz;—

who adds that there were otros muchos, many more;—but they are all lost. Some of them, from his account, wrote in the manner of the ancients; and perhaps Malara and Megia are the persons he refers to.

[48]   See L. F. Moratin, Catálogo, No. 84.

[49]   L. F. Moratin, Catálogo, Nos. 140, 141, 146, 148, 149; with Martinez de la Rosa, Obras, Tom. II. pp. 153-167. The play of Andres Rey de Artieda, on the “Lovers of Teruel,” 1581, belongs to this period and place. Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 263; Fuster, Tom. I. p. 212.

[50]   The translation of Boscan from Euripides was never published, though it is included in the permission to print that poet’s works, given by Charles V. to Boscan’s widow, 18 Feb., 1543, prefixed to the first edition of his Works, which appeared that year at Barcelona.

[51]   L. F. Moratin, Catálogo, Nos. 86 and 87.

[52]   Pellicer, Biblioteca de Traductores Españoles, Tom. II. pp. 145, etc.

[53]   Sedano’s “Parnaso Español” (Tom. VI., 1772) contains both the dramas of Bermudez, with notices of his life.

[54]   The “Castro” of Ferreira, one of the most pure and beautiful compositions in the Portuguese language, is found in his “Poemas” (Lisboa, 1771, 12mo, Tom. I. pp. 123, etc.). Its author died of the plague at Lisbon, in 1569, only forty-one years old.

[55]   Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 48.

[56]   They first appeared in Sedano’s “Parnaso Español,” Tom. VI., 1772. All the needful explanations about them are in Sedano, Moratin, and Martinez de la Rosa. The “Philis” has not been found.

[57]   It seems probable that a considerable number of dramas belonging to the period between Lope de Rueda and Lope de Vega, or between 1560 and 1590, could even now be collected, whose names have not yet been given to the public; but it is not likely that they would add any thing important to our knowledge of the real character or progress of the drama at that time. Aribau, Biblioteca, Tom. II. pp. 163, 225, notes.

[58]   The two brotherhoods were the Cofradía de la Sagrada Pasion, established 1565, and the Cofradía de la Soledad, established 1567. The accounts of the early beginnings of the theatre at Madrid are awkwardly enough given by C. Pellicer in his “Orígen de la Comedia en España.” But they can be found so well nowhere else. See Tom. I. pp. 43-77.

[59]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 83.

[60]   Ibid., p. 56.

[61]   Philosophia Antigua Poetica de A. L. Pinciano, Madrid, 1596, 4to, p. 128. Cisneros was a famous actor of the time of Philip II., about whom Don Carlos had a quarrel with Cardinal Espinosa. Cabrera, Felipe II., Madrid, 1619, folio, p. 470. He flourished 1579-86. C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 60, 61.

[62]   Obras del M. Fr. Luis de Leon, (Madrid, 1804-16, 6 tom. 8vo, Tom. V. p. 292), where, writing from his prison, he speaks of “those who in the ministry of a tribunal so holy have wreaked the vengeance of their own passions upon me.” Elsewhere he repeats the same accusation against his enemies.

[63]   Obras, Tom. V. p. i. and p. 5.

[64]   A poetical version of Solomon’s Song was made, not long afterwards, by the famous Arias Montano, on the same principle. When it was first published I do not know; but it may be found in Faber’s “Floresta,” No. 717, and parts of it are beautiful. Montano died in 1598.

[65]   Villanueva (Vida, Lóndres, 1825, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 340) says that all the papers relating to the inquisitorial process against Luis de Leon, including admirable answers of the accused, were found, in 1813, in the archives of the tribunal of Valladolid, but were not printed for want of means. They must be very curious documents.

[66]   Luis de Leon, Obras, Tom. V. pp. 258-280.

[67]   Ibid., Tom. V. p. 281.

[68]   Ibid., Tom. III. and IV.

[69]   This sermon is in Book First of the treatise. Obras, Tom. III. pp. 160-214.

[70]   Obras, Tom. III. pp. 342, 343. This beautiful passage may well be compared to his more beautiful ode, entitled “Noche Serena,” to which it has an obvious resemblance.

[71]   Ibid., Tom. IV.

[72]   Ibid., Tom. I. and II.

[73]   Obras, Tom. VI. p. 2.

[74]   The materials for the life of Luis de Leon are to be gathered from the notices of him in the curious MS. of Pacheco, published, Semanario Pintoresco, 1844, p. 374;—those in N. Antonio, Bib. Nova, ad verb.;—in Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. V.;—and in the Preface to a collection of his poetry, published at Valencia by Mayans y Siscar, 1761; the last being also found in Mayans y Siscar, “Cartas de Varios Autores” (Valencia, 1773, 12mo, Tom. IV. pp. 398, etc.). His birthplace has been by some supposed to have been Belmonte in La Mancha, or else Madrid. But Pacheco, who is a sufficient authority, gives that honor to Granada, and settles the date of Luis de Leon’s birth at 1528, though it is more commonly given as of 1526 or 1527; adding a description of his person, and the singular fact, not elsewhere noticed, that he amused himself with the art of painting, and succeeded in his own portrait.

[75]   The poems of Luis de Leon fill the last volume of his Works; but there are several among them that are probably spurious.

[76]   In noticing the Hebrew temperament of Luis de Leon, I am reminded of one of his contemporaries, who possessed in some respects a kindred spirit, and whose fate was even more strange and unhappy. I refer to Juan Pinto Delgado, a Portuguese Jew, who lived long in Spain, embraced the Christian religion, was reconverted to the faith of his fathers, fled from the terrors of the Inquisition to France, and died there about the year 1590. In 1627, a volume of his works, containing narrative poems on Queen Esther and on Ruth, free versions from the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the old national quintillas, and sonnets and other short pieces, generally in the Italian manner, was published at Rouen in France, and dedicated to Cardinal Richelieu, then the all-powerful minister of Louis XIII. They are full of the bitter and sorrowful feelings of his exile, and parts of them are written, not only with tenderness, but in a sweet and pure versification. The Hebrew spirit of the author, whose proper name is Moseh Delgado, breaks through constantly, as might be expected. Barbosa, Biblioteca, Tom. II. p. 722. Amador de los Rios, Judios de España, Madrid, 1848, 8vo, p. 500.

[77]   It is the eleventh of Luis de Leon’s Odes, and may well bear a comparison with that of Horace (Lib. I. Carm. 15) which suggested it.

[78]   It is in quintillas in the original; but that stanza, I think, can never, in English, be made flowing and easy as it is in Spanish. I have, therefore, used in this translation a freedom greater than I have generally permitted to myself, in order to approach, if possible, the bold outline of the original thought. It begins thus:—

Y dexas, pastor santo,

Tu grey en este valle hondo escuro

Con soledad y llanto,

Y tu rompiendo el puro

Ayre, te vas al immortal seguro!

Los antes bien hadados,

Y los agora tristes y afligidos,

A tus pechos criados,

De tí desposeidos,

A dó convertirán ya sus sentidos?

Obras de Luis de Leon, Madrid, 1816, Tom. VI. p. 42.

[79]   In 1837, D. José de Castro y Orozco produced on the stage at Madrid a drama, entitled “Fray Luis de Leon,” in which the hero, whose name it bears, is represented as renouncing the world and entering a cloister, in consequence of a disappointment in love. Diego de Mendoza is also one of the principal personages in the same drama, which is written in a pleasing style, and has some poetical merit, notwithstanding its unhappy subject and plot.

[80]   Many lives of Cervantes have been written, of which four need to be mentioned. 1. That of Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, first prefixed to the edition of Don Quixote in the original published in London in 1738, (4 tom., 4to), under the auspices of Lord Carteret, and afterwards to several other editions; a work of learning, and the first proper attempt to collect materials for a life of Cervantes, but ill arranged and ill written, and of little value now, except for some of its incidental discussions. 2. The Life of Cervantes, with the Analysis of his Don Quixote, by Vicente de los Rios, prefixed to the sumptuous edition of Don Quixote by the Spanish Academy, (Madrid, 1780, 4 tom., fol.), and often printed since;—better written than the preceding, and containing some new facts, but with criticisms full of pedantry and of extravagant eulogy. 3. Noticias para la Vida de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, by J. Ant. Pellicer, first printed in his “Ensayo de una Biblioteca de Traductores,” 1778, but much enlarged afterwards, and prefixed to his edition of Don Quixote (Madrid, 1797-1798, 5 tom., 8vo);—poorly digested, and containing a great deal of extraneous, though sometimes curious, matter; but more complete than any life that had preceded it. 4. Vida de Miguel de Cervantes, etc., por D. Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, published by the Spanish Academy (Madrid, 1819, 8vo);—the best of all, and indeed one of the most judicious and best-arranged biographical works that have been published in any country. Navarrete has used in it, with great effect, many new documents; and especially the large collection of papers found in the archives of the Indies at Seville, in 1808, which comprehend the voluminous Informacion sent by Cervantes himself, in 1590, to Philip II., when asking for an office in one of the American colonies;—a mass of well-authenticated certificates and depositions, setting forth the trials and sufferings of the author of Don Quixote, from the time he entered the service of his country, in 1571; through his captivity in Algiers; and, in fact, till he reached the Azores in 1582. This thorough and careful life is skilfully abridged by L. Viardot, in his French translation of Don Quixote, (Paris, 1836, 2 tom., 8vo), and forms the substance of the “Life and Writings of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,” by Thomas Roscoe, London, 1839, 18mo.

In the notice which follows in the text, I have relied for my facts on the work of Navarrete, whenever no other authority is referred to; but in the literary criticisms Navarrete can hardly afford aid, for he hardly indulges himself in them at all.

[81]   The date of the baptism of Cervantes is Oct. 9, 1547; and as it is the practice in the Catholic Church to perform this rite soon after birth, we may assume, with sufficient probability, that Cervantes was born on that very day, or the day preceding.

[82]   Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 29.

[83]   “En las riberas del famoso Henares.” (Galatea, Madrid, 1784, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 66.) Elsewhere, he speaks of “nuestro Henares”; the “famoso Compluto” (p. 121); and “nuestro fresco Henares,” p. 108.

[84]   Comedias, Madrid, 1749, 4to, Tom. I., Prólogo.

[85]   Galatea, Tom. I. p. x., Prólogo; and in the well-known fourth chapter of the “Viage al Parnaso,” (Madrid, 1784, 8vo, p. 53), he says:—

Desde mis tiernos años amé el arte

Dulce de la agradable poesía,

Y en ella procuré siempre agradarte.

[86]   “Como soy aficionado á leer aunque sean los papeles rotos de las calles, llevado desta mi natural inclinacion, tomé un cartapacio,” etc., he says, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 9, ed. Clemencin, Madrid, 1833, 4to, Tom. I. p. 198), when giving an account of his taking up the waste paper at the silk-mercer’s, which, as he pretends, turned out to be the Life of Don Quixote in Arabic.

[87]   The verses of Cervantes on this occasion may be found partly in Rios, “Pruebas de la Vida de Cervantes,” ed. Academia, Nos. 2-5, and partly in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 262, 263. They are poor, and the only circumstance that makes it worth while to refer to them is, that Hoyos, who was a professor of elegant literature, calls Cervantes repeatedly “caro discípulo,” and “amado discípulo”; and says that the Elegy is written “en nombre de todo el estudio.” These, with other miscellaneous poems of Cervantes, are collected for the first time in the first volume of the “Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,” by Aribau (Madrid, 1846, 8vo, pp. 612-620); and prove the pleasant relations in which Cervantes stood with some of the principal poets of his day, such as Padilla, Maldonado, Barros, Yague de Salas, Hernando de Herrera, etc.

[88]   “No hay mejores soldados, que los que se trasplantan de la tierra de los estudios en los campos de la guerra; ninguno salió de estudiante para soldado, que no lo fuese por estremo,” etc. Persiles y Sigismunda, Lib. III. c. 10, Madrid, 1802, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 128.

[89]   The regiment in which he served was one of the most famous in the armies of Philip II. It was the “Tercio de Flandes,” and at the head of it was Lope de Figueroa, who acts a distinguished part in two of the plays of Calderon,—“Amar despues de la Muerte,” and “El Alcalde de Zalamea.” Cervantes probably joined this favorite regiment again, when, as we shall see, he engaged in the expedition to Portugal in 1581, whither we know not only that he went that year, but that the Flanders regiment went also.

[90]   All his works contain allusions to the experiences of his life, and especially to his travels. When he sees Naples in his imaginary Viage del of Parnaso, (c. 8, p. 126), he exclaims,—

Esta ciudad es Nápoles la ilustre,

Que yo pisé sus ruas mas de un año.

[91]   “Si ahora me propusieran y facilitaran un imposible,” says Cervantes, in reply to the coarse personalities of Avellaneda, “quisiera ántes haberme hallado en aquella faccion prodigiosa, que sano ahora de mis heridas, sin haberme hallado en ella.” Prólogo á Don Quixote, Parte Segunda, 1615.

[92]   One of the most trustworthy and curious sources for this part of the life of Cervantes is “La Historia y Topografia de Argel,” por D. Diego de Haedo, (Valladolid, 1612, folio), in which Cervantes is often mentioned, but which seems to have been overlooked in all inquiries relating to him, till Sarmiento stumbled upon it, in 1752. It is in this work that occur the words cited in the text, and which prove how formidable Cervantes had become to the Dey,—“Decia Asan Bajá, Rey de Argel, que como él tuviese guardado al estropeado Español tenia seguros sus cristianos, sus baxeles y aun toda la ciudad.” (f. 185.) And just before this, referring to the bold project of Cervantes to take the city by an insurrection of the slaves, Haedo says, “Y si á su animo, industria, y trazas, correspondiera la ventura, hoi fuera el dia, que Argel fuera de cristianos; porque no aspiraban á menos sus intentos.” All this, it should be recollected, was published four years before Cervantes’s death. The whole book, including not only the history, but the dialogues at the end on the sufferings and martyrdom of the Christians in Algiers, is very curious, and often throws a strong light on passages of Spanish literature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which so often refer to the Moors and their Christian slaves on the coasts of Barbary.

[93]   With true Spanish pride, Cervantes, when alluding to himself in the story of the Captive, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40), says of the Dey, “Solo libró bien con él un soldado Español llamado tal de Saavedra, al qual con haber hecho cosas que quedarán en la memoria de aquellas gentes por muchos años, y todos por alcanzar libertad, jamas le dió palo, ni se lo mandó dar, ni le dixo mala palabra, y por la menor cosa de muchas que hizo, temiamos todos que habia de ser empalado, y así lo temió él mas de una vez.”

[94]   A beautiful tribute is paid by Cervantes, in his tale of the “Española Inglesa,” (Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. I. pp. 358, 359), to the zeal and disinterestedness of the poor priests and monks, who went, sometimes at the risk of their lives, to Algiers to redeem the Christians, and one of whom remained there, giving his person in pledge for four thousand ducats which he had borrowed to send home captives. Of Father Juan Gil, who effected the redemption of Cervantes himself from slavery, Cervantes speaks expressly, in his “Trato de Argel,” as

Un frayle Trinitario, Christianísimo,

Amigo de hacer bien y conocido,

Porque ha estado otra vez en esta tierra

Rescatando Christianos; y dió exemplo

De una gran Christiandad y gran prudencia;—

Su nombre es Fray Juan Gil.

Jornada V.

A friar of the blessed Trinity,

A truly Christian man, known as the friend

of all good charities, who once before

Came to Algiers to ransom Christian slaves,

And gave example in himself, and proof

Of a most wise and Christian faithfulness.

His name is Friar Juan Gil.

[95]   Cervantes was evidently a person of great kindliness and generosity of disposition; but he never overcame a strong feeling of hatred against the Moors, inherited from his ancestors and exasperated by his own captivity. This feeling appears in both his plays, written at distant periods, on the subject of his life in Algiers; in the fifty-fourth chapter of the second part of Don Quixote; and elsewhere. But except this, and an occasional touch of satire against duennas,—in which Quevedo and Luis Vélez de Guevara are as sever as he is,—and a little bitterness about private chaplains that exercised a cunning influence in the houses of the great, I know nothing, in all his works, to impeach his universal good-nature. See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Vol. V. p. 260, note, and p. 138, note.

[96]   For a beautiful passage on Liberty, see Don Quixote, Parte II., opening of chapter 58.

[97]

“Well doth the Spanish hind the difference know

’Twixt him and Lusian slave, the lowest of the low”;—

an opinion which Childe Harold found in Spain when he was there, and could have found at any time for two hundred years before.

[98]   The “Menina e Moça” is the graceful little fragment of a prose pastoral, by Bernardino Ribeyro, which dates from about 1500, and has always been admired, as indeed it deserves to be. It gets its name from the two words with which it begins,—“Small and young”; a quaint circumstance, showing its extreme popularity with those classes that were little in the habit of referring to books by their formal titles.

[99]   “Estas primicias de mi corto ingenio.” Dedicatoria.

[100]   “Muchos de los disfrazados pastores della lo eran solo en el hábito.”

[101]   “Cuyas razones y argumentos mas parecen de ingenios entre libros y las aulas criados que no de aquellos que entre pagizas cabañas son crecidos.” (Libro IV. Tomo II. p. 90.) This was intended, no doubt, at the same time, as a compliment to Figueroa, etc.

[102]   The chief actors in the Galatea visit the tomb of Mendoza, in the sixth book, under the guidance of a wise and gentle Christian priest; and when there, Calliope strangely appears to them and pronounces a tedious poetical eulogium on a vast number of the contemporary Spanish poets, most of whom are now forgotten. The Galatea was abridged by Florian, at the end of the eighteenth century, and reproduced, with an appropriate conclusion, in a prose pastoral, which, in the days when Gessner was so popular, was frequently reprinted. In this form, it is by no means without grace.

[103]   In the Dedication to “Persiles y Sigismunda,” 1616, April 19th, only four days before his death.

[104]   Parte Primera, cap. 6.

[105]   He alludes, I think, but twice in all his works to Esquivias; and, both times, it is to praise its wines. The first is in the “Cueva de Salamanca,” (Comedias, 1749, Tom. II. p. 313), and the last is in the Prólogo to “Persiles y Sigismunda,” though in the latter he speaks, also, of its “ilustres linages.”

[106]   See the end of Pellicer’s Life of Cervantes, prefixed to his edition of Don Quixote (Tom. I. p. ccv.). There seems to have been an earlier connection between the family of Cervantes and that of his bride, for the lady’s mother had been named executrix of his father’s will, who died while Cervantes himself was a slave in Algiers.

[107]   At the end of the sixth book.

[108]   Prólogo al Lector, prefixed to his eight plays and eight Entremeses, Madrid, 1615, 4to.

[109]   Adjunta al Parnaso, first printed in 1614; and the Prólogo last cited.

[110]   They are in the same volume with the “Viage al Parnaso,” Madrid, 1784, 8vo.

[111]   Adjunta al Parnaso, p. 139, ed. 1784.

[112]   In the “Baños de Argel,” and the “Amante Liberal.”

[113]   The “Esclavos en Argel” of Lope is found in his Comedias, Tom. XXV., (Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, pp. 231-260), and shows that he borrowed very freely from the play of Cervantes, which, it should be remembered, had not then been printed, so that he must have used a manuscript. The scenes of the sale of the Christian children, (pp. 249, 250), and the scenes between the same children after one of them had become a Mohammedan, (pp. 259, 260), as they stand in Lope, are taken from the corresponding scenes in Cervantes (pp. 316-323, and 364-366, ed. 1784). Much of the story, and passages in other parts of the play, are also borrowed. The martyrdom of the Valencian priest, which is merely described by Cervantes, (pp. 298-305), is made a principal dramatic point in the third jornada of Lope’s play, where the execution occurs, in the most revolting form, on the stage (p. 263).

[114]   Cervantes, no doubt, valued himself upon these immaterial agencies; and after his time, they became common on the Spanish stage. Calderon, in his “Gran Príncipe de Fez,” (Comedias, Madrid, 1760, 4to, Tom. III. p. 389), thus explains two, whom he introduces, in words that may be applied to those of Cervantes:—

Representando los dos

De su buen Genio y mal Genio

Exteriormente la lid,

Que arde interior en su pecho.

His good and evil genius bodied forth,

To show, as if it were in open fight,

The hot encounter hidden in his heart.

[115]

Aurelio donde vas? para dó mueves

El vagaroso paso? Quien te guia?

Con tan poco temor de Dios te atreves

A contentar tu loca fantasía? etc.

Jornada V.

[116]

Y aquí da este trato fin,

Que no lo tiene el de Argel,

is the jest with which he ends his other play on the same subject, printed thirty years after the representation of this one.

[117]   Cervantes makes Scipio say of the siege, on his arrival,—

Diez y seis años son y mas pasados.

The true length of the contest with Numantia was, however, fourteen years, and the length of the last siege fourteen months.

[118]   It is well to read, with the “Numancia” of Cervantes, the account of Florus, (Epit. II. 18), and especially that in Mariana, (Lib. III. c. 6-10), the latter being the proud Spanish version of it.

[119]

Duero gentil, que, con torcidas vueltas,

Humedeces gran parte de mi seno,

Ansí en tus aguas siempre veas envueltas

Arenas de oro qual el Tajo ameno,

Y ansí las ninfas fugitivas sueltas,

De que está el verde prado y bosque lleno,

Vengan humildes á tus aguas claras,

Y en prestarte favor no sean avaras,

Que prestes á mis ásperos lamentos

Atento oido, ó que á escucharlos vengas,

Y aunque dexes un rato tus contentos,

Suplícote que en nada te detengas:

Si tú con tus continos crecimientos

Destos fieros Romanos no te vengas,

Cerrado veo ya qualquier camino

A la salud del pueblo Numantino.

Jorn. I., Sc. 2.

It should be added, that these two octaves occur at the end of a somewhat tedious soliloquy of nine or ten others, all of which are really octave stanzas, though not printed as such.

[120]

Marquino.

Alma rebelde, vuelve al aposento

Que pocas horas ha desocupaste.

El Cuerpo.

Cese la furia del rigor violento

Tuyo. Marquino, baste, triste, baste,

La que yo paso en la region escura,

Sin que tú crezcas mas mi desventura.

Engáñaste, si piensas que recibo

Contento de volver á esta penosa,

Mísera y corta vida, que ahora vivo,

Que ya me va faltando presurosa;

Antes, me causas un dolor esquivo,

Pues otra vez la muerte rigurosa

Triunfará de mi vida y de mi alma;

Mi enemigo tendrá doblada palma,

El cual, con otros del escuro bando

De los que son sugetos á aguardarte,

Está con rabia en torno, aquí esperando

A que acabe, Marquino, de informarte

Del lamentable fin, del mal nefando,

Que de Numancia puedo asegurarte.

Jorn. II., Sc. 2.

[121]

Morandro.

No vayas tan de corrida,

Lira, déxame gozar

Del bien que me puede dar

En la muerte alegre vida:

Dexa, que miren mis ojos

Un rato tu hermosura,

Pues tanto mi desventura

Se entretiene en mis enojos.

O dulce Lira, que suenas

Contino en mi fantasía

Con tan suave harmonía

Que vuelve en gloria mis penas!

Que tienes? Que estás pensando,

Gloria de mi pensamiento?

Lira.

Pienso como mi contento

Y el tuyo se va acabando,

Y no será su homicida

El cerco de nuestra tierra,

Que primero que la guerra

Se me acabará la vida.

Morandro.

Que dices, bien de mi alma?

Lira.

Que me tiene tal la hambre,

Que de mi vital estambre

Llevará presto la palma.

Que tálamo has de esperar

De quien está en tal extremo,

Que te aseguro que temo

Antes de una hora espirar?

Mi hermano ayer espiró

De la hambre fatigado,

Y mi madre ya ha acabado,

Que la hambre la acabó.

Y si la hambre y su fuerza

No ha rendido mi salud,

Es porque la juventud

Contra su rigor se esfuerza.

Pero como ha tantos dias

Que no le hago defensa,

No pueden contra su ofensa

Las débiles fuerzas mias.

Morandro.

Enjuga, Lira, los ojos,

Dexa que los tristes mios

Se vuelvan corrientes rios

Nacidos de tus enojos;

Y aunque la hambre ofendida

Te tenga tan sin compas,

De hambre no morirás

Mientras yo tuviere vida.

Yo me ofrezco de saltar

El foso y el muro fuerte,

Y entrar por la misma muerte

Para la tuya escusar.

El pan que el Romano toca,

Sin que el temor me destruya,

Lo quitaré de la suya

Para ponerlo en tu boca.

Con mi brazo haré carrera

A tu vida y á mi muerte,

Porque mas me mata el verte,

Señora, de esa manera.

Yo te traeré de comer

A pesar de los Romanos,

Si ya son estas mis manos

Las mismas que solian ser.

Lira.

Hablas como enamorado,

Morandro, pero no es justo,

Que ya tome gusto el gusto

Con tu peligro comprado.

Poco podrá sustentarme

Qualquier robo que harás,

Aunque mas cierto hallarás

El perderte que ganarme.

Goza de tu mocedad

En fresca edad y crecida,

Que mas importa tu vida

Que la mia, á la ciudad.

Tu podrás bien defendella,

De la enemiga asechanza,

Que no la flaca pujanza

Desta tan triste doncella.

Ansí que, mi dulce amor,

Despide ese pensamiento,

Que yo no quiero sustento

Ganado con tu sudor.

Que aunque puedes alargar

Mi muerte por algun dia,

Esta hambre que porfia

En fin nos ha de acabar.

Morandro.

En vano trabajas, Lira,

De impidirme este camino,

Do mi voluntad y signo

Allá me convida y tira.

Tú rogarás entre tanto

A los Dioses, que me vuelvan

Con despojos que resuelvan

Tu miseria y mi quebranto.

Lira.

Morandro, mi dulce amigo,

No vayas, que se me antoja,

Que de tu sangre veo roxa

La espada del enemigo.

No hagas esta jornada,

Morandro, bien de mi vida,

Que si es mala la salida,

Es muy peor la tornada.

Jorn. III., Sc. 1.

There is, in this scene, a tone of gentle, broken-hearted self-devotion on the part of Lira, awakening a fierce despair in her lover, that seems to me very true to nature. The last words of Lira, in the passage translated, have, I think, much beauty in the original.

[122]   A. W. von Schlegel, Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Literatur, Heidelberg, 1811, Tom. II. Abt. ii. p. 345.

[123]   “Volvíme á Sevilla,” says Berganza, in the “Coloquio de los Perros,” “que es amparo de pobres y refugio de desdichados.” Novelas, Madrid, 1783, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 362.

[124]   This extraordinary mass of documents is preserved in the Archivos de las Indias, which are admirably arranged in the old and beautiful Exchange built by Herrera in Seville, when Seville was the great entrepôt between Spain and her colonies. The papers referred to may be found in Estante II. Cajon 5, Legajo 1, and were discovered by the venerable Cean Bermudez in 1808. The most important of them are published entire, and the rest are well abridged, in the Life of Cervantes by Navarrete (pp. 311-388). Cervantes petitioned in them for one of four offices:—the Auditorship of New Granada; that of the galleys of Carthagena; the Governorship of the Province of Soconusco; or the place of Corregidor of the city of Paz.

[125]   “Viéndose pues tan falto de dineros y aun no con muchos amigos, se acogió al remedio á que otros muchos perdidos en aquella ciudad [Sevilla] se acogen; que es, el pasarse á las Indias, refugio y amparo de los desesperados de España, iglesia de los alzados, salvo conducto de los homicidas, pala y cubierta de los jugadores, añagaza general de mugeres libres, engaño comun de muchos y remedio particular de pocos.” El Zeloso Estremeño, Novelas, Tom. II. p. 1.

[126]   These verses may be found in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 444, 445.

[127]   Pellicer, Vida, ed. Don Quixote, (Madrid, 1797, 8vo, Tom. I. p. lxxxv.), gives the sonnet.

[128]   Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. IX. p. 193. In the “Viage al Parnaso,” c. 4, he calls it “Honra principal de mis escritos.” But he was mistaken, or he jested,—I rather think the last. For an account of the indecent uproar Cervantes ridiculed, and needful to explain this sonnet, see Semanario Pintoresco, Madrid, 1842, p. 177.

[129]   “Se engendró en una cárcel.” Avellaneda says the same thing in his Preface, but says it contemptuously: “Pero disculpan los yerros de su Primera Parte en esta materia, el haberse escrito entre los de una cárcel,” etc. A base insinuation seems implied in the use of the relative article los.

[130]   Pellicer’s Life, pp. cxvi.-cxxxi.

[131]   One of the witnesses in the preceding criminal inquiry says that Cervantes was visited by different persons, “por ser hombre que escribe y trata negocios.”

[132]   Laurel de Apolo, Silva 8, where he is praised only as a poet.

[133]   Most of the materials for forming a judgment on this point in Cervantes’s character are to be found in Navarrete, (Vida, pp. 457-475), who maintains that Cervantes and Lope were sincere friends, and in Huerta, (Leccion Crítica, Madrid, 1786, 12mo, pp. 33-47), who maintains that Cervantes was an envious rival of Lope. As I cannot adopt either of these results, and think the last particularly unjust, I will venture to add one or two considerations.

Lope was fifteen years younger than Cervantes, and was forty-three years old when the First Part of the Don Quixote was published; but from that time till the death of Cervantes, a period of eleven years, he does not, that I am aware, once allude to him. The five passages in the immense mass of Lope’s works, in which alone, so far as I know, he speaks of Cervantes are,—1. In the “Dorothea,” 1598, twice slightly and without praise. 2. In the Preface to his own Tales, 1621, still more slightly, and even, I think, coldly. 3. In the “Laurel de Apolo,” 1630, where there is a somewhat stiff eulogy of him, fourteen years after his death. 4. In his play, “El Premio del Bien Hablar,” printed in Madrid, 1635, where Cervantes is barely mentioned (Comedias, 4to, Tom. XXI. f. 162). And 5. In “Amar sin Saber á Quien,” (Comedias, Madrid, Tom. XXII., 1635), where (Jornada primera) Leonarda, one of the principal ladies, says to her maid, who had just cited a ballad of Audalla and Xarifa to her,—

Inez, take care; your common reading is,

I know, the Ballad-book; and, after all,

Your case may prove like that of the poor knight——

to which Inez replies, interrupting her mistress,—

Don Quixote of la Mancha, if you please,—

May God Cervantes pardon!—was a knight

Of that wild, erring sort the Chronicle

So magnifies. For me, I only read

The Ballad-book, and find myself from day

To day the better for it.

All this looks very reserved; but when we add to it, that there were numberless occasions on which Lope could have gracefully noticed the merit to which he could never have been insensible,—especially when he makes so free a use of Cervantes’s “Trato de Argel” in his own “Esclavos de Argel,” absolutely introducing him by name on the stage, and giving him a prominent part in the action, (Comedias, Çaragoça, 1647, 4to, Tom. XXV. pp. 245, 251, 257, 262, 277), without showing any of those kindly or respectful feelings which it was easy and common to show to friends on the Spanish stage, and which Calderon, for instance, so frequently shows to Cervantes, (e. g. Casa con Dos Puertas, Jorn. I., etc.),—we can hardly doubt that Lope willingly overlooked and neglected Cervantes, at least from the time of the appearance of the First Part of Don Quixote, in 1605, till after its author’s death, in 1616.

On the other hand, Cervantes, from the date of the “Canto de Calíope” in the “Galatea,” 1584, when Lope was only twenty-two years old, to the date of the Preface to the Second Part of Don Quixote, 1615, only a year before his own death, was constantly giving Lope the praises due to one who, beyond all contemporary doubt or rivalship, was at the head of Spanish literature; and, among other proofs of such elevated and generous feelings, prefixed, in 1598, a laudatory sonnet to Lope’s “Dragontea.” But at the same time that he did this, and did it freely and fully, there is a dignified reserve and caution in some parts of his remarks about Lope that show he was not impelled by any warm, personal regard; a caution which is so obvious, that Avellaneda, in the Preface to his Don Quixote, maliciously interpreted it into envy.

It therefore seems to me difficult to avoid the conclusion, that the relations between the two great Spanish authors of this period were such as might be expected, where one was, to an extraordinary degree, the idol of his time, and the other a suffering and neglected man. What is most agreeable about the whole matter is the generous justice Cervantes never fails to render to Lope’s merits.

[134]   He explains in his Preface the meaning he wishes to give the word exemplares, saying, “Heles dado nombre de exemplares, y si bien lo miras, no hay ninguna de quien no se puede sacar algun exemplo provechoso.” The word exemplo, from the time of the Archpriest of Hita and Don Juan Manuel, has had the meaning of instruction or instructive story.

[135]   The “Curioso Impertinente,” first printed in 1605, in the First Part of Don Quixote, was separately printed in Paris in 1608,—five years before the collected Novelas appeared in Madrid,—by Cæsar Oudin, a teacher of Spanish at the French court, who caused several other Spanish books to be printed in Paris, where the Castilian was in much favor from the intermarriages between the crowns of France and Spain.

[136]   This story has been dramatized more than once in Spain, and freely used elsewhere. See note on the “Gitanilla” of Solís, post, Chap. 25.

[137]   It is an admirable hit, when Rinconete, first becoming acquainted with one of the rogues, asks him, “Es vuesa merced por ventura ladron?” and the rogue replies, “Sí, para servir á Dios y á la buena gente.” (Novelas, Tom. I. p. 235.) And, again, the scene (pp. 242-247) where Rinconete and Cortadillo are received among the robbers, and that (pp. 254, 255) where two of the shameless women of the gang are very anxious to provide candles to set up as devout offerings before their patron saints, are hardly less happy, and are perfectly true to the characters represented. Indeed, it is plain from this tale, and from several of the Entremeses of Cervantes, that he was familiar with the life of the rogues of his time. Fermin Caballero, in a pleasant tract on the Geographical Knowledge of Cervantes, (Pericia Geográfica de Cervantes, Madrid, 1840, 12mo), notes the aptness with which Cervantes alludes to the different localities in the great cities of Spain, which constituted the rendezvous and lurking-places of its vagabond population. (p. 75.) Among these Seville was preëminent. Guevara, when he describes a community like that of Monipodio, places it, as Cervantes does, in Seville. Diablo Cojuelo, Tranco IX.

[138]   Coarse as it is, however, the “Tia Fingida” was found, with “Rinconete y Cortadillo,” and several other tales and miscellanies, in a manuscript collection of stories and trifles made 1606-10, for the amusement of the Archbishop of Seville, D. Fernando Niño de Guevara; and long afterwards carefully preserved by the Jesuits of St. Hermenegild. A castigated copy of it was printed by Arrieta in his “Espíritu de Miguel de Cervantes” (Madrid, 1814, 12mo); but the Prussian ambassador in Spain, if I mistake not, soon afterwards obtained possession of an unaltered copy and sent it to Berlin, where it was published by the famous Greek scholar, F. A. Wolf, first in one of the periodicals of Berlin, and afterwards in a separate pamphlet. (See his Vorbericht to the “Tia Fingida, Novela inédita de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,” Berlin, 1818, 8vo.) It has since been printed in Spain with the other tales of Cervantes.

Some of the tales of Cervantes were translated into English as early as 1640; but not into French, I think, till 1768, and not well into that language till Viardot published his translation (Paris, 1838, 2 tom., 8vo). Even he, however, did not venture on the obscure puns and jests of the “Licenciado Vidriera,” a fiction of which Moreto made some use in his play of the same name, representing the Licentiate, however, as a feigned madman and not as a real one, and showing little of the humor of the original conception. (Comedias Escogidas, Madrid, 4to, Tom. V. 1653.) Under the name of “Léocadie,” there is a poor abridgment of the “Fuerza de la Sangre,” by Florian. The old English translation by Mabbe (London, 1640, folio) is said by Godwin to be “perhaps the most perfect specimen of prose translation in the English language.” (Lives of E. and J. Phillips, London, 1815, 4to, p. 246.) The praise is excessive, but the translation is certainly very well done. It, however, extends only to six of the tales.

[139]   The first edition is in small duodecimo, (Madrid, 1614), 80 leaves; better printed, I think, than any other of his works that were published under his own care. Little but the opening is imitated from Cesare Caporali’s “Viaggio in Parnaso,” which is only about one fifth as long as the poem of Cervantes.

[140]   Among them he speaks of many ballads that he had written:—

Yo he compuesto Romances infinitos,

Y el de los Zelos es aquel que estimo

Entre otros, que los tengo por malditos.

c. 4.

All these are lost, except such as may be found scattered through his longer works, and some which have been suspected to be his in the Romancero General. Clemencin, notes to his ed. of Don Quixote, Tom. III. pp. 156, 214. Coleccion de Poesías de Don Ramon Fernandez, Madrid, 1796, 8vo, Tom. XVI. p. 175. Mayans, Vida de Cervantes, No. 164.

[141]   Apollo tells him, (Viage, ed. 1784, p. 55),—

“Mas si quieres salir de tu querella,

Alegre y no confuso y consolado,

Dobla tu capa y siéntate sobre ella.

Que tal vez suele un venturoso estado,

Quando le niega sin razon la suerte,

Honrar mas merecido que alcanzado.”

“Bien parece, Señor, que no se advierte,”

Le respondí, “que yo no tengo capa.”

El dixo: “Aunque sea así, gusto de verte.”

[142]   The “Confusa” was evidently his favorite among these earlier pieces. In the Viage he says of it,—

Soy por quien La Confusa nada fea

Pareció en los teatros admirable;

and in the “Adjunta” he says, “De la que mas me precio fué y es, de una llamada La Confusa, la qual, con paz sea dicho, de quantas comedias de capa y espada hasta hoy se han representado, bien puede tener lugar señalado por buena entre las mejores.” This boast, it should be remembered, was made in 1614, when Cervantes had printed the First Part of the Don Quixote, and when Lope and his school were at the height of their glory. It is probable, however, that we, at the present day should be more curious to see the “Batalla Naval,” which, from its name, contained, I think, his personal experiences at the fight of Lepanto, as the “Trato de Argel” contained those at Algiers.

[143]   After alluding to his earlier efforts on the stage, Cervantes goes on in the Prólogo to his new plays: “Tuve otras cosas en que ocuparme; dexé la pluma y las comedias, y entró luego el monstruo de naturaleza, el gran Lope de Vega, y alzóse con la monarquía cómica; avasalló y puso debaxo de su jurisdiccion á todos los Farsantes, llenó el mundo de Comedias propias, felices y bien razonadas; y tantas que passan de diez mil pliegos los que tiene escritos, y todas (que es una de las mayores cosas que puede decirse) las ha visto representar, ú oido decir (por lo menos) que se han representado; y si algunos, (que hay muchos) han querido entrar á la parte y gloria de sus trabajos, todos juntos no llegan en lo que han escrito á la mitad de lo que él solo,” etc.

[144]   This play, which Cervantes calls “Los Baños de Argel,” (Comedias, 1749, Tom. I. p. 125), opens with the landing of a Moorish corsair on the coast of Valencia; gives an account of the sufferings of the captives taken in this descent, as well as the sufferings of others afterward; and ends with a Moorish wedding and a Christian martyrdom. He says of it himself,—

No de la imaginacion

Este trato se sacó,

Que la verdad lo fraguó

Bien lejos de la ficcion.

p. 186.

The verbal resemblances between the play and the story of the Captive are chiefly in the first jornada of the play, as compared with Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 40.

[145]   The part we should least willingly suppose to be true—that of a droll, roistering soldier, who gets a shameful subsistence by begging for souls in Purgatory, and spending on his own gluttony the alms he receives—is particularly vouched for by Cervantes. “Esto de pedir para las ánimas es cuento verdadero, que yo lo ví.” How so indecent an exhibition on the stage could be permitted is the wonder. Once, for instance, when in great personal danger, he prays thus, as if he had read the “Clouds” of Aristophanes:—

Animas de Purgatorio!

Favoreced me, Señoras!

Que mi peligro es notorio,

Si ya no estais en estas horas

Durmiendo en el dormitorio.

Tom. I. p. 34.

At the end he says his principal intent has been—

Mezclar verdades

Con fabulosos intentos.

The Spanish doctrine of the play—all for love and glory—is well expressed in the two following lines from the second jornada:—

Que por reynar y por amor no hay culpa,

Que no tenga perdon, y halle disculpa.

[146]

Se vino á Constantinopla,

Creo el ano de seiscientos.

Jor. III.

[147]   The Church prayers on the stage, in this play and especially in Jornada II., and the sort of legal contract used to transfer the merits of the healthy saint to the dying sinner, are among the revolting exhibitions of the Spanish drama which at first seem inexplicable, but which anyone who reads far in it easily understands. Cervantes, in many parts of this strange play, avers the truth of what he thus represents, saying, “Todo esto fué verdad”; “Todo esto fué así”; “Así se cuenta en su historia,” etc.

[148]   He uses the words as convertible. Tom. I. pp. 21, 22; Tom. II. p. 25, etc.

[149]   In the “Baños de Argel,” where he is sometimes indecorous enough, as when, (Tom. I. p. 151), giving the Moors the reason why his old general, Don John of Austria, does not come to subdue Algiers, he says:—

Sin duda, que, en el cielo,

Debia de haber gran guerra,

Do el General faltaba,

Y á Don Juan se llevaron para serlo.

[150]   See the early part of the “Prólogo del que hace imprimir.” I am not certain that Blas de Nasarre was perfectly fair in all this; for he printed, in 1732, an edition of Avellaneda’s continuation of Don Quixote, in the Preface to which he says that he thinks the character of Avellaneda’s Sancho is more natural than that of Cervantes’s Sancho; that the Second Part of Cervantes’s Don Quixote is taken from Avellaneda’s; and that, in its essential merits, the work of Avellaneda is equal to that of Cervantes. “No se puede disputar,” he says, “la gloria de la invencion de Cervantes, aunque no es inferior la de la imitacion de Avellaneda”; to which he adds afterwards, “Es cierto que es necesario mayor esfuerzo de ingenio para añadir á las primeras invenciones, que para hacerlas.” (See Avellaneda, Don Quixote, Madrid, 1805, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 34.) Now, the Juicio, or Preface, from which these opinions are taken, and which is really the work of Nasarre, is announced by him, not as his own, but as the work of an anonymous friend, precisely as if he were not willing to avow such opinions under his own name. (Pellicer’s Vida de Cervantes, ed. Don Quixote, I. p. clxvi.) In this way a disingenuous look is given to what would otherwise have been only an absurdity; and what, taken in connection with this reprint of Cervantes’s poor dramas and the Preface to them, seems like a willingness to let down the reputation of a genius that Nasarre could not comprehend.

It is intimated, in an anonymous pamphlet, called “Exámen Crítico del Tomo Primero del Antiquixote,” (Madrid, 1806, 12mo), that Nasarre had sympathies with Avellaneda as an Aragonese; and the pamphlet in question being understood to be the work of J. A. Pellicer, the editor of Don Quixote, this intimation deserves notice. It may be added, that Nasarre belonged to the French school of the eighteenth century in Spain;—a school that saw little merit in the older Spanish drama.

[151]   The extravagant opinion, that these plays of Cervantes were written to discredit the plays then in fashion on the stage, just as the Don Quixote was written to discredit the fashionable books of chivalry, did not pass uncontradicted at the time. The year after it was published, a pamphlet appeared, entitled “La Sinrazon impugnada y Beata de Lavapies, Coloquio Crítico apuntado al disparatado Prólogo que sirve de delantal (segun nos dice su Autor) á las Comedias de Miguel de Cervantes, compuesto por Don Joseph Carillo” (Madrid, 1750, 4to, pp. 25). It is a spirited little tract, chiefly devoted to a defence of Lope and of Calderon, though the point about Cervantes is not forgotten (pp. 13-15.) But in the same year a more formidable work appeared on the same side, called “Discurso Crítico sobre el Orígen, Calidad, y Estado presente de las Comedias de España, contra el Dictámen que las supone corrompidas, etc., por un Ingenio de esta Corte” (Madrid, 1750, 4to, pp. 285). The author was a lawyer in Madrid, D. Thomas Zavaleta, and he writes with as little philosophy and judgment as the other Spanish critics of his time; but he treats Blas de Nasarre with small ceremony.

[152]   “Ensayo Histórico-apologético de la Literatura Española,” Madrid, 1789, 8vo, Tom. VI. pp. 170, etc. “Suprimiendo las que verdaderamente eran de él,” are the bold words of the critic.

[153]   There can be little doubt, I think, that this was the case, if we compare the opinions expressed by the canon on the subject of the drama in the 48th chapter of the First Part of Don Quixote, 1605, and the opinions in the opening of the third jornada of the “Baños de Argel,” 1615.

[154]   It has been generally conceded that the Count de Lemos and the Archbishop of Toledo favored and assisted Cervantes; the most agreeable proof of which is to be found in the Dedication of the Second Part of Don Quixote. I am afraid, however, that their favor was a little too much in the nature of alms. Indeed, it is called limosna the only time it is known to be mentioned by any contemporary of Cervantes. See Salas Barbadillo, in the Dedication of the “Estafeta del Dios Momo,” Madrid, 1627, 12mo.

[155]

“Who, to be sure of Paradise,

Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,

Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised.”

[156]   The only case I recollect at all parallel is that of the graceful Dedication of Addison’s works to his friend and successor in office, Secretary Craggs, which is dated June 4, 1719; thirteen days before his death. But the Dedication of Cervantes is much more genial and spirited.

[157]   Bowle says, (Anotaciones á Don Quixote, Salisbury, 1781, 4to, Prólogo ix., note), that Cervantes died on the same day with Shakspeare; but this is a mistake, the calendar not having then been altered in England, and there being, therefore, a difference between that and the Spanish calendar of ten days.

[158]   Nor was any monument raised to Cervantes, in Spain, until 1835, when a bronze statue of him larger than life, cast at Rome by Solá of Barcelona, was placed in the Plaza del Estamento at Madrid. (See El Artista, a journal published at Madrid, 1834, 1835, Tom. I. p. 205; Tom. II. p. 12; and Semanario Pintoresco, 1836, p. 249.) Before this I believe there was nothing that approached nearer to a monument in honor of Cervantes throughout the world than an ordinary medal of him, struck in 1818, at Paris, as one of a large series which would have been absurdly incomplete without it; and a small medallion or bust, that was placed in 1834, at the expense of an individual, over the door of the house in the Calle de los Francos, where he died. But, in saying this, I ought to add,—whether in praise or censure,—that I believe the statue of Cervantes was the first erected in Spain to honor a man of letters or science.

[159]   At the time of his death Cervantes seems to have had the following works more or less prepared for the press, namely: “Las Semanas del Jardin,” announced as early as 1613;—the Second Part of “Galatea,” announced in 1615;—the “Bernardo,” mentioned in the Dedication of “Persiles,” just before he died;—and several plays, referred to in the Preface to those he published, and in the Appendix to the “Viage al Parnaso.” All these works are now probably lost.

[160]   The first edition of Persiles y Sigismunda was printed with the following title: “Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda. Historia Setentrional, por M. de Cervantes Saavedra, dirigida,” etc., Madrid, 1617, 8vo, por Juan de la Cuesta; and reprints of it appeared in Valencia, Pamplona, Barcelona, and Brussels, the same year. I have a copy of the first edition; but the most agreeable one is that of Madrid, 1802, 8vo, 2 tom. There is an English translation by M. L., published 1619, which I have never seen; but from which I doubt not Fletcher borrowed the materials for that part of the Persiles which he has used, or rather abused, in his “Custom of the Country,” acted as early as 1628, but not printed till 1647; the very names of the personages being sometimes the same. See Persiles, Book I. c. 12 and 13; and compare Book II. c. 4 with the English play, Act IV. scene 3, and Book III. c. 6, etc., with Act II. scene 4, etc. Sometimes we have almost literal translations, like the following:—

“Sois Castellano?” me preguntó en su lengua Portuguesa. “No, Señora,” le respondí yo, “sino forastero, y bien lejos de esta tierra.” “Pues aunque fuerades mil veces Castellano,” replicó ella, “os librara yo, si pudiera, y os libraré si puedo; subid por cima deste lecho, y éntraos debaxo de este tapiz, y éntraos en un hueco que aquí hallareis, y no os movais, que si la justicia viniere, me tendrá respeto, y creerá lo que yo quisiere decirles.” Persiles, Lib. III. cap. 6.

In Fletcher we have it as follows:—

Guiomar.

Are you a Castilian?

Rutilio.

No, Madam: Italy claims my birth.

Gui.

I ask not

With purpose to betray you. If you were

Ten thousand times a Spaniard, the nation

We Portugals most hate, I yet would save you,

If it lay in my power. Lift up these hangings;

Behind my bed’s head there’s a hollow place,

Into which enter.

[Rutilio retires behind the bed.

So;—but from this stir not.

If the officers come, as you expect they will do,

I know they owe such reverence to my lodgings,

That they will easily give credit to me

And search no further.

Act II. Sc. 4.

Other parallel passages might be cited; but it should not be forgotten, that there is one striking difference between the two; for that, whereas the Persiles is a book of great purity of thought and feeling, “The Custom of the Country” is one of the most indecent plays in the language; so indecent, indeed, that Dryden rather boldly says it is worse in this particular than all his own plays put together. Dryden’s Works, Scott’s ed., London, 1808, 8vo, Vol. XI. p. 239.

[161]   In the Aprobacion, dated Sept. 9, 1616, ed. 1802, Tom. I. p. vii.

[162]   This may be fairly suspected from the beginning of the 48th chapter of the First Part of Don Quixote.

[163]   Once he intimates that it is a translation, but does not say from what language. (See opening of Book II.) An acute and elegant critic of our own time says, “Des naufrages, des déserts, des descentes par mer, et des ravissements, c’est donc toujours plus ou moins l’ancien roman d’Héliodore.” (Sainte Beuve, Critiques, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. IV. p 173.) These words describe more than half of the Persiles and Sigismunda. Two imitations of the Persiles, or, at any rate, two imitations of the Greek romance which was the chief model of the Persiles, soon appeared in Spain. The first is the “Historia de Hipólito y Aminta” of Francisco de Quintana, (Madrid, 1627, 4to), divided into eight books, with a good deal of poetry intermixed. The other is “Eustorgio y Clorilene, Historia Moscovica,” by Enrique Suarez de Mendoza y Figueroa, (1629), in thirteen books, with a hint of a continuation; but my copy was printed Çaragoça, 1665, 4to. Both are written in bad taste, and have no value as fictions. The latter seems to have been plainly suggested by the Persiles.

[164]   From the beginning of Book III., we find that the action of Persiles and Sigismunda is laid in the time of Philip II. or Philip III., when there was a Spanish viceroy in Lisbon, and the travels of the hero and heroine in the South of Spain and Italy seem to be, in fact, Cervantes’s own recollections of the journey he made through the same countries in his youth; while Chapters 10 and 11 of Book III. show bitter traces of his Algerine captivity. His familiarity with Portugal, as seen in this work, should also be noticed. Frequently, indeed, as in almost every thing else he wrote, we meet intimations and passages from his own life.

[165]   My own experience in Spain fully corroborates the suggestion of Inglis, in his very pleasant book, (Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote, London, 1837, 8vo, p. 26), that “no Spaniard is entirely ignorant of Cervantes.” At least, none I ever questioned on the subject—and their number was great in the lower conditions of society—seemed to be entirely ignorant what sort of personages were Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

[166]   He felt this himself as a dreary interval in his life, for he says in his Prólogo: “Al cabo de tantos años como ha, que duermo en el silencio del olvido,” etc. In fact, from 1584 till 1605 he had printed nothing except a few short poems of little value, and seems to have been wholly occupied in painful struggles to secure a subsistence.

[167]   This idea is found partly developed by Bouterwek, (Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit, Göttingen, 1803, 8vo, Tom. III. pp. 335-337), and fully set forth and defended by Sismondi, with his accustomed eloquence. Littérature du Midi de l’Europe, Paris, 1813, 8vo, Tom. III. pp. 339-343.

[168]   Many other interpretations have been given to the Don Quixote. One of the most absurd is that of Daniel De Foe, who declares it to be “an emblematic history of, and a just satire upon, the Duke de Medina Sidonia, a person very remarkable at that time in Spain.” (Wilson’s Life of De Foe, London, 1830, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 437, note.) The “Buscapié”—if there ever was such a publication—pretended that it set forth “some of the undertakings and gallantries of the Emperor Charles V.” See Appendix (D).

[169]   In the Prólogo to the First Part, he says, “No mira á mas que á deshacer la autoridad y cabida, que en el mundo y en el vulgo tienen los libros de Caballerías”; and he ends the Second Part, ten years afterwards, with these remarkable words: “No ha sido otro mi deseo, que poner en aborrecimiento de los hombres las fingidas y disparatadas historias de los libros de Caballerías, que por las de mi verdadero Don Quixote van ya tropezando, y han de caer del todo sin duda alguna. Vale.” It seems really hard that a great man’s word of honor should thus be called in question by the spirit of an over-refined criticism, two centuries after his death. D. Vicente Salvá has partly, but not wholly, avoided this difficulty in an ingenious and pleasant essay on the question, “Whether the Don Quixote has yet been judged according to its merits”;—in which he maintains, that Cervantes did not intend to satirize the substance and essence of books of chivalry, but only to purge away their absurdities and improbabilities; and that, after all, he has given us only another romance of the same class which has ruined the fortunes of all its predecessors by being itself immensely in advance of them all. Ochoa, Apuntes para una Biblioteca, Paris, 1842, 8vo, Tom. II. pp. 723-740.

[170]   Símbolo de la Fé, Parte II. cap. 17, near the end. Conversion de la Magdalena, 1592, Prólogo al Letor. Both are strong in their censures.

[171]   “Vemos, que ya no se ocupan los hombres sino en leer libros que es affrenta nombrarlos, como son Amadis de Gaula, Tristan de Leonis, Primaleon,” etc. Argument to the Aviso de Privados, Obras de Ant. de Guevara, Valladolid, 1545, folio, f. clviii. b.

[172]   The passage is too long to be conveniently cited, but it is very severe. See Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. II. pp. 157, 158.

[173]   See ante, Vol. I. pp. 249-254. But, besides what is said there, Francisco de Portugal, who died in 1632, tells us in his “Arte de Galantería,” (Lisboa, 1670, 4to, p. 96), that Simon de Silveira (I suppose the Portuguese poet who lived about 1500; Barbosa, Tom. III. p. 722) once swore upon the Evangelists, that he believed the whole of the Amadis to be true history.

[174]   Clemencin, in the Preface to his edition of Don Quixote, Tom. I. pp. xi.-xvi., cites many other proofs of the passion for books of chivalry at that period in Spain; adding a reference to the “Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indias,” Lib. I. Tít. 24, Ley 4, for the law of 1553, and printing at length the very curious petition of the Cortes of 1555, which I have not seen anywhere else, and which would probably have produced the law it demanded, if the abdication of the Emperor, the same year, had not prevented all action upon the matter.

[175]   Allusions to the fanaticism of the lower classes on the subject of books of chivalry are happily introduced into Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 32, and in other places. It extended, too, to those better bred and informed. Francisco de Portugal, in the “Arte de Galantería,” cited in a preceding note, and written before 1632, tells the following anecdote: “A knight came home one day from the chase and found his wife and daughters and their women crying. Surprised and grieved, he asked them if any child or relation were dead. ‘No,’ they answered, suffocated with tears. ‘Why, then, do you weep so?’ he rejoined, still more amazed. ‘Sir,’ they replied, ‘Amadis is dead.’ They had read so far.” p. 96.

[176]   Cervantes himself, as his Don Quixote amply proves, must, at some period of his life, have been a devoted reader of the romances of chivalry. How minute and exact his knowledge of them was may be seen, among other passages, from one at the end of the twentieth chapter of Part First, where, speaking of Gasabal, the esquire of Galaor, he observes that his name is mentioned but once in the history of Amadis of Gaul;—a fact which the indefatigable Mr. Bowle took the pains to verify, when reading that huge romance. See his “Letter to Dr. Percy, on a New and Classical Edition of Don Quixote.” London, 1777, 4to, p. 25.

[177]   Clemencin, in his Preface, notes “D. Policisne de Boecia,” printed in 1602, as the last book of chivalry that was written in Spain, and adds, that, after 1605, “no se publicó de nuevo libro alguno de caballerías, y dejaron de reimprimirse los anteriores.” (p. xxi.) To this remark of Clemencin, however, there are exceptions. For instance, the “Genealogía de la Toledana Discreta, Primera Parte,” por Eugenio Martinez, a tale of chivalry in octave stanzas, was reprinted in 1608; and “El Caballero del Febo,” and “Claridiano,” his son, are extant in editions of 1617. The period of the passion for such books in Spain can be readily seen in the Bibliographical Catalogue, and notices of them by Salvá, in the Repertorio Americano, London, 1827, Tom. IV. pp. 29-74. It was eminently the sixteenth century.

[178]   See Appendix (E).

[179]   Cervantes reproaches Avellaneda with being an Aragonese, because he sometimes omits the article where a Castilian would insert it. (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 59.) The rest of the discussion about him is found in Pellicer, Vida, pp. clvi.-clxv.; in Navarrete, Vida, pp. 144-151; in Clemencin’s Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 59, notes; and in Adolfo de Castro’s Conde Duque de Olivares, Cadiz, 1846, 8vo, pp. 11, etc. This Avellaneda, whoever he was, called his book “Segundo Tomo del Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha,” etc., (Tarragona, 1614, 12mo), and printed it so that it matches very well with the Valencian edition, 1605, of the First Part of the genuine Don Quixote;—both of which I have. There are editions of it, Madrid, 1732 and 1805; and a translation by Le Sage, 1704, in which,—after his manner of translating,—he alters and enlarges the original work with little ceremony or good faith. The edition of 1805, in 2 vols. 12mo, is expurgated.

[180]   Avellaneda, c. 26.

[181]   “Tiene mas lengua que manos,” says Avellaneda, coarsely.

[182]   Chapter 8;—just as he makes Don Quixote fancy a poor peasant in his melon-garden to be Orlando Furioso (c. 6);—a little village to be Rome (c. 7);—and its decent priest alternately Lirgando and the Archbishop Turpin. Perhaps the most obvious comparison, and the fairest that can be made, between the two Don Quixotes is in the story of the goats, told by Sancho, in the twentieth chapter of the First Part in Cervantes, and the story of the geese, by Sancho, in Avellaneda’s twenty-first chapter, because the latter professes to improve upon the former. The failure to do so, however, is obvious enough.

[183]   The whole story of Barbara, beginning with Chapter 22, and going nearly through the remainder of the work, is miserably coarse and dull.

[184]   In 1824, a curious attempt was made, probably by some ingenious German, to add two chapters more to Don Quixote, as if they had been suppressed when the Second Part was published. But they were not thought worth printing by the Spanish Academy. See Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. VI. p. 296.

[185]   Parte II. c. 59.

[186]   See Appendix (E).

[187]   At the end of Cap. 36.

[188]   When Don Quixote understands that Avellaneda has given an account of his being at Saragossa, he exclaims, “Por el mismo caso, no pondré los pies en Zaragoza, y así sacaré á la plaza del mundo la mentira dese historiador moderno.” Parte II. c. 59.

[189]   Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 4. The style of both parts of the genuine Don Quixote is, as might be anticipated, free, fresh, and careless;—genial, like the author’s character, full of idiomatic beauties, and by no means without blemishes. Garcés, in his “Fuerza y Vigor de la Lengua Castellana,” Tom. II., Prólogo, as well as throughout that excellent work, has given it, perhaps, more uniform praise than it deserves;—while Clemencin, in his notes, is very rigorous and unpardoning to its occasional defects.

[190]   The concluding passages of the work, for instance, are in this tone; and this is the tone of his criticism on Avellaneda. I do not count in the same sense the passage, in the Second Part, c. 16, in which Don Quixote is made to boast that thirty thousand copies had been printed of the First Part, and that thirty thousand thousands would follow; for this is intended as the mere rhodomontade of the hero’s folly; but I confess I think Cervantes is somewhat in earnest when he makes Sancho say to his master, “I will lay a wager, that, before long, there will not be a two-penny eating-house, a hedge tavern, or a poor inn, or barber’s shop, where the history of what we have done shall not be painted and stuck up.” Parte II. c. 71.

[191]   Los Rios, in his “Análisis,” prefixed to the edition of the Academy, 1780, undertakes to defend Cervantes on the authority of the ancients, as if the Don Quixote were a poem, written in imitation of the Odyssey. Pellicer, in the fourth section of his “Discurso Preliminar” to his edition of Don Quixote, 1797, follows much the same course; besides which, at the end of the fifth volume, he gives what he gravely calls a “Geographico-historical Description of the Travels of Don Quixote,” accompanied with a map; as if some of Cervantes’s geography were not impossible, and as if half his localities were to be found anywhere but in the imaginations of his readers. On the ground of such irregularities in his geography, and on other grounds equally absurd, Nicholas Perez, a Valencian, attacked Cervantes in the “Anti-Quixote,” the first volume of which was published in 1805, but was followed by none of the five that were intended to complete it; and received an answer, quite satisfactory, but more severe than was needful, in a pamphlet, published at Madrid in 1806, 12mo, by J. A. Pellicer, without his name, entitled “Exámen Crítico del Tomo Primero de el Anti-Quixote.” And finally, Don Antonio Eximeno, in his “Apología de Miguel de Cervantes,” (Madrid, 1806, 12mo), excuses or defends every thing in the Don Quixote, giving us a new chronological plan, (p. 60), with exact astronomical reckonings, (p. 129), and maintaining, among other wise positions, that Cervantes intentionally represented Don Quixote to have lived both in an earlier age and in his own time, in order that curious readers might be confounded, and, after all, only some imaginary period be assigned to his hero’s achievements (pp. 19, etc.). All this, I think, is eminently absurd; but it is the consequence of the blind admiration with which Cervantes was idolized in Spain during the latter part of the last century and the beginning of the present;—itself partly a result of the coldness with which he had been overlooked by the learned of his countrymen for nearly a century previous to that period. Don Quixote, Madrid, 1819, 8vo, Prólogo de la Academia, p. [3].

[192]   Conde, the learned author of the “Dominacion de los Árabes en España,” undertakes, in a pamphlet published in conjunction with J. A. Pellicer, to show that the name of this pretended Arabic author, Cid Hamete Benengeli, is a combination of Arabic words, meaning noble, satirical, and unhappy. (Carta en Castellano, etc., Madrid, 1800, 12mo, pp. 16-27.) It may be so; but it is not in character for Cervantes to seek such refinements, or to make such a display of his little learning, which does not seem to have extended beyond a knowledge of the vulgar Arabic spoken in Barbary, the Latin, the Italian, and the Portuguese. Like Shakspeare, however, Cervantes had read and remembered nearly all that had been printed in his own language, and constantly makes the most felicitous allusions to the large stores of his knowledge of this sort.

[193]   Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 54.

[194]   The criticism on Avellaneda begins, as we have said, Parte II. c. 59.

[195]   Parte I. c. 46.

[196]   “Llegaba ya la noche,” he says in c. 42 of Parte I., when all that had occurred from the middle of c. 37 had happened after they were set down to supper.

[197]   Cervantes calls Sancho’s wife by three or four different names (Parte I. c. 7 and 52, and Parte II. c. 5 and 59); and Avellaneda having, in some degree, imitated him, Cervantes makes himself very merry at the confusion; not noticing that the mistake was really his own.

[198]   The facts referred to are these. Gines de Passamonte, in the 23d chapter of Part First, (ed. 1605, f. 108), steals Sancho’s ass. But hardly three leaves farther on, in the same edition, we find Sancho riding again, as usual, on the poor beast, which reappears yet six other times out of all reason. In the edition of 1608, Cervantes corrected two of these careless mistakes on leaves 109 and 112; but left the five others just as they stood before; and in Chapters 3 and 27 of the Second Part, (ed. 1615), jests about the whole matter, but shows no disposition to attempt further corrections.

[199]   Having expressed so strong an opinion of Cervantes’s merits, I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of citing the words of the modest and wise Sir William Temple, who, when speaking of works of satire, and rebuking Rabelais for his indecency and profaneness, says: “The matchless writer of Don Quixote is much more to be admired for having made up so excellent a composition of satire or ridicule without those ingredients; and seems to be the best and highest strain that ever has or will be reached by that vein.” Works, London, 1814, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 436. See Appendix (E).

[200]   There is a life of Lope de Vega, which was first published in a single volume, by the third Lord Holland, in 1806, and again, with the addition of a life of Guillen de Castro, in two volumes, 8vo, London, 1817. It is a pleasant book, and contains a good notice of both its subjects, and judicious criticisms on their works; but it is quite as interesting for the glimpses it gives of the fine accomplishments and generous spirit of its author, who spent some time in Spain when he was about thirty years old, and never afterwards ceased to take an interest in its affairs and literature. He was much connected with Jovellanos, Blanco White, and other distinguished Spaniards; not a few of whom, in the days of disaster that fell on their country during the French invasion, and the subsequent misgovernment of Ferdinand VII., enjoyed the princely hospitality of Holland House, where the benignant and frank kindliness of its noble master shed a charm and a grace over what was most intellectual and elevated in European society that could be given by nothing else.

Lope’s own account of his origin and birth, in a poetical epistle to a Peruvian lady, who addressed him in verse, under the name of “Amarylis,” is curious. The correspondence is found in the first volume of his Obras Sueltas, (Madrid, 1776-1779, 21 tom. 4to), Epístolas XV. and XVI.; and was first printed by Lope, if I mistake not, in 1624. It is now referred to for the following important lines:—

Tiene su silla en la bordada alfombra

De Castilla el valor de la montaña,

Que el valle de Carriedo España nombra.

Allí otro tiempo se cifraba España;

Allí tuve principio; mas que importa

Nacer laurel y ser humilde caña?

Falta dinero allí, la tierra es corta;

Vino mi padre del solar de Vega:

Assí á los pobres la nobleza exhorta;

Siguióle hasta Madrid, de zelos ciega,

Su amorosa muger, porque él queria

Una Española Helena, entonces Griega.

Hicieron amistades, y aquel dia

Fué piedra en mi primero fundamento

La paz de su zelosa fantasía,

En fin por zelos soy; que nacimiento!

Imaginalde vos que haver nacido

De tan inquieta causa fué portento.

And then he goes on with a pleasant account of his making verses as soon as he could speak; of his early passion for Raymond Lulli, the metaphysical doctor then so much in fashion; of his subsequent studies, his family, etc. Lope loved to refer to his origin in the mountains. He speaks of it in his “Laurel de Apolo,” (Silva VIII.), and in two or three of his plays he makes his heroes boast that they came from that part of Spain to which he traced his own birth. Thus, in “La Venganza Venturosa,” (Comedias, 4to, Madrid, Tom. X., 1620, f. 33. b), Feliciano, a high-spirited old knight, says,—

El noble solar que heredo,

No lo daré á rico infame,

Porque nadie me lo llame

En el valle de Carriedo.

And again, in the opening of the “Premio del Bien Hablar,” (4to, Madrid, Tom. XXI, 1635, f. 159), where he seems to describe his own case and character:—

Nací en Madrid, aunque son

En Galicia los solares

De mi nacimiento noble,

De mis abuelos y padres.

Para noble nacimiento

Ay en España tres partes,

Galicia, Vizcaya, Asturias,

O ya montañas le llaman.

The valley of Carriedo is said to be very beautiful, and Miñano, in his “Diccionario Geográfico,” (Madrid, 8vo, Tom. II., 1826, p. 40), describes La Vega as occupying a fine position on the banks of the Sandoñana.

[201]   “Before he knew how to write, he loved verses so much,” says Montalvan, his friend and executor, “that he shared his breakfast with the older boys, in order to get them to take down for him what he dictated.” Fama Póstuma, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 28.

[202]   In the “Laurel de Apolo” he says he found rough copies of verses among his father’s papers, that seemed to him better than his own.

[203]   See Dedication of the “Hermosa Ester” in Comedias, Madrid, 4to, Tom. XV., 1621.

[204]   In the “Fama Póstuma.”

[205]   This curious passage is in the Epistle, or Metro Lyrico, to D. Luis de Haro, Obras Sueltas, Tom. IX. p. 379:—

Ni mi fortuna muda

Ver en tres lustros de mi edad primera

Con la espada desnuda

Al bravo Portugues en la Tercera,

Ni despues en las naves Españolas

Del mar Ingles los puertos y las olas.

I do not quite make out how this can have happened in 1577; but the assertion seems unequivocal. Schack (Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur in Spanien, Berlin, 1845, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 164) thinks the fifteen years here referred to are intended to embrace the fifteen years of Lope’s life as a soldier, which he extends from Lope’s eleventh year to his twenty-sixth,—1573 to 1588. But Schack’s ground for this is a mistake he had himself previously made in supposing the Dedication of the “Gatomachia” to be addressed to Lope himself; whereas it is addressed to his son, named Lope, who served, at the age of fifteen, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, as we shall see hereafter. The “Cupid in arms,” therefore, referred to in this Dedication, fails to prove what Schack thought it proved; and leaves the “fifteen years” as dark a point as ever. See Schack pp. 157, etc.

[206]   These are the earliest works of Lope mentioned by his eulogists and biographers, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 30), and must be dated as early as 1582 or 1583. The “Pastoral de Jacinto” is in the Comedias, Tom. XVIII., but was not printed till 1623.

[207]   In the epistle to Doctor Gregorio de Ángulo, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 420), he says: “Don Gerónimo Manrique brought me up. I studied in Alcalá, and took the degree of Bachelor; I was even on the point of becoming a priest; but I fell blindly in love, God forgive it; I am married now, and he that is so ill off fears nothing.” Elsewhere he speaks of his obligations to Manrique more warmly; for instance, in his Dedication of “Pobreza no es Vileza,” (Comedias, 4to, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629), where his language is very strong.

[208]   See Dorotea, Acto I. sc. 6, in which, having coolly made up his mind to abandon Marfisa, he goes to her and pretends he has killed one man and wounded another in a night brawl, obtaining by this base falsehood the unhappy creature’s jewels, which he needed to pay his expenses, and which she gave him out of her overflowing affection.

[209]   Act. I. sc. 5, and Act. IV. sc. 1, have a great air of reality about them. But other parts, like that of the discourses and troubles that came from giving to one person the letter intended for another, are quite too improbable and too much like the inventions of some of his own plays, to be trusted. (Act. V. sc. 3, etc.) M. Fauriel, however, whose opinion on such subjects is always to be respected, regards the whole as true. Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1, 1839.

[210]   Lord Holland treats him as the old Duke (Life of Lope de Vega, London, 1817, 2 vols., 8vo); and Southey (Quarterly Review, 1817, Vol. XVIII. p. 2) undertakes to show that it could be no other; while Nicolas Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 74) speaks as if he were doubtful, though he inclines to think it was the elder. But there is no doubt about it. Lope repeatedly speaks of Antonio, the grandson, as his patron; e. g. in his epistle to the Bishop of Oviedo, where he says,—

Y yo del Duque Antonio dexé el Alva.

Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 289.

He, however, praised the elder Duke abundantly in the second, third, and fifth books of the “Arcadia,” giving in the last an account of his death and of the glories of his grandson, whom he again notices as his patron. Indeed, the case is quite plain, and it is only singular that it should need an explanation; for the idea of making the Duke of Alva, who was minister to Philip II., a shepherd, seems to be a caricature or an absurdity, or both. It is, however, the common impression, and may be found again in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 18. The younger Duke, on the contrary, loved letters, and, if I mistake not, there is a Cancion of his in the Cancionero General of 1573, f. 178.

[211]   The truth of the stories, or some of the stories, in the Arcadia may be inferred from the mysterious intimations of Lope in the Prólogo to the first edition; in the “Egloga á Claudio”; and in the Preface to the “Rimas,” (1602), put into the shape of a letter to Juan de Arguijo. Quintana, too, in the Dedication to Lope of his “Experiencias de Amor y Fortuna,” (1626), says of the Arcadia, that, “under a rude covering, are hidden souls that are noble and events that really happened.” See, also, Lope, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX. p. xxii., and Tom. II. p. 456. That it was believed to be true in France is apparent from the Preface to old Lancelot’s translation, under the title of “Délices de la Vie Pastorale” (1624). It is important to settle the fact; for it must be referred to hereafter.

[212]   The Arcadia fills the sixth volume of Lope’s Obras Sueltas. Editions of it were printed in 1599, 1601, 1602, twice, 1603, 1605, 1612, 1615, 1617, and often since, showing a great popularity.

[213]   Her father, Diego de Urbina, was a person of some consequence, and figures among the more distinguished natives of Madrid in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid.”

[214]   Montalvan, it should be noted, seems willing to slide over these “frowns of fortune, brought on by his youth and aggravated by his enemies.” But Lope attributes to them his exile, which came, he says, from “love in early youth, whose trophies were exile and its results tragedies.” (Epístola Primera á D. Ant. de Mendoza.) But he also attributes it to false friends, in the fine ballad where he represents himself as looking down upon the ruins of Saguntum and moralizing on his own exile:—“Bad friends,” he says, “have brought me here.” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVII. p. 434, and Romancero General, 1602, f. 108.) But again, in the Second Part of his “Philomena,” 1621, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. II. p. 452), he traces his troubles to his earlier adventures; “love to hatred turned.” “Love-vengeance,” he declares, “disguised as justice, exiled me.”

[215]   His relations with Claudio are noticed by himself in the Dedication to that “true friend,” as he justly calls him, of the well-known play, “Courting his own Misfortunes”; “which title,” he adds, “is well suited to those adventures, when, with so much love, you accompanied me to prison, from which we went to Valencia, where we ran into no less dangers than we had incurred at home, and where I repaid you by liberating you from the tower of Serranos [a jail at Valencia] and the severe sentence you were there undergoing,” etc. Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621, f. 26.

[216]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. pp. 430-443. Belardo, the name Lope bears in this eclogue, is the one he gave himself in the Arcadia, as may be seen from the sonnet prefixed to that pastoral by Amphryso, or Antonio Duke of Alva; and it is the poetical name Lope bore to the time of his death, as may be seen from the beginning of the third act of the drama in honor of his memory. (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 494.) Even his Peruvian Amaryllis knew it, and under this name addressed to him the poetical epistle already referred to. This fact—that Belardo was his recognized poetical appellation—should be borne in mind when reading the poetry of his time, where it frequently recurs.

[217]   Belisa is an anagram of Isabela, the first name of his wife, as is plain from a sonnet on the death of her mother, Theodora Urbina, where he speaks of her as “the heavenly image of his Belisa, whose silent words and gentle smiles had been the consolation of his exile.” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 278.) There are several ballads connected with her in the Romancero General, and a beautiful one in the third of Lope’s Tales, written evidently while he was with the Duke of Alva. Obras, Tom. VIII. p. 148.

[218]   For instance, in the fine ballad beginning, “Llenos de lágrimas tristes,” (Romancero of 1602, f. 47), he says to Belisa, “Let Heaven condemn me to eternal woe, if I do not detest Phillis and adore thee”;—which may be considered as fully contradicted by the equally fine ballad addressed to Filis, (f. 13), “Amada pastora mia”; as well as by six or eight others of the same sort; some more, some less tender.

[219]

Volando en tacos del cañon violento

Los papeles de Filis por el viento.

Egloga á Claudio, Obras, Tom. IX. p. 356.

[220]   One of his poetical panegyrists, after his death, speaking of the Armada, says: “There and in Cadiz he wrote the Angelica.” (Obras, Tom. XX. p. 348.) The remains of the Armada returned to Cadiz in September, 1588, having sailed from Lisbon in the preceding May; so that Lope was probably at sea about four months. Further notices of his naval service may be found in the third canto of his “Corona Trágica,” and the second of his “Philomena.”

[221]   Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Count of Lemos and Marquis of Sarria, who was born in Madrid about 1576, married a daughter of the Duke de Lerma, the reigning favorite and minister of the time, with whose fortunes he rose, and in whose fall he was ruined. The period of his highest honors was that following his appointment as Viceroy of Naples, in 1610, where he kept a literary court of no little splendor, that had for its chief directors the two Argensolas, and with which, at one time, Quevedo was connected. The Count died in 1622, at Madrid. Lope’s principal connections with him were when he was young, and before he had come to his title as Count de Lemos. He records himself as “Secretary of the Marquis of Sarria,” in a sonnet prefixed to the “Peregrino Indiano” of Saavedra, 1599, and on the title-page of the “San Isidro,” printed the same year; besides which, many years afterwards, when writing to the Count de Lemos, he says: “You know how I love and reverence you, and that, many a night, I have slept at your feet like a dog.” Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVII. p. 403. Clemencin, Don Quixote, Parte II., note to the Dedicatoria.

[222]   Epístola al Doctor Mathias de Porras, and Epístola á Amarylis; to which may be added the pleasant epistle to Francisco de Rioja, in which he describes his garden and the friends he received in it.

[223]   On this son, see Obras, Tom. I. p. 472;—the tender Cancion on his death, Tom. XIII. p. 365;—and the beautiful Dedication to him of the “Pastores de Belen,” Tom. XVI. p. xi.

[224]   Obras, Tom. I. p. 472, and Tom. XX. p. 34.

[225]   Obras, Tom. IX. p. 355.

[226]   “El Remedio de la Desdicha,” a play whose story is from the “Diana” of Montemayor, (Comedias, Tom. XIII., Madrid, 1620), in the Preface to which he begs his daughter to read and correct it; and prays that she may be happy in spite of the perfections which render earthly happiness almost impossible to her. She long survived her father, and died, much reverenced for her piety, in 1688.

[227]   The description of his grief and of his religious feelings as she took the veil is solemn, but he dwells a little too complacently on the splendor given to the occasion by the king, and by his patron, the Duke de Sessa, who desired to honor thus a favorite and famous poet. Obras, Tom. I. pp. 313-316.

[228]   Obras, Tom. XI. pp. 495 and 596, where his father jests about it. It is a Glosa. He is called Lope de Vega Carpio, el mozo; and it is added, that he was not yet fourteen years old.

[229]   Obras, Tom. I. pp. 472 and 316.

[230]   In the eclogue, (Obras, Tom. X. p. 362), he is called, after both his father and his mother, Don Lope Felix del Carpio y Luxan.

[231]   Pellicer, ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. cxcix.

[232]   I notice the title Familiar del Santo Oficio as early as the “Jerusalen Conquistada,” 1609. Frequently afterwards, as in the Comedias, Tom. II., VI., XI., etc., he puts no other title to his name, as if this were glory enough. In his time, Familiar meant a person who could at any moment be called into the service of the Inquisition; but had no special office, and no duties, till he was summoned. Covarruvias, ad verb.

[233]

Tres ángeles á Abraham

Una vez aparecieron,

Que á verle á Mambre vinieron:

Bien que á este número dan

El que en figura trujeron.

Seis vienen á Isidro á ver:

O gran Dios, que puede ser?

Donde los ha de alvergar?

Mas vienen á consolar,

Que no vienen á comer.

Si como Sara, María

Cocer luego pan pudiera,

Y él como Abraham truxera

El cordero que pacia,

Y la miel entre la cera,

Yo sé que los convidara.

Mas quando lo que no ara.

Le dicen que ha de pagar;

Como podrá convidar

A seis de tan buena cara?

Disculpado puede estar,

Puesto que no los convide,

Pues su pobreza lo impide,

Isidro, aunque puede dar

Muy bien lo que Dios le pide.

Vaya Abraham al ganado,

Y en el suelo humilde echado,

Dadle el alma, Isidro, vos,

Que nunca desprecia Dios

El corazon humillado.

No queria el sacrificio

De Isaac, sino la obediencia

De Abraham.

Obras Sueltas, Tom. XI. p. 69.

[234]   The “Fiestas de Denia,” a poem in two short cantos, on the reception of Philip III. at Denia, near Valencia, in 1598, soon after his marriage, was printed in 1599, but is of little consequence.

[235]   The point where it branches off from the story of Ariosto is the sixteenth stanza of the thirtieth canto of the “Orlando Furioso.”

[236]   La Angélica, Canto III.

[237]   Cantos IV. and VII.

[238]   La Hermosura de Angélica was printed for the first time in 1604, says the editor of the Obras, in Tom. II. But Salvá gives an edition in 1602. It certainly appeared at Barcelona in 1605. The stanzas where proper names occur so often as to prove that Lope was guilty of the affectation of taking pains to accumulate them are to be found in Obras, Tom. II. pp. 27, 55, 233, 236, etc.

[239]   “Considerations touching a War with Spain, inscribed to Prince Charles, 1624”; a curious specimen of the political discussions of the time. See Bacon’s Works, London, 1810, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 517.

[240]   Mariana, Historia, ad an. 1596, calls him simply “Francis Drake, an English corsair”;—and in a graceful little anonymous ballad, imitated from a more graceful one by Góngora, we have again a true expression of the popular feeling. The ballad in question, beginning “Hermano Perico,” is in the Romancero General, 1602, (f. 34), and contains the following significant passage:—

And Bartolo, my brother,

To England forth is gone,

Where the Drake he means to kill;—

And the Lutherans every one,

Excommunicate from God,

Their queen among the first,

He will capture and bring back,

Like heretics accurst.

And he promises, moreover,

Among his spoils and gains,

A heretic young serving-boy

To give me, bound in chains;

And for my lady grandmamma,

Whose years such waiting crave,

A little handy Lutheran,

To be her maiden slave.

Mi hermano Bartolo

Se va á Ingalaterra,

A matar al Draque,

Y á prender la Reyna,

Y á los Luteranos

De la Bandomessa.

Tiene de traerme

A mí de la guerra

Un Luteranico

Con una cadena,

Y una Luterana

A señora agüela.

Romancero General, Madrid, 1602, 4to, f. 35.

[241]   He was in fact of Devonshire. See Fuller’s Worthies and Holy State.

[242]   There is a curious poem in English, by Charles Fitzgeffrey, on the Life and Death of Sir Francis Drake, first printed in 1596, which is worth comparing with the Dragontea, as its opposite, and which was better liked in England in its time than Lope’s poem was in Spain. See Wood’s Athenæ, London, 1815, 4to, Vol. II. p. 607.

[243]   The time of the story is quite unsettled.

[244]   At the end of the whole, it is said, that, during the eight nights following the wedding, eight other dramas were acted, whose names are given; two of which, “El Perseguido,” and “El Galan Agradecido,” do not appear among Lope’s printed plays;—at least, not under these titles.

[245]   Among the passages that have the strongest air of reality about them are those relating to the dramas, said to have been acted in different places; and those containing descriptions of Monserrate and of the environs of Valencia, in the first and second books. A sort of ghost-story, in the fifth, seems also to have been founded on fact.

[246]   The first edition of the “Peregrino en su Patria” is that of Madrid, 1604, 4to, and it was soon reprinted; but the best edition is that in the fifth volume of the Obras Sueltas, 1776. A worthless abridgment of it in English appeared anonymously in London in 1738, 12mo.

[247]   Lope insists, on all occasions, upon the fact of Alfonso’s having been in the Crusades. For instance, in “La Boba para los otros,” (Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 60), he says,—

To this crusade

There went together France and England’s powers,

And our own King Alfonso.

But the whole is a mere fiction of the age succeeding that of Alfonso, for using which Lope is justly rebuked by Navarrete, in his acute essay on the part the Spaniards took in the Crusades. Memorias de la Academia de la Hist., Tom. V., 1817, 4to, p. 87.

[248]   See the Prólogo. The whole poem is in Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIV. and XV.

[249]

Pues andais en las palmas,

Angeles santos,

Que se duerme mi niño,

Tened los ramos.

Palmas de Belen,

Que mueven ayrados

Los furiosos vientos,

Que suenan tanto,

No le hagais ruido,

Corred mas passo;

Que se duerme mi niño,

Tened los ramos.

El niño divino,

Que está cansado

De llorar en la tierra:

Por su descanso,

Sosegar quiere un poco

Del tierno llanto;

Que se duerme mi niño,

Tened los ramos.

Rigurosos hielos

Le estan cercando,

Ya veis que no tengo

Con que guardarlo:

Angeles divinos,

Que vais volando,

Que se duerme mi niño,

Tened los ramos.

Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVI. p. 332.

[250]   Obras, Tom. XIII., etc.

[251]   For instance, the sonnet beginning, “Yo dormiré en el polvo.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 186.

[252]   Such as “Gertrudis siendo Dios tan amoroso.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 223.

[253]   Some of them are very flat;—see the sonnet, “Quando en tu alcazar de Sion.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 225.

[254]   Triumfos de la Fé en los Reynos de Japon. Obras, Tom. XVII.

[255]   See ante, Vol. I. p. 338, and Vol. II. p. 79.

[256]   The successful poem, a jesting ballad of very small merit, is in the Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. pp. 171-177.

[257]   An account of some of the poetical joustings of this period is to be found in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” § 162, with the notes, p. 486; and a good illustration of the mode in which they were conducted is to be found in the “Justa Poética,” in honor of our Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, collected by Juan Bautista Felices de Caceres, (Çaragoça, 1629, 4to), in which Joseph de Valdivielso and Vargas Machuca figured. Such joustings became so frequent at last as to be subjects of ridicule. In the “Caballero Descortes” of Salas Barbadillo, (Madrid, 1621, 12mo, f. 99, etc.), there is a certámen in honor of the recovery of a lost hat;—merely a light caricature.

[258]   The details of the festival, with the poems offered on the occasion, were neatly printed at Madrid, in 1620, in a small quarto, ff. 140, and fill about three hundred pages in the eleventh volume of Lope’s Works. The number of poetical offerings was great, but much short of what similar contests sometimes produced. Figueroa says in his “Pasagero,” (Madrid, 1617, 12mo, f. 118), that, at a festival, held a short time before, in honor of St. Antonio of Padua, five thousand poems of different kinds were offered; which, after the best of them had been hung round the church and the cloisters of the monks who originally proposed the prizes, were distributed to other monasteries. The custom extended to America. In 1585, Balbuena carried away a prize in Mexico from three hundred competitors. See his Life, prefixed to the Academy’s edition of his “Siglo de Oro,” Madrid, 1821, 8vo.

[259]   “But let the reader note well,” says Lope, “that the verses of Master Burguillos must be supposititious; for he did not appear at the contest; and all he wrote is in jest, and made the festival very savory. And as he did not appear for any prize, it was generally believed that he was a character introduced by Lope himself.” Obras, Tom. XI. p. 401. See also p. 598.

[260]   The proceedings and poems of this second great festival were printed at once at Madrid, in a quarto volume, 1622, ff. 156, and fill Tom. XII. of the Obras Sueltas.

[261]   The edition which claims a separate and real existence for Burguillos is that found in the seventeenth volume of the “Poesías Castellanas,” collected by Fernandez and others. But, besides the passages from Lope himself cited in a preceding note, Quevedo says, in an Aprobacion to the very volume in question, that “the style is such as has been seen only in the writings of Lope de Vega”; and Coronel, in some décimas prefixed to it, adds, “These verses are dashes from the pen of the Spanish Phœnix”; hints which it would have been dishonorable for Lope himself to publish, unless the poems were really his own. The poetry of Burguillos is in Tom. XIX. of the Obras Sueltas, just as Lope originally published it in 1634. There is a spirited German translation of the Gatomachia in Bertuch’s Magazin der Span. und Port. Literatur, Dessau, 1781, 8vo, Tom. I.

[262]   The poems are in Tom. II. of the Obras Sueltas. The discussion about the new poetry is in Tom. IV. pp. 459-482; to which should be added some trifles in the same vein, scattered through his Works, and especially a sonnet beginning, “Boscan, tarde llegamos”;—which, as it was printed by him with the “Laurel de Apolo,” (1630, f. 123), shows, that, though he himself sometimes wrote in the affected style then in fashion, to please the popular taste, he continued to disapprove it to the last. The Novela is in Obras, Tom. VIII.

[263]   The three poems are in Tom. III.; the epistles in Tom. I. pp. 279, etc.; and the three tales in Tom. VIII.

[264]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. VIII. p. 2; also Tom. III. Preface.

[265]   There are editions of the eight at Saragossa, (1648), Barcelona, (1650), etc. There is some confusion about a part of the poems published originally with these tales, and which appear among the works of Fr. Lopez de Zarate, Alcalá, 1651, 4to. (See Lope, Obras, Tom. III. p. iii.) But such things are not very rare in Spanish literature, and will occur again in relation to Zarate.

[266]   The account is found in a MS. history of Madrid, by Leon Pinelo, in the King’s Library; and so much as relates to this subject I possess, as well as a notice of Lope himself, given in the same MS. under the date of his death. It is cited, and an abstract of it given, in Casiano Pellicer, “Orígen de las Comedias,” (Madrid, 1804, 12mo), Tom. I. pp. 104, 105.

[267]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIII.

[268]   A la Muerte de Carlos Felix, Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 365.

[269]   See particularly the two beginning on pp. 413 and 423.

[270]   It is in Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV.

[271]   The atrocious passage is on p. 5. In an epistle, which he addressed to Ovando, the Maltese envoy, and published at the end of the “Laurel de Apolo,” (Madrid, 1630, 4to, f. 118), he gives an account of this poem, and says he wrote it in the country, where “the soul in solitude labors more gently and easily!”

[272]   It is not easy to tell why these later productions of Lope are put in the first volume of his Miscellaneous Works, (1776-79), but so it is. That collection was made by Cerdá y Rico; a man of learning, though not of good taste or sound judgment.

[273]   It fills the whole of the seventh volume of his Obras Sueltas.

[274]   “Dorotea, the posthumous child of my Muse, the most beloved of my long-protracted life, still asks the public light,” etc. Egloga á Claudio; Obras, Tom. IX. p. 367.

[275]   These three poems—curious as his last works—are in Tom. X. p. 193, and Tom. IX. pp. 2 and 10.

[276]   “A continued melancholy passion, which of late has been called hypochondria,” etc., is the description Montalvan gives of his disease. The account of his last days follows it. Obras, Tom. XX. pp. 37, etc.; and Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. pp. 360-363.

[277]   See Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX.-XXI., in which they are republished;—Spanish, Latin, French, Italian, and Portuguese. The Spanish, which were brought together by Montalvan, and are preceded by his “Fama Póstuma de Lope de Vega,” may be regarded as a sort of justa poética in honor of the great poet, in which above a hundred and fifty of his contemporaries bore their part.

[278]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 42. For an excellent and interesting discussion of Lope’s miscellaneous works, and one to which I have been indebted in writing this chapter, see London Quarterly Review, No. 35, 1818. It is by Mr. Southey.

[279]   Philomena, Segunda Parte, Obras Sueltas, Tom. II. p. 458.

[280]

El capitan Virues, insigne ingenio,

Puso en tres actos la Comedia, que ántes

Andaba en quatro, como pies de niño;

Que eran entonces niñas las Comedias:

Y yo las escribí, de once y doce años,

De á quatro actos y de á quatro pliegos,

Porque cada acto un pliego contenia:

Y era que entonces en las tres distancias

Se hacian tres pequeños entremeses.

Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 412.

[281]   Dramatic entertainments of some kind are spoken of at Valencia in the fourteenth century. In 1394, we are told, there was represented at the palace a tragedy, entitled “L’ hom enamorat e la fembra satisfeta,” by Mossen Domingo Maspons, a counsellor of John I. This was undoubtedly a Troubadour performance. Perhaps the Entramesos mentioned as having occurred in the same city in 1412, 1413, and 1415, were of the same sort. At any rate, they seem to have belonged, like those we have noticed (ante, Vol. I. p. 259) by the Constable Alvaro de Luna, to courtly festivities. Aribau, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Madrid, 1846, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 178, note; and an excellent article on the early Spanish theatre, by F. Wolf, in Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung, 1848, p. 1287, note.

[282]   Jovellanos, Diversiones Públicas, Madrid, 1812, 8vo, p. 57.

[283]   In one of his earlier efforts he says, (Obras, Tom. V. p. 346), “The laws help them little.” But of this we shall see more hereafter.

[284]   It is probable, from internal evidence, that this eclogue, and some others in the same romance, were acted before the Duke Antonio de Alva. At any rate, we know similar representations were common in the age of Cervantes and Lope, as well as before and after it.

[285]   Such dramas are found in the “Pastores de Belen,” Book III., and elsewhere.

[286]   “El Verdadero Amante” is in the Fourteenth Part of the Comedias, printed at Madrid, 1620, and is dedicated to his son Lope, who died the next year, only fifteen years old;—the father saying in the Dedication, “This play was written when I was of about your age.”

[287]   Montalvan says, “Lope greatly pleased Manrique, the Bishop of Avila, by certain eclogues which he wrote for him, and by the drama of ‘The Pastoral of Jacinto,’ the earliest he wrote in three acts.” (Obras, Tom. XX. p. 30.) It was first printed at Madrid, in 1617, 4to, by Sanchez, in a volume entitled “Quatro Comedias Famosas de Don Luis de Góngora y Lope de Vega Carpio,” etc.; and afterwards in the eighteenth volume of the Comedias of Lope, Madrid, 1623. It was also printed separately, under the double title of “La Selva de Albania, y el Çeloso de sí mismo.”

[288]   It fills nearly fifty pages in the third book of the romance.

[289]   In the first book. It is entitled “A Moral Representation of the Soul’s Voyage”;—in other words, A Morality.

[290]

Oy la Nabe del deleyte

Se quiere hazer á la Mar;—

Ay quien se quiera embarcar?

Oy la Nabe del contento,

Con viento en popa de gusto,

Donde jamas ay disgusto,

Penitencia, ni tormento,

Viendo que ay prospero viento,

Se quiere hazer á la Mar.

Ay quien se quiera embarcar?

El Peregrino en su Patria, Sevilla, 1604, 4to, f. 36. b.

[291]   Book Fourth. The compliment to the actor shows, of course, that the piece was acted. Indeed, this is the proper inference from the whole Prologue. Obras, Tom. V. p. 347.

[292]   Miñana, in his continuation of Mariana, (Lib. X. c. 15, Madrid, 1804, folio, p. 589), says, when speaking of the marriage of Philip III. at Valencia, “In the midst of such rejoicings, tasteful and frequent festivities and masquerades were not wanting, in which Lope de Vega played the part of the buffoon.”

[293]   In Book Second.

[294]   Lope boasts that he has made this sort of commutation and accommodation, as if it were a merit. “This was literally the way,” he says, “in which his Majesty, King Philip, entered Valencia.” Obras, Tom. V. p. 187.

[295]   See ante, p. 90, and Comedias, Madrid, 1615, 4to, Prólogo. The phrase monstruo de naturaleza, in this passage, has been sometimes supposed to imply a censure of Lope on the part of Cervantes. But this is a mistake. It is a phrase frequently used; and though sometimes understood in malam partem, as it is in D. Quixote, Part I. c. 46,—“Vete de mi presencia, monstruo de naturaleza,”—it is generally understood to be complimentary; as, for instance, in the “Hermosa Ester” of Lope, (Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621), near the end of the first act, where Ahasuerus, in admiration of the fair Esther, says,—

Tanta belleza

Monstruo será de la naturaleza.

Cervantes, I have no doubt, used it in wonder at Lope’s prodigious fertility.

[296]   Lope must have been a writer for the public stage as early as 1586 or 1587, and a popular writer at Madrid soon after 1590; but we have no knowledge that any of his plays were printed, with his own consent, before the volume which appeared at Valladolid, in 1604. Yet, in the Preface to the “Peregrino en su Patria,” licensed in 1603, he gives us a list of three hundred and forty-one plays which he acknowledges and claims. Again, in 1618, when he says he had written eight hundred, (Comedias, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, Prólogo), he had printed but one hundred and thirty-four full-length plays, and a few entremeses. Finally, of the eighteen hundred attributed to him in 1635, after his death, by Montalvan and others, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 49), only about three hundred and twenty or thirty can be found in the volumes of his collected plays; and Lord Holland, counting autos and all, which would swell the general claim of Montalvan to at least twenty-two hundred, makes out but five hundred and sixteen printed dramas of Lope. Life of Lope de Vega, London, 1817, 8vo, Vol. II. pp. 158-180.

[297]   This curious list, with the Preface in which it stands, is worth reading over carefully, as affording indications of the history and progress of Lope’s genius. It is to Lope’s dramatic life what the list in Meres is to Shakspeare. It is found in the Obras Sueltas, Tom. V.

[298]   In his “New Art of Writing Plays,” he says, “I have now written, including one that I have finished this week, four hundred and eighty-three plays.” He printed this for the first time in 1609; and though it was probably written four or five years earlier, yet these lines near the end may have been added at the moment the whole poem went to the press. Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 417.

[299]   In the Prólogo to Comedias, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618;—a witty address of the theatre to the readers.

[300]   Comedias, Tom. XIV., Madrid, 1620, Dedication of “El Verdadero Amante” to his son.

[301]   Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, Preface,—where he says, “Candid minds will hope, that, as I have lived long enough to write a thousand and seventy dramas, I may live long enough to print them.” The certificates of this volume are dated 1624-25.

[302]   In the “Índice de los Ingenios de Madrid,” appended to the “Para Todos” of Montalvan, printed in 1632, he says Lope had then published twenty volumes of plays, and that the number of those that had been acted, without reckoning autos, was fifteen hundred. Lope also himself puts it at fifteen hundred in the “Egloga á Claudio,” which, though not published till after his death, must have been written as early as 1632, since it speaks of the “Dorotea,” first published in that year, as still waiting for the light.

[303]   Fama Póstuma, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 49.

[304]   Art. Lupus Felix de Vega.

[305]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. pp. 3, 19.

[306]   “All studied out and written in five days.” Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 72. b.

[307]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. pp. 51, 52. How eagerly his plays were sought by the actors and received by the audiences of Madrid may be understood from the fact Lope mentions in the poem to his friend Claudio, that above a hundred were acted within twenty-four hours of the time when their composition was completed. Obras Sueltas, Tom. IX. p. 368.

[308]   As early as 1603, Lope maintains this doctrine in the Preface to his “Peregrino”;—it occurs frequently afterwards in different parts of his works, as, for instance, in the Prólogo to his “Castigo sin Venganza”; and he left it as a legacy in the “Egloga á Claudio,” printed after his death. The “Nueva Arte de Hacer Comedias,” however, is abundantly explicit on the subject in 1609, and, no doubt, expressed the deliberate purpose of its author, from which he seems never to have swerved during his whole dramatic career.

[309]   Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, 4to, f. 22, etc.

[310]   I know this play, “Dineros son Calidad,” only among the Comedias Sueltas of Lope; but it is no doubt his, as it is in Tom. XXIV. printed at Zaragoza in 1632, which contains different plays from a Tom. XXIV. printed at Zaragoza in 1641, which I have. There is yet a third Tom. XXIV., printed at Madrid in 1638. The internal evidence would, perhaps, be enough to prove its authorship.

[311]   Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, f. 277, etc., but often reprinted since under the title of “La Melindrosa.”

[312]   Comedias, Tom. XXV., Çaragoça, 1647, f. 1, etc.

[313]   Comedias, Tom. XI, Barcelona, 1618, f. 1, etc. The Preface to this volume is curious, on account of Lope’s complaints of the booksellers. He calls it “Prólogo del Teatro,” and makes the surreptitious publication of his plays an offence against the drama itself. He intimates that it was not very uncommon for one of his plays to be acted seventy times.

[314]   The “Azero de Madrid,” which was written as early as 1603, has often been printed separately, and is found in the regular collection, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, f. 27, etc.

[315]

Teo.

Lleua cordura y modestia;—

Cordura en andar de espacio;

Modestia en que solo veas

La misma tierra que pisas.

Bel.

Ya hago lo que me enseñas.

Teo.

Como miraste aquel hombre?

Bel.

No me dixiste que viera

Sola tierra? pues, dime,

Aquel hombre no es de tierra?

Teo.

Yo la que pisas te digo.

Bel.

La que piso va cubierta

De la saya y los chapines.

Teo.

Que palabras de donzella!

Por el siglo de tu madre,

Que yo te quite essas tretas!

Otra vez le miras?

Bel.

Yo?

Teo.

Luego no le hiziste señas?

Bel.

Fuy á caer, como me turbas

Con demandas y respuestas,

Y miré quien me tuuiesse.

Ris.

Cayó! llegad á tenerla!

Lis.

Perdone, vuessa merced,

El guante.

Teo.

Ay cosa como esta?

Bel.

Beso os las manos, Señor;

Que, si no es por vos, cayera.

Lis.

Cayera un ángel, Señora,

Y cayeran las estrellas,

A quien da mas lumbre el sol.

Teo.

Y yo cayera en la cuenta.

Yd, cauallero, con Dios!

Lis.

El os guarde, y me defienda

De condicion tan estraña!

Teo.

Ya cayste, y vás contenta,

De que te dieron la mano.

Bel.

Y tú lo irás de que tengas

Con que pudrirme seys dias.

Teo.

A que bueluas la cabeça?

Bel.

Pues no te parece que es

Advertencia muy discreta

Mirar adonde cahí,

Para que otra vez no buelua

A tropeçar en lo mismo?

Teo.

Ay, mala pascua te venga,

Y como entiendo tus mañas.

Otra vez, y dirás que esta

No miraste el mancebito?

Bel.

Es verdad.

Teo.

Y lo confiessas?

Bel.

Si me dió la mano allí,

No quieres que lo agradesca?

Teo.

Anda, que entraras en casa.

Bel.

O lo que harás de quimeras!

Comedias de Lope de Vega. Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, f. 27.

[316]   The facts relating to this play are taken partly from the play itself, (Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 68. b), and partly from Casiano Pellicer, Orígen y Progresos de la Comedia, Madrid, 1804, 12mo, Tom. I. pp. 174-181.

A similar entertainment had been given by his queen to Philip IV., on his birthday, in 1622, at the beautiful country-seat of Aranjuez, for which the unfortunate Count of Villamediana furnished the poetry, and Fontana, the distinguished Italian architect, erected a theatre of great magnificence. The drama, which was much like a masque of the English theatre, and was performed by the queen and her ladies, is in the Works of Count Villamediana (Çaragoça, 1629, 4to, pp. 1-55); and an account of the entertainment itself is given in Antonio de Mendoça (Obras, Lisboa, 1690, 4to, pp. 426-464);—all indicating the most wasteful luxury and extravagance.

[317]   Lope himself, in 1624, published a poem on the same subject, which fills thirty pages in the third volume of his Works; but a description of the frolics of St. John’s eve, better suited to illustrate this play of Lope, and much else on St. John’s eve in Spanish poetry, is in “Doblado’s Letters,” (1822, p. 309),—a work full of the most faithful sketches of Spanish character and manners.

[318]   Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 45, etc.

[319]

Camilo.

Señora, el Duque es muerto.

Diana.

Pues que se me da á mí? pero si es cierto,

Enterralde, Señores,

Que yo no soi el Cura.

Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635. f. 47.

[320]   Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 158, etc.

[321]   Ibid., f. 243, etc. It has often been printed separately; once in London.

[322]   Comedias, Tom. VIII., Madrid, 1617, and often printed separately; a play remarkable for its gayety and spirit.

[323]   Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, f. 187, etc.

[324]   Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, f. 96, etc.

[325]   Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 410.

[326]   Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, ff. 177, etc. It is entitled “Tragedia Famosa.”

[327]   It is worth while to compare Suetonius, (Books V. and VI.), and the “Crónica General,” (Parte I. c. 110 and 111), with the corresponding passages in the “Roma Abrasada.” In one passage of Act III., Lope uses a ballad, the first lines of which occur in the first act of the “Celestina.”

[328]   This scene is in the second act, and forms that part of the play where Nero enacts the gracioso.

[329]   Comedias, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 121, etc.

[330]

D. Leo.

Principe, qu’ en paz, y en guerra,

Te llama perfeto el mundo,

Oye una muger!

Rey.

Comiença.

D. Leo.

Del gobernador Fadrique

De Lara soy hija.

Rey.

Espera.

Perdona al no conocerte

La cortesia, que es deuda

Digna á tu padre y á ti.

D. Leo.

Essa es gala y gentileza

Digna de tu ingenio claro,

Que el mundo admira y celebra.—

For dos vezes á Castilla

Fue un fidalgo desta tierra,—

Que quiero encubrir el nombre,

Hasta que su engaño sepas;

Porque le quieres de modo,

Que temiera que mis quexas

No hallaran justicia en ti,

Si otro que tu mismo fueras.

Poso entrambas en mi casa;

Solicito la primera

Mi voluntad.

Rey.

Di adelante,

Y no te oprima verguença,

Que tambien con los juezes

Las personas se confiessan.

D. Leo.

Agradeci sus engaños.

Partiose; llore su ausencia;

Que las partes deste hidalgo,

Quando el se parte, ellas quedan.

Boluio otra vez, y boluio

Mas dulcemente Sirena.

Con la voz no vi el engaño.

Ay, Dios! Señor, si nacieran

Las mugeres sin oydos,

Ya que los hombres con lenguas.

Llamome al fin, como suele

A la perdiz la cautela

Del caçador engañoso,

Las redes entre la yerua.

Resistime; mas que importa,

Si la mayor fortaleza

No contradize el amor,

Que es hijo de las estrellas?

Una cedula me hizo

De ser mi marido, y esta

Deuio de ser con intento

De no conocer la deuda,

En estando en Portugal,

Como si el cielo no fuera

Cielo sobre todo el mundo,

Y su justicia suprema.

Al fin, Señor, el se fue,

Ufano con las banderas

De una muger ya rendida;

Que donde hay amor, no hay fuerça.

Despojos traxo á su patria,

Como si de Africa fueran,

De los Moros, que en Arcila

Venciste en tu edad primera,

O de los remotos mares,

De cuyas blancas arenas

Te traen negros esclauos

Tus armadas Portuguesas.

Nunca mas vi letra suya.

Lloro mi amor sus obsequias,

Hize el tumulo del llanto,

Y de amor las hachas muertas.

Caso el Principe tu hijo

Con nuestra Infanta, que sea

Para bien de entrambos reynos.

Vino mi padre con ella.

Vine con el á Lisboa,

Donde este fidalgo niega

Tan justas obligaciones,

Y de suerte me desprecia,

Que me ha de quitar la vida,

Si tu Alteza no remedia

De una muger la desdicha.

Rey.

Viue la cedula?

D. Leo.

Fuera

Error no auerla guardado.

Rey.

Yo conocere la letra,

Si es criado de mi casa.

D. Leo.

Señor, la cedula es esta.

Rey.

La firma dize, Don Juan

De Sosa! No lo creyera,

A no conocer la firma,

De su virtud y prudencia.

Comedias de Lope de Vega, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 143, 144.

This passage is near the end of the piece, and leads to the dénouement by one of those flowing narratives, like an Italian novella, to which Lope frequently resorts, when the intriguing fable of the drama has been carried far enough to fill up the three customary acts.

[331]   Comedias, Tom. IV., Madrid, 1614; and also in the Appendix to Ochoa’s “Teatro Escogido de Lope de Vega” (Paris, 1838, 8vo). Fernando de Zarate took some of the materials for his “Conquista de Mexico,” (Comedias escogidas, Tom. XXX., Madrid, 1668), such as the opening of Jornada II., from this play of Lope de Vega.

[332]

No permitas, Providencia,

Hacerme esta sinjusticia;

Pues los lleua la codicia

A hacer esta diligencia.

So color de religion,

Van á buscar plata y oro

Del encubierto tesoro.

El Nuevo Mundo, Jorn. I.

[333]

Una secreta deidad

A que lo intente me impele,

Diciéndome que es verdad,

Que en fin, que duerma ó que vele,

Persigue mi voluntad.

Que es esto que ha entrado en mí?

Quien me lleva ó mueve ansí?

Donde voy, donde camino?

Que derrota, que destino

Sigo, ó me conduce aquí?

Un hombre pobre, y aun roto,

Que ansí lo puedo decir,

Y que vive de piloto,

Quiere á este mundo añadir

Otro mundo tan remoto!

El Nuevo Mundo, Jorn. I.

[334]   The story was well known, from its peculiar horrors, though the events occurred in 1405,—more than two centuries before the date of the play. Lope, in the Preface to his version of it, says it was extant in Latin, French, German, Tuscan, and Castilian.

[335]   This play contains all the usual varieties of measure,—redondillas, tercetas, a sonnet, etc.; but especially, in the first act, a silva of beautiful fluency.

[336]   I possess the original MS., entirely in Lope’s handwriting, with many alterations, corrections, and interlineations by himself. It is prepared for the actors, and has the certificate to license it by Pedro de Vargas Machuca, a poet himself, and Lope’s friend, who was much employed to license plays for the theatre. He also figured at the “Justas Poéticas” of San Isidro, published by Lope in 1620 and 1622; and in the “Justa” in honor of the Vírgen del Pilar, published by Caceres in 1629; in neither of which, however, do his poems give proof of much talent, though there is no doubt of his popularity with his contemporaries. (Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. IV. p. 199.) At the top of each page in the MS. of Lope de Vega is a cross with the names or ciphers of “Jesus, Maria, Josephus, Christus”; and at the end, “Laus Deo et Mariæ Virgini,” with the date of its completion and the signature of the author. Whether Lope thought it possible to consecrate the gross immoralities of such a drama by religious symbols, I do not know; but if he did, it would not be inconsistent with his character or the spirit of his time. A cross was commonly put at the top of Spanish letters,—a practice alluded to in Lope’s “Perro del Hortelano,” (Jornada II.), and one that must have led often to similar incongruities.

[337]   Comedias, Tom. II., Madrid, 1609. Thrice, at least,—viz., in this play, in his “Fuente Ovejuna,” and in his “Peribañez,”—Lope has shown us commanders of the great military orders of his country in very odious colors, representing them as men of the most fierce pride and the grossest passions, like the Front-de-Bœuf of Ivanhoe.

[338]   Old copies of this play are excessively scarce, and I obtained, therefore, many years ago, a manuscript of it, from which it was reprinted twice in this country by Mr. F. Sales, in his “Obras Maestras Dramáticas” (Boston, 1828 and 1840); the last time with corrections, kindly furnished by Don A. Duran, of Madrid;—a curious fact in Spanish bibliography, and one that should be mentioned to the honor of Mr. Sales, whose various publications have done much to spread the love of Spanish literature in the United States, and to whom I am indebted for my first knowledge of it. The same play is well known on the modern Spanish stage, and has been reprinted, both at Madrid and London, with large alterations, under the title of “Sancho Ortis de las Roelas.” An excellent abstract of it, in its original state, and faithful translations of parts of it, are to be found in Lord Holland’s Life of Lope (Vol. I. pp. 155-200); out of which, and not out of the Spanish original, Baron Zedlitz composed “Der Stern von Sevilla”; a play by no means without merit, which was printed at Stuttgard in 1830, and has been often acted in different parts of Germany.

[339]   Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, ff. 91, etc., in which Lope has wisely followed the old monkish traditions, rather than either the “Crónica General,” (Parte II. c. 51), or the yet more sobered account of Mariana, Hist., Lib. VI. c. 12.

[340]   Comedias, Tom. XXV., Çaragoça, 1647, ff. 369, etc. It is called “Tragicomedia.”

[341]   The first edition of the first volume of Lope’s plays is that of Valladolid, 1604. See Brunet, etc.

[342]   The first two of these plays, which are not to be found in the collected dramatic works of Lope, have often been printed separately; but the last occurs, I believe, only in the first volume of the Comedias, (Valladolid, 1604, f. 98), and in the reprints of it. It makes free use of the old ballads of Durandarte and Belorma.

[343]   The “Siete Infantes de Lara” is in the Comedias, Tom. V., Madrid, 1615; and the “Bastardo Mudarra” is in Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641.

[344]   Thus, the attractive story of “El Mejor Alcalde el Rey” is, as he himself tells us at the conclusion, taken from the fourth part of the “Crónica General.”

[345]   “El Gran Duque de Muscovia,” Comedias, Tom. VII., Madrid, 1617.

[346]   “Arauco Domado,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629. The scene is laid about 1560; but the play is intended as a compliment to the living son of the conqueror. In the Dedication to him, Lope asserts it to be a true history; but there is, of course, much invention mingled with it, especially in the parts that do honor to the Spaniards. Among its personages is the author of the “Araucana,” Alonso de Ercilla, who comes upon the stage beating a drum. Another and earlier play of Lope may be compared with the “Arauco”; I mean “Los Guanches de Tenerife” (Comedias, Tom. X., Madrid, 1620, f. 128). It is on the similar subject of the conquest of the Canary Islands, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and, as in the “Arauco Domado,” the natives occupy much of the canvas.

[347]   “La Santa Liga,” Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621.

[348]   “El Valiente Cespedes,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629. This notice is specially given to the reader by Lope, out of tenderness to the reputation of Doña María de Cespedes, who does not appear in the play with all the dignity which those who, in Lope’s time, claimed to be descended from her might exact at his hands.

[349]   In “Roma Abrasada,” Acto II. f. 89, already noticed, ante, p. 193.

[350]   Jornada II. of “Exemplo Mayor de la Desdicha, y Capitan Belisario”; not in the collection of Lope’s plays, and though often printed separately as his, and inserted as such on Lord Holland’s list, it is published in the old and curious collection entitled “Comedias de Diferentes Autores,” (4to, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1633), as the work of Montalvan, both he and Lope being then alive.

[351]   “Contra Valor no hay Desdicha.” Like the last, it has been often reprinted. It begins with the romantic account of Cyrus’s exposure to death, in consequence of his grandfather’s dream, and ends with a battle and his victory over Astyages and all his enemies.

[352]   We occasionally meet with the phrase comedias de ruido; but it does not mean a class of plays separated from the others by different rules of composition. It refers to the machinery used in their exhibition; so that comedias de capa y espada, and especially comedias de santos, which often demanded a large apparatus, were not unfrequently comedias de ruido. In the same way, comedias de apariencias were plays demanding much scenery and scene-shifting.

[353]   “La Moza de Cantaro” and “La Esclava de su Galan” have continued to be favorites down to our own times. The first was printed at London, not many years ago, and the last at Paris, in Ochoa’s collection, 1838, 8vo, and at Bielefeld, in that of Schütz, 1840, 8vo.

[354]   Comedias, Tom. VI., Madrid, 1615, ff. 101, etc. It may be worth notice, that the character of Mendo is like that of Camacho in the Second Part of Don Quixote, which was first printed in the same year, 1615. The resemblance between the two, however, is not very strong, and I dare say is wholly accidental.

[355]

El que nacio para humilde

Mal puede ser cauallero.

Mi padre quiere morir,

Leonardo, como nacio.

Carbonero me engendró;

Labrador quiero morir.

Y al fin es un grado mas,

Aya quien are y quien caue.

Siempre el vaso al licor sabe.

Comedias, Tom. VI, Madrid, 1615, f. 117.

[356]   There is in these passages something of the euphuistical style then in favor, under the name of the estilo culto, with which Lope sometimes humored the more fashionable portions of his audience, though on other occasions he bore a decided testimony against it.

[357]   This play, I think, gave the hint to Calderon for his “Alcalde de Zalamea,” in which the character of Pedro Crespo, the peasant, is drawn with more than his accustomed distinctness. It is the last piece in the common collection of Calderon’s Comedias, and nearly all its characters are happily touched.

[358]   This is among the more curious of the old popular Spanish tales. N. Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 9) assigns no age to its author, and no date to the published story. Denis, in his “Chroniques de l’Espagne,” etc., (Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 285) gives no additional light, but, in one of his notes, treats its ideas on natural history as those of the moyen âge. It seems, however, from internal evidence, to have been composed after the fall of Granada. Brunet (Table, No. 17,572) notices an edition of it in 1607. The copy I use is of 1726, showing that it was in favor in the eighteenth century; and I possess another printed for popular circulation about 1845. We find early allusions to the Donzella Teodor, as a well-known personage; for example, in the “Modest Man at Court” of Tirso de Molina, where one of the characters, speaking of a lady he admires, cries out, “Que Donzella Teodor!” Cigarrales de Toledo, Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 158.

[359]   The popular English story of “Fryer Bacon” hardly goes back farther than to the end of the sixteenth century, though some of its materials may be traced to the “Gesta Romanorum.” Robert Greene’s play on it was printed in 1594. Both may be considered as running parallel with the story and play of the “Donzella Teodor,” so as to be read with advantage when comparing the Spanish drama with the English.

[360]   Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 27, etc.

[361]   Comedias, Tom. XXV., Çaragoça, 1647, ff. 231, etc.

[362]   These passages are much indebted to the “Trato de Argel” of Cervantes.

[363]   See, passim, Haedo, “Historia de Argel” (Madrid, 1612, folio). He reckons the number of Christian captives, chiefly Spaniards, in Algiers, at twenty-five thousand.

[364]   Lope, Obras Sueltas, Tom. III. p. 377. I am much disposed to think the play referred to as acted in the prisons of Algiers is Lope’s own moral play of the “Marriage of the Soul to Divine Love,” in the second book of the “Peregrino en su Patria.”

[365]   The passages in which Cervantes occurs are on ff. 245, 251, and especially 262 and 277, Comedias, Tom. XXV.

[366]   The fusion of the three classes may be seen at a glance in Lope’s fine play, “El Mejor Alcalde el Rey,” (Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635), founded on a passage in the fourth part of the “General Chronicle” (ed. 1604, f. 327). The hero and heroine belong to the condition of peasants; the person who makes the mischief is their liege lord; and, from the end of the second act, the king and one or two of the principal persons about the court play leading parts. On the whole, it ranks technically with the comedias heróicas; and yet the best and most important scenes are those relating to common life, while others of no little consequence belong to the class of capa y espada.

[367]   How the Spanish theatre, as it existed in the time of Philip IV., ought to have been regarded may be judged by the following remarks on such of its plays as continued to be represented at the end of the eighteenth century, read in 1796 to the Spanish Academy of History, by Jovellanos,—a personage who will be noticed when we reach the period during which he lived.

“As for myself,” says that wise and faithful magistrate, “I am persuaded there can be found no proof so decisive of the degradation of our taste as the cool indifference with which we tolerate the representation of dramas, in which modesty, the gentler affections, good faith, decency, and all the virtues and principles belonging to a sound morality, are openly trampled under foot. Do men believe that the innocence of childhood and the fervor of youth, that an idle and dainty nobility and an ignorant populace, can witness without injury such examples of effrontery and grossness, of an insolent and absurd affectation of honor, of contempt of justice and the laws, and of public and private duty, represented on the stage in the most lively colors, and rendered attractive by the enchantment of scenic illusions and the graces of music and verse? Let us, then, honestly confess the truth. Such a theatre is a public nuisance, and the government has no just alternative but to reform it or suppress it altogether.” Memorias de la Acad., Tom. V. p. 397.

Elsewhere, in the same excellent discourse, its author shows that he was by no means insensible to the poetical merits of the old theatre, whose moral influences he deprecated.

“I shall always be the first,” he says, “to confess its inimitable beauties; the freshness of its inventions, the charm of its style, the flowing naturalness of its dialogue, the marvellous ingenuity of its plots, the ease with which every thing is at last explained and adjusted; the brilliant interest, the humor, the wit, that mark every step as we advance;—but what matters all this, if this same drama, regarded in the light of truth and wisdom, is infected with vices and corruptions that can be tolerated neither by a sound state of morals nor by a wise public policy?” Ibid., p. 413.

[368]   C. Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, Madrid, 1804, 12mo, Tom. I. pp. 142-148. Plays were prohibited in Barcelona in 1591 by the bishop; but the prohibition was not long respected, and in 1597 was renewed with increased earnestness. Bisbe y Vidal, Tratado de las Comedias, Barcelona, 1618, 12mo, f. 94;—a curious book, attacking the Spanish theatre with more discretion than any other old treatise against it that I have read, but not with much effect. Its author would have all plays carefully examined and expurgated before they were licensed, and then would permit them to be performed, not by professional actors, but by persons belonging to the place where the representation was to occur, and known as respectable men and decent youths; for, he adds, “when this was done for hundreds of years, none of those strange vices were committed that are the consequence of our present modes.” (f. 106.) Bisbe y Vidal is a pseudonyme for Juan Ferrer, the head of a large congregation of devout men at Barcelona, and a person who was so much scandalized at the state of the theatre in his time, that he published this attack on it for the benefit of the brotherhood whose spiritual leader he was. (Torres y Amat, Biblioteca, Art. Ferrer.) It is encumbered with theological learning; but less so than other similar works of the time.

[369]   Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, ff. 110, etc. Such plays were often acted at Christmas, and went under the name of Nacimientos;—a relique of the old dramas mentioned in the “Partidas,” and written in various forms after the time of Juan de la Enzina and Gil Vicente. They seem, from hints in the “Viage” of Roxas, 1602, and elsewhere, to have been acted in private houses, in the churches, on the public stage, and in the streets, as they happened to be asked for. They were not exactly autos, but very like them, as may be seen from the “Nacimiento de Christo” by Lope de Vega, (in a curious volume entitled “Navidad y Corpus Christi Festejados,” Madrid, 1664, 4to, f. 346),—a drama quite different from this one, though bearing the same name; and quite different from another Nacimiento de Christo, in the same volume, (f. 93), attributed to Lope, and called “Auto del Nacimiento de Christo Nuestro Señor.” There are besides, in this volume, Nacimientos attributed to Cubillo, (f. 375), and Valdivielso, f. 369.

[370]

Adan.

Aqui, Reyna, en esta alfõbra

De yerua y flores te assienta.

Inoc.

Esso á la fe me contenta.

Reyna y Señora la nombra.

Gra.

Pues no ves que es su muger,

Carne de su carne y hueso

De sus huesos?

Inoc.

Y aũ por esso,

Porque es como ser su ser.

Lindos requiebros se dizen.

Gra.

Dos en una carne son.

Inoc.

Dure mil años la union,

Y en esta paz se eternizen.

Gra.

Por la Reyna dexará

El Rey a su padre y madre.

Inoc.

Ninguno nació con padre,

Poco en dexarlos hará;

Y á la fe, Señor Adan,

Que aunque de Gracia vizarro,

Que los Principes del barro

Notable pena me dan.

Brauo artificio tenia

Vuestro soberano dueño,

Quãdo un mũdo aunq̄ pequeño

Hizo de barro en un dia.

Gra.

Quiẽ los dos mũdos mayores

Pudo hacer con su palabra,

Que mucho que rompa y abra

En la tierra estas labores.

No ves las lamparas bellas,

Que de los cielos colgó?

Inoc.

Como de flores sembró

La tierra, el cielo de estrellas.

Comedias de Lope de Vega. Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, f. 111.

[371]

Baxa esclareciendo el ayre

Con exercitos de estrellas.

[372]

Gracia santa, ya los veo.

Voy á hazer que aquesta noche,

Aunque lo defienda el yelo,

Borden la escarcha las flores,

Salgan los pimpollos tiernos

De las encogidas ramas,

Y de los montes soberbios

Bajen los arroyos mansos

Liquido cristal vertiendo.

Hare que las fuentes manen

Candida leche, y los fresnos

Pura miel, diluvios dulces,

Que aneguen nuestros deseos.

Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, f. 116.

[373]   It is in the twenty-fourth volume of the Comedias of Lope, Madrid, 1632, and is one of a very few of his religious plays that have been occasionally reprinted.

[374]   “Historia de Tobias,” Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621, ff. 231, etc.

[375]   “La Hermosa Ester,” Ibid. ff. 151, etc.

[376]   “El Robo de Dina,” Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, ff. 118, etc. To this may be added a better one, in Tom. XXII., Madrid, 1635, “Los Trabajos de Jacob,” on the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren.

[377]   The underplot is slightly connected with the main story of Esther, by a proclamation of King Ahasuerus, calling before him all the fair maidens of his empire, which, coming to the ears of Silena, the shepherdess, she insists upon leaving her lover, Selvagio, and trying the fortune of her beauty at court. She fails, and on her return is rejected by Selvagio, but still maintains her coquettish spirit to the last, and goes off saying or singing, as gayly as if it were part of an old ballad,—

For the vulture that flies apart,

I left my little bird’s nest;

But still I can soften his heart,

And soothe down his pride to rest.

The best parts of the play are the more religious; like Esther’s prayers in the first and last acts, and the ballad sung at the triumphant festival when Ahasuerus yields to her beauty; but the whole, like many other plays of the same sort, is intended, under the disguise of a sacred subject, to serve the purposes of the secular theatre.

Perhaps one of the most amusing instances of incongruity in Lope, and their number is not few, is to be found in the first jornada of the “Trabajos de Jacob,” where Joseph, at the moment he escapes from Potiphar’s wife, leaving his cloak in her possession, says in soliloquy,—

So mayest thou, woman-like, upon my cloak

Thy vengeance wreak, as the bull wreaks his wrath

Upon the cloak before him played; the man

Meanwhile escaping safe.

Y assi haras en essa capa,

Con venganza de muger,

Lo que el toro suele hacer,

Del hombre que se escapa.

Yet, absurd as the passage is for its incongruity, it may have been loudly applauded by an audience that thought much more of bull-fights than of the just rules of the drama.

[378]   “El Cardenal de Belen,” Comedias, Tom. XIII., Madrid, 1620.

[379]   This play is not in the collection of Lope’s Comedias, but it is in Lord Holland’s list. My copy of it is an old one, without date, printed for popular use at Valladolid.

[380]   Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, ff. 91, etc.

[381]   “Bautismo del Príncipe de Marruecos,” in which there are nearly sixty personages. Comedias, Tom. XI., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 269, etc. C. Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, Tom. I. p. 86.

[382]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 153.

[383]   “San Nicolas de Tolentino,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, ff. 167, etc. Each act, as is not uncommon in the old Spanish theatre, is a sort of separate play, with its separate list of personages prefixed. The first has twenty-one; among which are God, the Madonna, History, Mercy, Justice, Satan, etc. It opens with a masquerading scene in a public square, of no little spirit; immediately after which we have a scene in heaven, containing the Divine judgment on the soul of one who had died in mortal sin; then another spirited scene, in a public square, among loungers, with a sermon from a fervent, fanatical monk; and afterwards, successive scenes between Nicholas, who has been moved by this sermon to enter a convent, and his family, who consent to his purpose with reluctance; the whole ending with a dialogue of the rudest humor between Nicholas’s servant, who is the buffoon of the piece, and a servant-maid, to whom he was engaged to be married, but whom he now abandons, determined to follow his master into a religious seclusion, which, at the same time, he is making ridiculous by his jests and parodies. This is the first act. The other two acts are such as might be anticipated from it.

[384]   This is not either of the plays ordered by the city of Madrid, to be acted in the open air in 1622, in honor of the canonization of San Isidro, and found in the twelfth volume of Lope’s Obras Sueltas; though, on a comparison with these last, it will be seen that it was used in their composition. It, in fact, was printed five years earlier, in the seventh volume of Lope’s Comedias, Madrid, 1617, and continued long in favor, for it is reprinted in Parte XXVIII. of “Comedias Escogidas de los Mejores Ingenios,” Madrid, 1667, 4to.

[385]   A spirited ballad or popular song is sung and danced at the young Saint’s wedding, beginning,—

Al villano se lo dan

La cebolla con el pan.

Mira que el tosco villano,

Quando quiera alborear,

Salga con su par de bueyes

Y su arado otro que tal.

Le dan pan, le dan cebolla,

Y vino tambien le dan, etc.

Comedias, Tom. XXVIII. 1667, p. 54.

[386]

Rio verde, rio verde,

Mas negro vas que la tinta

De sangre de los Christianos,

Que no de la Moreria.

p. 60.

[387]   How far these plays were felt to be religious by the crowds who witnessed them may be seen in a thousand ways; among the rest, by the fact mentioned by Madame d’Aulnoy, in 1679, that, when St. Antony, on the stage, repeated his Confiteor, the audience all fell on their knees, smote their breasts heavily, and cried out, Meâ culpâ. Voyage d’Espagne à la Haye, 1693, 18mo, Tom. I. p. 56.

[388]   Auto was originally a forensic term, from the Latin actus, and meant a decree or a judgment of a court. Afterwards it was applied to these religious dramas, which were called Autos sacramentales or Autos del Corpus Christi, and to the autos de fé of the Inquisition; in both cases, because they were considered solemn religious acts. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana, ad verb. Auto.

[389]   Great splendor was used, from the earliest times down to the present century, in the processions of the Corpus Christi throughout Spain; as may be judged from the accounts of them in Valencia, Seville, and Toledo, in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 167; 1840, p. 187; and 1841, p. 177. In those of Toledo, there is an intimation that Lope de Rueda was employed in the dramatic entertainments connected with them in 1561; and that Alonso Cisneros, Cristóbal Navarro, and other known writers for the rude popular stage of that time, were his successors;—all serving to introduce Lope and Calderon.

[390]   Pellicer, notes, D. Quixote, Tom. IV. pp. 105, 106, and Covarrubias, ut supra, ad verb. Tarasca. The populace at Toledo called the woman on the Tarasca, Anne Boleyn. Sem. Pint., 1841, p. 177.

[391]   The most lively description I have seen of this procession is contained in the loa to Lope’s first fiesta and auto (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVIII. pp. 1-7). Another description, to suit the festival as it was got up about 1655-65, will be found when we come to Calderon. It is given here as it occurred in the period of Lope’s success; and a fancy drawing of the procession, as it may have appeared in 1623, is to be found in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1846, p. 185. But Lope’s loa is the best authority.

[392]   A good idea of the contents of the carro may be found in the description of the one met by Don Quixote, (Parte II. c. 11), as he was returning from Toboso.

[393]   Montalvan, in his “Fama Póstuma.”

[394]   Preface of Joseph Ortis de Villena, prefixed to the Autos in Tom. XVIII. of the Obras Sueltas. They were not printed till 1644, nine years after Lope’s death, and then they appeared at Zaragoza. One other auto, attributed to Lope, “El Tirano Castigado,” occurs in a curious volume, entitled “Navidad y Corpus Christi Festejados,” collected by Isidro de Robles, and already referred to.

[395]   The manuscript collection referred to in the text was acquired by the National Library at Madrid in 1844. It fills 468 leaves in folio, and contains ninety-five dramatic pieces. All of them are anonymous, except one, which is said to be by Maestro Ferruz, and is on the subject of Cain and Abel; and all but one seem to be on religious subjects. This last is called “Entremes de las Esteras,” and is the only one bearing that title, The rest are called Coloquios, Farsas, and Autos; nearly all being called Autos, but some of them Farsas del Sacramento, which seems to have been regarded as synonymous. One only is dated. It is called “Auto de la Resurreccion de Christo,” and is licensed to be acted March 28, 1568. Two have been published in the Museo Literario, 1844, by Don Eugenio de Tapia, of the Royal Library, Madrid, one of the most eminent Spanish scholars and writers of this century. The first, entitled “Auto de los Desposorios de Moisen,” is a very slight performance, and, except the Prologue or Argument, is in prose. The other, called “Auto de la Residencia del Hombre,” is no better, but is all in verse. In a subsequent number, Don Eugenio publishes a complete list of the titles, with the figuras or personages that appear in each. It is much to be desired that all the contents of this MS. should be properly edited. Meanwhile, we know that saynetes were sometimes interposed between different parts of the performances; that allegorical personages were abundant; and that the Bobo or Fool constantly recurs. Some of them were probably earlier than the time of Lope de Vega; perhaps as early as the time of Lope de Rueda, who, as I have already said in note 38 to this chapter, prepared autos of some kind for the city of Toledo, in 1561. But the language and versification of the two pieces that have been printed, and the general air of the fictions and allegories of the rest, so far as we can gather them from what has been published, indicate a period nearly or quite as late as that of Lope de Vega.

[396]   This is the first of the loas in the volume, and, on the whole, the best.

[397]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVIII. p. 367.

[398]   Ibid., p. 107.

[399]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVIII. p. 8. “Entremes del Letrado.”

[400]   Ibid., p. 114. “Entremes del Poeta.”

[401]   Ibid., p. 168. “El Robo de Helena.”

[402]   Ibid., p. 373. “Muestra de los Carros.”

[403]   It is the last in the collection, and, as to its poetry, one of the best of the twelve, if not the very best.

[404]   The direction to the actors is,—“Salen Adan y Eva vestidos de Franceses muy galanes.”

[405]   See Historia del Emperador Cárlos Magno, Cap. 26, 30, etc.

[406]   The giant says to Adam, referring to the temptation:—

Yerros Adan por amores

Dignos son de perdonar, etc.;

which is out of the beautiful and well-known old ballad of the “Conde Claros,” beginning “Pésame de vos, el Conde,” which has been already noticed, ante, Vol. I. p. 121. It must have been perfectly familiar to many persons in Lope’s audience, and how the allusion to it could have produced any other than an irreverent effect I know not.

[407]   The address of the music, “Si dormis, Príncipe mio,” refers to the ballads about those whose lady-loves had been carried captive among the Moors.

[408]   “La Siega,” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVIII. p. 328), of which there is an excellent translation in Dohrn’s Spanische Dramen, Berlin, 1841, 8vo, Tom. I.

[409]   “La Vuelta de Egypto,” Obras, Tom. XVIII. p. 435.

[410]   “El Pastor Lobo y Cabaña Celestial,” Ibid., p. 381.

[411]   Primera Parte de Entremeses, “Entremes Primero de Melisendra,” Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, 4to, ff. 333, etc. It is founded on the fine old ballads of the Romancero of 1550-1555, “Asentado está Gayferos,” etc.; the same out of which the puppet-show man made his exhibition at the inn before Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 26.

[412]   Comedias, Valladolid, 1604, Tom. I. p. 337.

[413]   All three of these pieces are in the same volume.

[414]   “Lope de Rueda,” says Lope de Vega, “was an example of these precepts in Spain; for from him has come down the custom of calling the old plays Entremeses.” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 407.) A single scene taken out and used in this way as an entremes was called a Paso or “passage.” We have noted such by Lope de Rueda, etc. See ante, pp. 16, 22.

[415]   Among the imitators of Juan de la Enzina should be noted Lucas Fernandez, a native of Salamanca, who published in that city a thin folio volume, in 1514, entitled “Farsas y Eglogas al Modo y Estilo Pastoril y Castellano.” Judged by their titles, they are quite in the manner and style of the eclogues and farces of his predecessor; but one of them is called a Comedia, two others are called Farsa ó quasi Comedia, and another Auto ó Farsa. There are but six in all. I have never seen the book; but the notices I have found of its contents show that it is undoubtedly an imitation of the dramatic attempts of its author’s countryman, and that it is probably one of little poetical merit.

[416]   Obras, Tom. I. p. 225.

[417]   Obras, Tom. XVI., passim, and XIX. p. 278.

[418]   For these, see Obras, Tom. III. p. 463; Tom. X. p. 193; Tom. IV. p. 430; and Tom. X. p. 362. The last passage contains nearly all we know about his son, Lope Felix.

[419]   See the scene in the Second Part of Don Quixote, where some gentlemen and ladies, for their own entertainment in the country, were about to represent the eclogues of Garcilasso and Camoens. In the same way, I think, the well-known eclogue which Lope dedicated to Antonio Duke of Alva, (Obras, IV. p. 295), that to Amaryllis, which was the longest he ever wrote, (Tom. X. p. 147), that for the Prince of Esquilache, (Tom. I. p. 352), and most of those in the “Arcadia,” (Tom. VI.), were acted, and written in order to be acted. Why the poem to his friend Claudio, (Tom. IX. p. 355), which is in fact an account of some passages in his own life, with nothing pastoral in its tone or form, is called “an eclogue,” I do not know; nor will I undertake to assign to any particular class the “Military Dialogue in Honor of the Marquis of Espinola,” (Tom. X. p. 337), though I think it is dramatic in its structure, and was probably represented, on some show occasion, before the Marquis himself.

[420]   This division can be traced back to a play of Francisco de Avendaño, 1553. L. F. Moratin, Obras, 1830, Tom. I. Parte I. p. 182.

[421]   “Except six,” says Lope, at the end of his “Arte Nuevo,” “all my four hundred and eighty-three plays have offended gravely against the rules [el arte].” See Montiano y Luyando, “Discurso sobre las Tragedias Españolas,” (Madrid, 1750, 12mo, p. 47), and Huerta, in the Preface to his “Teatro Hespañol,” for the difficulty of finding even these six.

[422]   Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias, Obras, Tom. IV. p. 406.

[423]   “El Primer Rey de Castilla,” Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, ff. 114, etc.

[424]   “El Bastardo Mudarra,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641.

[425]   “La Limpieza no Manchada,” Comedias, Tom. XIX., Madrid, 1623.

[426]   “El Nacimiento de Christo,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., ut supra.

[427]   It is the learned Theodora, a person represented as capable of confounding the knowing professors brought to try her, who declares Constantinople to be four thousand leagues from Madrid. La Donzella Teodor, end of Act II.

[428]   This extraordinary disembarkation takes place in the “Animal de Ungria” (Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 137, 138). One is naturally reminded of Shakspeare’s “Winter’s Tale”; but it is curious that the Duke de Luynes, a favorite minister of state to Louis XIII., made precisely the same mistake, at about the same time, to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, then (1619-21) ambassador in France. But Lope certainly knew better, and I doubt not Shakspeare did, however ignorant the French statesman may have been. Herbert’s Life, by himself, London, 1809, 8vo, p. 217.

[429]   See “San Isidro Labrador,” in Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXVIII., Madrid, 1667, f. 66.

[430]   “San Nicolas de Tolentino,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, f. 171.

[431]   “Arauco Domado,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629. After reading such absurdities, we wonder less that Cervantes, even though he committed not a few like them himself, should make the puppet-show man exclaim, “Are not a thousand plays represented now-a-days, full of a thousand improprieties and absurdities, which yet run their course successfully, and are heard, not only with applause, but with admiration?” D. Quixote, Parte II. c. 26.

[432]   “Tienen las novelas los mismos preceptos que las comedias, cuyo fin es haber dado su autor contento y gusto al pueblo, aunque se ahorque el arte.” Obras Sueltas, Tom. VIII. p. 70.

[433]   Arte Nuevo, Obras, Tom. IV. p. 412. From an autograph MS. of Lope, still extant, it appears that he sometimes wrote out his plays first in the form of pequeñas novelas. Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 19.

[434]   See the Dedication of the “Francesilla” to Juan Perez de Montalvan, in Comedias, Tom. XIII., Madrid, 1620, where we have the following words: “And note in passing that this is the first play in which was introduced the character of the jester, which has been so often repeated since. Rios, unique in all parts, played it, and is worthy of this record. I pray you to read it as a new thing; for when I wrote it, you were not born.” The gracioso was generally distinguished by his name on the Spanish stage, as he was afterwards on the French stage. Thus, Calderon often calls his gracioso Clarin, or Trumpet; as Molière called his Sganarelle. The simplé, who, as I have said, can be traced back to Enzina, and who was, no doubt, the same with the bobo, is mentioned as very successful, in 1596, by Lopez Pinciano, who, in his “Philosofía Antigua Poética,” (1596, p. 402), says, “They are characters that commonly amuse more than any other that appear in the plays.” The gracioso of Lope was, like the rest of his theatre, founded on what existed before his time; only the character itself was further developed, and received a new name. D. Quixote, Clemencin, Parte II. cap. 3, note.

[435]   The specimens of his bad taste in this particular occur but too frequently; e. g. in “El Cuerdo en su Casa” (Comedias, Tom. VI., Madrid, 1615, ff. 105, etc.); in the “Niña de Plata” (Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 125, etc.); in the “Cautivos de Argel” (Comedias, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1647, p. 241); and in other places. But in opposition to all this, see his deliberate condemnation of such euphuistical follies in his Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. pp. 459-482; and the jests at their expense in his “Amistad y Obligacion,” and his “Melindres de Belisa” (Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618).

[436]   Sonnets seem to have been a sort of choice morsels thrown in to please the over-refined portion of the audience. In general, only one or two occur in a play; but in the “Discreta Venganza” (Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629) there are five. In the “Palacios de Galiana” (Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, f. 256) there is a foolish sonnet with echoes, and another in the “Historia de Tobias” (Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621, f. 244). The sonnet in ridicule of sonnets, in the “Niña de Plata,” (Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, f. 124), is witty, and has been imitated in French and in English.

[437]   “El Sol Parado,” Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, pp. 218, 219. It reminds one of the much more beautiful serrana of the Marquis of Santillana, beginning “Moza tan formosa,” ante, Vol. I. p. 372.

[438]   “Pobreza no es Vileza,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, f. 61.

[439]   He has even ventured to take the beautiful and familiar ballad, “Sale la Estrella de Venus,”—which is in the Romancero General, the “Guerras de Granada,” and many other places,—and work it up into a dialogue. “El Sol Parado,” Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, ff. 223-224.

[440]   In the same way, he seizes upon the old ballad, “Reduan bien se te acuerda,” and uses it in the “Embidia de la Nobleza,” Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, f. 192.

[441]   For example, the ballad in the Romancero of 1555, beginning “Despues que el Rey Rodrigo,” at the end of Jornada II., in “El Ultimo Godo,” Comedias, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1647.

[442]   Compare “El Bastardo Mudarra” (Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, ff. 75, 76) with the ballads, “Ruy Velasquez de Lara,” and “Llegados son los Infantes”; and, in the same play, the dialogue between Mudarra and his mother, (f. 83), with the ballad, “Sentados á un ajedrez.”

[443]   “El Casamiento en la Muerte,” (Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, ff. 198, etc.), in which the following well-known old ballads are freely used, viz.:—“O Belerma! O Belerma!” “No tiene heredero alguno”; “Al pie de un túmulo negro”; “Bañando está las prisiones”; and others.

[444]   It is in the last chapter of the “Guerras Civiles de Granada”; but Lope has given it, with a slight change in the phraseology, as follows:—

Cercada está Sancta Fé

Con mucho lienço encerado;

Y al rededor muchas tiendas

De terciopelo y damasco.

It occurs in many collections of ballads, and is founded on the fact, that a sort of village of rich tents was established near Granada, which, after an accidental conflagration, was turned into a town, that still exists, within whose walls were signed both the commission of Columbus to seek the New World, and the capitulation of Granada. The imitation of this ballad by Lope is in his “Cerco de Santa Fé,” Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604, f. 69.

[445]   He says this apparently as a kind of apology to foreigners, in the Preface to the “Peregrino en su Patria,” 1603, where he gives a list of his plays to that date.

[446]   See the curious facts collected on this subject in Pellicer’s note to Don Quixote, ed. 1798, Parte II., Tom. I. pp. 109-111.

[447]   This is stated by the well-known Italian poet, Marini, in his Eulogy on Lope, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. p. 19.

[448]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. VIII. pp. 94-96, and Pellicer’s note to Don Quixote, Parte I., Tom. III. p. 93.

[449]   This is said in a discourse preached over his mortal remains in St. Sebastian’s, at his funeral. Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX. p. 329.

[450]   “Frey Lope Felix de Vega, whose name has become universally a proverb for whatever is good,” says Quevedo, in his Aprobacion to “Tomé de Burguillos.” (Obras Sueltas de Lope, Tom. XIX. p. xix.) “It became a common proverb to praise a good thing by calling it a Lope; so that jewels, diamonds, pictures, etc., were raised into esteem by calling them his,” says Montalvan. (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 53.) Cervantes intimates the same thing in his entremes, “La Guarda Cuidadosa.”

[451]   His complaints on the subject begin as early as 1603, before he had published any of his plays himself, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. V. p. xvii.), and are renewed in the “Egloga á Claudio,” (Ib., Tom. IX. p. 369), printed after his death; besides which, they occur in the Prefaces to his Comedias, (Tom. IX., XI., XV., XXI., and elsewhere), as a matter that seems to have been always troubling him.

[452]   Montalvan sets the price of each play at five hundred reals, and says that in this way Lope received, during his life, eighty thousand ducats. Obras, Tom. XX. p. 47.

[453]   The Duke of Sessa alone, besides many other benefactions, gave Lope, at different times, twenty-four thousand ducats, and a sinecure of three hundred more per annum. Ut supra.

[454]   Libro XX., last three stanzas.

[455]   “I have a daughter, and am old,” he says. “The Muses give me honor, but not income,” etc. (Obras, Tom. XVII. p. 401.) From his will, an abstract of which may be found in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 19, it appears that Philip IV. promised an office to the person who should marry this daughter, and failed to keep his word.

[456]   Like some other distinguished authors, however, he was inclined to undervalue what he did most happily, and to prefer what is least worthy of preference. Thus, in the Preface to his Comedias, (Vol. XV., Madrid, 1621), he shows that he preferred his longer poems to his plays, which he says he holds but “as the wild-flowers of his field, that grow up without care or culture.”

[457]   This might be inferred from the account in Montalvan’s “Fama Póstuma”; but Lope himself declares it distinctly in the “Egloga á Claudio,” where he says, “The printed part of my writings, though too much, is small, compared with what remains unpublished.” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. IX. p. 369.) Indeed, we know we have hardly a fourth part of his full-length plays; only twelve autos out of four hundred; only twenty or thirty entremeses out of the “infinite number” ascribed to him.

[458]   Bisbe y Vidal, “Tratado de Comedias,” (1618, f. 102), speaks of the “glosses which the actors make extempore upon lines given to them on the stage.”

[459]   Viardot, Études sur la Littérature en Espagne, Paris, 1835, 8vo, p. 339.

[460]   Pellicer, Biblioteca de Traductores Españoles, (Madrid, 1778, 4to, Tom. I. pp. 89-91), in which there is a curious narrative by Diego, Duke of Estrada, giving an account of one of these entertainments, (a burlesque play on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice), performed before the viceroy and his court.

[461]   Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. pp. 51, 52.

[462]   A diffuse life of Quevedo was published at Madrid in 1663, by Don Pablo Antonio de Tarsia, a Neapolitan, and is inserted in the tenth volume of the best edition of Quevedo’s Works,—that of Sancha, Madrid, 1791-94, 11 tom., 8vo. A shorter, and, on the whole, a more satisfactory, life of him is to be found in Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. pp. 137-154.

[463]   In his “Grandes Anales de Quince Dias,” speaking of the powerful President Acevedo, he says, “I was unwelcome to him, because, coming myself from the mountains, I never flattered the ambition he had to make himself out to be above men to whom we, in our own homes, acknowledge no superiors.” Obras, Tom. XI. p. 63.

[464]   The first is the very curious paper entitled “Caida de su Privanza y Muerte del Conde Duque de Olivares,” in the Seminario Erudito (Madrid, 1787, 4to, Tom. III.); and the other is “Memorial de Don F. Quevedo contra el Conde Duque de Olivares,” in the same collection, Tom. XV.

[465]   This letter, often reprinted, is in Mayans y Siscar, “Cartas Morales,” etc., Valencia, 1773, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 151. Another letter to his friend Adan de la Parra, giving an account of his mode of life during his confinement, shows that he was extremely industrious. Indeed, industry was his main resource a large part of the time he was in San Márcos de Leon. Seminario Erudito, Tom. I. p. 65.

[466]   Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. IV. p. xxxi.

[467]   His nephew, in a Preface to the second volume of his uncle’s Poems, (published at Madrid, 1670, 4to), says that Quevedo died of two imposthumes on his chest, which were formed during his last imprisonment.

[468]   Obras, Tom. X. p. 45, and N. Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 463. A considerable amount of his miscellaneous works may be found in the Seminario Erudito, Tom. I., III., VI., and XV.

[469]   Besides these dramas, whose names are unknown to us, he wrote, in conjunction with Ant. Hurtado de Mendoza, and at the command of the Count Duke Olivares, who afterwards treated him so cruelly, a play called “Quien mas miente, medra mas,”—He that lies most, will rise most,—for the gorgeous entertainment that prodigal minister gave to Philip IV. on St. John’s eve, 1631. See the account of it in the notice of Lope de Vega, ante, p. 185, and post, p. 324, note 21.

[470]

Poderoso cavallero

Es Don Dinero, etc.

is in Pedro Espinosa, “Flores de Poetas Ilustres,” Madrid, 1605, 4to, f. 18.

[471]   “Not the twentieth part was saved of the verses which many persons knew to have been extant at the time of his death, and which, during our constant intercourse, I had countless times held in my hands,” says Gonzalez de Salas, in the Preface to the first part of Quevedo’s Poems, 1648.

[472]   Preface to Tom. VII. of Obras. His request on his death-bed, that nearly all his works, printed or manuscript, might be suppressed, is triumphantly recorded in the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 425.

[473]   “Los equívocos y las alusiones suyas,” says his editor, in 1648, “son tan frequentes y multiplicados, aquellos y estas, ansí en un solo verso y aun en una palabra, que es bien infalible que mucho número sin advertirse se haya de perder.” Obras, Tom. VII., Elogios, etc.

[474]   They are at the end of the seventh volume of the Obras, and also in Hidalgo, “Romances de Germania” (Madrid, 1779, 12mo, pp. 226-295). Of the lighter ballads in good Castilian, we may notice, especially, “Padre Adan, no lloreis duelos,” (Tom. VIII. p. 187), and “Dijo á la rana el mosquito,” Tom. VII. p. 514.

[475]   Obras, Tom. VII. pp. 192-200, and VIII. pp. 533-550. The last is somewhat coarse, though not so bad as its model in this respect.

[476]   See the cancion (Tom. VII. p. 323) beginning, “Pues quita al año Primavera el ceño”; also some of the poems in the “Erato” to the lady he calls Fili, who seems to have been more loved by him than any other.

[477]   Particularly in “The Dream,” (Tom. IX. p. 296), and in the “Hymn to the Stars,” p. 338.

[478]   There are several poems about cultismo, Obras, Tom. VIII. pp. 82, etc. The “Aguja de Navegar Cultos” is in Tom. I. p. 443; and immediately following it is the Catechism, whose whimsical title I have abridged somewhat freely.

[479]   Perhaps there is a little too much of the imitation of Petrarch and of the Italians in the Poems of the Bachiller de la Torre; but they are, I think, not only graceful and beautiful, but generally full of the national tone, and of a tender spirit, connected with a sincere love of nature and natural scenery. I would instance the ode, “Alexis que contraria,” in the edition of Velazquez (p. 17), and the truly Horatian ode (p. 44) beginning, “O tres y quatro veces venturosa,” with the description of the dawn of day, and the sonnet to Spring (p. 12). The first eclogue, too, and all the endechas, which are in the most flowing Adonian verse, should not be overlooked. Sometimes he has unrhymed lyrics, in the ancient measures, not always successful, but seldom without beauty.

[480]   “Poesías que publicó D. Francisco de Quevedo Villegas, Cavallero del Órden de Santiago, Señor de la Torre de Juan Abad, con el nombre del Bachiller Francisco de la Torre. Añadese en esta segunda edicion un Discurso, en que se descubre ser el verdadero autor el mismo D. Francisco de Quevedo, por D. Luis Joseph Velazquez,” etc. Madrid, 1753, 4to.

[481]   Quintana denies it in the Preface to his “Poesías Castellanas” (Madrid, 1807, 12mo, Tom. I. p. xxxix.). So does Fernandez (or Estala for him), in his Collection of “Poesías Castellanas” (Madrid, 1808, 12mo, Tom. IV. p. 40); and, what is of more significance, so does Wolf, in the Jahrbücher der Literatur, Wien, 1835, Tom. LXIX. p. 189. On the other side are Baena, in his Life of Quevedo; Sedano, in his “Parnaso Español”; Luzan, in his “Poética”; and Bouterwek, in his History. Martinez de la Rosa and Faber seem unable to decide. But none of them gives any reasons. I have in the text, and in the subsequent notes, stated the case as fully as seems needful, and have no doubt that Quevedo was the author, or that he knew and concealed the author.

[482]   We know, concerning the conclusion of Ercilla’s life, only that he died as early as 1595; thirty-six years before the publication of the Bachelor, and when Quevedo was only fifteen years old.

[483]   It is even doubtful who this Bachiller de la Torre of Boscan was. Velazquez (Pref., v.) thinks it was probably Alonso de la Torre, author of the “Vision Deleytable,” (circa 1465), of which we have spoken, Vol. I. p. 417; and Baena (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. IV. p. 169) thinks it may perhaps have been Pedro Diaz de la Torre, who died in 1504, one of the counsellors of Ferdinand and Isabella. But, in either case, the name does not correspond with that of Quevedo’s Bachiller Francisco de la Torre any better than the style, thoughts, and forms of the few poems which may be found in the Cancionero of 1573, at ff. 124-127, etc., do with those published by Quevedo.

[484]   He was exiled there in 1628, for six months, as well as imprisoned there in 1620. Obras, Tom. X. p. 88.

[485]   It is among the suspicious circumstances accompanying the first publication of the Bachiller de la Torre’s works, that one of the two persons who give the required Aprobaciones is Vander Hammen, who played the sort of trick upon the public of which Quevedo is accused; a vision he wrote being, to this day, printed as Quevedo’s own, in Quevedo’s works. The other person who gives an Aprobacion to the Bachiller de la Torre is Valdivielso, a critic of the seventeenth century, whose name often occurs in this way; whose authority on such points is small; and who does not say that he ever saw the manuscript or the Approbation of Ercilla. See, for Vander Hammen, post, p. 273.

[486]   These works, chiefly theological, metaphysical, and ascetic, fill more than six of the eleven octavo volumes that constitute Quevedo’s works in the edition of 1791-94, and belong to the class of didactic prose.

[487]   Watt, in his Bibliotheca, art. Quevedo, cites an edition of “El Gran Tacaño,” at Zaragoza, 1626; but I do not find it mentioned elsewhere. I know of none earlier than that of 1627. Since that time, it has appeared in the original in a great number of editions, both at home and abroad. Into Italian it was translated by P. Franco, as early as 1634; into French by Genest, the well-known translator of that period, as early as 1644; and into English, anonymously, as early as 1657. Many other versions have been made since;—the last, known to me, being one of Paris, 1843, 8vo, by A. Germond de Lavigne. His translation is made with spirit; but, besides that he has thrust into it passages from other works of Quevedo, and a story by Salas Barbadillo, he has made a multitude of petty additions, alterations, and omissions; some desirable, perhaps, from the indecency of the original, others not; and winds off the whole with a conclusion of his own, which savors of the sentimental and extravagant school of Victor Hugo. There is, also, a translation of it into English, in a collection of some of Quevedo’s works, printed at Edinburgh, in 3 vols., 8vo, 1798; and a German translation in Bertuch’s Magazin der Spanischen und Portug. Litteratur (Dessau, 1781, 8vo, Band II.). But neither of them is to be commended for its fidelity.

[488]   They are in Vols. I. and II. of the edition of his Works, Madrid, 1791, 8vo.

[489]   The “Cartas del Cavallero de la Tenaza” were first printed, I believe, in 1635; and there is a very good translation of them in Band I. of the Magazin of Bertuch, an active man of letters, the friend of Musäus, Wieland, and Goethe, who, by translations and in other ways, did much, between 1769 and 1790, to promote a love for Spanish literature in Germany.

[490]   I know of no edition of “La Fortuna con Seso” earlier than one I possess, printed at Zaragoza, 1650, 12mo; and as N. Antonio declares this satire to have been a posthumous work, I suppose there is none older. It is there said to be translated from the Latin of Rifroscrancot Viveque Vasgel Duacense; an imperfect anagram of Quevedo’s own name, Francisco Quevedo Villegas.

[491]   One of these Sueños is dated as early as 1608,—the “Zahurdas de Pluton”; but none, I think, was printed earlier than 1627; and all the six that are certainly by Quevedo were first printed together in a small collection of his satirical works that appeared at Barcelona, in 1635, entitled “Juguetes de la Fortuna.” They were translated into French by Genest, and printed in 1641. Into English they were very freely rendered by Sir Roger L’Estrange, and published in 1668 with such success, that the tenth edition of them was printed at London in 1708, 8vo, and I believe there was yet one more. This is the basis of the translations of the Visions found in Quevedo’s Works, Edinburgh, 1798, Vol. I., and in Roscoe’s Novelists, 1832, Vol. II. All the translations I have seen are bad. The best is that of L’Estrange, or at least the most spirited; but still L’Estrange is not always faithful when he knew the meaning, and he is sometimes unfaithful from ignorance. Indeed, the great popularity of his translations was probably owing, in some degree, to the additions he boldly made to his text, and the frequent accommodations he hazarded of its jests to the scandal and taste of his times by allusions entirely English and local.

[492]   The six unquestioned Sueños are in Tom. I. of the Madrid edition of Quevedo, 1791. The “Casa de los Locos de Amor” is in Tom. II.; and as N. Antonio (Bib. Nov., I. 462, and II. 10) says Vander Hammen, a Spanish author of Flemish descent, told him that he wrote it himself, we are bound to take it from the proper list of Quevedo’s works.

[493]   Obras, Tom. VII. p. 289.

[494]   A violent attack was made on Quevedo, ten years before his death, in a volume entitled “El Tribunal de la Justa Venganza,” printed at Valencia, 1635, 12mo, pp. 294, and said to be written by the Licenciado Arnaldo Franco-Furt; probably a pseudonyme. It is thrown into the form of a trial, before regular judges, of the satirical works of Quevedo then published; and, except when the religious prejudices of the author prevail over his judgment, is not more severe than Quevedo’s license merited. No honor, however, is done to his genius or his wit; and personal malice seems apparent in many parts of it.

In 1794, Sancha printed, at Madrid, a translation of Anacreon, with notes by Quevedo, making 160 pages, but not numbering them as a part of the eleventh volume, 8vo, of Quevedo’s Works, which he completed that year. They are more in the terse and classical manner of the Bachiller de la Torre than the same number of pages anywhere among Quevedo’s acknowledged works; but the translation is not very strict, and the spirit of the original is not so well caught as it is by Estévan Manuel de Villegas, whose “Eróticas” will be noticed hereafter. The version of Quevedo is dedicated to the Duke of Ossuna, his patron, Madrid, 1st April, 1609. Villegas did not publish till 1617; but it is not likely that he knew any thing of the labors of Quevedo.

[495]   Quintana, Historia de Madrid, 1630, folio, Lib. III., c. 24-26. Cabrera, Historia de Felipe II., Madrid, 1619, folio, Lib. V., c. 9; where he says Charles V. had intended to make Madrid his capital.

[496]   The “Comedia Jacobina” is found in a curious and rare volume of religious poetry, entitled “Libro de Poesía, Christiana, Moral, y Divina,” por el Doctor Frey Damian de Vegas (Toledo, 1590, 12mo, ff. 503). It contains a poem on the Immaculate Conception, long the turning-point of Spanish orthodoxy; a colloquy between the Soul, the Will, and the Understanding, which may have been represented; and a great amount of religious poetry, both lyric and didactic, much of it in the old Spanish measures, and much in the Italian, but none better than the mass of poor verse on such subjects then in favor.

[497]   It is ascertained that the Canon Tarrega lived at Valencia in 1591, and wrote eleven plays, two of which are known only by their titles. The rest were printed at Madrid in 1614, and again in 1616. Cervantes praises him in the Preface to his Comedias, 1615, among the early followers of Lope, for his discrecion é inumerables conceptos. It is evident from the notice of the “Enemiga Favorable,” by the wise canon in Don Quixote, that it was then regarded as the best of its author’s plays, as it has been ever since. Rodriguez, Biblioteca Valentina, Valencia, 1747, folio, p. 146. Ximeno, Escritores de Valencia, Valencia, 1747, Tom. I. p. 240. Fuster, Biblioteca Valentina, Valencia, 1827, folio, Tom. I. p. 310. Don Quixote, Parte I., c. 48.

[498]   This farce, much like an entremes or saynete of modern times, is a quarrel between two lackeys for a damsel of their own condition, which ends with one of them being half drowned by the other in a public fountain. It winds up with a ballad older than itself; for it alludes to a street as being about to be constructed through Leganitos, while one of the personages in the farce speaks of the street as already there. The fountain is appropriately introduced, for Leganitos was famous for it. (See Cervantes, Ilustre Fregona, and D. Quixote, Parte II., c. 22, with the note of Pellicer.) Such little circumstances abound in the popular portions of the old Spanish drama, and added much to its effect at the time it appeared.

[499]   The “Enemiga Favorable” is divided into three jornadas called actos, and shows otherwise that it was constructed on the model of Lope’s dramas. But Tarrega wrote also at least one religious play, “The Foundation of the Order of Mercy.” It is the story of a great robber who becomes a great saint, and may have suggested to Calderon his “Devocion de la Cruz.”

[500]   Laurel de Apolo, (Madrid, 1630, 4to, f. 21), where Lope says, speaking of Tarrega, “Gaspar Aguilar competia con él en la dramática poesía.”

[501]

Dios me guarde de hombre

Que tan pronto se consuela,

Que lo mismo hará de mí.

Mercader Amante, Jorn. I.

Quieres ver que no eres hombre,

Pues el ser tuyo has perdido;

Y que de aquello que has sido,

No te queda sino el nombre?

Haz luego un alarde aquí

De tu perdida notoria;

Toma cuenta á tu memoria;

Pide á tí mismo por tí,

Verás que no eres aquel

A quien dí mi corazon.

Ibid., Jorn. II.

[502]   The accounts of Aguilar are found in Rodriguez, pp. 148, 149, and in Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 255, who, as is often the case, has done little but arrange in better order the materials collected by Rodriguez. Aguilar’s nine plays are in collections printed at Valencia in 1614 and 1616, mingled with the plays of other poets. A copy of the “Suerte sin Esperanza” which I possess, without date or paging, seems older.

[503]   In the note of Cerdá y Rico to the “Diana” of Gil Polo, 1802, pp. 515-519, is an account of this Academy, and a list of its members.

[504]   Rodriguez, p. 177; Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 305; Fuster, Tom. I. p. 235. The last is important on this subject.

[505]   Both these plays are in the first volume of his Comedias, printed in 1614; but I have the Don Quixote in a separate pamphlet, without paging or date, and with rude wood-cuts, such as belong to the oldest Spanish publications of the sort. The first time Don Quixote appears in it, the stage direction is, “Enter Don Quixote on Rozinante, dressed as he is described in his book.” The redondillas in this drama, regarded as mere verses, are excellent; e. g. Cardenio’s lamentations at the end of the first act:—

Donde me llevan los pies

Sin la vida? El seso pierdo;

Pero como seré cuerdo

Si fué traydor el Marques?

Que cordura, que concierto,

Tendré yo, si estoy sin mí?

Sin ser, sin alma y sin tí?

Ay, Lucinda, que me has muerto!—

and so on. Guerin de Bouscal, one of a considerable number of French dramatists (see Puybusque, Tom. II. p. 441) who resorted freely to Spanish sources between 1630 and 1650, brought this drama of Guillen on the French stage in 1638.

[506]   It is in the second volume of Guillen’s plays; but it is also in the “Flor de las Mejores Doce Comedias,” etc., Madrid, 1652.

[507]   This comedia de santo does not appear in the collection of Guillen’s plays; but my copy of it (Madrid, 1729) attributes it to him, and so does the Catalogue of Huerta; besides which, the internal evidence from its versification and manner is strong for its genuineness. The passages in which the lady speaks of Christ as her lover and spouse are, like all such passages in the old Spanish drama, offensive to Protestant ears.

[508]   Fr. Santos, “El Verdad en el Potro, y el Cid resuscitado,” (Madrid, 1686, 12mo), contains (pp. 9, 10, 51, 106, etc.) ballads on the Cid, as he says they were then sung in the streets by the blind beggars. The same or similar statements are made by Sarmiento, nearly a century later.

[509]

Diego.

No la ovejuela su pastor perdido,

Ni el leon que sus hijos le han quitado,

Balo quejosa, ni bramo ofendido,

Como yo por Rodrigo. Ay, hijo amado!

Voy abrazando sombras descompuesto

Entre la oscura noche que ha cerrado.

Díle la seña, y señaléle el puesto,

Donde acudiese, en sucediendo el caso.

Si me habrá sido inobediente en esto?

Pero no puede ser; mil penas paso!

Algun inconveniente le habrá hecho,

Mudando la opinion, torcer el paso.

Que helada sangre me rebienta el pecho!

Si es muerto, herido, ó preso? Ay, Cielo santo!

Y quantas cosas de pesar sospecho!

Que siento? es él? mas no meresco tanto.

Será que corresponden á mis males

Los ecos de mi voz y de mi llanto.

Pero entre aquellos secos pedregales

Vuelvo á oir el galope de un caballo.

De él se apea Rodrigo! hay dichas tales?

Sale Rodrigo.

Hijo?

Cid.

Padre?

Diego.

Es posible que me hallo

Entre tus brazos? Hijo, aliento tomo

Para en tus alabanzas empleallo.

Como tardaste tanto? pues de plomo

Te puso mi deseo; y pues veniste,

No he de cansarte pregando el como.

Bravamente probaste! bien lo hiciste!

Bien mis pasados brios imitaste!

Bien me pagaste el ser que me debiste!

Toca las blancas canas que me honraste,

Llega la tierna boca á la mexilla

Donde la mancha de mi honor quitaste!

Soberbia el alma á tu valor se humilla,

Como conservador de la nobleza,

Que ha honrado tantos Reyes en Castilla.

Mocedades del Cid, Primera Parte, Jorn. II.

[510]   This impeachment of the honor of the whole city of Zamora, for having harboured the murderer of King Sancho, fills a large place in the “Crónica General,” (Parte IV.), in the “Crónica del Cid,” and in the old ballads, and is called El Reto de Zamora,—a form of challenge preserved in this play of Guillen, and recognized as a legal form so far back as the Partida VII., Tít. III., “De los Rieptos.”

[511]   The plays of Guillen on the Cid have often been reprinted, though hardly one of his other dramas has been. Voltaire, in his Preface to Corneille’s Cid, says Corneille took his hints from Diamante. But the reverse is the case. Diamante wrote after Corneille, and was indebted to him largely, as we shall see hereafter. Lord Holland’s Life of Guillen, already referred to, ante, p. 121, is interesting, though imperfect.

[512]   “Las Maravillas de Babilonia” is not in Guillen’s collected dramas, and is not mentioned by Rodriguez or Fuster. But it is in a volume entitled “Flor de las Mejores Doce Comedias,” Madrid, 1652, 4to.

[513]   Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 68, and Montalvan, Para Todos, in his catalogue of authors who wrote for the stage when (in 1632) that catalogue was made out. Guevara will be noticed again as the author of the “Diablo Cojuelo.”

[514]   Crónica de D. Sancho el Bravo, Valladolid, 1554, folio, f. 76.

[515]   Quintana, Vidas de Españoles Célebres, Tom. I., Madrid, 1807, 12mo, p. 51, and the corresponding passage in the play. Martinez de la Rosa, in his “Isabel de Solís,” describing a real or an imaginary picture of the death of the young Guzman, gives a tender turn to the father’s conduct; but the hard old chronicle is more likely to tell the truth, and the play follows it.

[516]   The copy I use of this play was printed in 1745. Like most of the other published dramas of Guevara, it has a good deal of bombast, and some Gongorism. But a lofty tone runs through it, that always found an echo in the Spanish character.

[517]   The “Luna de la Sierra” is the first play in the “Flor de las Mejores Doce Comedias,” 1652.

[518]   The plays last mentioned are found scattered in different collections,—“The Devil’s Lawsuit” being in the volume just cited, and “The Devil’s Court” in the twenty-eighth volume of the Comedias Escogidas. My copy of the “Tres Portentos” is a pamphlet without date. Fifteen of the plays of Guevara are in the collection of Comedias Escogidas, to be noticed hereafter.

[519]   Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. p. 157;—a good life of Montalvan.

[520]   Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XI. pp. 501, 537, etc., and Tom. XII. p. 424.

[521]   Para Todos, Alcalá, 1661, 4to, p. 428.

[522]   It went through several editions as a book of devotion,—the last I have seen being of 1739, 18mo.

[523]   Para Todos, 1661, p. 529, (prepared in 1632), where he speaks also of a picaresque novela, “Vida de Malhagas,” and other works, as ready for the press; but they have never been printed.

[524]   “Lágrimas Panegiricas á la Temprana Muerte del Gran Poeta, etc., J. Perez de Montalvan,” por Pedro Grande de Terra, Madrid, 1639, 4to, ff. 164. Quevedo, Montalvan’s foe, is the only poet of note whom I miss.

[525]   “Orfeo en Lengua Castellana,” por J. P. de Montalvan, Madrid, 1624, 4to. N. Ant., Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 757, and Lope de Vega, Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, in the Preface to which he says the Orfeo of Montalvan “contains whatever can contribute to its perfection.”

[526]   His complaints are as loud as Lope’s or Calderon’s, and are to be found in the Preface to the first volume of his plays, Alcalá, 1638, 4to, and in his “Para Todos,” 1661, p. 169.

[527]   The date of the first volume is 1639 on the title-page, but 1638 at the end.

[528]   It should perhaps be added, that another religious play of Montalvan, “El Divino Nazareno Sanson,” containing the history of Samson from the contest with the lion to the pulling down of the Philistine temple, is less offensive.

[529]   I shall have occasion to recur to this subject when I notice a long poem published on it by Yague de Salas, in 1616. The story used by Montalvan is founded on a tradition already employed for the stage, but with an awkward and somewhat coarse plot, and a poor versification, by Andres Rey de Artieda, in his “Amantes,” published in 1581, and by Tirso de Molina, in his “Amantes de Teruel,” 1635. These two plays, however, had long been forgotten, when an abstract of the first, and the whole of the second, appeared in the fifth volume of Aribau’s “Biblioteca” (Madrid, 1848); a volume which contains thirty-six well-selected plays of Tirso de Molina, with valuable prefatory discussions of his life and works. There can be no doubt, from a comparison of the “Amantes de Teruel” of Tirso with that of Montalvan, printed three years later, that Montalvan was largely indebted to his predecessor; but he has added to his drama much that is beautiful, and given to parts of it a tone of domestic tenderness that, I doubt not, he drew from his own nature. Aribau, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Tom. V. pp. xxxvii. and 690.

[530]   “El Principe Don Carlos” is the first play in the twenty-eighth volume of the Comedias Escogidas, 1667, and gives an account of the miraculous cure of the Prince from an attack of insanity; the other, entitled “El Segundo Seneca de España,” is the first play in his “Para Todos,” and ends with the marriage of the king to Anne of Austria, and the appointment of Don John as generalissimo of the League.

[531]   Henry IV. is in “El Mariscal de Viron”; Don John in the play that bears his name.

[532]   Both of them are in the fifth day’s entertainments of his “Para Todos.”

[533]   Preface to “Para Todos.”

[534]   The story of “El Zeloso Estremeño” is altered from that of the same name by Cervantes, but is indebted to it largely, and takes the names of several of its personages. At the end of the play entitled “De un Castigo dos Venganzas,” a play full of horrors, Montalvan declares the plot to be—

Historia tan verdadera,

Que no ha cincuenta semanas,

Que sucedió.

Almost all his plays are founded on exciting and interesting tales.

[535]   Pellicer de Tobar, in the “Lágrimas,” etc., ut supra, gives this account of his friend Montalvan’s literary theories, pp. 146-152. In the more grave parts of his plays, he says, Montalvan employed octavas, canciones, and silvas; in the tender parts, décimas, glosas, and other similar forms; and romances everywhere; but that he avoided dactyles and blank verse, as unbecoming and hard. All this, however, is only the system of Lope, in his “Arte Nuevo,” a little amplified.

[536]   Para Todos, 1661, p. 508.

[537]   Ibid., p. 158.

[538]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 202.

[539]   Quevedo, Obras, Tom. XI., 1794, pp. 125, 163. An indignant answer was made to Quevedo, in the “Tribunal de la Justa Venganza,” already noticed.

[540]   Deleytar Aprovechando, Madrid, 1765, 2 tom., 4to, Prólogo. Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 267.

[541]   Of these five volumes, containing fifty-nine plays, and a number of entremeses and ballads, whose titles are given in Aribau’s Biblioteca, (Madrid, 1848, Tom. V. p. xxxvi.), I have never seen but four, and have been able with difficulty to collect between thirty and forty separate plays. Their author says, however, in the Preface to his “Cigarrales de Toledo,” (1624), that he had written three hundred; and I believe about eighty have been printed.

[542]   There are some details in this part of Lope’s play, such as the mention of a walking stone statue, which leave no doubt in my mind that Tirso de Molina used it. Lope’s play is in the twenty-fourth volume of his Comedias (Zaragoza, 1632); but it is one of his dramas that have continued to be reprinted and read.

[543]   For the way in which this truly Spanish fiction was spread through Italy to France, and then, by means of Molière, throughout the rest of Europe, see Parfaicts, “Histoire du Théatre François” (Paris, 12mo, Tom. VIII., 1746, p. 255; Tom. IX., 1746, pp. 3 and 343; and Tom. X., 1747, p. 420); and Cailhava, “Art de la Comédie” (Paris, 1786, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 175). Shadwell’s “Libertine” (1676) is substantially the same story, with added atrocities; and, if I mistake not, is the foundation of the short drama which has often been acted on the American stage. Shadwell’s own play is too gross to be tolerated anywhere now-a-days, and besides has no literary merit.

[544]   That the popularity of the mere fiction of Don Juan has been preserved in Spain may be seen from the many recent versions of it; and especially from the two plays of “Don Juan Tenorio,” by Zorrilla, (1844), and his two poems, “El Desafío del Diablo,” and “Un Testigo de Bronce,” (1845), hardly less dramatic than the plays that had preceded them.

[545]   Crónica de D. Juan el Segundo, ad ann.

[546]   The “Vergonzoso en Palacio” was printed as early as 1624, in the “Cigarrales de Toledo,” (Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 100), and took its name, I suppose, from a Spanish proverb, “Mozo vergonzoso no es para palacio.”

[547]   “Todo es dar en una Cosa.”

[548]   “Por el Sotano y el Torno.”

[549]   “Escarmientos para Cuerdos.”

[550]   Cigarrales de Toledo, 1624, pp. 183-188.

[551]   The notices of Mira de Mescua, or Amescua, as he is sometimes called, are scattered like his works. He is mentioned in Roxas, “Viage” (1602); and I have his “Desgraciada Raquel,” both in a printed copy, where it is attributed to Diamante, and in an autograph MS., where it is sadly cut up to suit the ecclesiastical censors, whose permission to represent it is dated April 10th, 1635. Guevara indicates his birthplace and ecclesiastical office in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco VI. Antonio (Bib. Nov., ad verb.) gives him extravagant praise, and says that his dramas were collected and published together. But this, I believe, is a mistake. Like his shorter poems, they can be found only separate, or in collections made for other purposes. See also, in relation to Mira de Mescua, Montalvan, Para Todos, the Catalogue at the end; and Pellicer, Biblioteca, Tom. I. p. 89. The story on which the “Raquel” is founded is a fiction, and therefore need not so much have disturbed the censors of the theatre. (Castro, Crónica de Sancho el Deseado, Alonso el Octavo, etc., Madrid, 1665, folio, pp. 90, etc.) Two autos by Mira de Mescua are to be found in “Navidad y Corpus Christi Festejados,” Madrid, 1664, 4to.

[552]   Antonio, Bib. Nova, Tom. I. p. 821. His dramatic works which I possess are “Doce Autos Sacramentales y dos Comedias Divinas,” por el Maestro Joseph de Valdivielso, Toledo, 1622, 4to, 183 leaves. Compare the old ballad, “Ya cabalga Diego Ordoñez,” which can be traced to the Romancero of 1550-1555, with the “Crónica del Cid,” c. 66, and the “Cautivos Libres,” f. 25. a. of the Doce Autos. It will show how the old ballads rung in the ears of all men, and penetrated everywhere into Spanish poetry. There is a nacimiento of Valdivielso in the “Navidad y Corpus Christi,” mentioned in the preceding note; but it is very slight and poor.

[553]   His works were not collected till long after his death, which happened in 1644, and were then printed from a MS. found in the library of the Archbishop of Lisbon, Luis de Souza, under the affected title, “El Fenix Castellano, D. Antonio de Mendoza, renascido,” etc. (Lisboa, 1690, 4to). The only notices of consequence that I find of him are in Montalvan’s “Para Todos,” and in Antonio, Bib. Nova, where he is called Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza; probably a mistake, for he does not seem to have belonged to the old Santillana family. A second edition of his works, with trifling additions, appeared at Madrid in 1728, 4to.

[554]   Alarcon seems, in consequence of these remonstrances, or perhaps in consequence of the temper in which they were made, to have drawn upon himself a series of attacks, from the poets of the time, Góngora, Lope de Vega, Mendoza, Montalvan, and others. See Puibusque, Histoire Comparée des Littératures Espagnole et Française, 2 tom., 8vo, Paris, 1843, Tom. II. pp. 155-164, and 430-437;—a book written with much taste and knowledge of the subject to which it relates. It gained the prize of 1842.

[555]   Repertorio Americano, Tom. III. p. 61, Tom. IV. p. 93; Denis, Chroniques de l’Espagne, Paris, 1839, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 231; Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXVIII., 1667, p. 131. Corneille’s opinion of the “Verdad Sospechosa,” which is often misquoted, is to be found in his “Examen du Menteur.” I will only add, in relation to Alarcon, that, in “Nunca mucho costó poco,” he has given us the character of an imperious old nurse, which is well drawn, and made effective by the use of picturesque, but antiquated, words and phrases.

[556]   The plays of these authors are found in the large collection entitled “Comedias Escogidas,” Madrid, 1652-1704, 4to, with the exception of those of Sanchez and Villaizan, which I possess separate. Of Belmonte, there are eleven in the collection, and of Godinez, five. Those of Miguel Sanchez, who was very famous in his time, and obtained the addition to his name of El Divino, are nearly all lost.

[557]   The plays of Salas Barbadillo, viz., “Victoria de España y Francia,” and “El Galan Tramposo y Pobre,” are in his “Coronas del Parnaso,” left for publication at his death, but not printed till 1635, Madrid, 12mo.

[558]   It is called “El Mayorazgo,” and is found with its loa at the end of the author’s “Alivios de Casandra,” 1640.

[559]   These are, “Las Firmezas de Isabela,” “El Doctor Carlino,” and “La Comedia Venatoria,”—the last two unfinished, and the very last allegorical.

[560]   The play written to please the Count Duke was by Quevedo and Antonio de Mendoza, and was entitled “Quien mas miente medra mas,”—He that lies most will rise most. (C. Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, Tom. I. p. 177.) This play is lost, unless, as I suspect, it is the “Empeños del Mentir” that occurs in Mendoza’s Works, 1690, pp. 254-296. There are also four entremeses of Quevedo in his Works, 1791, Vol. IX.

[561]   Philip IV. was a lover of letters. Translations of Francesco Guicciardini’s “Wars in Italy,” and of the “Description of the Low Countries,” by his nephew, Luigi Guicciardini, made by him, and preceded by a well-written Prólogo, are said to be in the National Library at Madrid. (C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 162; Huerta, Teatro Hespañol, Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte I., Tom. III. p. 159; and Ochoa, Teatro, Paris, 1838, 8vo, Tom. V. p. 98.) “King Henry the Feeble” is also among the plays most confidently ascribed to Philip IV., who is said to have often joined in improvisating dramas, an amusement well known at the court of Madrid, and at the hardly less splendid court of the Count de Lemos at Naples. C. Pellicer, Teatro, Tom. I. p. 163, and J. A. Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. pp. 90-92, where a curious account, already referred to, is given of one of these Neapolitan exhibitions, by Estrada, who witnessed it.

[562]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 184, note; Suplemento al Índice, etc., 1805; and an excellent article by Louis de Vieil Castel, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, July 15, 1840. To these should be added the pleasant description given by Blanco White, in his admirable “Doblado’s Letters,” (1822, pp. 163-169), of a representation he himself witnessed of the “Diablo Predicador,” in the court-yard of a poor inn, where a cow-house served for the theatre, or rather the stage, and the spectators, who paid less than twopence apiece for their places, sat in the open air, under a bright, starry sky.

[563]   El Pinciano, Filosofía Antigua Poética, Madrid, 1596, 4to, p. 381, etc.; Andres Rey de Artieda, Discursos, etc., de Artemidoro, Çaragoça, 1605, 4to, f. 87; C. de Mesa, Rimas, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, ff. 94, 145, 218, and his Pompeyo, Madrid, 1618, 12mo, with its Dedicatoria; Cascales, Tablas Poéticas, Murcia, 1616, 4to, Parte II.; C. S. de Figueroa, Pasagero, Madrid, 1617, 12mo, Alivio tercero; Est. M. de Villegas, Eróticas, Najera, 1617, 4to, Segunda Parte, f. 27; Los Argensolas, Rimas, Zaragoza, 1634, 4to, p. 447. I have arranged them according to their dates, because, in this case, the order of time is important, and because it should be noticed that all come within the period of Lope’s success as a dramatist.

[564]   D. Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. III. p. 402, note.

[565]   Pellicer, Bib. de Traductores, Tom. I. p. 11.

[566]   As a set-off to this alleged religious effect of the comedias de santos, we have, in the Address that opens the “Tratado de las Comedias,” (1618), by Bisbe y Vidal, an account of a young girl who was permitted to see the representation of the “Conversion of Mary Magdalen” several times, as an act of devotion, and ended her visits to the theatre by falling in love with the actor that personated the Saviour, and running off with him, or rather following him to Madrid.

[567]   The account, however, was sometimes the other way. Bisbe y Vidal (f. 98) says that the hospitals made such efforts to sustain the theatres, in order to get an income from them afterwards, that they themselves were sometimes impoverished by the speculations they ventured to make; and adds, that in his time (c. 1618) there was a person alive, who, as a magistrate of Valencia, had been the means of such losses to the hospital of that city, through its investments and advances for the theatre, that he had entered a religious house, and given his whole fortune to the hospital, to make up for the injury he had done it.

[568]   Roxas (1602) gives an amusing account of the nicknames and resources of eight different kinds of strolling companies of actors, beginning with the bululu, which boasted of but one person, and going up to the full compañía, which was required to have seventeen. (Viage, Madrid, 1614, 12mo, ff. 51-53.) These nicknames and distinctions were long known in Spain. Four of them occur in “Estebanillo Gonzalez,” 1646, c. 6.

[569]   On the whole subject of the contest between the Church and the theatre, and the success of Lope and his school, see C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 118-122, and 142-157; Don Quixote, ed. J. A. Pellicer, Parte II., c. 11, note; Roxas, Viage, 1614, passim (f. 66, implying that he wrote in 1602); Montalvan, Para Todos, 1661, p. 543; Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. p. 66; and many other parts of Vols. XX. and XXI.;—all showing the triumph of Lope and his school. A letter of Francisco Cascales to Lope de Vega, published in 1634, in defence of plays and their representation, is the third in the second decade of his Epistles; but it goes on the untenable ground, that the plays then represented were liable to no objection on the score of morals.

[570]   There has been some discussion, and a general error, about the date of Calderon’s birth; but in a rare book, entitled “Obelisco Fúnebre,” published in his honor, by his friend Gaspar Augustin de Lara, (Madrid, 1684, 4to), written immediately after Calderon’s death, it is distinctly stated, on the authority of Calderon himself, that he was born Jan. 17th, 1600. This settles all doubts. The certificate of baptism given in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid,” Tom. IV. p. 228, only says that he was baptized Feb. 14th, 1600; but why that ceremony, contrary to custom, was so long delayed, or why a person in the position of Vera Tassis y Villarroel, who, like Lara, was a friend of Calderon, should have placed the poet’s birth on January 1st, we cannot now even conjecture.

[571]   See the learned genealogical introduction to the “Obelisco Fúnebre,” just cited. The name of Calderon, as its author tells us, came into the family in the thirteenth century, when one of its number, being prematurely born, was supposed to be dead, but was ascertained to be alive by being unceremoniously thrown into a caldron—calderon—of warm water. As he proved to be a great man, and was much favored by St. Ferdinand and Alfonso the Wise, his nickname became a name of honor, and five caldrons were, from that time, borne in the family arms. The additional surname of Barca came in later, with an estate—solar—of one of the house, who afterwards perished, fighting against the Moors; in consequence of which, a castle, a gauntlet, and the motto, Por la fé moriré, were added to their escutcheon, which, thus arranged, constituted the not inappropriate arms of the poet in the seventeenth century.

[572]   See the notice of Calderon’s father in Baena, Tom. I. p. 305; that of Calderon himself, Tom. IV. p. 228; and that of Lope de Vega, Tom. III. p. 350; but, especially, see the different facts about Calderon scattered through the dull prose introduction to the “Obelisco Fúnebre,” and its still more dull poetry. The biographical sketch of him by his friend Vera Tassis y Villarroel, originally prefixed to the fifth volume of his Comedias, and to be found in the first volume of the editions since, is formal, pedantic, and unsatisfactory, like most notices of the old Spanish authors.

[573]   His sonnet for this occasion is in Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XI. p. 432; and his octavas are at p. 491. Both are respectable for a youth of twenty. The praises of Lope, which are unmeaning, are at p. 593 of the same volume. Who obtained the prizes at this festival of 1620 is not known.

[574]   The different pieces offered by Calderon for the festival of May 17, 1622, are in Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XII. pp. 181, 239, 303, 363, 384. Speaking of them, Lope (p. 413) says, a prize was given to “Don Pedro Calderon, who, in his tender years, earns the laurels which time is wont to produce only with hoary hairs.” The six or eight poems offered by Calderon at these two poetical joustings are valuable, not only as being the oldest of his works that remain to us, but as being almost the only specimens of his verse that we have, except his dramas. Cervantes, in his Don Quixote, intimates, that, at these poetical contests, the first prize was given from personal favor, or from regard to the rank of the aspirant, and the second with reference only to the merit of the poem presented. (Parte II. c. 18.) Calderon took, on this occasion, only the third prize for a cancion; the first being given to Lope, and the second to Zarate.

[575]   Silva VII.

[576]   Para Todos, ed. 1661, pp. 539, 540. But these sketches were prepared in 1632.

[577]   It has been said that Calderon has given to none of his dramas the title Vera Tassis assigns to this one, viz., “Certámen de Amor y Zelos.” But this is a mistake. No play with this precise title is to be found among his printed works; but it is the last but one in the list of his plays furnished by Calderon himself to the Duke of Veraguas, in 1680.

[578]   “He knew how,” says Augustin de Lara, “to unite, by humility and prudence, the duties of an obedient child and a loving father.”

[579]   “Murió sin Mecenas.” Aprobacion to the “Obelisco,” dated Oct. 30th, 1683. All that relates to Calderon in this very rare volume is important, because it comes from a friend, and was written,—at least the poetical part of it,—as the author tells us, within fifty-three days after Calderon’s death.

[580]   “Estava un auto entonces en los fines, como su autor.” (Obelisco, Canto I., st. 22. See also a sonnet at the end of the volume.) Solís, the historian, in one of his letters, says, “Our friend Don Pedro Calderon is just dead, and went off, as they say the swan does, singing; for he did all he could, even when he was in immediate danger, to finish the second auto for the Corpus. But, after all, he went through only a little more than half of it, and it has been finished in some way or other by Don Melchior de Leon.” (Cartas de N. Antonio y A. Solís, publicadas por Mayans y Siscar, Leon de Francia, 1733, 12mo, p. 75.) I cite three contemporary notices of so small a fact, to show how much consequence was attached to every thing regarding Calderon and his autos.

[581]   Lara, in his “Advertencias,” speaks of “the funeral eulogies printed in Valencia.” Vera Tassis mentions them also, without adding that they were printed. A copy of them would be very interesting, as they were the work of “the illustrious gentlemen” of the household of the Duke of Veraguas, Calderon’s friend. The substance of the poet’s will is given in the “Obelisco,” Cant. I., st. 32, 33.

[582]   An account of the first monument and its inscription is to be found in Baena, Tom. IV. p. 231; and an account of the removal of the poet’s ashes to the convent of “Our Lady of Atocha” is in the Foreign Quarterly Review, April, 1841, p. 227. An attempt to do still further honor to the memory of Calderon was made by the publication of a life of him, and of poems in his honor by Zamacola, Zorilla, Hartzenbusch, etc., in a folio pamphlet, Madrid, 1840, as well as by a subscription.

[583]   His fine capacious forehead is noticed by his eulogist, and is obvious in the print of 1684, which little resembles the copies made from it by later engravers:—

Considerava de su rostro grave

Lo capaz de la frente, la viveza

De los ojos alegres, lo suave

De la voz, etc.

Canto I., st. 41.

[584]   Prólogo to the “Obelisco.”

[585]   The account of the entrance of the new queen into Madrid, in 1649, written by Calderon, was indeed printed; but it was under the name of Lorenço Ramirez de Prado, who, assisted by Calderon, arranged the festivities of the occasion.

[586]   The unpublished works of Calderon, as enumerated by Vera Tassis, Baena, and Lara, are:—

(1.) “Discurso de los Quatro Novísimos”; or what, in the technics of his theology, are called the four last things to be thought upon by man: viz., Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Lara says Calderon read him three hundred octave stanzas of it, and proposed to complete it in one hundred more. It is, no doubt, lost.

(2.) “Tratado defendiendo la Nobleza de la Pintura.”

(3.) “Otro tratado, Defensa de la Comedia.”

(4.) “Otro tratado, sobre el Diluvio General.” These three tratados were probably poems, like the “Discurso.” At least, that on the Deluge is mentioned as such by Montalvan and by Lara.

(5.) “Lágrimas, que vierte un Alma arrepentida á la Hora de la Muerte.” This, however, is not unpublished, though so announced by Vera Tassis. It is a little poem in the ballad measure, which I detected first in a singular volume, where probably it first appeared, entitled “Avisos para la Muerte, escritos por algunos Ingenios de España, á la Devocion de Bernardo de Obiedo, Secretario de su Majestad, etc., publicados por D. Luis Arellano,” Valencia, 1634, 18mo, 90 leaves; reprinted, Zaragoza, 1648, and often besides. It consists of the contributions of thirty poets, among whom are no less personages than Luis Vélez de Guevara, Juan Perez de Montalvan, and Lope de Vega. The burden of Calderon’s poem, which is given with his name attached to it, is “O dulce Jesus mio, no entres, Señor, con vuestro siervo en juicio!” The two following stanzas are a favorable specimen of the whole:—

O quanto el nacer, O quanto,

Al morir es parecido!

Pues, si nacimos llorando,

Llorando tambien morimos.

O dulce Jesus mio, etc.

Un gemido la primera

Salva fué que al mundo hizimos,

Y el último vale que

Le hazemos es un gemido.

O dulce Jesus mio, etc.

How much resembles here our birth

The final hour of all!

Weeping at first we see the earth,

And weeping hear Death’s call.

O, spare me, Jesus, spare me, Saviour dear,

Nor meet thy servant as a Judge severe!

When first we entered this dark world,

We hailed it with a moan;

And when we leave its confines dark,

Our farewell is a groan.

O, spare me, Jesus, spare me, Saviour dear,

Nor meet thy servant as a Judge severe!

The whole of the little volume in which it occurs serves curiously to illustrate Spanish manners, in an age when a minister of state sought spiritual comfort by such means and in such sources.

[587]   Lara and Vera Tassis, both personal friends of Calderon, speak of the number of these miscellanies as very great.

[588]   There were four volumes in all, and Calderon, in his Preface to the Autos, 1676, seems to admit their genuineness, though he abstains, with apparent caution, from directly declaring it, lest he should seem to imply that their publication had ever been authorized by him.

[589]   “All men well know,” says Lara, “that Don Pedro never sent any of his comedias to the press, and that those which were printed were printed against his will.” Obelisco, Prólogo.

[590]   The earliest of these fraudulent publications of Calderon’s plays that I have seen is in the very rare collection of “Comedias compuestas por Diferentes Autores,” Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1633, 4to, where is Calderon’s “Astrólogo Fingido,” given with a recklessness as to omissions and changes that is the more remarkable, because Escuer, who published the volume, makes great professions of his editorial care and faithfulness. (See f. 191. b.) In the larger collection of Comedias, in forty-eight volumes, begun in 1652, there are fifty-three plays attributed, in whole or in part, to Calderon, some of which are certainly not his, and all of them, so far as I have examined, scandalously corrupted in their text. All of them, too, were printed as early as 1679; that is, two years before Calderon’s death, and therefore before there was sufficient authority for publishing any one of them.

[591]   Probably several more may be added to the list of dramas that are attributed to Calderon, and yet are not his. I have observed one, entitled “El Garrote mas bien dado,” in “El Mejor de los Mejores Libros de Comedias Nuevas,” (Madrid, 1653, 4to), where it is inserted with others that are certainly genuine.

[592]   This correspondence, so honorable to Calderon, as well as to the head of the family of Columbus, who signs himself proudly, El Almirante Duque,—as Columbus himself had required his descendants always to sign themselves, (Navarrete, Tom. II. p. 229),—is to be found in the “Obelisco,” and again in Huerta, “Teatro Hespañol” (Madrid, 1785, 12mo, Parte II. Tom. III.). The complaints of Calderon about the booksellers are very bitter, as well they might be; for in 1676, in his Preface to his Autos, he says that their frauds took away from the hospitals and other charities—which yet received only a small part of the profits of the theatre—no less than twenty-six thousand ducats annually.

[593]   All the loas, however, are not Calderon’s; but it is no longer possible to determine which are not so. “No son todas suyas” is the phrase applied to them in the Prólogo of the edition of 1717.

[594]   Vera Tassis tells us, indeed, in his Life of Calderon, that Calderon wrote a hundred saynetes, or short farces; about a hundred autos sacramentales; two hundred loas; and more than one hundred and twenty comedias. But he collected for his edition (Madrid, 1682-91, 9 tom., 4to) only the comedias mentioned in the text, and a few more, probably twelve, intended for an additional volume that never was printed. Nor do any more appear in the edition by Apontes, Madrid, 1760-63, 11 tom., 4to; nor in the more correct one published at Leipzig in 1827-30, 4 bände, 8vo, by J. J. Keil, an accomplished Spanish scholar of that city. It is probable, therefore, that their number will not hereafter be much increased. And yet we know the names of nine plays, recognized by Calderon himself, which are not in any of these collections; and Vera Tassis gives us the names of eight more, in which he says, Calderon, after the fashion of his time, wrote a single act. Some of these ought to be recovered. But though we should be curious to see any of them, we should be more curious, considering how happy Calderon is in many of his graciosos, to see some of the hundred saynetes Vera Tassis mentions, of which not one is known to be extant, though the titles of six or seven are given in Huerta’s catalogue. The autos, being the property of the city of Madrid, and annually represented, were not permitted to be printed for a long time. (Lara, Prólogo.) They were first published in 1717, in 6 volumes, 4to, and they fill the same number of volumes in the edition of Madrid, 1759-60, 4to. These, however, are all the editions of Calderon’s dramatic works, except a sort of counterfeit of that of Vera Tassis, printed at Madrid in 1726, and the selections and single plays printed from time to time both in Spain and in other countries. Two, however, have been undertaken lately in Spain, (1846), and one in Havana, (1840), but probably none of them will be finished. See notices of Calderon, by F. W. V. Schmidt, in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, Bände XVII., XVIII., and XIX., 1822, to which I am much indebted, and which deserve to be printed separately, and preserved.

[595]   Roxas, Viage Entretenido, 1614, ff. 51, 52, and many other places.

[596]   Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, Parte II. c. 11, with the notes.

[597]   Voyage d’Espagne, Cologne, 1667, 18mo, with Barbier, Dictionnaire d’Anonymes, Paris, 1824, 8vo, No. 19,281. The auto which the Dutch traveller saw was, no doubt, one of Calderon’s; since Calderon then, and for a long time before and after, furnished the autos for the city of Madrid. Madame d’Aulnoy describes the same gorgeous procession as she saw it in 1679, (Voyage, ed. 1693, Tom. III. pp. 52-55), with the impertinent auto, as she calls it, that was performed that year.

[598]   La Verdad en el Potro, Madrid, 1686, 12mo, pp. 291, 292. The Dutch traveller had heard the same story, but tells it less well. (Voyage, p. 121.) The Tarasca was no doubt excessively ugly. Montalvan (Comedias, Madrid, 4to, 1638, f. 13) alludes to it for its monstrous deformity.

[599]   C. Pellicer, Orígen de las Comedias, 1804, Tom. I. p. 258.

[600]   Quevedo, Obras, 1791, Tom. I. p. 386.

[601]   It is in the fourth volume of the edition printed at Madrid in 1759.

[602]   Viage, 1614, ff. 35-37.

[603]   Lope de Vega, Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, f. 133, El Animal de Ungria.

[604]   Don Quixote, Parte I. c. xii.

[605]   Doblado’s Letters, 1822, pp. 296, 301, 303-309; Madame Calderon’s Life in Mexico, London, 1843, Letters 38 and 39; and Thompson’s Recollections of Mexico, New York, 1846, 8vo, Chap. 11. How much the autos were valued to the last, even by respectable ecclesiastics, may be inferred from the grave admiration bestowed on them by Martin Panzano, chaplain to the Spanish embassy at Turin, in his Latin treatise, “De Hispanorum Literatura,” (Mantuæ, 1759, folio), intended as a defence of his country’s literary claims, in which, speaking of the autos of Calderon, only a few years before they were forbidden, he says they were dramas, “in quibus neque in inveniendo acumen, nec in disponendo ratio, neque in ornando aut venustas, aut nitor, aut majestas desiderantur.”—p. lxxv.

[606]   These representations in private houses had long been common. Bisbe y Vidal (Tratado, 1618, c. 18) speaks of them as familiar in Barcelona, and treats them, in his otherwise severe attack on the theatre, with a gentleness that shows he recognized their influence.

[607]   It is not easy to make out how much the theatre was really interfered with during these four or five years; but the dramatic writers seem to have felt themselves constrained in their course, more or less, for a part of that time, if not the whole of it. The accounts are to be found in Casiano Pellicer, Orígen, etc., de la Comedia, Tom. I. pp. 216-222, and Tom. II. p. 135;—a work important, but ill digested. Conde, the historian, once told me, that its materials were furnished chiefly by the author’s father, the learned editor of Don Quixote, and that the son did not know how to put them together. A few hints and facts on the subject of the secular drama of this period may also be found in Ulloa y Pereira’s defence of it, written apparently to meet the particular case, but not published till his works appeared in Madrid, 1674, 4to. He contends that there was never any serious purpose to break up the theatre, and that even Philip II. meant only to regulate, not to suppress it. (p. 343.) Don Luis Crespé de Borja, Bishop of Orihuela and ambassador of Philip IV. at Rome, who had previously favored the theatre, made, in Lent, 1646, an attack on it in a sermon, which, when published three years afterwards, excited a considerable sensation, and was answered by Andres de Avila y Heredia, el Señor de la Garena, and sustained by Padre Ignacio Camargo. But nothing of this sort much hindered or helped the progress of the drama in Spain.

[608]   The clergy writing loose and immoral plays is only one exemplification of the unsound state of society so often set forth in Madame d’Aulnoy’s Travels in Spain, in 1679-80;—a curious and amusing book, which sometimes throws a strong light on the nature of the religious spirit that so frequently surprises us in Spanish literature. Thus, when she is giving an account of the constant use made of the rosary or chaplet of beads,—a well-known passion in Spain, connected, perhaps, with the Mohammedan origin of the rosary, of which the Christian rosary was made a rival,—she says, “They are going over their beads constantly when they are in the streets, and in conversation; when they are playing ombre, making love, telling lies, or talking scandal. In short, they are for ever muttering over their chaplets; and even in the most ceremonious society it goes on just the same; how devoutly you may guess. But custom is very potent in this country.” Ed. 1693, Tom. II. p. 124.

[609]   The “Vida y Purgatorio del Glorioso San Patricio,” of which I have a copy, (Madrid, 1739, 18mo), was long a popular book of devotion, both in Spanish and in French. That Calderon used it is obvious throughout his play. Wright, however, in his pleasant work on St. Patrick’s Purgatory, (London, 1844, 12mo, pp. 156-159), supposes that the French book of devotion was made up chiefly from Calderon’s play; whereas they resemble each other only because both were taken from the Spanish prose work of Montalvan. See ante, p. 298.

[610]   When Enio determines to adventure into the cave of Purgatory, he gravely urges his servant, who is the gracioso of the piece, to go with him; to which the servant replies,—

I never heard before, that any man

Took lackey with him when he went to hell!

No,—to my native village will I haste,

Where I can live in something like content;

Or, if the matter must to goblins come,

I think my wife will prove enough of one

For my purgation.

Comedias, 1760, Tom. II. p. 264.

There is, however, a good deal that is solemn in this wild drama. Enio, when he goes to the infernal world, talks, in the spirit of Dante himself, of

Treading on the very ghosts of men.

[611]   See Chapters 4 and 6 of Montalvan’s “Patricio.”

[612]   It is beautifully translated by A. W. Schlegel. A drama of Tirso de Molina, “El Condenado por Desconfiado,” goes still more profoundly into the peculiar religious faith of the age, and may well be compared with this play of Calderon, which it preceded. It represents a reverend hermit, Paulo, as losing the favor of God, simply from want of trust in it; while Enrico, a robber and assassin, obtains that favor by an exercise of faith and trust at the last moment of a life which had been filled with the most revolting crimes.

[613]   An interesting, but somewhat too metaphysical, discussion of the character of this play, with prefatory remarks on the general merits of Calderon, by Karl Rosenkranz, appeared at Leipzig in 1829, (12mo), entitled, “Ueber Calderon’s Tragödie vom wunderthätigen Magus.”

[614]   How completely a light, worldly tone was taken in these plays may be seen in the following words of the Madonna, when she personally gives St. Ildefonso a rich vestment,—the chasuble,—in which he is to say mass:—

Receive this robe, that, at my holy feast,

Thou mayst be seen as such a gallant should be.

My taste must be consulted in thy dress,

Like that of any other famous lady.

Comedias, 1760, Tom. VI. p. 113.

The lightness of tone in this passage is the more remarkable, because the miracle alluded to in it is the crowning glory of the great cathedral of Toledo, on which volumes have been written, and on which Murillo has painted one of his greatest and most solemn pictures.

Figueroa (Pasagero, 1617, ff. 104-106) says, with much truth, in the midst of his severe remarks on the drama of his time, that the comedias de santos were so constructed, that the first act contained the youth of the saint, with his follies and love-adventures; the second, his conversion and subsequent life; and the third, his miracles and death; but that they often had loose and immoral stories to render them attractive. But they were of all varieties; and it is curious, in such a collection dramas as the one in forty-eight volumes, extending over the period from 1652 to 1704, to mark in how many ways the theatre endeavoured to conciliate the Church; some of the plays being filled entirely with saints, demons, angels, and allegorical personages, and deserving the character given to the “Fenix de España,” (Tom. XLIII., 1678), of being sermons in the shape of plays; while others are mere intriguing comedies, with an angel or a saint put in to consecrate their immoralities, like “La Defensora de la Reyna de Ungria,” by Fernando de Zarate, in Tom. XXIX., 1668.

In other countries of Christendom besides those in which the Church of Rome bears sway, this sort of irreverence in relation to things divine has more or less shown itself among persons accounting themselves religious. The Puritans of England in the days of Cromwell, from their belief in the constant interference of Providence about their affairs, sometimes addressed supplications to God in a spirit not more truly devout than that shown by the Spaniards in their autos and their comedias de santos. Both felt themselves to be peculiarly regarded of Heaven, and entitled to make the most peremptory claims on the Divine favor and the most free allusions to what they deemed holy. But no people ever felt themselves to be so absolutely soldiers of the cross as the Spaniards did, from the time of their Moorish wars; no people ever trusted so constantly to the recurrence of miracles in the affairs of their daily life; and therefore no people ever talked of divine things as of matters in their nature so familiar and commonplace. Traces of this state of feeling and character are to be found in Spanish literature on all sides.

[615]   “La Púrpura de la Rosa” and “Las Fortunas de Andrómeda y Perseo” are both of them plays in the national taste, and yet were sung throughout. The last is taken from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Lib. IV. and V., and was produced before the court with a magnificent theatrical apparatus. The first, which was written in honor of the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Infanta Maria Teresa, 1660, was also taken from Ovid (Met., Lib. X.); and in the loa that precedes it we are told expressly, “The play is to be wholly in music, and is intended to introduce this style among us, that other nations may see they have competitors for those distinctions of which they boast.” Operas in Spain, however, never had any permanent success, though they had in Portugal.

[616]   “Zelos aun del Ayre matan,” which Calderon parodied, is on the same subject with his “Cephalus and Procris,” to which he added, not very appropriately, the story of Erostratus and the burning of the temple of Diana.

[617]   For instance, the “Armas de la Hermosura,” on the story of Coriolanus; and the “Mayor Encanto Amor,” on the story of Ulysses.

[618]   Calderon was famous for what are called coups de théâtre; so famous, that lances de Calderon became a sort of proverb.

[619]

La novela mas notable

Que en Castellanas comedias,

Sutil el ingenio traza

Y gustoso representa.

El Alcayde de sí mismo, Jorn. II.

[620]   No hay Burlas con el Amor, Jorn. II.

[621]   Armas de la Hermosura, Jorn. I., II.

[622]   Afectos de Odio y Amor, Jorn. II.

[623]   El Mayor Monstruo los Zelos, Jorn. III.

[624]   La Vírgen del Sagrario, Jorn. I. The pious bishop who is here represented as talking of America, on the authority of Herodotus, is, at the same time, supposed to live seven or eight centuries before America was discovered.

[625]

Un frayle,—mas no es bueno,—

Porque aun no ay en Roma frayles.

Los Dos Amantes del Cielo, Jorn. III.

[626]   El Mayor Encanto Amor, Jorn. II.; El Joseph de las Mugeres, Jorn. III., etc.

[627]   Huerta, Teatro Hespañol, Parte II., Tom I., Prólogo, p. vii. La Niña de Gomez Arias, Jorn. III.

[628]   Compare the eloquent speeches of El Zaguer, in Mendoza, ed. 1776, Lib. I. p. 29, and Malec, in Calderon, Jorn. I.; or the description of the Alpujarras, in the same jornada, with that of Mendoza, p. 43, etc.

[629]   The story of Tuzani is found in Chapters XXII., XXIII., and XXIV. of the second volume of Hita’s “Guerras de Granada,” and is the best part of it. Hita says he had the account from Tuzani himself, long afterwards, at Madrid, and it is not unlikely that a great part of it is true. Calderon, though sometimes using its very words, makes considerable alterations in it, to bring it within the forms of the drama; but the leading facts are the same in both cases, and the story belongs to Hita.

[630]   While they are fighting in a room, with locked doors, suddenly there is a great bustle and calling without. Mendoza, the Spaniard, asks his adversary,—

What’s to be done?

Tuzani.

First let one fall, and the survivor then

May open straight the doors.

Mendoza.

Well said.

[631]   This character of Lope de Figueroa may serve as a specimen of the way in which Calderon gave life and interest to many of his dramas. Lope is an historical personage, and figures largely in the second volume of Hita’s “Guerras,” as well as elsewhere. He was the commander under whom Cervantes served in Italy, and probably in Portugal, when he was in the Tercio de Flándes,—the Flanders regiment,—one of the best bodies of troops in the armies of Philip II. Lope de Figueroa appears again, and still more prominently, in another good play of Calderon, “El Alcalde de Zalamea,” the last in the common collection. Its hero is a peasant, finely sketched, partly from Lope de Vega’s Mendo, in the “Cuerdo en su Casa”; and it is said at the end that it is a true story, whose scene is laid in 1581, at the very time Philip II. was advancing toward Lisbon, and when Cervantes was probably with this regiment at Zalamea.

[632]   About this time, there was a strong disposition shown by the overweening sensibility of Spanish loyalty to relieve the memory of Peter the Cruel from the heavy imputations left resting on it by Pedro de Ayala, of which I have taken notice, (Period I., chap. 9, note 17), and of which traces may be found in Moreto, and the other dramatists of the reign of Philip IV. Pedro appears also in the “Niña de Plata” of Lope de Vega, but with less strongly marked attributes.

[633]

El amor te adora, el honor te aborrece,

Y así el uno te mata, y el otro te avisa:

Dos horas tienes de vida; Christiana eres;

Salva el alma, que la vida es imposible.

Jorn. III.

[634]

Don Gutierre.

Assomate á esse aposento;

Que ves en él?

Lud.

Una imagen

De la muerte, un bulto veo,

Que sobre una cama yaze;

Dos velas tiene a los lados

Y un Crucifixo delante:

Quien es, no puedo decir,

Que con unos tafetanes

El rostro tiene cubierto.

Ibid.

[635]

Rey.

Para todo avrá remedio.

D. Gut.

Posible es que á esto le aya?

Rey.

Sí, Gutierre.

D. Gut.

Qual, Señor?

Rey.

Uno vuestro.

D. Gut.

Que es?

Rey.

Sangrarla.

D. Gut.

Que dices?

Rey.

Que hagais borrar

Las puertas de vuestra casa,

Que ay mano sangrienta en ellas.

D. Gut.

Los que de un oficio tratan,

Ponen, Señor, á las puertas

Un escudo de sus armas.

Trato en honor; y assi, pongo

Mi mano en sangre bañada

A la puerta, que el honor

Con sangre, Señor, se laba.

Rey.

Dadsela, pues, á Leonor,

Que yo sé que su alabanza

La merece.

D. Gut.

Sí, la doy

Mas mira que va bañada

En sangre, Leonor.

Leon.

No importa,

Que no me admira, ni espanta.

D. Gut.

Mira que medico he sido

De mi honra; no está olvidada

La ciencia.

Leon.

Cura con ella

Mi vida en estando mala.

D. Gut.

Pues con essa condicion

Te la doy.

Jorn. III.

[636]   “El Médico de su Honra,” Comedias, Tom. VI.

[637]   “El Pintor de su Deshonra,” Comedias, Tom. XI.

[638]   “A Secreto Agravio, Secreta Venganza,” Comedias, Tom. VI. Calderon, at the end, vouches for the truth of the shocking story, which he represents as founded on facts that occurred at Lisbon just before the embarkation of Don Sebastian for Africa, in 1578.

[639]   “El Mayor Monstruo los Zelos,” Comedias, Tom. V.

[640]   Josephus de Bello Judaico, Lib. I. c. 17-22, and Antiq. Judaicæ, Lib. XV. c. 2, etc. Voltaire has taken the same story for the subject of his “Mariamne,” first acted in 1724. There is a pleasant criticism on the play of Calderon in a pamphlet published at Madrid, by Don A. Duran, without his name, in 1828, 18mo, entitled, “Sobre el Influjo que ha tenido la Crítica Moderna en la Decadencia del Teatro Antiguo Español,” pp. 106-112.

[641]

Calla,

Que sé, que tienes razon,

Pero no puedo escucharla.

· · · ·

Esferas altas,

Cielo, sol, luna y estrellas,

Nubes, granizos, y escarchas,

No hay un rayo para un triste?

Pues si aora no los gastas,

Para quando, para quando

Son, Jupiter, tus venganzas?

Jorn. II.

[642]

Ven, muerte, tan escondida,

Que no te sienta venir,

Porque el placer del morir

No me buelva á dar la vida.

Jorn. III.

See, also, Calderon’s “Manos Blancas no ofenden,” Jorn. II., where he has it again; and Cancionero General, 1573, f. 185. Lope de Vega made a gloss on it, (Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 256), and Cervantes repeats it (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 38);—so much was it admired.

[643]

El labio mudo

Quedó al veros, y al oiros

Su aliento le restituyo,

Animada para solo

Deciros, que algun perjuro

Aleve, y traydor, en tanto

Malquisto concepto os puso.

Mi esposo es mi esposo; y quando

Me mate algun error suyo,

No me matará mi error,

Y lo será si dél huyo.

Yo estoy segura, y vos mal

Informado en mis disgustos;

Y quando no lo estuviera,

Matandome un puñal duro,

Mi error no me diera muerte,

Sino mi fatal influxo;

Con que viene á importar menos

Morir inocente, juzgo.

Que vivir culpada á vista

De las malicias del vulgo.

Y assi, si alguna fineza

He de deberos, presumo,

Que la mayor es bolveros.

Jorn. III.

[644]   “El Príncipe Constante,” Comedias, Tom. III. It is translated into German by A. W. Schlegel, and has been much admired as an acting play in the theatres of Berlin, Vienna, Weimar, etc.

[645]   Colecçaõ de Livros Ineditos de Hist. Port., Lisboa, folio, Tom. I., 1790, pp. 290-294; an excellent work, published by the Portuguese Academy, and edited by the learned Correa de Serra, formerly Minister of Portugal to the United States. The story of Don Ferdinand is also told in Mariana, Historia (Tom. II. p. 345). But the principal resource of Calderon was, no doubt, a life of the Infante, by his faithful friend and follower, Joam Alvares, first printed in 1527, of which an abstract, with long passages from the original, may be found in the “Leben des standhaften Prinzen,” Berlin, 1827, 8vo. To these may be added, for the illustration of the Príncipe Constante, a tract by J. Schulze, entitled “Ueber den standhaften Prinzen,” printed at Weimar, 1811, 12mo, at a time when Schlegel’s translation of that drama, brought out under the auspices of Goethe, was in the midst of its success on the Weimar stage; the part of Don Ferdinand being acted with great power by Wolf. Schulze is quite extravagant in his estimate of the poetical worth of the Príncipe Constante, placing it by the side of the “Divina Commedia”; but he discusses skilfully its merits as an acting drama, and explains, in part, its historical elements.

[646]

No prosigas;—cessa,

Cessa, Enrique, porque son

Palabras indignas essas,

No de un Portugués Infante,

De un Maestre, que professa

De Christo la Religion,

Pero aun de un hombre lo fueran

Vil, de un barbaro sin luz

De la Fé de Christo eterna.

Mi hermano, que está en el Cielo,

Si en su testamento dexa

Essa clausula, no es

Para que se cumpla, y lea,

Sino para mostrar solo,

Que mi libertad desea,

Y essa se busque por otros

Medios, y otras conveniencias,

O apacibles, ó crueles;

Porque decir: Dese á Ceuta,

Es decir: Hasta esso haced

Prodigiosas diligencias;

Que un Rey Católico, y justo

Como fuera, como fuera

Possible entregar á un Moro

Una ciudad que le cuesta

Su sangre, pues fué el primero

Que con sola una rodela,

Y una espada, enarboló

Las Quinas en sus almenas?

Jorn. II.

When we read the Príncipe Constante, we seldom remember that this Don Henry, who is one of its important personages, is the highly cultivated prince who did so much to promote discoveries in India.

[647]   “’T is Better than it was” and “Worse and Worse.” “These two comedies,” says Downes, (Roscius Anglicanus, London, 1789, 8vo, p. 36), “were made out of Spanish by the Earl of Bristol.” There can be little doubt that Calderon was the source here referred to. Tuke’s “Adventures of Five Hours,” in Dodsley’s Collection, Vol. XII., is from Calderon’s “Empeños de Seis Horas.” But such instances are rare in the old English drama, compared with the French.

[648]   Dryden took, as he admits, “An Evening’s Love, or the Mock Astrologer,” from the “Feint Astrologue” of Thomas Corneille. (Scott’s Dryden, London, 1808, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 229.) Corneille had it from Calderon’s “Astrólogo Fingido.”

[649]

Mas facil sana una herida

Que no una palabra.

And again, in “Amar despues de la Muerte,”—

Una herida mejor

Se sana que una palabra.

Comedias, 1760. Tom. II. p. 352.

[650]   “Antes que todo es mi Dama.”

[651]   “La Dama Duende,” Comedias, Tom. III.

[652]

Oy el bautismo celebra

Del primero Balthasar.

Jorn. I.

[653]   I should think he refers to it eight times, perhaps more, in the course of his plays: e. g. in “Mañanas de Avril y Mayo”; “Agradecer y no Amar”; “El Joseph de las Mugeres,” etc. I notice it, because he rarely alludes to his own works, and never, I think, in the way he does to this one. The Dama Duende is well known in the French “Répertoire” as the “Esprit Follet” of Hauteroche.

[654]

Como sombra se mostró;

Fantástica su luz fué.

Pero como cosa humana,

Se dexó tocar y ver;

Como mortal se temió,

Rezeló como muger,

Como ilusion se deshizó,

Como fantasma se fué:

Si doy la rienda al discurso,

No sé, vive Dios, no sé,

Ni que tengo de dudar,

Ni que tengo de creer.

Jorn. II.

[655]   “La Vanda y la Flor,” Comedias, Tom. V. It is admirably translated into German, by A. W. Schlegel.

[656]   In Jornada I. there is a full-length description of the Jura de Baltasar,—the act of swearing homage to Prince Balthasar, as Prince of Asturias, which took place in 1632, and which Calderon would hardly have introduced on the stage much later, because the interest in such a ceremony is so short-lived.

[657]

Lisid.

Pues como podeis negarme

Lo mismo que yo estoy viendo?

Enriq.

Negando que vos lo veis.

Lisid.

No fuisteis en el passeo

Sombra de su casa?

Enriq.

Sí.

Lisid.

Estatua de su terrero

No os halló el Alva?

Enriq.

Es verdad.

Lisid.

No la escrivisteis?

Enriq.

No niego,

Que escriví.

Lisid.

No fué la noche

De amantes delitos vuestros

Capa obscura?

Enriq.

Que la hablé

Alguna noche os confiesso.

Lisid.

No es suya essa vanda?

Enriq.

Suya

Pienso que fué.

Lisid.

Pues que es esto?

Si ver, si hablar, si escrivir,

Si traer su vanda al cuello,

Si seguir, si desvelar,

No es amar, yo, Enrique, os ruego

Me digais como se llama,

Y no ignore yo mas tiempo

Una cosa que es tan facil.

Enriq.

Respondaos un argumento:

El astuto cazador,

Que en lo rapido del buelo

Hace á un atomo de pluma

Blanco veloz del acierto,

No adonde la caza está

Pone la mira, advirtiendo,

Que para que el viento peche,

Le importa engañar el viento.

El marinero ingenioso,

Que al mar desbocado, y fiero

Monstruo de naturaleza,

Halló yugo, y puso freno,

No al puerto que solicita

Pone la proa, que haciendo

Puntas al agua, desmiente

Sus iras, y toma puerto.

El capitan que esta fuerza

Intenta ganar, primero

En aquella toca al arma,

Y con marciales estruendos

Engaña á la tierra, que

Mal prevenida del riesgo

La esperaba; assi la fuerza

Le da á partido al ingenio.

La mina, que en las entrañas

De la tierra estrenó el centro,

Artificioso volcan,

Inventado Mongibelo,

No donde preñado oculta

Abismos de horror inmensos

Hace el efecto, porque,

Engañando al mismo fuego,

Aquí concibe, allá aborta;

Allí es rayo, y aquí trueno.

Pues si es cazador mi amor

En las campañas del viento;

Si en el mar de sus fortunas

Inconstante marinero;

Si es caudillo victorioso

En las guerras de sus zelos:

Si fuego mal resistido

En mina de tantos pechos,

Que mucho engañasse en mí

Tantos amantes afectos?

Sea esta vanda testigo;

Porque, volcan, marinero,

Capitan, y cazador;

En fuego, agua, tierra, y viento;

Logre, tenga, alcanze, y tome

Ruina, caza, triunfo, y puerto.

[Dale la vanda.

Lisid.

Bien pensareis que mis quexas,

Mal lisonjeadas con esso,

Os remitan de mi agravio

Las sinrazones del vuestro.

No, Enrique, yo soy muger

Tan sobervia, que no quiero

Ser querida por venganza,

Por tema, ni por desprecio.

El que á mí me ha de querer,

Por mí ha de ser; no teniendo

Conveniencias en quererme

Mas que quererme.

Jorn. II.

[658]   I think there are six, at least, of Calderon’s plays taken from the Metamorphoses; a circumstance worth noting, because it shows the direction of his taste. He seems to have used no ancient author, and perhaps no author at all, in his plays, so much as Ovid, who was a favorite classic in Spain, six translations of the Metamorphoses having been made there before the time of Calderon. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. IV., 1835, p. 407.

[659]   It is possible Calderon may not have gone to the originals, but found his materials nearer at hand; and yet, on a comparison of the triumphal entry of Aurelian into Rome, in the third jornada, with the corresponding passages in Trebellius, “De Triginta Tyrannis,” (c. xxix.), and Vopiscus, “Aurelianus,” (c. xxxiii., xxxiv., etc.), it seems most likely that he had read them.

Sometimes Calderon is indebted to his dramatic predecessors. Thus, his fine play of the “Alcalde de Zalamea” is compounded of the stories in Lope’s “Fuente Ovejuna” and his “Mejor Alcalde el Rey.” But I think his obligations of this sort are infrequent.

[660]   For instance, the exact enumeration of the troops at the opening of the play. Comedias, Tom. III. pp. 142, 149.

[661]   It ends with a voluntary anachronism,—the resolution of the Emperor to apply to Pope Paul III. and to have such duels abolished by the Council of Trent. By its very last words, it shows that it was acted before the king, a fact that does not appear on its title-page. The duel is the one Sandoval describes with so much minuteness. Hist. de Carlos V., Anvers, 1681, folio, Lib. XI. §§ 8, 9.

[662]   “Las Armas de la Hermosura,” Tom. I., and “El Mayor Encanto Amor,” Tom. V., are the plays on Coriolanus and Ulysses. They have been mentioned before.

[663]   Good, but somewhat over-refined, remarks on the use Calderon made of Portuguese history in his “Weal and Woe” are to be found in the Preface to the second volume of Malsburg’s German translation of Calderon, Leipzig, 1819, 12mo.

[664]   Comedias, 1760, Tom. IV. See, also, Ueber die Kirchentrennung von England, von F. W. V. Schmidt, Berlin, 1819, 12mo;—a pamphlet full of curious matter, but quite too laudatory, so far as Calderon’s merit is concerned. Nothing will show the wide difference between Shakspeare and Calderon more strikingly than a comparison of this play with the grand historical drama of “Henry the Eighth.”

[665]   Of these duels, and his notions about female honor, half the plays of Calderon may be taken as specimens; but it is only necessary to refer to “Casa con Dos Puertas” and “El Escondido y la Tapada.”

[666]   Fuero Juzgo, ed. de la Academia, Madrid, 1815, folio, Lib. III. Tít. IV. Leyes 3-5 and 9. It should be remembered, that these laws were the old Gothic laws of Spain before A. D. 700; that they were the laws of the Christians who did not fall under the Arabic authority; and that they are published in the edition of the Academy as they were consolidated and reënacted by St. Ferdinand after the conquest of Córdova in 1241.

[667]   Howell, in 1623, when he had been a year in Madrid, under circumstances to give him familiar knowledge of its gay society, and at a time when the drama of Lope was at the height of its favor, says, “One shall not hear of a duel here in an age.” Letters, eleventh edition, London, 1754, 8vo, Book I. Sect. 3, Letter 32.

[668]   In “El Canto Junto al Encanto,” and in “Pedir Favor.”

[669]   Things had not been in an easy state, at any time, since the troubles already noticed in the reigns of Philip II. and Philip III., as we may see from the Approbation of Thomas de Avellaneda to Tom. XXII., 1665, of the Comedias Escogidas, where that personage, a grave and distinguished ecclesiastic, thought it needful to step aside from his proper object, and defend the theatre against attacks, which were evidently then common, though they have not reached us. But the quarrel of 1682-85, which was a violent and open rupture, can be best found in the “Apelacion al Tribunal de los Doctos,” Madrid, 1752, 4to, (which is, in fact, Guerra’s defence of himself written in 1683, but not before published), and in “Discursos contra los que defienden el Uso de las Comedias,” por Gonzalo Navarro, Madrid, 1684, 4to, which is a reply to the last and to other works of the same kind.

[670]   The description of Philip IV. on horseback, as he passed through the streets of Madrid, suggests a comparison with Shakspeare’s Bolingbroke in the streets of London, but it is wholly against the Spanish poet. (Jorn. I.) That Calderon meant to be accurate in the descriptions contained in this play can be seen by reading the official account of the “Juramento del Príncipe Baltasar,” 1632, prepared by Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza, of which the second edition was printed by order of the government, in its printing-office, 1605, 4to.

[671]   It is genuine Spanish. The hero says,—

En Italia estaba,

Quando la loca arrogancia

Del Frances, sobre Valencia

Del Po, etc.

Jorn. I.

[672]   He makes the victory more important than it really was, but his allusions to it show that it was not thought worth while to irritate the French interest; so cautious and courtly is Calderon’s whole tone. It is in Tom. X. of the Comedias.

[673]   The account, in “Guárdate de la Agua Mansa,” of the triumphal arch, for which Calderon furnished the allegorical ideas and figures, as well as the inscriptions, (both Latin and Castilian, the play says), is very ample. Jornada III.

[674]   Here, again, we have the courtly spirit in Calderon. He insists most carefully, that the Peace of the Pyrenees and the marriage of the Infanta are not connected with each other; and that the marriage is to be regarded “as a separate affair, treated at the same time, but quite independently.” But his audience knew better.

From the “Viage del Rey Nuestro Señor D. Felipe IV. el Grande á la Frontera de Francia,” por Leonardo del Castillo, Madrid, 1667, 4to,—a work of official pretensions, describing the ceremonies attending both the marriage of the Infanta and the conclusion of the peace,—it appears, that, wherever Calderon has alluded to either, he has been true to the facts of history. A similar remark may be made of the “Tetis y Peleo,” evidently written for the same occasion, and printed, Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXIX., 1668;—a poor drama by an obscure author, Josef de Bolea, and probably one of several that we know, from Castillo, were represented to amuse the king and court on their journey.

[675]   This flattery of Charles II. is the more disagreeable, because it was offered in the poet’s old age; for Charles did not come to the throne till Calderon was seventy-five years old. But it is, after all, not so shocking as the sort of blasphemous compliments to Philip IV. and his queen in the strange auto called “El Buen Retiro,” acted on the first Corpus Christi day after that luxurious palace was finished.

[676]   I think Calderon never uses blank verse, though Lope does.

[677]   “El Carro del Cielo,” which Vera Tassis says he wrote at fourteen, and which we should be not a little pleased to see.

[678]   The audience remained in the same seats, but there were three stages before them. It must have been a very brilliant exhibition, and is quaintly explained in the loa prefixed to it.

[679]   This is stated in the title, and gracefully alluded to at the end of the piece:—

Fué el agua tan dichosa,

En esta noche felice,

Que merecia ser Teatro.

[680]   Vera Tassis makes this statement. See also F. W. V. Schmidt, Ueber die italienischen Heldengedichte, Berlin, 1820, 12mo, pp. 269-280.

[681]   The two decided attempts of Calderon in the opera style have already been noticed. The “Laurel de Apolo” (Comedias, Tom. VI.) is called a Fiesta de Zarzuela, in which it is said (Jorn. I.): “Se canta y se representa”;—so that it was probably partly sung and partly acted. Of the Zarzuelas we must speak when we come to Candamo.

[682]   Goethe had this quality of Calderon’s drama in his mind when he said to Eckermann, (Gespräche mit Goethe, Leipzig, 1837, Band I. p. 251), “Seine Stücke sind durchaus bretterrecht, es ist in ihnen kein Zug, der nicht für die beabsichtigte Wirkung calculirt wäre, Calderon ist dasjenige Genie, was zugleich den grössten Verstand hatte.”

[683]   A good many of Calderon’s graciosos, or buffoons, are excellent, as, for instance, those in “La Vida es Sueño,” “El Alcayde de sí mismo,” “Casa con Dos Puertas,” “La Gran Zenobia,” “La Dama Duende,” etc.

[684]   Calderon, like many other authors of the Spanish theatre, has, as we have seen, been a magazine of plots for the dramatists of other nations. Among those who have borrowed the most from him are the younger Corneille and Gozzi. Thus, Corneille’s “Engagements du Hasard” is from “Los Empeños de un Acaso”; “Le Feint Astrologue,” from “El Astrólogo Fingido”; “Le Géolier de soi même,” from “El Alcayde de sí mismo”; besides which, his “Circe” and “L’Inconnu” prove that he had well studied Calderon’s show pieces. Gozzi took his “Pubblico Secreto” from the “Secreto á Voces”; his “Eco e Narciso” from the play of the same name; and his “Due Notti Affanose” from “Gustos y Disgustos.” And so of others.

[685]   These few meagre facts, which constitute all we know about Moreto, are due mainly to Ochoa (Teatro Español, Paris, 1838, 8vo, Tom. IV. p. 248); but the suggestion he makes, that Moreto was probably concerned in the violent death of Medinilla, mourned by Lope de Vega in an elegy in the first volume of his Works, seems to rest on no sufficient proof, and to be quite inconsistent with the regard felt for Moreto by Lope, Valdivielso, and other intimate friends of Medinilla. As to Moreto’s works, I possess his Comedias, Tom. I., Madrid, 1677 (of which Antonio notes an edition in 1654); Tom. II., Valencia, 1676; and Tom. III., Madrid, 1681, all in 4to;—besides which I have about a dozen of his plays, found in none of them. Calderon, in his “Astrólogo Fingido,” first printed by his brother in 1637, alludes to Moreto’s “Lindo Don Diego,” so that Moreto must have been known as early as that date; and in the “Comedias Escogidas de los Mejores Ingenios,” Tom. XXXVI., Madrid, 1671, we have the “Santa Rosa del Perú,” the first two acts of which are said to have been his last work, the remaining act being by Lanini, but with no intimation when Moreto wrote his part of it. This old collection of Comedias Escogidas contains forty-six plays attributed in whole or in part to Moreto.

[686]   “Los mas Dichosos Hermanos.” It is the first play in the third volume; and though it does not correspond in its story with the beautiful legend as Gibbon gives it, there is a greater attempt at the preservation of the truth of history in its accompaniments than is common in the old Spanish drama.

[687]   Comedias de Lope de Vega, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641, f. 16.

[688]   “The Aunt and the Niece” is from Lope’s “De quando acá nos vino,” and “It cannot be” from his “Mayor imposible.” There are good remarks on these and other of Moreto’s imitations in Martinez de la Rosa, Obras, Paris, 1827, 12mo, Tom. II. pp. 443-446. But the excuses there given for him hardly cover such a plagiarism as his “Valiente Justiciero” is, from Lope’s “Infanzon de Illescas.” As usual, however, in such cases, Moreto improved upon his model. Cancer y Velasco, a contemporary poet, in a little jeu d’esprit, represents Moreto as sitting down with a bundle of old plays to see what he can cunningly steal out of them, spoiling all he steals. (Obras, Madrid, 1761, 4to, p. 113.) But in this, Cancer was unjust to Moreto’s talent, if not to his honesty.

[689]   In 1664 Molière imitated the “Desden con el Desden” in his “Princesse d’Élide,” which was represented at Versailles by the command of Louis XIV., with great splendor, before his queen and his mother, both Spanish princesses. The compliment, as far as the king was concerned in it, was a magnificent one;—on Molière’s part, it was a failure, and his play is now no longer acted. The original drama of Moreto, however, is known wherever the Spanish language is spoken, and a good translation of it into German is common on the German stage.

[690]

Atento, Señor, he estado,

Y el successo no me admira,

Porque esso, Señor, es cosa,

Que sucede cada dia.

Mira; siendo yo muchacho,

Auia en mi casa vendimia,

Y por el suelo las ubas

Nunca me dauan codicia.

Passó este tiempo, y despues

Colgaron en la cocina

Las ubas para el Inuierno;

Y yo viendolas arriba,

Rabiaua por comer dellas,

Tanto que, trepando un dia

Por alcançarlas, caí,

Y me quebré las costillas.

Este es el caso, el por el.

Jorn. I.

[691]   Both volumes of the Comedias de Roxas were reprinted, Madrid, 1680, 4to, and both their Licencias are dated on the same day; but the publisher of the first, who dedicates it to a distinguished nobleman, is the same person to whom the second is dedicated by the printer of both. Autos of Roxas may be found in “Autos, Loas, etc.,” 1655, and in “Navidad y Corpus Christi Festejados,” collected by Pedro de Robles, 1664. But they are no better than those of his contemporaries generally.

[692]   His “Persiles y Sigismunda” is from Cervantes’s novel of the same name. On the other hand, his “Casarse por vengarse” is plundered, without ceremony, for the story of “Le Mariage de Vengeance,” (Gil Blas, Liv. IV. c. 4), by Le Sage, who never neglected a good opportunity of the sort.

[693]   “Del Rey abaxo Ninguno” has been sometimes printed with the name of Calderon, who might well be content to be regarded as its author; but there is no doubt who wrote it. It is, however, among the Comedias Sueltas of Roxas, and not in his collected works.

[694]   T. Corneille’s play is “Don Bertrand de Cigarral,” (Œuvres, Paris, 1758, 12mo, Tom. I. p. 209), and his obligations are avowed in the Dedication. Scarron’s “Jodelet” (Œuvres, Paris, 1752, 12mo, Tom. II. p. 73) is a spirited comedy, desperately indebted to Roxas. But Scarron constantly borrowed from the Spanish theatre.

[695]   Three persons were frequently employed on one drama, dividing its composition among them, according to its three regular jornadas. In the large collection of Comedias printed in the latter half of the seventeenth century, in forty-eight volumes, there are, I think, about thirty such plays. Two are by six persons each. One, in honor of the Marquis Cañete, is the work of nine different poets, but it is not in any collection; it is printed separately, and better than was usual, Madrid, 1622, 4to.

[696]   The plays of Cubillo that I have seen are,—ten in his “Enano de las Musas” (Madrid, 1654, 4to); five in the Comedias Escogidas, printed as early as 1660; and perhaps two or three more scattered elsewhere. The “Enano de las Musas” is a collection of his works, containing many ballads, sonnets, etc., and an allegorical poem on “The Court of the Lion,” which, Antonio says, was published as early as 1625, and which seems to have been liked and to have gone through several editions. But none of Cubillo’s poetry is so good as his plays. See Prólogo and Dedication to the Enano, and Montalvan’s list of writers for the stage at the end of his “Para Todos.”

[697]   There are a few of Leyba’s plays in Duran’s collection, and in the Comedias Escogidas, and I possess a few of them in pamphlets. But I do not know how many he wrote, and I have no notices of his life. He is sometimes called Francisco de Leyba; unless, indeed, there were two of the same surname.

[698]   Obras de Don Gerónimo Cancer y Velasco, Madrid, 1761, 4to. The first edition is of 1651, and Antonio sets his death at 1654. The “Muerte de Baldovinos” is in the Index of the Inquisition, 1790; as is also his “Vandolero de Flandes.” A play, however, which he wrote in conjunction with Pedro Rosete and Antonio Martinez, was evidently intended to conciliate the Church, and well calculated for its purpose. It is called “El Mejor Representante San Gines,” and is found in Tom. XXIX., 1668, of the Comedias Escogidas,—San Gines being a Roman actor, converted to Christianity, and undergoing martyrdom in the presence of the spectators in consequence of being called on to act a play written by Polycarp, which was ingeniously constructed so as to defend the Christians. The tradition is absurd enough certainly, but the drama may be read with interest throughout, and parts of it with pleasure. It has a love-intrigue brought in with skill. Cancer, I believe, wrote plays without assistance only once or twice. Certainly, twelve written in conjunction with Moreto, Matos Fragoso, and others, are all by him that are found in the Comedias Escogidas.

[699]   “Academias Morales de las Musas,” Madrid, 4to, 1660; but my copy was printed at Barcelona, 1704, 4to.

[700]   Flor de las Mejores Comedias, Madrid, 1652, 4to. Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. p. 227. A considerable number of the plays of Zabaleta may be seen in the forty-eight volumes of the Comedias Escogidas, 1652, etc. One of them, “El Hijo de Marco Aurelio,” on the subject of the Emperor Commodus, was acted in 1644, and, as the author tells us, being received with little favor, and complaints being made that it was not founded in truth, he began at once a life of that Emperor, which he calls a translation from Herodian, but which has claims neither to fidelity in its version, nor to purity in its style. It remained long unfinished, until one morning in 1664, waking up and finding himself struck entirely blind, he began, “as on an elevation,” to look round for some occupation suited to his solitude and affliction. His play had been printed in 1658, in the tenth volume of the Comedias Escogidas, and he now completed the work that was to justify it, and published it in 1666, announcing himself on the title-page as a royal chronicler. But it failed, as his drama had failed before it. In the “Vexámen de Ingenios” of Cancer, where the failure of another of Zabaleta’s plays is noticed, (Obras de Cancer, Madrid, 1761, 4to, p. 111), a punning epigram is inserted on his personal ugliness, the amount of which is, that, though his play was dear at the price paid for a ticket, his face would repay the loss to those who should look on it.

[701]   The plays of Zarate are, I believe, easiest found in the Comedias Escogidas, where twenty-two of them occur;—the earliest in Tom. XV., 1661; and “La Presumida y la Hermosa,” in Tom. XXIII., 1666. In the Index Expurgatorius of 1792, p. 288, it is intimated that Fernando de Zarate is the same person with Antonio Enriquez Gomez;—a mistake founded, probably, on the circumstance, that a play of Enriquez Gomez, who was a Jew, was printed with the name of Zarate attached to it, as others of his plays were printed with the name of Calderon. Amador de los Rios, Judios de España, Madrid, 1848, 8vo, p. 575.

[702]   His “Coro de las Musas,” at the end of which his plays are commonly added separately, was printed at Brussels in 1665, 4to, and in 1672. In my copy, which is of the first edition, and which once belonged to Mr. Southey, is the following characteristic note in his handwriting: “Among the Lansdowne MSS. is a volume of poems by this author, who, being a ‘New Christian,’ was happy enough to get into a country where he could profess himself a Jew.” There is a long notice of him in Barbosa, Biblioteca Lusitana, Tom. III. p. 464, and a still longer one in Amador de los Rios, Judios de España, Madrid, pp. 608, etc.

[703]   The “Comedias de Diamante” are in two volumes, 4to, Madrid, 1670 and 1674; but in the first volume eight plays are paged together, and for the four others there is a separate paging; though, as the whole twelve are recognized in the Tassa and in the table of contents, they are no doubt all his.

[704]   The “Cid” of Corneille dates from 1636, and Diamante’s “Honrador de su Padre” is found earliest in the eleventh volume of the Comedias Escogidas, licensed 1658. Indeed, it may be well doubted whether Diamante was a writer for the stage so early as 1636; for I find no play of his printed before 1657. Another play on the subject of the Cid, partly imitated from this one of Diamante, and with a similar title,—“Honrador de sus Hijas,”—is found in the Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXIII., 1662. Its author is Francisco Polo, of whom I know only that he wrote this drama, whose merit is very small, and whose subject is the marriage of the daughters of the Cid with the Counts of Carrion, and their subsequent ill-treatment by their husbands, etc.

[705]   Huerta, who reprints the “Castigo de la Miseria” in the first volume of his “Teatro Hespañol,” expresses a doubt as to who is the inventor of the story, Hoz or María de Zayas. But there is no question about the matter. The “Novelas” were printed at Zaragoza, 1637, 4to, and their Aprobacion is dated in 1635. See, also, Baena’s “Hijos de Madrid,” Tom. III. p. 271. In the Prólogo to Candamo’s plays, (Madrid, Tom. I., 1722), Hoz is said to have written the third act of Candamo’s “San Bernardo,” left unfinished at its author’s death in 1704. If this were the case, Hoz must have lived to a good old age.

[706]   The first of these scenes is taken, in a good degree, from the “Novelas,” ed. 1637, p. 86; but the scene with the astrologer is wholly the poet’s own, and parts of it are worthy of Ben Jonson. It should be added, however, that the third act of the play is technically superfluous, as the action really ends with the second. But we could not afford to part with it, so full is it of spirit and humor.

[707]   I have already noticed plays of Lope and Cervantes that set forth the cruel condition of Christian Spaniards in Algiers, and must hereafter notice the great influence this state of things had on Spanish romantic fiction. But it should be remembered here, that many dramas were founded on it, besides those I have had occasion to mention. One of the most striking is by Moreto, which has some points of resemblance to the one spoken of in the text. It is called “El Azote de su Patria,” (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXXIV., 1670),—and is filled with the cruelties of a Valencian renegade, who seems to have been an historical personage.

[708]   In the Comedias Escogidas, there are, at least, twenty-five plays written wholly or in part by Matos, the earliest of which is in Tom. V., 1653. From the conclusion of his “Pocos bastan si son Buenos,” (Tom. XXXIV., 1670), and, indeed, from the local descriptions in other parts of it, there can be no doubt that Matos Fragoso was at one time in Italy, and very little that this drama was written at Naples, and acted before the Spanish Viceroy there. One volume of the plays of Matos Fragoso, called the first, was printed at Madrid, 1658, 4to. Other separate plays are in Duran’s collection, but not, I think, the best of them. Villaviciosa wrote a part of “Solo el Piadoso es mi Hijo,” of “El Letrado del Cielo,” of “El Redentor Cautivo,” etc. The apologue of the barber, in the second act of the last, is, I think, taken from one of Leyba’s plays, but I have it not now by me to refer to, and such things were too common at the time on a much larger scale to deserve notice, except as incidental illustrations of a well-known state of literary morals in Spain. Fragoso’s life is in Barbosa, Tom. II. pp. 695-697. I have eighteen of his plays in separate pamphlets, besides those in the Comedias Escogidas.

[709]   The “Triunfos de Amor y Fortuna” appeared as early as 1660, in Tom. XIII. of the Comedias Escogidas.

[710]   The “Varias Poesías” of Solís were edited by Juan de Goyeneche, who prefixed to them an ill-written life of their author, and published them at Madrid, 1692 (4to). His Comedias were first printed in Madrid, 1681, as Tom. XLVII. of the Comedias Escogidas. The “Gitanilla,” of which I have said that it has been occasionally reproduced from Cervantes, is to be found in the “Spanish Gypsy” of Rowley and Middleton; in the “Preciosa,” a pleasant German play by P. A. Wolff; and in Victor Hugo’s “Notre Dame de Paris”; besides which certain resemblances to it in the “Spanish Student” of Professor Longfellow are noticed by the author.

[711]   Candamo’s plays, entitled “Poesías Cómicas, Obras Póstumas,” were printed at Madrid, in 1722, in 2 vols., 4to. His miscellaneous poems, “Poesías Lyricas,” were published in Madrid, in 18mo, but without a date on the title-page, while the Dedication is of 1729, the Licencias of 1720, and the Fe de Erratas, which ought to be the latest of all, is of 1710. This, however, is a specimen of the confusion of such matters in Spanish books; a confusion which, in the present instance, is carried into the contents of the volume itself, the whole of which is entitled “Poesías Lyricas,” though it contains idyls, epistles, ballads, and part of three cantos of an epic on the expedition of Charles V. against Tunis; nine cantos having been among the papers left by its author to the Duke of Alva. The life of Candamo, prefixed to the whole, is very poorly written. Huerta (Teatro, Parte III. Tom. II. p. 196) says he himself bought a large mass of Candamo’s poetry, including six cantos of this epic, for two rials; no doubt, a part of the manuscripts left to the Duke.

[712]   He boasts of it in the opening of his “Cesar Africano.”

[713]   At first, only airs were introduced into the play, but gradually the whole was sung. (Ponz, Viage de España, Madrid, 12mo, Tom. VI., 1782, p 152. Signorelli, Storia dei Teatri, Napoli, 1813, 8vo, Tom. IX. p. 194.) One of these zarzuelas, in which the portions that were sung are distinguished from the rest, is to be found in the “Ocios de Ignacio Alvarez Pellicer de Toledo,” s. l. 1635, 4to, p. 26. Its tendency to approach the Italian opera is apparent in its subject, which is “The Vengeance of Diana,” as well as in the treatment of the story, in the theatrical machinery, etc.; but it has no poetical merit. A small volume, by Andres Dávila y Heredia, (Valencia, 1676, 12mo), called “Comedia sin Música,” seems intended, by its title, to ridicule the beginnings of the opera in Spain; but it is a prose satire, of little consequence in any respect. See ante, pp. 160, 237, 361, 399.

[714]   See “Selva sin Amor,” with its Preface, printed by Lope de Vega at the end of his “Laurel de Apolo,” Madrid, 1630, 4to;—Benavente, Joco-Seria, 1645, and Valladolid, 1653, 12mo, where such pieces are called entremeses cantados;—Calderon’s Púrpura de la Rosa;—Luzan, Poética, Lib. III. c. 1;—Diamante’s Labyrinto de Creta, printed as early as 1667, in the Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXVII.;—Parra, El Teatro Español, Poema Lírico, s. l. 1802, 8vo, notas, p. 295;—C. Pellicer, Orígen del Teatro, Tom. I. p. 268;—and Stefano Arteaga, Teatro Musicale Italiano, Bologna, 8vo, Tom. I., 1785, p. 241. The last is an excellent book, written by one of the Jesuits driven from Spain by Charles III., and who died at Paris in 1799. The second edition, 1783-88, is the amplest and best.

[715]   Comedias de Antonio de Zamora, Madrid, 1744, 2 tom., 4to. The royal authority to print the plays gives also a right to print the lyrical works, but I think they never appeared. His life is in Baena, Tom. I. p. 177, and notices of him in L. F. Moratin, Obras, ed. Acad., Tom. II., Prólogo, pp. v.-viii.

[716]   These and many others, now entirely forgotten, are found in the old collection of Comedias Escogidas, published between 1652 and 1704, where they occur in the later volumes; e. g. of Lanini, nine plays; of Martinez, eighteen; and of Rosete and Villegas, eleven each. I am not aware that any one of them deserves to be rescued from the oblivion in which they are all sunk.

[717]   Two volumes of the plays of Cañizares were collected, but more can still be found separate, and many are lost. In Moratin’s list, the titles of above seventy are brought together. Notices of his life are in Baena, Tom. III. p. 69, and in Huerta, Teatro, Parte I. Tom. II. p. 347.

[718]   The “Dómine Lucas” of Cañizares has no resemblance to the lively play with the same title by Lope de Vega, in the seventeenth volume of his Comedias, 1621, which, he says in the Dedication, is founded on fact, and which was reprinted in Madrid, 1841, 8vo, with a Preface, attacking, not only Cañizares, but several of the author’s contemporaries, in a most truculent manner. The “Dómine Lucas” of Cañizares, however, is worth reading, particularly in an edition where it is accompanied by its two entremeses, improperly called saynetes;—the whole newly arranged for representation in the Buen Retiro, on occasion of the marriage of the Infanta María Luisa with the Archduke Peter Leopold, in 1765.

[719]   The habit of using too freely the works of their predecessors was common on the Spanish stage from an early period. Cervantes says, in 1617, (Persiles, Lib. III. c. 2), that some companies kept poets expressly to new-vamp old plays; and so many had done it before him, that Cañizares seems to have escaped censure, though nobody, certainly, had gone so far.

[720]   See Appendix (F).

[721]   Mariana, in his treatise “De Spectaculis,” Cap. VII., (Tractatus Septem, Coloniæ Agrippinæ, 1609, folio), earnestly insists that actors of the low and gross character he gives to them should not be permitted to perform in the churches, or to represent sacred plays anywhere; and that the theatres should be closed on Sundays. But he produced no effect against the popular passion.

[722]   For Hardy and his extraordinary career, which was almost entirely founded on the Spanish theatre, see the “Parfaits,” or any other history of the French stage. Corneille, in his “Remarks on Mélite,” says, that, when he began, he had no guide but a little common sense and the example of Hardy, and a few others no more regular than he was. The example of Hardy led Corneille directly to Spain for materials.

[723]   D. Quixote, Parte I. c. 48. The Primera Dama, or the actress of first parts, was sometimes called the Autora. Diablo Cojuelo, Tranco V.

[724]   Villegas was one of the last of the authors who were managers. He wrote, we are told, fifty-four plays, and died about 1600. (Roxas, Viage, 1614, f. 21.) After this, the next example of any prominence is Diamante, who was an actor before he wrote for the stage, and died about 1700. The managing autor was sometimes the object of ridicule in the play his own company performed, as he is in the “Tres Edades del Mundo” of Luis Vélez de Guevara, where he is the gracioso. Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXXVIII., 1672.

[725]   Pasagero, 1617, ff. 112-116.

[726]   “Garduña de Sevilla,” near the end, and the “Bachiller Trapaza,” c. 15. Cervantes, just as he is finishing his “Coloquio de los Perros,” tells a story somewhat similar; so that authors were early ill-treated by the actors.

[727]   See the Preface and Dedication of the “Arcadia,” by Lope, as well as other passages, noted in his Life;—the letter of Calderon to the Duke of Veraguas;—his Life by Vera Tassis, etc.

[728]   Thus, Mira de Mescua, at the conclusion of “The Death of St. Lazarus,” (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. IX., 1657, p. 167), says:—

Here ends the play

Whose wondrous tale Mira de Mescua wrote

To warn the many. Pray forgive our faults.

And Francisco de Leyba finishes his “Amadis y Niquea” (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XL., 1675, f. 118) with these words:—

Don Francis Leyba humbly bows himself,

And at your feet asks,—not a victor shout,—

But rather pardon for his many faults.

In general, however, as in the “Mayor Venganza” of Alvaro Cubillo, and in the “Caer para levantarse” of Matos, Cancer, and Moreto, the annunciation is simple, and made, apparently, to protect the rights of the author, which, in the seventeenth century, were so little respected.

[729]   Don Quixote, ed. Pellicer, 1797, Tom. IV. p. 110, note. One account says there were three hundred companies of actors in Spain about 1636; but this seems incredible, if it means companies of persons who lived by acting. Pantoja, Sobre Comedias, Murcia, 1814, 4to, Tom. I. p. 28.

[730]   Pellicer, Orígen de las Comedias, 1804, Tom. I. p. 185.

[731]   Ibid., pp. 226-228. When Philip III. visited Lisbon in 1619, the Jesuits performed a play before him, partly in Latin and partly in Portuguese, at their College of San Antonio;—an account of which is given in the “Relacion de la Real Tragicomedia con que los Padres de la Compañía de Jesus recibieron á la Magestad Católica,” etc., por Juan Sardina Mimoso, etc., Lisboa, 1620, 4to,—its author being, I believe, Antonio de Sousa. Add to this that Mariana (De Spectaculis, c. 7) says that the entremeses and other exhibitions between the acts of the plays, performed in the most holy religious houses, were often of a gross and shameless character,—a statement which he repeats, partly in the same words, in his treatise “De Rege,” Lib. III. c. 16.

[732]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. II., passim, and Mad. d’Aulnoy, Voyage en Espagne, ed. 1693, Tom. I. p. 97. One of the best-known actors of the time was Sebastian Prado, mentioned above, the head of a company that went to France after the marriage of Louis XIV. with María Teresa, in 1659, and performed there some time for the pleasure of the new queen;—one of the many proofs of the spread and fashion of Spanish literature at this period. (C. Pellicer, Tom. I. p. 39.) María de Córdoba is mentioned with admiration, not only by the authors I have cited, but by Calderon in the opening of the “Dama Duende,” as Amarilis. For the names of other actors in the seventeenth century, see Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Parte II. c. 11, note.

[733]   Alonso, Mozo de Muchos Amos, Parte I., Barcelona, 1625, f. 141. A little earlier, viz. 1618, Bisbe y Vidal speaks of women on the stage frequently taking the parts of men (Tratado de Comedias, f. 50); and from the directions to the players in the “Amadis y Niquea” of Leyba, (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XL., 1675), it appears that the part of Amadis was expected to be played always by a woman.

[734]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 183, Tom. II. p. 29; and Navarro Castellanos, Cartas Apologéticas contra las Comedias, Madrid, 1684, 4to, pp. 256-258. “Take my advice,” says Sancho to his master, after their unlucky encounter with the players of the Auto Sacramental,—“take my advice and never pick a quarrel with play-actors: they are privileged people. I have known one of them sent to prison for two murders, and get off scot-free. For mark, your worship, as they are gay fellows, full of fun, every body favors them; every body defends, helps, and likes them; especially if they belong to the royal and privileged companies, where all or most of them dress as if they were real princes.” Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 11, with the note of Clemencin.

[735]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. II. p. 53, and elsewhere throughout the volume.

[736]   In the tale of the “Licenciado Vidriera.”

[737]   Roxas, Viage, 1614, f. 138. The necessities of the actors were so pressing, that they were paid their wages every night, as soon as the acting was over.

Un Representante cobra

Cada noche lo que gana.

Y el Autor paga, aunque

No hay dinero en la Caxa.

El Mejor Representante, Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XXIX., 1668, p. 199.

The Actor gets his wages every night;

For the poor Manager must pay him up,

Although his treasure-chest is clear of coin.

[738]   “Pondus iners reipublicæ, atque inutile,” said Mariana, De Spectaculis, c. 9.

[739]   Hugalde y Parra, Orígen del Teatro, p. 312.

[740]   Familiar Letters, London, 1754, 8vo, Book I. Sect. 3, Letter 18.

[741]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 220. Aarsens, Voyage, 1667, p. 29.

[742]   Relation du Voyage d’Espagne, par Madame la Contesse d’Aulnoy, La Haye, 1693, 18mo, Tom. III. p. 21,—the same who wrote beautiful fairy tales. She was there in 1679-80; but Aarsens gives a similar account of things fifteen years earlier. Voyage, 1667, p. 59.

[743]   Figueroa, Pasagero, and Guevara, Diablo Cojuelo.

[744]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 53, 55, 63, 68.

[745]   Mad. d’Aulnoy, Voyage, Tom. III. p. 21. Spectator, No. 235.

[746]   Aarsens, Relation, at the end of his Voyage, 1667, p. 60.

[747]   Manuel Morchon, at the end of his “Vitoria del Amor,” (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. IX., 1657, p. 242), says:—

Most honorable Mosqueteros, here

Don Manuel Morchon, in gentlest form,

Beseeches you to give him, as an alms,

A victor shout;—if not for this his play,

At least for the good-will it shows to please you.

In the same way, Antonio de Huerta, speaking of his “Cinco Blancas de Juan Espera en Dios,” (Ibid., Tom. XXXII., 1669, p. 179), addresses them:—

And should it now a victor cry deserve,

Señores Mosqueteros, you will here,

In charity, vouchsafe to give me one;—

That is, in case the play has pleased you well.

Perhaps we should not have expected of such a condescension from Solís, but he stooped to it. At the conclusion of his well-known “Doctor Carlino,” (Comedias, 1716, p. 262), he turns to them, saying:—

And here expires my play. If it has pleased,

Let the Señores Mosqueteros cry a victor

At its burial.

Every thing, indeed, that we know about the mosqueteros shows that their influence was great at the theatre in the theatre’s best days. In the eighteenth century we shall find it governing every thing.

[748]   Aarsens, Relation, p. 59. Zavaleta, Dia de Fiesta por la Tarde, Madrid, 1660, 12mo, pp. 4, 8, 9. C. Pellicer, Tom. I. Mad. d’Aulnoy, Tom. III. p. 22.

[749]   Guillen de Castro, “Mal Casadas de Valencia,” Jorn. II. It may be worth notice, perhaps, that the traditions of the Spanish theatre are still true to its origin;—aposentos, or apartments, being still the name for the boxes; patio, or court-yard, that of the pit; and mosqueteros, or musketeers, that of the persons who fill the pit, and who still claim many privileges, as the successors of those who stood in the heat of the old court-yard. As to the cazuela, Breton de los Herreros, in his spirited “Sátira contra los Abusos en el Arte de la Declamacion Teatral,” (Madrid, 1834, 12mo), says:—

Tal vez alguna insípida mozuela

De tí se prende; mas si el Patio brama,

Que te vale un rincon de la Cazuela?

But this part of the theatre is more respectable than it was in the seventeenth century.

[750]   Zabaleta, Dia de Fiesta por la Tarde, p. 2.

[751]   Cervantes, Viage al Parnaso, 1784, p. 148.

[752]   Cervantes, Prólogo á las Comedias. Lope, Prefaces to several of his plays. Figueroa, Pasagero, 1617, p. 105. Benavente, Joco-Seria, Valladolid, 1653, 12mo, f. 81. One of the ways in which the audiences expressed their disapprobation was, as Cervantes intimates, by throwing cucumbers (pepinos) at the actors.

[753]   Mad. d’Aulnoy, Voyage, Tom. I. p. 55. Tirso de Molina, Deleytar, Madrid, 1765, 4to, Tom. II. p. 333. At the end of a play the whole audience is not unfrequently appealed to for a “Victor” by the second-rate authors, as we have seen the mosqueteros were sometimes, though rarely. Diego de Figueroa, at the conclusion of his “Hija del Mesonero,” (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XIV., 1662, p. 182), asks for it as for an alms, “Dadle un Vitor de limosna”; and Rodrigo Enriquez, in his “Sufrir mas por querer menos,” (Tom. X., 1658, p. 222), asks for it as for the vails given to servants in a gaming-house, “Venga un Vitor de barato.” Sometimes a good deal of ingenuity is used to bring in the word Vitor just at the end of the piece, so that it shall be echoed by the audience without an open demand for it, as it is by Calderon in his “Amado y Aborrecido,” and in the “Difunta Pleyteada” of Francisco de Roxas. But, in general, when it is asked for at all, it is rather claimed as a right. Once, in “Lealtad contra su Rey,” by Juan de Villegas, (Comedias Escogidas, Tom. X., 1658), the two actors who end the piece impertinently ask the applause for themselves, and not for the author; a jest which was, no doubt, well received.

[754]   Cervantes, Viage, 1784, p. 138. Novelas, 1783, Tom. I. p. 40.

[755]   Roxas, Viage, 1614, f. 51. Benavente, Joco-Seria, 1653, f. 78. Alonso, Mozo de Muchos Amos;—by which (Tom. I. f. 137) it appears that the placards were written as late as 1624, in Seville.

[756]   This title he gave to “Como han de ser los Amigos,” “Amor por Razon de Estado,” and some others of his plays. It may be noted that a full-length play was sometimes called Gran Comedia, as twelve such are in Tom. XXXI. of “Las Mejores Comedias que hasta oy han salido,” Barcelona, 1638.

[757]   Mad. d’Aulnoy, Voyage, Tom. III. p. 22, and Zabaleta, Fiesta por la Tarde, 1660, pp. 4, 9.

[758]   Cigarrales de Toledo, Madrid, 1624, 4to, p. 99. There is a good deal of learning about loas in Pinciano, “Filosofía Antigua,” Madrid, 1596, 4to, p. 413, and Salas, “Tragedia Antigua,” Madrid, 1633, 4to, p. 184.

[759]   The loa to the “Vergonzoso en Palacio”: it is in décimas redondillas.

[760]   It gives an account of the reception of the news at the palace, (Obras de Mendoza, Lisboa, 1690, 4to, p. 78), and may have been spoken before Calderon’s well-known play, “El Sitio de Breda.”

[761]   Four persons appear in this loa,—a part of which is sung,—and, at the end, Seville enters and grants them all leave to act in her city. Viage, 1614, ff. 4-8.

[762]   Lyra Poética de Vicente Sanchez, Zaragoza, 1688, 4to, p. 47.

[763]   Joco-Seria, 1653, ff. 77, 82. In another he parodies some of the familiar old ballads (ff. 43, etc.) in a way that must have been very amusing to the mosqueteros: a practice not uncommon in the lighter dramas of the Spanish stage, most of which are lost. Instances of it are found in the entremes of “Melisandra,” by Lope (Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1609, p. 333); and two burlesque dramas in Comedias Escogidas, Tom. XLV., 1679,—the first entitled “Traycion en Propria Sangre,” being a parody on the ballads of the “Infantes de Lara,” and the other entitled “El Amor mas Verdadero,” a parody on the ballads of “Durandarte” and “Belerma”;—both very extravagant and dull, but showing the tendencies of the popular taste not a whit the less.

[764]   These curious loas are found in a rare volume, called “Autos Sacramentales, con Quatro Comedias Nuevas y sus Loas y Entremeses,” Madrid, 1655, 4to.

[765]   A loa entitled “El Cuerpo de Guardia,” by Luis Enriquez de Fonseca, and performed by an amateur company at Naples on Easter eve, 1669, in honor of the queen of Spain, is as long as a saynete, and much like one. It is—together with another loa and several curious bayles—part of a play on the subject of Viriatus, entitled “The Spanish Hannibal,” and to be found in a collection of his poems, less in the Italian manner than might be expected from a Spaniard who lived and wrote in Italy. Fonseca published the volume containing them all at Naples, in 1683, 4to, and called it “Ocios de los Estudios”; a volume not worth reading, and yet not wholly to be passed over.

[766]   Roxas, Viage, ff. 189-193.

[767]   Cigarrales de Toledo, 1624, pp. 104 and 403. Figueroa, Pasagero, 1617, f. 109. b.

[768]   Sarmiento, the literary historian and critic, in a letter cited in the “Declamacion contra los Abusos de la Lengua Castellana,” (Madrid, 1793, 4to, p. 149), says: “I never knew what the true Castilian idiom was till I read entremeses.”

[769]   The origin of entremeses is distinctly set forth in Lope’s “Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias”; and both the first and third volumes of his collection of plays contain entremeses; besides which, several are to be found in his Obras Sueltas;—almost all of them amusing. The entremeses of Cervantes are at the end of his Comedias, 1615.

[770]   Novelas, 1783, Tom. II. p. 441. “Coloquio de los Perros.”

[771]   A good many are to be found in the “Joco-Seria” of Quiñones de Benavente. Those by Cancer are in the Autos, etc., 1655, cited in note 44.

[772]   “El Castillo de Lindabridis,” end of Act I. There is an entremes called “The Chestnut Girl,” very amusing as far as the spirited dialogue is concerned, but immoral enough in the story, to be found in Chap. 15 of the “Bachiller Trapaza.”

[773]   Mad. d’Aulnoy, Tom. I. p. 56.

[774]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 277. The entremeses of Cancer are to be found in his Obras, Madrid, 1761, 4to; those of Deza y Avila, in his “Donayres de Tersicore,” 1663; and those of Benavente, in his “Joco-Seria,” 1653. The volume of Deza y Avila—marked Vol. I., but I think the only one that ever appeared—is almost filled with light, short compositions for the theatre, under the name of bayles, entremeses, saynetes, and mogigangas; the last being a sort of mumming. Some of them are good; all are characteristic of the state of the theatre in the middle of the seventeenth century.

[775]

Al fin con un baylezito

Iba la gente contenta.

Roxas, Viage, 1614, f. 48.

[776]   The Gaditanæ Puellæ were the most famous; but see, on the whole subject of the old Spanish dances, the notes to Juvenal, by Ruperti, Lipsiæ, 1801, 8vo, Sat. XI. vv. 162-164, and the curious discussion by Salas, “Nueva Idea de la Tragedia Antigua,” 1633, pp. 127, 128. Gifford, in his remarks on the passage in Juvenal, (Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis, Philadelphia, 1803, 8vo, Vol. II. p. 159), thinks that it refers to “neither more nor less than the fandango, which still forms the delight of all ranks in Spain,” and that in the phrase “testarum crepitus” he hears “the clicking of the castanets, which accompanies the dance.”

[777]   Jornada III. Every body danced. The Duke of Lerma was said to be the best dancer of his time, being premier to Philip IV., and afterwards a cardinal. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. VI., 1839, p. 272.

[778]   “Danzas habladas” is the singular phrase applied to a pantomime with singing and dancing in Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 20. The bayles of Fonseca, referred to in a preceding note, are a fair specimen of the singing and dancing on the Spanish stage in the middle of the seventeenth century. One of them is an allegorical contest between Love and Fortune; another, a discussion on Jealousy; and the third, a wooing by Peter Crane, a peasant, carried on by shaking a purse before the damsel he would win;—all three in the ballad measure, and none of them extending beyond a hundred and twenty lines, or possessing any merit but a few jests.

[779]   Some of them are very brutal, like one at the end of “Crates y Hipparchia,” Madrid, 1636, 12mo; one in the “Enano de las Musas”; and several in the “Ingeniosa Helena.” The best are in Quiñones de Benavente, “Joco-Seria,” 1653, and Solís, “Poesías,” 1716. There was originally a distinction between bayles and danzas, now no longer recognized;—the danzas being graver and more decent. See a note of Pellicer to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 48; partly discredited by one of Clemencin on the same passage.

[780]   Covarrubias, ad verbum Çarabanda. Pellicer, Don Quixote, 1797, Tom. I. pp. cliii.-clvi., and Tom. V. p. 102. There is a list of many ballads that were sung with the zarabandas in a curious satire entitled “The Life and Death of La Zarabanda, Wife of Anton Pintado,” 1603;—the ballads being given as a bequest of the deceased lady. (C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. pp. 129-131, 136-138.) Lopez Pinciano, in his “Filosofía Antigua Poética,” 1596, pp. 418-420, partly describes the zarabanda, and expresses his great disgust at its indecency.

[781]   Dorotea, Acto I. sc. 5.

[782]   Other names of dances are to be found in the “Diablo Cojuelo,” Tranco I., where all of them are represented as inventions of the Devil on Two Sticks; but these are the chief. See, also, Covarrubias, Art. Zapato.

[783]   Cuevas de Salamanca. There is a curious bayle entremesado of Moreto, on the subject of Don Rodrigo and La Cava, in the Autos, etc., 1655, f. 92; and another, called “El Médico,” in the “Ocios de Ignacio Alvarez Pellicer,” s. l. 1685, 4to, p. 51.

[784]   See the “Gran Sultana,” as already cited, note 57.

[785]   C. Pellicer, Orígen, Tom. I. p. 102.

[786]   Figueroa, Pasagero, 1617, f. 105. Villegas, Eróticas Najera, 1617, 4to, Tom. II. p. 29. Diablo Cojuelo, Tranco V. Figueroa, Plaza Universal, Madrid, 1733, folio, Discurso 91.

[787]   Mad. d’Aulnoy, fresh from the stage of Racine and Molière, then the most refined and best appointed in Europe, speaks with great admiration of the theatres in the Spanish palaces, though she ridicules those granted to the public. (Voyage, etc., ed. 1693, Tom. III. p. 7, and elsewhere.) One way, however, in which the kings patronized the drama was, probably, not very agreeable to the authors, if it were often practised; I mean that of requiring a piece to be acted nowhere but in the royal presence. This was the case with Gerónimo de Villayzan’s “Sufrir mas por querer mas.” Comedias por Diferentes Autores, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1633, f. 145. b.

[788]   Schack’s Geschichte der dramat. Lit. in Spanien, Berlin, 1846, Tom. III. 8vo, pp. 22-24; a work of great value.

[789]   Relation du Voyage d’Espagne, ed. 1693, Tom. I. p. 55.

[790]   “La Carolea,” Valencia, 1560, 2 tom. 12mo. The first volume ends with accounts of the author’s birthplace, in the course of which he commemorates some of its merchants and some of its scholars, particularly Luis Vives. Notices of Sempere are to be found in Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 135, in Fuster, Tom. I. p. 110, and in the notes to Polo’s “Diana,” by Cerdá, p. 380.

A poem entitled “Conquista de la Nueva Castilla,” first published at Paris in 1848, 12mo, by J. A. Sprecher de Bernegg, may, perhaps, be older than the “Carolea.” It is a short narrative poem, in two hundred and eighty-three octave stanzas, apparently written about the middle of the sixteenth century, by some unknown author of that period, and devoted to the glory of Francisco Pizarro, from the time when he left Panamá, in 1524, to the fall of Atabalipa. It was found in the Imperial Library at Vienna, among the manuscripts there, but, from a review of it in the Jahrbücher der Literatur, Band CXXI., 1848, it seems to have been edited with very little critical care. It does not, however, deserve more than it received. It is wholly worthless;—not better than we can easily suppose to have been written by one of Pizarro’s rude followers.

[791]   “Carlo Famoso de Don Luis de Çapata,” Valencia, 1565, 4to. At the opening of the fiftieth canto, he congratulates himself that he has “reached the end of his thirteen years’ journey”; but, after all, is obliged to hurry over the last fourteen years of his hero’s life in that one canto. For Garcilasso, see Canto XLI.; and for Torralva’s story, which strongly illustrates the Spanish character of the sixteenth century, see Cantos XXVIII., XXX., XXXI., and XXXII., with the notes of the commentators to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 41.

[792]   Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 323) gives the date and title, and little else. The only copy of the poem known to me is one printed at Alcalá de Henares, 1579, 4to, 149 leaves, double columns. It is dedicated to the great Duke of Alva, under whom its author had served, and consists chiefly of the usual traditions about the Cid, told in rather flowing, but insipid, octave stanzas.

In the Library of the Society of History at Madrid, MS. D. No. 42, is a poem in double redondillas de arte mayor, by Fray Gonzalo de Arredondo, on the achievements both of the Cid and of the Count Fernan Gonzalez, the merits of each being nicely balanced in alternate cantos. It is hardly worth notice, except from the circumstance that it was written as early as 1522, when the unused license of Charles V. to print it was given. Fray Arredondo is also the author of “El Castillo Inexpugnable y Defensorio de la Fé,” Burgos, 1528, fol.

[793]   Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 179, and Velazquez, Dieze, p. 385.

[794]   The “Historia Parthenopea,” in eight books, by Alfonso Fernandez, was printed at Rome in 1516, says Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 23). Nicolas de Espinosa’s second part of the “Orlando Furioso” is better known, as there are editions of it in 1555, 1556, 1557, and 1559, the one of 1556 being printed at Antwerp in 4to. Juan de Coloma’s “Década de la Pasion,” in ten books, terza rima, was printed in 1579, in 8vo, at Caller (Cagliari) in Sardinia, where its author was viceroy, and on which island this has been said to be the first book ever printed. There is an edition of it, also, of 1586. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 175.) It is praised by Cervantes in his “Galatea,” and is a sort of harmony of the Gospels, not without a dignified movement in its action, and interspersed with narratives from the Old Testament. The story of St. Veronica, (Lib. VII.), and the description of the Madonna as she sees her son surrounded by the rude crowd and ascending Mount Calvary under the burden of his cross, (Lib. VIII.), are passages of considerable merit. Coloma says he chose the terza rima “because it is the gravest verse in the language and the best suited to any grave subject.” In a poem in the same volume, on the Resurrection, he has, however, taken the octave rhyme; and half a century earlier, the terza rima had been rejected by Pedro Fernandez de Villegas, as quite unfitted for Castilian poetry. See ante, Vol. I. p. 486, note.

[795]   In Canto XXVII. he says: “Behold the rough soil of ancient Biscay, whence it is certain comes that nobility now extended through the whole land; behold Bermeo, the head of Biscay, surrounded with thorn-woods, and above its port the old walls of the house of Ercilla, a house older than the city itself.”

[796]   “Arauco,” says Ercilla, “is a small province, about twenty leagues long and twelve broad, which produces the most warlike people in the Indies, and is therefore called The Unconquered State.” Its people are still proud of their name.

[797]   The accounts of himself are chiefly in Cantos XIII., XXXVI., and XXXVII.; and besides the facts I have given in the text, I find it stated (Seman. Pintoresco, 1842, p. 195) that Ercilla in 1571 received the Order of Santiago, and in 1578 was employed by Philip II. on an inconsiderable mission to Saragossa.

[798]   The great praise of this speech by Voltaire, in the Essay prefixed to his “Henriade,” 1726, first made the Araucana known beyond the Pyrenees; and if Voltaire had read the poem he pretended to criticize, he might have done something in earnest for its fame. (See his Works, ed. Beaumarchais, Paris, 1785, 8vo, Tom. X. pp. 394-401.) But his mistakes are so gross as to impair the value of his admiration.

[799]   The best edition of the Araucana is that of Sancha, Madrid, 1776, 2 tom. 12mo; and the most exact life of its author is in Baena, Tom. I. p. 32. Hayley published an abstract of the poem, with bad translations of some of its best passages, in the notes to his third epistle on Epic Poetry (London, 1782, 4to); but there is a better and more ample examination of it in the “Caraktere der vornehmsten Dichter aller Nationen,” Leipzig, 1793, 8vo, Band II. Theil I. pp. 140 and 349.

[800]   The last edition of the continuation of the Araucana, by Diego de Sanisteban Osorio, of which I have any knowledge, was printed with the poem of Ercilla at Madrid, 1733, folio.

[801]   The injustice, as it was deemed by many courtly persons, of Ercilla to Garcia de Mendoza, fourth Marquis of Cañete, who commanded the Spaniards in the war of Arauco, may have been one of the reasons why the poet was neglected by his own government after his return to Spain, and was certainly a subject of remark in the reigns of Philip III. and IV. In 1613, Christóval Suarez de Figueroa, the well-known poet, published a life of the Marquis, and dedicated it to the profligate Duke de Lerma, then the reigning favorite. It is written with some elegance and some affectation in its style, but is full of flattery to the great family of which the Marquis was a member; and when its author reaches the point of time at which Ercilla was involved in the trouble at the tournament, already noticed, he says: “There arose a difference between Don Juan de Pineda and Don Alonso de Ercilla, which went so far, that they drew their swords. Instantly a vast number of weapons sprang from the scabbards of those on foot, who, without knowing what to do, rushed together and made a scene of great confusion. A rumor was spread, that it had been done in order to cause a revolt; and from some slight circumstances it was believed that the two pretended combatants had arranged it all beforehand. They were seized by command of the general, who ordered them to be beheaded, intending to infuse terror into the rest, and knowing that severity is the most effectual way of insuring military obedience. The tumult, however, was appeased; and as it was found, on inquiry, that the whole affair was accidental, the sentence was revoked. The becoming rigor with which Don Alonso was treated caused the silence in which he endeavoured to bury the achievements of Don Garcia. He wrote the wars of Arauco, carrying them on by a body without a head;—that is, by an army, with no intimation that it had a general. Ungrateful for the many favors he had received from the same hand, he left his rude sketch without the living colors that belonged to it; as if it were possible to hide the valor, virtue, forecast, authority, and success of a nobleman whose words and deeds always went together and were alike admirable. But so far could passion prevail, that the account thus given remained in the minds of many as if it were an apocryphal one; whereas, had it been dutifully written, its truth would have stood authenticated to all. For, by the consent of all, the personage of whom the poet ought to have written was without fault, gentle, and of great humanity; and he who was silent in his praise strove in vain to dim his glory.” Hechos de Don Garcia de Mendoza, por Chr. Suarez de Figueroa, Madrid, 1613, 4to, p. 103.

The theatre seemed especially anxious to make up for the deficiencies of the greatest narrative poet of the country. In 1622, a play appeared, entitled “Algunas Hazañas de las muchas de Don Garcia Hurtado de Mendoza”; a poor attempt at flattery, which, on its title-page, professes to be the work of Luis de Belmonte, but, in a sort of table of contents, is ascribed chiefly to eight other poets, among whom are Antonio Mira de Mescua, Luis Vélez de Guevara, and Guillen de Castro. Of the “Arauco Domado” of Lope de Vega, printed in 1629, and the humble place assigned in it to Ercilla, I have spoken, ante, p. 207. To these should be added two others, namely, the “Governador Prudente” of Gaspar de Avila, in Tom. XXI. of the Comedias Escogidas, printed in 1664, in which Don Garcia arrives first on the scene of action in Chili, and distinguishes his command by acts of wisdom and clemency; and in Tom. XXII., 1665, the “Españoles en Chili,” by Francisco Gonzalez de Bustos, devoted in part to the glory of Don Garcia’s father, and ending with the impalement of Caupolican and the baptism of another of the principal Indians; each as characteristic of the age as was the homage of all to the Mendozas.

[802]   “Arauco Domado, compuesto por el Licenciado Pedro de Oña, Natural de los Infantes de Engol en Chile, etc., impreso en la Ciudad de los Reyes,” (Lima), 1596, 12mo, and Madrid, 1605. Besides which, Oña wrote a poem on the earthquake at Lima in 1599. Antonio is wrong in suggesting that Oña was not a native of America.

[803]   “Cortés Valeroso, por Gabriel Lasso de la Vega,” Madrid, 1588, 4to, and “La Mexicana,” Madrid, 1594, 8vo. Tragedies and other works, which I have not seen, are also attributed to him. (Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 264.) “El Peregrino Indiano, por Don Antonio de Saavedra Guzman, Viznieto del Conde del Castellar, nacido en Mexico,” Madrid, 1599, 12mo. It is in twenty cantos of octave stanzas; and though we know nothing else of its author, we know, by the laudatory verses prefixed to his poem, that Lope de Vega and Vicente Espinel were among his friends. It brings the story of Cortés down to the death of Guatimozin.

[804]   The poem of Castellanos is singularly enough entitled “Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias,” and we have some reason to suppose it originally consisted of four parts. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 674.) The first was printed at Madrid, 1589, 4to; but the second and third, discovered, I believe, in the National Library of that city, were not published till they appeared in the fourth volume of the Biblioteca of Aribau, Madrid, 1847, 8vo. Elegias seems to have been used by Castellanos in the sense of eulogies. Of their author the little we know is told by himself.

[805]   “Argentina, Conquista del Rio de la Plata y Tucuman, y otros Sucesos del Peru,” Lisboa, 1602, 4to. There is a love-story in Canto XII., and some talk about enchantments elsewhere; but, with a few such slight exceptions, the poem is evidently pretty good geography, and the best history the author could collect on the spot. I know it only in the reprint of Barcia, who takes it into his collection entirely for its historical claims.

One thing has much struck me in this and all the poems written by Spaniards on their conquests in America, and especially by those who visited the countries they celebrate. It is, that there are no proper sketches of the peculiar scenery through which they passed, though much of it is among the most beautiful and grand that exists on the globe, and must have been filling them constantly with new wonder. The truth is, that, when they describe woods and rivers and mountains, their descriptions would as well fit the Pyrenees or the Guadalquivir as they do Mexico, the Andes, or the Amazon. Perhaps this deficiency is connected with the same causes that have prevented Spain from ever producing a great landscape painter.

[806]   “La Conquista del Nuevo Mexico, por Gaspar de Villagra,” was printed at Alcalá in 1610, 8vo. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 535.

[807]   “Universal Redencion de Francisco Hernandez Blasco,” Toledo, 1584, 1589, 4to, Madrid, 1609, 4to. He was of Toledo, and claims that a part of his poem was a revelation to a nun.

[808]   “El Cavallero Assisio, Vida de San Francisco y otros Cinco Santos, por Gabriel de Mata,” Tom. I., Bilbao, 1587, with a wood-cut of St. Francis on the title-page, as a knight on horseback and in full armour; Tom. II., 1589, 4to. A third volume was promised, but it never appeared. The five saints are St. Anthony of Padua, St. Buenaventura, St. Luis the Bishop, Sta. Bernadina, and Sta. Clara, all Minorites. St. Anthony preaching to the fishes, whom he addresses (Canto XVII.) as hermanos peces, is very quaint.

[809]   In a hermitage on a mountain near Córdova, where about thirty hermits lived in stern silence and subjected to the most cruel penances, I once saw a person who had served with distinction as an officer at the battle of Trafalgar, and another who had been of the household of the first queen of Ferdinand VII. The Duke de Rivas and his brother, Don Angel,—now wearing the title himself, but more distinguished as a poet, or for his eminent merits in the diplomatic and military service of his country, than for his high rank,—who led me up that rude mountain, and filled a long and beautiful morning with strange sights and adventures and stories, such as can be found in no other country but Spain, assured me that cases like those of the Spanish officers who had become hermits were still of no infrequent occurrence in their country. This was in 1818.

[810]   Of Virues a notice has been already given, (ante, p. 28), to which it is only necessary to add here that there are editions of the Monserrate of 1588, 1601, 1602, 1609, and 1805; the last (Madrid, 8vo) with a Preface written, I think, by Mayans y Siscar. A poem by Francisco de Ortega, on the same subject, appeared about the middle of the eighteenth century, in small quarto, without date, entitled “Orígen, Antiguedad é Invencion de nuestra Señora de Monserrate.” It is entirely worthless.

[811]   “La Benedictina de F. Nicolas Bravo,” Salamanca, 1604, 4to. Bravo was a professor at Salamanca and Madrid, and died in 1648, the head of a rich monastery of his order in Navarre. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 151.) Of Valdivielso I have spoken, ante, p. 316. His “Vida, etc., de San Josef,” printed 1607 and 1647, makes above seven hundred pages in the edition of Lisbon, 1615, 12mo; and his “Sagrario de Toledo,” Barcelona, 1618, 12mo, fills nearly a thousand;—both in octave stanzas, as are nearly all the poems of their class.

[812]   “La Christiada de Diego de Hojeda,” Sevilla, 1611, 4to. It has the merit of having only twelve cantos, and, if this were the proper place, it might well be compared with Milton’s “Paradise Regained” for its scenes with the devils, and with Klopstock’s “Messiah” for the scene of the crucifixion. Of the author we know only that he was a native of Seville, but went young to Lima, in Peru, where he wrote this poem, and where he died at the head of a Dominican convent founded by himself. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 289.) There is a rifacimento of the “Christiada,” by Juan Manuel de Berriozabal, printed Madrid, 1841, 18mo, in a small volume; not, however, an improvement on the original.

[813]   “Poema Castellano de nuestra Señora de Aguas Santas, por Alonso Diaz,” Seville, 1611, cited by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 21).—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico,” Valladolid, 1613, 8vo, and “Historia de la Vírgen Madre de Dios,” 1608, afterwards published with the title of “Nueva Jerusalen María,” Valladolid, 1625, 18mo; both by Antonio de Escobar y Mendoza, and both the work of his youth, since he lived to 1668. (Ibid., p. 115.) The last of these poems, my copy of which is of the fourth edition, absurdly divides the life of the Madonna according to the twelve precious stones that form the foundations of the New Jerusalem in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation; each fundamento, as the separate portions or books are called, being subdivided into three cantos; and the whole filling above twelve thousand lines of octave stanzas, which are not always without merit, though they generally have very little.—“Creacion del Mundo de Alonso de Azevedo,” Roma, 1615. (Velazquez, Dieze, p. 395.)—“La Verdadera Hermandad de los Cinco Martires de Arabia, por Damian Rodriguez de Vargas,” Toledo, 1621, 4to. It is very short for the class to which it belongs, containing only about three thousand lines, but it is hardly possible that any of them should be worse.—“David, Poema Heróico del Doctor Jacobo Uziel,” Venetia, 1624, pp. 440; a poem in twelve cantos, on the story of the Hebrew monarch whose name it bears, written in a plain and simple style, evidently imitating the flow of Tasso’s stanzas, but without poetical spirit, and in the ninth canto absurdly bringing a Spanish navigator to the court of Jerusalem.—“La Mejor Muger Madre y Vírgen, Poema Sacro, por Sebastian de Nieva Calvo,” Madrid, 1625, 4to. It ends in the fourteenth book with the victory of Lepanto, which is attributed to the intercession of the Madonna and the virtue of the rosary.—“Grandezas Divinas, Vida y Muerte de nuestro Salvador, etc., por Fr. Duran Vivas,” found in scattered papers after his death, and arranged and modernized in its language by his grandson, who published it, (Madrid, 1643, 4to); a worthless poem, more than half of which is thrown into the form of a speech from Joseph to Pontius Pilate.—“Pasion del Hombre Dios, por el Maestro Juan Dávila,” Leon de Francia, 1661, folio, written in the Spanish décimas of Espinel, and filling about three-and-twenty thousand lines, divided into six books, which are subdivided into estancias, or resting-places, and these again into cantos.—“Sanson Nazareno, Poema Eróico, por Ant. Enriquez Gomez,” Ruan, 1656, 4to, thoroughly infected with Gongorism, as is another poem by the same author, half narrative, half lyrical, called “La Culpa del Primer Peregrino,” Ruan, 1644, 4to.—“San Ignacio de Loyola, Poema Heróico, escrivialo Hernando Dominguez Camargo,” 1666, 4to, a native of Santa Fé de Bogotá, whose poem, filling nearly four hundred pages of octave rhymes, is a fragment published after his death.—“La Christiada, Poema Sacro y Vida de Jesu Christo, que escrivió Juan Francisco de Encisso y Monçon,” Cadiz, 1694, 4to; deformed, like almost every thing of the period when it appeared, with the worst taste.

[814]   “Segunda Parte de Orlando, etc., por Nicolas Espinosa,” Zaragoza, 1555, 4to, Anveres, 1656, 4to, etc. The Orlando of Ariosto, translated by Urrea, was published at Lyons in 1550, folio, (the same edition, no doubt, which Antonio gives to 1656), and is treated with due severity by the curate in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library, and by Clemencin in his commentary on that passage. Tom. I. p. 120.

[815]   “Orlando Enamorado de Don Martin Abarca de Bolea, Conde de las Almunias, en Octava Rima,” Lerida, 1578;—“Orlando Determinado, en Octava Rima,” Zaragoza, 1578. (Latassa, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 54.)—The “Orlando Enamorado” of Boiardo, by Francisco Garrido de Villena, 1577, and the “Verdadero Suceso de la Batalla de Roncesvalles,” by the same, 1683. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 428.)—“Historia de las Hazañas y Hechos del Invencible Cavallero Bernardo del Carpio, por Agustin Alonso,” Toledo, 1585. Pellicer (Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. 58, note) says he had seen one copy of this book, and Clemencin says he never saw any.—I have never met with either of those referred to in this note.

[816]   “Primera Parte de la Angélica de Luis Barahona de Soto,” Granada, 1586, 4to. My copy contains a license to reprint from it, dated July 15, 1805; but, like many other projects of the sort in relation to old Spanish literature, this one was not carried through. A notice of De Soto is to be found in Sedano (Parnaso, Tom. II. p. xxxi.); but the pleasantest idea of him and of his agreeable social relations is to be gathered from a poetical epistle to him by Christóval de Mesa (Rimas, 1611, f. 200);—from several poems in Silvestre (ed. 1599, ff. 325, 333, 334);—and from the notices of him by Cervantes in his “Galatea,” and in the Don Quixote, (Parte I. c. 6, and Parte II. c. 1), together with the facts collected in the two last places by the commentators.—Gerónimo de Huerta, then a young man, published in 1588, at Alcalá, his “Florando de Castilla, Lauro de Cavalleros, en Ottava Rima,”—an heroic poem it is called, but still, it is said, in the manner of Ariosto. It is noticed, Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 587, and Mayans, Cartas de Varios Autores, Tom. II., 1773, p. 36; but I have never seen it.

[817]   “El Bernardo, Poema Heróico del Doctor Don Bernardo de Balbuena,” Madrid, 1624, 4to, and 1808, 3 tom. 8vo, containing about forty-five thousand lines, but abridged by Quintana, in the second volume of his “Poesías Selectas, Musa Épica,” with skill and judgment, to less than one third of that length.

[818]   The story of “Leander” fills a large part of the third book of Boscan and Garcilasso’s Works in the original edition of 1543.—Diego de Mendoza’s “Adonis,” which is about half as long, and on which the old statesman is said to have valued himself very much, is in his Works, 1610, pp. 48-65.—Silvestre’s poems, mentioned in the text, with two others, something like them, make up the whole of the second book of his Works, 1599.—Montemayor’s “Pyramus,” in the short ten-line stanzas, is at the end of the “Diana,” in the edition of 1614.—The “Pyramus” of Ant. de Villegas is in his “Inventario,” 1577, and is in terza rima, which, like the other Italian measures attempted by him, he manages awkwardly.—The “Daphne” of Perez is in various measures, and better deserves reading in old Bart. Yong’s version of it than it does in the original.—I might have added to the foregoing the “Pyramus and Thisbe” of Castillejo, (Obras, 1598, ff. 68, etc.), pleasantly written in the old Castilian short verse, when he was twenty-eight years old, and living in Germany; but it is so much a translation from Ovid, that it hardly belongs here.

[819]   Obras de Romero de Cepeda, Sevilla, 1582, 4to. The poem alluded to is entitled “El Infelice Robo de Elena Reyna de Esparta por Paris, Infante Troyano, del qual sucedió la Sangrienta Destruycion de Troya.” It begins ab ovo Ledæ, and, going through about two thousand lines, ends with the death of six hundred thousand Trojans. The shorter poems in the volume are sometimes agreeable.

The poem of Manuel de Gallegos, entitled “Gigantomachia,” and published at Lisbon, 1628, 4to, is also, like that of Cepeda, on a classical subject, being devoted to the war of the Giants against the Gods. Its author was a Portuguese, who lived many years at Madrid in intimacy with Lope de Vega, and wrote occasionally for the Spanish stage, but returned at last to his native country, and died there in 1665. His “Gigantomachia,” in about three hundred and forty octave stanzas, divided into five short books, is written, for the period when it appeared, in a pure style, but is a very dull poem.

[820]   These poems are all to be found in the works of their respective authors, elsewhere referred to, except two. The first is the “Atalanta y Hipomenes,” by Moncayo, Marques de San Felice, (Zaragoza, 1656, 4to), in octave stanzas, about eight thousand lines long, in which he manages to introduce much of the history of Aragon, his native country; a general account of its men of letters, who were his contemporaries; and, in canto fifth, all the Aragonese ladies he admired, whose number is not small. The other poem is the “Amor Enamorado,” which Jacinto de Villalpando published (Zaragoça, 1655, 12mo) under the name of “Fabio Clymente”; and which, like the last, is in octave stanzas, but only about half as long. See, also, Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom III. p. 272.

[821]   “Los Amantes de Teruel, Epopeya Trágica, con la Restauracion de España por la Parte de Sobrarbe y Conquista del Reino de Valencia, por Juan Yague de Salas,” Valencia, 1616, 12mo. The latter part of it is much occupied with a certain Friar John and a certain Friar Peter, who were great saints in Teruel, and with the conquest of Valencia by Don Jaume of Aragon. The poetry of the whole, it is not necessary to add, is naught. The antiquarian investigation of the truth of the story of the lovers is in a modest pamphlet entitled “Noticias Históricas sobre los Amantes de Teruel, por Don Isidro de Antillon” (Madrid, 1806, 18mo);—a respectable Professor of History in the College of the Nobles at Madrid. (Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. VI. p. 123). It leaves no reasonable doubt about the forgery of Salas, which, moreover, is done very clumsily. Ford, in his admirable “Hand-Book of Spain,” (London, 1845, 8vo, p. 874), implies that the tomb of the lovers is still much visited. It stands now in the cloisters of St. Peter, whither, in 1709, in consequence of alterations in the church, their bodies were removed;—much decayed, says Antillon, notwithstanding the claim set up that they are imperishable. The story of the lovers of Teruel has often been resorted to, and, among others in our own time, by Juan Eugenio Harzenbusch, in his drama, “Los Amantes de Teruel,” and by an anonymous author in a tale with the same title, that appeared at Valencia, 1838, 2 tom. 18mo. In the Preface to the last, another of the certificates of Yague de Salas to the truth of the story is produced for the first time, but adds nothing to its probability. See ante, pp. 301-304.

[822]   “El Macabeo, Poema Heróico de Miguel de Silveira,” Nápoles, 1638, 4to. Castro (Biblioteca, Tom. I. p. 626) makes Silveira a converted Jew, and Barbosa places his death at 1636; but the Dedication of “El Sol Vencido,” a short, worthless poem, written to flatter the Vice-Queen of Naples, is dated 20 April, 1639, and was printed there that year.

[823]   “Poema Heróico de la Invencion de la Cruz, por Fr. Lopez de Zarate,” Madrid, 1648, 4to; twenty-two cantos and four hundred pages of octave stanzas. The infernal councils and many other parts show it to be an imitation of Tasso. The notice of his life by Sedano (Parnaso, Tom. VIII. p. xxiv.) is sufficient; but that by Antonio is more touching, and reads like a tribute of personal regard. Zarate died in 1658, above seventy years old. Semanario Pintoresco, 1845, p. 82.

[824]   The continual parody of the gracioso on the hero shows what was the tendency of the Spanish stage in this particular. But there are also plays that are entirely burlesque, such as “The Death of Baldovinos,” at the end of Cancer’s Works, 1651, which is a parody on the old ballads and traditions respecting that paladin; and the “Cavallero de Olmedo,” a favorite play, by Francisco Felix de Monteser, which is in the volume entitled “Mejor Libro de las Mejores Comedias,” Madrid, 1653, and which is a parody of a play with the same title in the Comedias de Lope de Vega, Vol. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641.

[825]   Cosmé was editor of the poems of his brother, Francisco de Aldana, in 1593. (Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 256.) He wrote in Italian and printed at Florence as early as 1578; but Velasco did not go as governor to Milan till after 1586. (Salazar, Dignidades, f. 131.) The only account I have seen of the “Asneida” is in Figueroa’s “Pasagero,” 1617, f. 127.

[826]

En la concavidad del tejadillo,

Hazia los paredones del gallego,

Junto adonde morava antaño el grillo,

En un rincon secreto, oscuro y ciego,

Escondidos debaxo de un ladrillo,

Estan cinco sardinas, lo que os ruego

Como hermanos partays, y seays hermanos

En quanto mas viniere á vuestras manos.

Hallareys, item mas, amontonadas,

De gloria y fama prosperos deseos,

Alas y patas de mil aves tragadas,

De quadrupides pieles y manteos,

Que vuestro padre alli dexo allegadas

Por victoriosas señas y tropheos;

Estas tened en mas que la comida,

Qu’el descanso, qu’el sueño, y que la vida.

p. 14.

[827]   “La Muerte, Entierro y Honras de Chrespina Maranzmana, Gata de Juan Chrespo, en tres cantos de octava rima, intitulados la Gaticida, compuesta por Cintio Merctisso, Español, Paris, por Nicolo Molinero,” 1604, 12mo, pp. 52. I know nothing of the poem or its author, except what is to be found in this volume, of which I have never met even with a bibliographical notice, and of which I have seen only one copy,—that belonging to my friend Don Pascual de Gayangos, of Madrid.

[828]   The first edition of the “Mosquea” was printed in small 12mo at Cuenca, when its author was twenty-six years old;—the third is Sancha’s, Madrid, 1777, 12mo, with a life, from which it appears, that, besides being a faithful officer of the Inquisition himself, and making a good fortune out of it, Villaviciosa exhorted his family, by his last will, to devote themselves in all future time to its holy service with grateful zeal. See, also, the Spanish translation of Sismondi, Sevilla, 8vo, Tom. I., 1841, p. 354.

[829]   A vast number of tributes were paid by contemporary men of letters to Don John of Austria; but among them none is more curious than a Latin poem in two books, containing seventeen or eighteen hundred hexameters and pentameters, the work of a negro, who had been brought as an infant from Africa, and who by his learning rose to be professor of Latin and Greek in the school attached to the cathedral of Granada. He is the same person noticed by Cervantes as “el negro Juan Latino,” in a poem prefixed to the Don Quixote. His volume of Latin verses on the birth of Ferdinand, the son of Philip II., on Pope Pius V., on Don John of Austria, and on the city of Granada, making above a hundred and sixty pages in small quarto, printed at Granada in 1573, is not only one of the rarest books in the world, but is one of the most remarkable illustrations of the intellectual faculties and possible accomplishments of the African race. The author himself says he was brought to Spain from Ethiopia, and was, until his emancipation, a slave to the grandson of the famous Gonsalvo de Córdova. His Latin verse is respectable, and, from his singular success as a scholar, he was commonly called Joannes Latinus, a sobriquet under which he is frequently mentioned, and which was made the title of a play, I presume about him, by Lopez de Enciso, called “Juan Latino.” He was respectably married to a lady of Granada, who fell in love with him, as Eloisa did with Abelard, while he was teaching her; and after his death, which occurred later than 1573, his wife and children erected a monument to his memory in the church of Sta. Ana, in that city, inscribing it with an epitaph, in which he is styled “Filius Æthiopum, prolesque nigerrima patrum.” Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 716. Don Quixote, ed. Clemencin, Tom. I. p. lx., note.

It may not be amiss here to add, that another negro is celebrated in a play, written in tolerable Castilian, and claiming, at the end, to be founded in fact. It is called “El Valiente Negro en Flandes,” and is found in Tom. XXXI., 1638, of the collection of Comedias printed at Barcelona and Saragossa. The negro in question, however, was not, like Juan Latino, a native African, but was a slave born in Merida, and was distinguished only as a soldier, serving with great honor under the Duke of Alva, and enjoying the favor of that severe general.

[830]   “Felicissima Victoria concedida del Cielo al Señor Don Juan d’Austria, etc., compuesta por Hierónimo de Cortereal, Cavallero Portugues,” s. l. 1578, 8vo, with curious wood-cuts; probably printed at Lisbon. (Life, in Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 495.) His “Suceso do Segundo Cerco de Diu,” in twenty-one cantos, on the siege, or rather defence, of Diu, in the East Indies, in 1546, was published in 1574, and translated into Spanish by the well-known poet, Pedro de Padilla, who published his version in 1597. His “Naufragio y Lastimoso Suceso da Perdiçaõ de Manuel de Souza de Sepúlveda,” etc., (Lisboa, 1594), in seventeen cantos, was translated into Spanish by Francisco de Contreras, with the title of “Nave Trágica de la India de Portugal,” 1624. This Manuel de Souza, who had held a distinguished office in Portuguese India, and who had perished miserably by shipwreck near the Cape of Good Hope, in 1553, as he was returning home, was a connection of Cortereal by marriage. Denis, Chroniques, etc., Tom. II. p. 79.

[831]   “La Austriada de Juan Rufo, Jurado de la Ciudad de Córdoba,” Madrid, 1584, 12mo, ff. 447. There are editions of 1585 and 1587, and it is extravagantly praised by Cervantes, in a prefatory sonnet, and in the scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library. Rufo, when he was to be presented to Philip II.,—probably at the time he offered his poem and dedication,—said he had prepared himself fully for the reception, but lost all presence of mind, from the severity of that monarch’s appearance. (Baltasar Porreño, Dichos y Hechos de Philipe II., Bruselas, 1666, 12mo, p. 39.) The best of Rufo’s works is his Letter to his young Son, at the end of his “Apotegmas,” already noticed;—the same son, Luis, who afterwards became a distinguished painter at Rome.

[832]   “Primera y Segunda Parte del Leon de España, por Pedro de la Vezilla Castellanos,” Salamanca, 1586, 12mo, ff. 369. The story of the gross tribute of the damsels has probably some foundation in fact; one proof of which is, that the old General Chronicle (Parte III., c. 8) seems a little unwilling to tell a tale so discreditable to Spain. Mariana admits it, and Lobera, in his “Historia de las Grandezas, etc., de Leon,” (Valladolid, 1596, 4to, Parte II. c. 24) gives it in full, as unquestionable. Leon is still often called Leon de España, as it is in the poem of Castellanos, to distinguish it from Lyons in France, Leon de Francia.

[833]   “Sitio y Toma de Amberes, por Miguel Giner,” Zaragoza, 1587, 8vo.—“La Conquista que hicieron los Reyes Católicos en Granada, por Edoardo Diaz,” 1590, 8vo, Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 730; besides which, Diaz, who was long a soldier in the Spanish service, and wrote good Castilian, published, in 1592, a volume of verse in Spanish and Portuguese.—“De la Historia de Sagunto, Numancia, y Cartago, compuesta por Lorencio de Zamora, Natural de Ocaña,” Alcalá, 1589, 4to,—nineteen cantos of ottava rima, and about five hundred pages, ending abruptly and promising more. It was written, the author says, when he was eighteen years old; but though he lived to be an old man, and died in 1614, having printed several religious books, he never went farther with this poem. Antonio, Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 11.

[834]   “Las Navas de Tolosa,” twenty cantos, Madrid, 1594, 12mo;—“La Restauracion de España,” ten cantos, Madrid, 1607, 12mo;—“El Patron de España,” six books, Madrid, 1611, 12mo, with Rimas added. My copy of the last volume is one of the many proofs that new title-pages with later dates were attached to Spanish books that had been some time before the public. Mr. Southey, to whom this copy once belonged, expresses his surprise, in a MS. note on the fly-leaf, that the last half of the volume should be dated in 1611, while the first half is dated in 1612. But the reason is, that the title-page to the Rimas comes at p. 94, in the middle of a sheet, and could not conveniently be cancelled and changed, as was the title-page to the “Patron de España,” with which the volume opens. Mesa’s translations are later;—the Æneid, Madrid, 1615, 12mo; and the Eclogues of Virgil, to which he added a few more Rimas and the poor tragedy of “Pompeio,” Madrid, 1618, 12mo. The ottava rima seems to me very cumbrous in both these translations, and unsuited to their nature, though we are reconciled to it, and to the terza rima, in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, by Viana, a Portuguese, printed at Valladolid, in 1589, 4to; one of the happiest translations made in the pure age of Castilian literature. The Iliad, which Mesa is also supposed to have translated, was never printed. In one of his epistles, (Rimas, 1611, f. 201), he says he was bred to the law; and in another, (f. 205), that he loved to live in Castile, though he was of Estremadura. In many places he alludes to his poverty and to the neglect he suffered; and in a sonnet in his last publication, (1618, f. 113), he shows a poor, craven spirit in flattering the Count de Lemos, with whom he was offended for not taking him to Naples.

[835]   “Conquista de la Bética, Poema Heróico de Juan de la Cueva,” 1603, reprinted in the fourteenth and fifteenth volumes of the collection of Fernandez, (Madrid, 1795), with a Preface, which is, I think, by Quintana, and is very good. A notice of Cueva occurs in the Spanish translation of Sismondi, Tom. I. p. 285; and a number of his unpublished works are said to be in the possession of the Counts of Aguila in Seville. Semanario Pintoresco, 1846, p. 250.

[836]   “El Pelayo del Pinciano,” Madrid, 1605, 12mo, twenty cantos, filling above six hundred pages, with a poor attempt at the end, after the manner of Tasso, to give an allegorical interpretation to the whole. I notice in N. Antonio “La Iberiada, de los Hechos de Scipion Africano, por Gaspar Savariego de Santa Anna,” Valladolid, 1603, 8vo. I have never seen it. “La Patrona de Madrid Restituida,” by Salas Barbadillo, an heroic poem in honor of Our Lady of Atocha, printed in 1608, and reprinted, Madrid, 1750, 12mo, which I possess, is worthless and does not need to be noticed.

[837]   “La Numantina del Licenciado Don Francisco Mosquera de Barnuevo, etc., dirigida á la nobilissima Ciudad de Soria y á sus doce Linages y Casas á ellas agregadas,” Sevilla, 1612, 4to. He says “it was a book of his youth, printed when his hairs were gray”; but it shows none of the judgment of mature years.

“La Liga deshecha por la Expulsion de los Moriscos de los Reynos de España,” Madrid, 1612, 12mo. It was printed, therefore, long before Vasconcellos fought against Spain, and contains fulsome compliments to Philip III., which must afterwards have given their author no pleasure. (Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 701.) The poem consists of about twelve hundred octave stanzas.

“La España Defendida,” by Christ. Suarez de Figueroa, Madrid, 1612, 12mo, and Naples, 1644, belongs to the same date, making, in fact, three heroic poems in one year.

[838]   “Hespaña Libertada, Parte Primera, por Doña Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda, dirigida al Rey Católico de las Hespañas, Don Felipe Tercero deste Nombre, nuestro Señor,” (Lisboa, 1618, 4to), was evidently intended as a compliment to the Spanish usurpers, and, in this point of view, is as little creditable to its author as it is in its poetical aspect. Parte Segunda was published by her daughter, Lisboa, 1673, 4to. Bernarda de Lacerda was a lady variously accomplished. Lope de Vega, who dedicated to her his eclogue entitled “Phylis,” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. X. p. 193), compliments her on her writing Latin with purity. She published a volume of poetry, in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, in 1634, and died in 1644.

“El Fernando, ó Sevilla Restaurada, Poema Heróico, escrito con los Versos de la Gerusalemme Liberata, etc., por Don Juan Ant. de Vera y Figueroa, Conde de la Roca,” etc., Milan, 1632, 4to, pp. 654. He died 1658. Antonio, ad verb.

“Nápoles Recuperada por el Rey Don Alonso, Poema Heróico de D. Francisco de Borja, Príncipe de Esquilache,” etc. Zaragoza, 1651, Amberes, 1658, 4to. A notice of his honorable and adventurous life will be given, when we speak of Spanish lyrical poetry, where he was more successful than he was in epic.

There were two or three other poems called heroic that appeared after these; but they do not need to be recalled. One of the most absurd of them is the “Orfeo Militar,” in two parts, by Joan de la Victoria Ovando; the first being on the siege of Vienna by the Turks, and the second on that of Buda, both printed in 1688, 4to, at Malaga, where their author enjoyed a military office; but neither, I think, was much read beyond the limits of the city that produced them.

[839]   See what is said in Chap. III. on Acuña, Cetina, Silvestre, etc.

[840]   “Obras Poéticas de Lomas de Cantorál,” Madrid, 1578, 12mo. It opens with a translation from Tansillo, and the lyrical portions of the three books into which it is divided are in the Italian manner; but the rest is often more national in its forms.

[841]   Figueroa, (born 1540, died 1620), often called El Divino, was perhaps more known and admired in Italy, during the greater part of his life, than he was in Spain; but he died at last, much honored, in Alcalá, his native city. His poetry is dated in 1572, and was circulated in manuscript quite as early as that date implies; but it was not printed, I think, till it appeared in 1626, at Lisbon, in a minute volume under the auspices of Luis Tribaldo de Toledo, chronicler of Portugal. It is also in the twentieth volume of the collection of Fernandez, Madrid. But, though it is highly polished, it is not inspired by a masculine genius.

[842]   “Diversas Rimas de V. Espinel,” Madrid, 1591, 18mo. His lines on Seeking Occasions for Jealousy (f. 78) are very happy, and his Complaints against Past Happiness (f. 128) are better than those on the same subject by Silvestre, Obras, 1599, f. 71.

[843]   Montemayor, as we shall see hereafter, introduced the prose pastorals, in imitation of Sannazaro, into Spanish in 1542; and a collection of his poetry, called a “Cancionero,” was printed in 1554. In the edition of Madrid, 1588, 12mo, which I use, about one third of the volume is in the Castilian measures and manner; after which it is formally announced, “Here begin the sonnets, canciones, and other pieces in the measures of Italian verse.” A cancion occurs in the first book of the “Diana,” on the regrets of a shepherdess who had driven her lover to despair, which is very sweet and natural, and is well translated by old Bartholomew Yong in his version of the Diana (London, 1598, folio, p. 8). Polo, who continued the Diana, pursued the same course in the poems he inserted in his continuation, and good translations of several of them may be found in Yong.

“The works of Montemayor touching on Devotion and Religion”—those, I presume, in his “Cancionero”—are prohibited in the Index of 1667, and in that of 1790.

[844]   The lyric poetry of Barahona de Soto is to be sought among the works of Silvestre, 1599, and in the “Flores de Poetas Ilustres,” by Espinosa, Valladolid, 1605, 4to.

[845]   “Las Seyscientas Apotegmas de Juan Rufo, y otras Obras en Verso,” Toledo, 1596, 8vo. The Apotegmas are, in fact, anecdotes in prose. His sonnets and canciones are not so good as his Letter to his Son and his other more Castilian poems, such as the one relating to the war in Flanders, where he served.

[846]   “Libro de Poesía, por Fray Damian de Vegas,” Toledo, 1590, 12mo, above a thousand pages; most of it religious; most of it in the old manner; and nearly all of it very dull.

[847]   “Pedro de Padilla, Eglogas, Sonetos,” etc., Sevilla, 1582, 4to, ff. 246. There are many lyrics in this collection, glosas, villancicos, and letrillas, that are quite Castilian, some of them spirited and pleasant. Others may be found in his “Thesoro de Varias Poesías,” (Madrid, 1587, 12mo), where, however, there are yet more in the Italian forms.

[848]   The “Cancionero” of Maldonado was printed at Madrid, 1586, in 4to, and the best parts of it are the amatory poetry, some of which is found in the third volume of Faber’s “Floresta.” One more poet might have been added here, as writing in the old measures,—Joachim Romero de Çepeda,—whose works were printed at Seville, 1582, in 4to, and contain a good many canciones, motes, and glosas; among the rest, three remarkable sonnets, presented by him to Philip II. as he passed through Badajoz, where Çepeda lived, to take possession of Portugal, in 1580. But the whole volume is marked with conceits and quibbles.

[849]   Herrera’s praises of Seville and the Guadalquivir sufficiently betray his origin, so constant are they. They are, too, sometimes among the happy specimens of his verse; for instance, in the ode in honor of St. Ferdinand, who rescued Seville from the Moors, and in the elegy, “Bien debes asconder sereno cielo.”

[850]   Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, 1819, p. 447. The date of Herrera’s death is given on the sure authority of some MS. notes of Pacheco, his friend, published in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1845, p. 299; before which it was unknown. These notes are taken from an interesting MS. which seems to have been the rough and imperfect draft of the “Imágines” and “Elogia Virorum Illustrium,” which Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 456) says Pacheco gave to the well-known Count Duke Olivares. They are in the Semanario Erudito, 1844, pp. 374, etc. See also Navarrete, Vida de Cervantes, pp. 536-537. Pacheco was a good painter, and Cean Bermudez (Diccionario, Tom. IV. p. 3) gives a life of him. He was a man of some learning, and entered into a controversy with Quevedo on the question of making Santa Teresa a copatroness of Spain with Santiago, which Quevedo resisted; besides which, in 1649, he published in 4to, at Seville, his “Arte de la Pintura, su Antiguedad y Grandezas,” a rare work, praised by Cean Bermudez, which I have never seen. Pacheco died in 1654. Sedano (Parnaso Español, Tom. III. p. 117, and Tom. VII. p. 92) gives two epigrams of Pacheco, which are connected with his art, and which Sedano praises, I think, more than they deserve to be praised.

[851]   Pacheco’s edition is accompanied with a fine portrait of the author from a picture by the editor, which has often been engraved since.

[852]   “In our Spain, beyond all comparison, Garcilasso stands first,” he says, (p. 409), and repeats the same opinion often elsewhere.

[853]   The edition of Fernandez, the most complete of all, and twice printed, is in the fourth and fifth volumes of his “Poesías Castellanas.” The longer poems of Herrera, which we know only by their unpromising titles, are “The Battle of the Giants,” “The Rape of Proserpine,” “The Amadis,” and “The Loves of Laurino and Cærona.” Perhaps we have reason to regret the loss of his unpublished Eclogues and “Castilian Verses,” which last may have been in the old Castilian measures. In 1572, he published a descriptive account of the war of Cyprus and the battle of Lepanto, and, in 1592, a Life of Sir Thomas More, taken from the Latin “Lives of the Three Thomases,” by Stapleton, the obnoxious English Papist. (Wood’s Athenæ, ed. Bliss, Tom. I. p. 671.) A History of Spain, said by Rioja to have been finished by Herrera about 1590, is probably lost.

[854]   In some remarks by the Licentiate Enrique de Duarte, prefixed to the edition of Herrera’s poetry printed in 1619, he says, that, a few days after Herrera’s death, a bound volume, containing all his poetical works, prepared by himself for the press, was destroyed, and that his scattered manuscripts would probably have shared the same fate, if they had not been carefully collected by Pacheco.

[855]   In his commentary on Garcilasso he says, “The sonnet is the most beautiful form of composition in Spanish and Italian poetry, and the one that demands the most art in its construction and the greatest grace.” p. 66.

[856]   The lady to whom Herrera dedicated his love, in a spirit of pure and Platonic affection, little known to Spanish poetry, is said to have been the Countess of Gelves.

[857]   There is a book on this subject which should not be entirely overlooked in a history of Spanish literature. It is an account of a pastry-cook of Madrigal, who, seventeen years after the rout in Africa, passed himself off in Spain as Don Sebastian, and induced Anna of Austria, a cousin of that monarch and a nun, to give him rich jewels, which led to the detection of the fraud. The story is interesting and well told, and was first printed in 1595, at Cadiz, under the title of “A History of Gabriel de Espinosa, the Pastry-cook of Madrigal, who pretended to be King Don Sebastian of Portugal.” Of course, Philip II. did not deal gently with one who made such pretensions to the crown he himself had clutched, or with any of his abettors. The pastry-cook and a monk on whom he had imposed his fictions were both hanged, after undergoing the usual appliances of racks and tortures; and the poor princess was degraded from her rank, and shut up in a conventual cell for life. There is an anonymous play of small merit, which seems to have been written in the time of Philip IV., and is entitled “El Pastelero de Madrigal.”

[858]

Ai de los que passaron, confiados

En sus cavallos, y en la muchadumbre

De sus carros, en tí, Libia desierta!

Y en su vigor y fuerças engañados,

No alçaron su esperança á aquella cumbre

D’eterna luz; mas con sobervia cierta

S’ofrecieron la incierta

Victoria, y sin bolver á Dios sus ojos,

Con ierto cuello y coraçon ufano,

Solo atendieron siempre á los despojos!

Y el Santo de Israel abrió su mano,

Y los dexó;—y cayó en despeñadero

Versos de Fern. Herrera, Sevilla, 1619, 4to, p. 350.

[859]   See the address of Quevedo to his readers in the “Poesías del Bachiller de la Torre.” Some of the words, however, to which he objects, like pensoso, infamia, dudanza, etc., have been recognized since as good Castilian, which from their nature they were when Herrera used them.

[860]   Obras de Garcilasso, 1580, pp. 75, 120, 126, 573, and other places.

[861]   “Primera Parte de las Flores de Poetas Ilustres de España, ordenada por Pedro Espinosa, Natural de la Ciudad de Antequera,” Valladolid, 1605, 4to, ff. 204. Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 190) says Espinosa was attached to the great Andalusian family of the Dukes of Medina-Sidonia, the Guzmans, and of the three or four works he produced, two are in honor of his patrons, and one was published by himself as late as 1644. Much of the poetry in the “Flores” is Andalusian,—a circumstance that renders the omission of Herrera the more striking; some of it is to be found nowhere else; and, unhappily, the book itself is among the rarest in Spanish poetry.

[862]   Of the ladies whose poems occur in Espinosa, I think one, Doña Christovalina, is noticed by Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 349). Of the others I know nothing, nor of Pedro de Liñan. Texada, as we are told by Antonio, died in 1635, at the age of sixty-seven;—the five poems printed thirty years before by Espinosa being all we have of his works.

[863]   Andres Rey de Artieda, better known under his academical name of Artemidoro, is praised by Cervantes as a well-known poet in 1584, though his works were not printed till they appeared at Çaragoça, 1605, 4to. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 262.) Manoel de Portugal, one of those Portuguese who, in the time of Philip II. and III., sought favor of the oppressors of their country by writing in Spanish, was known from 1577; but the collection of his poems in nearly a thousand pages, some in Portuguese, and all of little value, did not appear till it was printed at Lisbon, 1605, 12mo, the year before his death. (Barbosa, Tom. III. p. 345.) Luys de Carrillo y Sotomayor’s poems were published after his death by his brother, at Madrid, 1611, 4to, and were reprinted in 1613; but they had been circulated in MS. from the time he was at the University of Salamanca, where he resided six years. He died in 1610. Pellicer, Bib., Tom. II. p. 122.

[864]   “Rimas de Christóval de Mesa,” Madrid, 1611, 12mo; to which add about fifty sonnets in the volume of his translation of Virgil’s Eclogues, Madrid, 1618, 12mo. His notice of himself is in a poetical epistle to the Count de Lemos, when he was going as viceroy to Naples, (Rimas, f. 155), and is such as to show that he was anxious to be a member of that poetical court, and much disappointed at his failure.

[865]   The poetry of both of them was printed in 1603; but I do not find any mention of the exact time when either of them lived, and am not quite certain that Lope de Sosa is not the poet who occurs often in the old Cancioneros. I might have added to the notice of their poetry that of some of the poetry in an ascetic work by Malon de Chaide, called “La Conversion de la Magdalena,” consisting of sonnets, versions of the Psalms, etc., which are very pleasing. The best, however,—an ode on the love of Mary Magdalen to the Saviour after his resurrection,—is so grossly amatory in its tone, that its poetical merit is quite dimmed by it. Ed. Alcalá, 1592, 12mo, f. 336.

[866]   Sedano, Parnaso Español, Tom. V. p. xxxi. Lope de Vega praises Ledesma more than once, unreasonably. His “Conceptos,” in the first edition, Madrid, 1600, is a small volume of 258 leaves, but I believe the subsequent editions contain more poems. His “Juegos de la Noche Buena,” Barcelona, 1611, which I have never seen, is strictly forbidden by the Index Expurgatorius of 1667, p. 64.

[867]   Moro Expósito, Paris, 1834, 8vo, Tom. I. p. xvii.

[868]   It is a striking and important fact, to be taken in this connection, that Lope de Vega, though opposed to the new school upon principle, was a correspondent and admirer of Marini, to whom he sent his portrait and dedicated a play; and of whom, in the extravagance of his flattery, he said that Tasso was but as a dawn to the full glory of Marini. Through this channel, therefore, and through many others, traces of which may be found in the collection of Italian eulogies on Lope de Vega, we can at once see how Marini may easily have exercised an influence over the poets of Spain contemporary with him. See Lope’s “Jardin,” (Obras, Tom. I. p. 486), first printed in 1622, and his Dedication to “Virtud, Pobreza y Mujer” (Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629, f. 203).

Of the influence of classical antiquity in corrupting the proper Castilian style, I know of no instance earlier than that of Vasco Diaz de Frexenal, who published as early as 1547. His object seems to have been to introduce Latin words and constructions, just as the Pleiades did in France, at the same time and a little later. This can be seen in his “Veinte Triunfos,” chiefly devoted to a poetical account of events in the life of Charles V.; such as his marriage, the birth of his son Philip II., his coronation at Bologna, etc.,—all written in the old measures, and published without notice of the place or year, but, necessarily, after 1530, since that was the date of the Emperor’s coronation. Thus, in the “Prohemio,” where he speaks of dedicating his “Twenty Triumphs” to the twenty Spanish Dukes, Frexenal says, “Baste que la ferventisima afeccion, y la observantisima veneracion, que á vuestras dignisimas y felicisimas Señorias devo, á la dedicacion de mis veinte triunphos me han convidado. Como quiera que mas coronas ducales segun mi noticia en la indomita España no hay, verdaderamente el presente es de poco precio, y las obras del de menos valor, y el autor dellas de menos estima. Pero su apetitosa observancia, su afeccionada fidelidad, y su optativa servidumbre, por las nobilisimas bondades, y prestantisimas virtudes de vuestras excelentes y dignisimas Señorias en algun precio estimadas ser merecen.”

He Latinizes less in the poems that follow, because it is more difficult to do it in verse, but not because he desires it less, as the following lines from the “Triumpho Nuptial Vandalico” (f. ix.) prove plainly:—

Al tiempo que el fulminado

Apolo muy radial

Entrava en el primer grado,

Do nasció el vello dorado

En el equinocial;

Pasado el puerto final

De la hesperica nacion,

Su machina mundanal,

Por el curso occidental

Equitando en Phelegon.

This is very different from what was attempted by Juan de Mena a century before; he having desired only to take individual Latin words, and knowing little of classical antiquity; whereas Frexenal wishes, in Montaigne’s phrase, “to Latinize,” and give to his Castilian sentences a Roman air and construction, and so may have been, to a certain extent, the predecessor of Góngora. Antonio mentions two or three other works of Frexenal in prose, chiefly religious, which I have never seen; but I have some ridiculous verses, printed at the end of his treatise entitled “Jardin del Alma Christiana,” 1552, 4to.

[869]   Galatea, ed. 1784, Tom. II. p. 284.

[870]   Pellicer, Vida de Cervantes, in Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. cxiv.

[871]   Mayans y Siscar, Cartas, Tom. I. p. 125.

[872]   See his life, by his friend Hozes, prefixed to his Works, Madrid, 1654, 4to.

[873]

La mas bella niña

De nuestro lugar;

Oy viuda, y sola,

Y ayer por casar.

Obras de Góngora, 1654, f. 84.

[874]

Frescos ayrecillos,

Que á la primauera

Destexeis guirnaldas,

Y esparceis violetas.

Obras de Góngora, 1654. f. 89.

[875]   A la Tercera Parte de la Historia Pontifical, que escriuió el Doctor Bavia, Capellan de la Capilla Real de Granada.

Este que Bavia al mundo oy ha ofrecido

Poema, si no á numeros atado,

De la disposicion antes limado,

Y de la erudicion despues lamido,

Historia es culta, cuyo encanecido

Estilo, sino metrico, peinado,

Tres ya Pilotos del vagel sagrado

Hurta al tiempo, y redime del oluido.

Pluma, pues, que claueros celestiales

Eterniza en los bronces du su historia,

Llaue es ya de los siglos, y no pluma.

Ella á sus nombres puertas immortales

Abre, no de caduca no memoria,

Que sombras sella en tumulos de espuma.

Góngora, Obras, 1654, f. 5.

The commentary is in Coronel, Obras de Góngora Comentadas, Tom. II. Parte I., Madrid, 1645, pp. 148-159; but it should be noted, that the concluding lines are so obscure, that Luzan (Poética, Lib. II. c. 15) gives them a different interpretation, and understands the phrase, “stamping shadows on masses of foam,” to refer to the art of printing, which so often praises those who do not deserve it. The whole sonnet is cited with admiration by Gracian, “Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio,” Discurso XXXII.; a work which we must mention hereafter as the art of poetry for the culto school; and the editors of the “Diario de los Literatos de España”—men of better taste than was common in their times—reproached Luzan, when they reviewed his “Poética” in 1738, with being too severe on this extraordinary nonsense. Lanuza, Discurso Apologético de Luzan, Pamplona, 1740, 12mo, pp. 46-78.

[876]   Obras, f. 32.

[877]   In the second coro.

[878]   I suppose he changed his style about the time he went to court; and the very first of his sonnets in Espinosa’s “Flores” is proof that he had changed it as early as 1605.

[879]   Jos. Pellicer, in his “Lecciones Solemnes,” (Madrid, 1630, 4to, col. 610-612 and 684), explains his position in relation to Góngora, and his trouble about finding the meaning of some passages in his works; thus justifying what the Prince of Esquilache said, probably in reference to these very commentaries:—

Un docto comentador

(El mas presumido digo)

Es el mayor enemigo

Que tener pudo el autor.

El Príncipe á su Libro.

[880]   “Ilustracion y Defensa de la Fábula de Píramo y Tisbe de Christóval de Salazar Mardones,” Madrid, 1636, 4to.

[881]   There is a notice of Coronel in Antonio, Bib. Nova. The three volumes of his commentary (Madrid, 4to, 1636-46) contain six or seven hundred pages each;—the second being divided into two parts. As a poet himself, he printed in Madrid, 1650, 4to, a volume which he called “Crystals from Helicon,” one of the worst productions of the school of Góngora.

[882]   Antonio, article “Ludovicus de Góngora,” mentions the inferior commentators. The attack of Cascales, who seems afraid to be thorough with it, is in his “Cartas Philológicas.”

[883]   The queen, who was a daughter of Henry IV. of France, was one day passing through a gallery of the palace, when some one came behind her and covered her eyes with his hands. “What is that for, Count?” she exclaimed. But, unhappily for her, it was not the Count;—it was the king. Soon afterwards Villamediana received a hint to be on his guard, as his life was in danger. He neglected the friendly notice, and was assassinated the same evening. He had been very open in his admiration of the queen, having, on occasion of a tournament, covered his person with silver reals and taken the punning motto,—“Mis amores son reales.” (Velazquez, Dieze, Göttingen, 1796, 8vo, p. 255.) An edition of his Works, Madrid, 1634, 4to, is a little more ample than that of Çaragoça, 1629, 4to; but not the better for it. The story of the Count’s unhappy presumption and fate may be found in Mad. d’Aulnoy’s “Voyage d’Espagne,” ed. 1693, Tom. II. pp. 17-21, and in the striking ballads of the Duke of Rivas, Romances Históricos, Paris, 1841, 8vo.

[884]   Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. II. p. 389. His entire name was Hortensio Felix Paravicino y Arteaga. Why the whole of it was not given with his poems, which were not printed till after his death, it is not easy to tell. There are editions of them in 1641, 1645, and 1650; the last, Alcalá, 12mo.

[885]   Ambrosio de la Roca y Serna was a Valencian, and died in 1649. (Ximeno, Tom. I. p. 359, and Fuster, Tom. I. p. 249.) He seems to have been valued little, except as a religious poet, but he was valued long. I have a copy of his “Luz del Alma,” without year or place, but printed as late as 1725, 12mo.

[886]   “El Perfeto Señor, Poesías Varias,” etc., Madrid, 1652, 4to. He wrote silvas darker than Góngora’s “Soledades.” His madrigals and shorter poems are more intelligible, though none are good. He was a Portuguese by birth, but lived in Madrid, where he died after 1656. (Barbosa, Tom. I. p. 310.) There are two editions of his works.

[887]   Baena, Tom. I. p. 93. The works of Pantaleon are obvious imitations of Góngora, as may be seen in his “Fábula de Prosérpina,” “Fábula de Alfeo y Aretusa,” etc., though perhaps still more in his sonnets and décimas. They were first printed in 1634, but appeared several times afterwards, with slight additions. My copy is of Madrid, 1648, 18mo.

[888]   Violante del Cielo (do Ceo, in Portuguese) died in 1693, ninety-two years old, having written and published many volumes of Portuguese poetry and prose, some of the contents of which are too gallant to be very nun-like. Her “Rimas,” chiefly Spanish, were printed in Ruan, 1646, 12mo. One of the few poems among them that can be read is an ode on the death of Lope de Vega (p. 44); though it should be added, that some of her short religious poems, scattered elsewhere in her works, are better.

[889]   Melo, who died in 1666, was one of the most successful Portuguese authors of his time. (Barbosa, Tom. II. p. 182.) His “Tres Musas del Melodino,” a volume containing his Spanish poetry, and consisting, in a great measure, of sonnets, ballads, odes, and other short lyrics, much in the manner of Quevedo, as well as of Góngora, was printed twice, in 1649 and 1665,—the former, Lisboa, 4to.

[890]   Moncayo is also known by his title of Marques de San Felices. His poems are entitled “Rimas de Don Juan de Moncayo í Gurrea,” (Çaragoça, 1652, 4to), and consist of sonnets, a “Fábula de Venus í Adonis,” ballads, etc. Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. III. p. 320.

[891]   “Entretenimiento de las Musas en esta Baraxa Nueva de Versos, dividida en Quatro Manjares, etc., por Fenix de la Torre,” Çaragoça, 1654, 4to. The title speaks for itself. His proper name was Francisco, and he was a Murcian.

[892]   “Ydeas de Apolo y Dignas Tareas del Ocio Cortesano,” Madrid, 1661, 4to; abounding in sonnets, religious ballads, and courtly lyrics. A few of its poems are narrative, like one in the ballad form on the story of Danae, and another at the end in ottava rima, on the finding of the Virgin of Balvanera.

[893]   “Noche de Invierno; Conversacion sin Naypes,” Madrid, 1662, 4to. The second part of this volume consists of burlesque poems, full of miserable puns and rudenesses.

[894]   “Obras de Don Luis de Ulloa, Prosas y Versos,” of which the second edition was published by his son, at Madrid, 1674, 4to. Some of the religious poems, in the old measures, are among the best of the volume; but the very best is the “Raquel,” in about eighty octave stanzas, on the story of the love of Alfonso VIII. for the fair Jewess of Toledo.

[895]   “Cythara de Apolo,”—published after its author’s death by Vera Tassis y Villarroel, “his greatest friend”;—the same person who collected and published the plays of Calderon. Among his works is a Soledad, in professed imitation of Góngora, and Fábulas or Stories of Venus and Adonis, and Orpheus and Eurydice, in the manner of Villamediana. Aug. de Salazar was born in 1642, and died in 1675.

[896]   Of Quevedo and Calderon I have already spoken; and Montalvan, Zarate, Tirso de Molina, and most of the dramatists of note, might have been added. Cervantes, in his old age, heeded the new school little, but he complains of the obscure style of poetry in his “Ilustre Fregona,” 1613, giving a specimen of it, and alludes to it again in the second part of his Don Quixote, c. 16.

[897]   Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. pp. 271, 342; Tom. XII. pp. 231-234; Tom. XIX. p. 49; and Tom. IV. pp. 459-482. In the last cited passage, Lope says he always placed Fernando de Herrera as a model before himself.

[898]   National Library, Madrid, Estante M, Codex 132, 4to. At least, it was there in 1818, at which date I saw it.

[899]   Tablas Poéticas, ed. 1779, p. 103. One of Góngora’s friends, Mardones, answered Cascales, (Cartas Philológicas, 1771, Dec. I. Cartas 8 and 10), who rejoined, and is again answered in Carta 9.

[900]   I have never seen this book, but Antonio, in his article on Jauregui, gives its title, and Flögel (Gesch. der Komischen Literatur, Tom. II. p. 303) gives the date of its publication. Jauregui, however, in his translation of the “Pharsalia” of Lucan, falls into the false style of Góngora. Declamacion contra los Abusos de la Lengua Castellana, 1793, p. 138.

[901]   Tragedia Antigua, Madrid, 1633, 4to, pp. 84, 85.

[902]   See Appendix (G).

[903]   We know nothing of Medrano, except his poems, printed at Palermo, in 1617, at the end of an imitation, rather than a translation, of Ovid by Venegas. But Pedro Venegas de Saavedra was a Sevilian gentleman, and Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 246) hints that the imprint of the volume may not show the true place of its publication.

[904]   He is mentioned in Cervantes, “Canto de Calíope,” and there is a life of him in the notes to Sismondi, Spanish translation (Tom. I. p 274). His poems are found in the “Flores” of Espinosa, and in the eighteenth volume of Fernandez.

[905]   Varflora, Hijos de Sevilla, No. III. p. 14; Sismondi’s Lit. Española por Figueroa, Tom. I. p. 282; Espinosa, Flores; and Fernandez, Coleccion, Tom. XVIII. pp. 88-124. It may, perhaps, be noted here, that the “Hijos de Sevilla Ilustres en Santidad, Letras, Armas, Artes ó Dignidad,” published in that city in 1791, in 8vo, is a poor book, but one that sometimes contains facts not elsewhere to be found, and one that is now become very rare, from the circumstance that it was published in separate numbers. On its title-page it is said to have been written by Don Firmin Arana de Varflora; but Blanco White, in “Doblado’s Letters,” 1822, p. 469, says its author was Padre Valderrama.

[906]   “El Poeta Castellano, Antonio Balvas Barona, Natural de la Ciudad de Segovia,” Valladolid, 1627, 12mo.

[907]   All needful notices of the two Argensolas and their works—and more too—can be found in the elaborate lives of them by Pellicer, in his “Biblioteca de Traductores,” 1778, pp. 1-141; and by Latassa, in the “Biblioteca Nueva de Escritores Aragoneses,” Tom. II. pp. 143, 461. Besides the original edition of their Rimas, (Zaragoza, 1634, 4to), two editions are found in Fernandez, “Coleccion,” the last being of 1804. The sonnet of Bartolomé on Sleep is commonly much admired; but of his poems I prefer the sonnet on Providence, (p. 330), and the ode in honor of the Church after the battle of Lepanto, ed. 1634, p. 372.

[908]   It is a curious fact, and one somewhat characteristic of the carelessness with which works in Spain were attributed to persons who did not write them, that the “Orfeo” of Jauregui is printed in the “Cythara de Apolo,” a collection of the posthumous poems of Agustin de Salazar, (which appeared at Madrid, 1694, 4to), as if it were his. So far as I have compared the two, I find nothing altered but the first stanza, and the title of the poem, which, instead of being simply called “Orfeo,” as it was by its author, is entitled, in imitation of Góngora’s school, “Fábula de Euridice y Orfeo.”

[909]   Sedano, Tom. IX. p. xxii. Lope de Vega, Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 38. Signorelli, Storia de’ Teatri, 1813, Tom. VI. p. 13. Cervantes, Novelas, Prólogo. Orfeo de Juan de Jauregui, Madrid, 1624, 4to. Fernandez, Coleccion, Tom. VII. and VIII., containing the “Farsalia”; and Rimas de Juan de Jauregui, Sevilla, 1618, 4to, reprinted by Fernandez, Tom. VI. But the best text of the “Amynta” is that in Sedano, (Parnaso, Tom. I.), which is made by a collation of both the editions that were prepared by Jauregui himself. Of this beautiful version it may be noted that Cervantes (Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 62) says, as he does of the “Pastor Fido” by Figueroa, “We happily doubt which is the translation and which the original.” The “Farsalia” of Jauregui was not printed till 1684.

Jauregui’s silva on seeing his mistress bathing can be compared, much to its advantage and honor, with a longer silva on the same subject, entitled “Anaxarete,” and published at the end of his “Gigantomachia,” by Manuel de Gallegos, Lisboa, 1628, 4to, ten years after the appearance of Jauregui’s poem. The “Anaxarete” is not without graceful passages, but it is much too long, and shows frequent traces of the school of Góngora.

[910]   This allusion occurs in a satire on the culto style of poetry, not found in his collected works, but in Sedano, (Tom. IX., 1778, p. 8), where it appeared for the first time.

[911]   An excellent life of Villegas is prefixed to the edition of his Works, Madrid, 1774, 2 tom. 8vo, said by Guarinos (Biblioteca de Escritores del Reinado de Carlos III., Madrid, 1785, 8vo, Tom. V. p. 19) to have been written by Vicente de los Rios.

[912]   In the edition of his poetry published by himself and at his own expense, in 1617, 4to, at Naxera, his birthplace, he gives on the title-page a print of the rising sun, with the stars growing dim, and two mottoes to explain its meaning: the first, “Sicut sol matutinus,” and the other, “Me surgente, quid istæ?“—the istæ whom he thus slights being Lope de Vega, Quevedo, and indeed the whole galaxy of the best period of Spanish literature. Lope seems to have been a little annoyed at this impertinence and vanity of Villegas; for, in allusion to it, he says, in the midst of a passage otherwise laudatory,—

Aunque dixo que todos se escondiesen,

Quando los rayos de su ingenio viesen.

Laurel de Apolo, Madrid, 1630, 4to, Silva iii.

For the harsh words of Villegas about Cervantes, see Navarrete, Vida, § 128.

[913]

Mis dulces cantilenas,

Mis suaves delicias,

A los veinte limadas

I á los catorce escritas.

Ed. 1617, f. 88.

[914]   There is an interesting notice of Villegas and his works by the kindred spirit of Wieland, in the Deutsche Merkur, 1774, Tom. V. pp. 237, etc.; the first time, I suspect, that his name had been mentioned with the praise it deserves, out of Spain, for a century. It should be remembered, however, that Villegas, though he generally wrote with very great simplicity, and, in his Elegy to Bartolomé de Argensola (Eróticas, 1617, Tom. II. f. 28) and elsewhere, censures the obscure and affected writers of his time, yet sometimes himself writes in the bad style he condemns, and devotes his sixth Elegy to praise of the absurd “Phaeton” of the Count Villamediana.

[915]   In the Academy’s edition of the “Siglo de Oro,” Madrid, 1821, 8vo, there is other poetry besides that contained in the pastoral itself.

[916]   Poems are found in all the stories of Salas Barbadillo, which would, perhaps, double the amount published by himself in his “Rimas Castellanas,” Madrid, 1618, 12mo, and by his friends after his death, in the “Coronas del Parnaso,” Madrid, 1635, 12mo. The volume of Rimas is more than half made up of sonnets and epigrams.

[917]   “Obras de Salvador Jacinto Polo,” Zaragoça, 1670, 4to. His “Apollo and Daphne” is partly in ridicule of the culto style.

[918]   “Desengaño del Amor en Rimas por Pedro Soto de Rojas,” Madrid, 1623, 4to. He was of Granada, and, as his sonnets show, a great admirer of Góngora.

[919]   The poetry of Rioja was not published till near the end of the eighteenth century, when it appeared in the collections of Sedano and Fernandez in 1774 and 1797. The two odes of Rioja and Caro are printed together in the Spanish translation of Sismondi’s “History of Spanish Literature,” Sevilla, 1842, in the notes to which is the best account to be found of Rioja. (Tom. II. p. 173.) Rioja, it may be added, was a friend of Lope de Vega, who addressed to him a pleasant poetical epistle on his own garden, which was first printed in 1622.

[920]

Fuentecillas, que reis,

Y con la arena jugais,

Donde vais?

Pues de las flores huis,

Y los peñascos buscais.

Si reposais

Donde risueña dormis,

Porque correis, y os cansais?

Obras en Verso de Borja, Amberes, 1663, 4to, p. 395.

[921]   The life of Borja is in Baena, Tom. II. p. 175; and his opinions on poetry, defending the older and simpler school, are set forth in some décimas prefixed to his “Obras en Verso,” of which there are editions of 1639, 1654, and 1663. Of his lyrical ballads, I would notice particularly, in the edition of Amberes, 1663, 4to, Nos. 40, 66, and 129. The trifle translated in the text is No. 20 among the poems which he calls Bueltas, a sort of refrain, with a gloss, where much poetical ingenuity is shown, in the turn both of the thought and of the phraseology.

[922]   “El Fenix Castellano de Ant. de Mendoza,” Lisboa, 1690, 4to; “Obras Poéticas de Gerónimo Cancer y Velasco,” 1650, and Madrid, 1761, 4to; with Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. III. p. 224; “El Enano de las Musas de Alvaro Cubillo de Aragon,” Madrid, 1654, 4to, who was, however, of Granada; and “Obras Varias de Fr. Lopez de Zarate,” Alcalá, 1651, 4to, which, after a great deal of worthless poetry, both in Spanish and Italian measures, contains, at the end, his equally worthless tragedy, “Hercules Furens y Œta, con todo el rigor del Arte.”

[923]   Obras, Madrid, 1778, 8vo, Tom. I. p. 571.

[924]   There is a notice of Rebolledo, which must have been prepared by his own authority, in the Preface to his “Ocios,” printed at Antwerp, 1650, 18mo; but there is a better life of him in the fifth volume of Sedano’s “Parnaso”; and his poetry, and every thing relating to him, is found in his Works printed at Madrid, 1778, 3 tom. 8vo, the first volume being in two parts. Some of his poetry falls into Gongoresque affectations. He wrote a single play, “Amar despreciando Riesgos,” which he called a tragicomedy, and which is not without merit.

[925]   Ant. Luiz Ribero de Barros, “Jornada de Madrid,” Madrid, 1672, 4to; a poor miscellany of prose and verse, whose author died in 1683. (Barbosa, Bib., Tom. I. p. 313.)—Pedro Quiros, 1670, best found in Sismondi, Lit. Esp., Sevilla, 1842, Tom. II. p. 187, note; and Varflora, No. IV. p. 68.—Miguel de Barrios, “Flor de Apolo,” Bruselas, 1665, 4to, and “Coro de las Musas,” Bruselas, 1672, 18mo.—“Ociosidad Ocupada y Ocupacion Ociosa de Felix de Lucio y Espinossa,” Roma, 1674, 4to; a hundred bad sonnets. (Latassa, Bib. Nov., Tom. IV. p. 22.)—Jacinto de Evia, “Ramillete de Flores Poéticas,” Madrid, 1676, 4to, which contains other poems besides his own.—Inez de la Cruz, la Décima Musa, “Poemas,” Zaragoza, 1682-1725, 3 tom. 4to, etc.—Ant. de Solís, “Poesías,” Madrid, 1692, 4to.—Candamo, “Obras Líricas,” s. a. 18mo.—Joseph Perez de Montoro, “Obras Póstumas Lyricas, Humanas y Sagradas,” Madrid, 1736, 2 tom. 4to; not printed, I think, till that year, though their author died in 1694.—Manuel de Leon Marcante, “Obras Póstumas,” Madrid, 1733, 2 tom. 4to; where some of the villancicos, by their rudeness, not their poetry, recall Juan de la Enzina.—And, Joseph Tafalla Negrete, “Ramillete Poético,” Zaragoça, 1706, 4to; to which last add Latassa, Bib. Nueva, Tom. IV. p. 104.—Perhaps a volume printed in Valencia, 1680, 4to, and entitled “Varias Hermosas Flores del Parnaso,” will, especially if compared with the similar work of Espinosa printed in 1605, give the fairest idea of the low state of poetry at the time it appeared. It contains poems by Ant. Hurtado de Mendoza, by Solís, and by the following poets, otherwise unknown to me: namely, Francisco de la Torre y Sebil, Rodrigo Artes y Muñoz, Martin, Juan Barcelo, and Juan Bautista Aguilar;—all worthless. Of the persons mentioned in this note, the one that produced the greatest sensation, after Solís, was Inez de la Cruz,—a remarkable woman, but not a remarkable poet, who was born in Guipuzcoa in 1651, and died in the city of Mexico in 1695. Semanario Pintoresco, 1845, p. 12.

[926]   I possess, I believe, works of more than one hundred and twenty lyric poets of this period.

Transcriber’s note

- Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected.

- Original spelling was kept, but variant spellings were made consistent when a predominant usage was found.

- The following words have been changed:

p. 57:

Sesa

→

Sessa

pp. 283, 424:

Benevente

→

Benavente

pp. 359, 360:

Copacobana

→

Copacabana

- Footnotes have been renumbered and moved to the end of the book.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516, Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

History of Spanish Literature (vol. 2 of 3)

CONTENTS OF VOLUME SECOND.

SECOND PERIOD.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE