Part 5

Lope de Vega, one of the most astonishing geniuses the world has known, permanently established the national forms of the Spanish drama. Some of these were in their beginnings taken over by him from ruder predecessors; some were cultivated with equal or even superior success by subsequent authors; but in variety, as in fertility of dramatic production, he has no rivals. His fertility, which was such that he wrote about 1500 plays, besides 300 dramatic works classed as _autos sacramentales_ and _entremeses_, and a vast series of other literary compositions, has indisputably prejudiced his reputation with those to whom he is but a name and a number. Yet as a dramatist Lope more fully exemplifies the capabilities of the Spanish theatre than any of his successors, though as a poet Calderon may deserve the palm. Nor would it be possible to imagine a truer representative of the Spain of his age than a poet who, after suffering the hardships of poverty and exile, and the pangs of passion, sailed against the foes of the faith in the Invincible Armada, subsequently became a member of the Holy Inquisition and of the order of St Francis, and after having been decorated by the pope with the cross of Malta and a theological doctorate, honoured by the nobility, and idolized by the nation, ended with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips. From the plays of such a writer we may best learn the manners and the sentiments, the ideas of religion and honour, of the Spain of the Philippine age, the age when she was most prominent in the eyes of Europe and most glorious in her own. For, with all its inventiveness and vigour, the genius of Lope primarily set itself the task of pleasing his public,--the very spirit of whose inner as well as outer life is accordingly mirrored in his dramatic works. In them we have, in the words of Lope's French translator Baret, "the movement, the clamour, the conflict of unforeseen intrigues suitable to unreflecting spectators; perpetual flatteries addressed to an unextinguishable national pride; the painting of passions dear to a people never tired of admiring itself; the absolute sway of the point of honour; the deification of revenge; the adoration of symbols; buffoonery and burlesque, everywhere beloved of the multitude, but here never defiled by obscenities, for this people has a sense of delicacy, and the foundation of its character is nobility; lastly, the flow of proverbs which at times escape from the _gracioso_" (the comic servant domesticated in the Spanish drama by Lope)--"the commonplace literature of those who possess no other."

Comedias de capa y espada.

Heróicas.

Comedias de santos.

Autos sacramentales.

Entremeses.

The plays of Lope, and those of the national Spanish drama in general, are divided into classes which it is naturally not always easy, and which there is no reason to suppose him always to have intended, to keep distinct from one another. After in his early youth composing eclogues, pastoral plays, and allegorical moralities in the old style, he began his theatrical activity at Madrid about 1590, and the plays which he thenceforth produced have been distributed under the following heads. The _comedias_, all of which are in verse, include (1) the so-called _c. de capa y espada_--not comedies proper, but dramas in which the principal personages are taken from the class of society that wears cloak and sword. Gallantry is their main theme, an interesting and complicated, but well-constructed and perspicuous intrigue their chief feature; and this is usually accompanied by an underplot in which the _gracioso_ plays his part. Their titles are frequently taken from the old proverbs or proverbial phrases of the people[52] upon the theme suggested, by which the plays often (as G. H. Lewes admirably expresses it) constitute a kind of gloss (_glosa_) in action. This is the favourite species of the national Spanish theatre; and to the plots of the plays belonging to it the drama of other nations owes a debt almost incalculable in extent. (2) The _c. heróicas_ are distinguished by some of their personages being of royal or very high rank, and by their themes being often historical and largely[53] (though not invariably[54]) taken from the national annals, or founded on contemporary or recent events.[55] Hence they exhibit a greater gravity of tone; but in other respects there is no difference between them and the cloak-and-sword comedies with which they share the element of comic underplots. Occasionally Lope condescended in the opposite direction, to (3) plays of which the scene is laid in common life, but for which no special name appears to have existed.[56] Meanwhile, both he and his successors were too devoted sons of the church not to acknowledge in some sort her claim to influence the national drama. This claim she had never relinquished, even when she could no longer retain an absolute control over the stage. For a time, indeed, she was able to reassert even this; for the exhibition of all secular plays was in 1598 prohibited by the dying Philip II., and remained so for two years; and Lope with his usual facility proceeded to supply religious plays of various kinds. After a few dramas on scriptural subjects he turned to the legends of the saints; and the _comedias de santos_, of which he wrote a great number, became an accepted later Spanish variety of the miracle-play. True, however, to the popular instincts of his genius, he threw himself with special zeal and success into the composition of another kind of religious plays--a development of the Corpus Christi pageants, in honour of which all the theatres had to close their doors for a month. These were the famous _autos sacramentales_ (i.e. solemn "acts" or proceedings in honour of the Sacrament), which were performed in the open air by actors who had filled the cars of the sacred procession. Of these Lope wrote about 400. These entertainments were arranged on a fixed scheme, comprising a prologue in dialogue between two or more actors in character (_loa_), a farce (_entremes_), and the _auto_ proper, an allegorical scene of religious purport, as an example of which Ticknor cites the _Bridge of the World_,--in which the Prince of Darkness in vain seeks to defend the bridge against the Knight of the Cross, who finally leads the Soul of Man in triumph across it. Not all the _entremeses_ of Lope and others were, however, composed for insertion in these _autos_. This long-lived popular species, together with the old kind of dramatic dialogue called _eclogues_, completes the list of the varieties of his dramatic works.

The school of Lope.

The example of Lope was followed by a large number of writers, and Spain thus rapidly became possessed of a dramatic literature almost unparalleled in quantity--for in fertility also Lope was but the first among many. Among the writers of Lope's school, his friend G. de Castro (1569-1631) must not be passed by, for his _Cid_[57] was the basis of Corneille's; nor J. P. de Montalban, "the first-born of Lope's genius," the extravagance of whose imagination, like that of Lee, culminated in madness. Soon after him died (1639) Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, in whose plays, as contrasted with those of Lope, has been recognized the distinctive element of a moral purpose. To G. Tellez, called Tirso de Molina (d. 1648), no similar praise seems due; but the frivolous gaiety of the inventor of the complete character of Don Juan was accompanied by ingenuity in the construction of his excellent[58] though at times "sensational"[59] plots. F. de Rojas Zorrilla (b. 1607), who was largely plundered by the French dramatists of the latter half of the century, survived Molina for about a generation. In vain scholars of strictly classical tastes protested in essays in prose and verse against the ascendancy of the popular drama; the prohibition of Philip II. had been recalled two years after his death and was never renewed; and the

## activity of the theatre spread through the towns and villages of the

land, everywhere under the controlling influence of the school of writers who had established so complete a harmony between the drama and the tastes and tendencies of the people.

Calderon.

The glories of Spanish dramatic literature reached their height in P. Calderon de la Barca, though in the history of the Spanish theatre he holds only the second place. He elaborated some of the forms of the national drama, but brought about no changes of moment in any of them. Even the brilliancy of his style, glittering with a constant reproduction of the same family of tropes, and the variety of his melodious versification, are mere intensifications of the poetic qualities of Lope, while in their moral and religious sentiments, and their general views of history and society, there is no difference between the two. Like Lope, Calderon was a soldier in his youth and an ecclesiastic in his later years; like his senior, he suited himself to the tastes of both court and people, and applied his genius with equal facility to the treatment of religious and of secular themes. In fertility Calderon was inferior to Lope (for he wrote not many more than 100 plays); but he surpasses the elder poet in richness of style, and more especially in fire of imagination. In his _autos_ (of which he is said to have left not less than 73), Calderon probably attained to his most distinctive excellence; some of these appear to take a wide range of allegorical invention,[60] while they uniformly possess great beauty of poetical detail. Other of his most famous or interesting pieces are _comedias de santos_.[61] In his secular plays he treats as wide a variety of subjects as Lope, but it is not a dissimilar variety; nor would it be easy to decide whether a poet so uniformly admirable within his limits has achieved greater success in romantic historical tragedy,[62] in the comedy of amorous intrigue,[63] or in a dramatic work combining fancy and artificiality in such a degree that it has been diversely described as a romantic caprice and as a philosophical poem.[64]

Contemporaries of Calderon.

Moreto and the comedia de figuron.

During the life of the second great master of the Spanish drama there was little apparent abatement in the productivity of its literature; while the _autos_ continued to flourish in Madrid and elsewhere, till in 1765 (shortly before the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain) their public representation was prohibited by royal decree. In the world of fashion, the opera had reached Spain already during Calderon's lifetime, together with other French influences, and the great dramatist had himself written one or two of his plays for performance with music. But the regular national drama continued to command popular favour, and with A. Moreto may be said to have actually taken a step in advance. While he wrote in all the forms established by Lope and cultivated by Calderon, his manner seems most nearly to approach the masterpieces of French and later English comedy of character; he was the earliest writer of the _comedias de figuron_, in which the most prominent personage is (in Congreve's phrase) "a character of affectation," in other words, the Spanish fop of real life.[65] His masterpiece, a favourite of many stages, is one of the most graceful and pleasing of modern comedies--simple but interesting in plot, and true to nature, with something like Shakespearian truth.[66] Other writers trod more closely in the footsteps of the masters without effecting any noticeable changes in the form of the Spanish drama; even the _saynete_ (tit-bit), which owes its name to Benavente (fl. 1645), was only a kind of _entremes_. The Spanish drama in all its forms retained its command over the nation, because they were alike popular in origin and character; nor is there any other example of so complete an adaptation of a national art to the national taste and sentiment in its ethics and aesthetics, in the nature of the plots of the plays (whatever their origin), in the motives of their actions, in the conduct and tone and in the very costume of their characters.

Decay of the national Spanish drama.

The French school of the 18th century.

Other later dramatists.

National as it was, and because of this very quality, the Spanish drama was fated to share the lot of the people it so fully represented. At the end of the 17th century, when the Spanish throne at last became the declared apple of discord among the governments of Europe, the Spanish people lay, in the words of an historian of its later days, "like a corpse, incapable of feeling its own impotence." That national art to which it had so faithfully clung had fallen into decline and decay with the spirit of Spain itself. By the time of the close of the great war, the theatre had sunk into a mere amusement of the populace, which during the greater part of the 18th century, while allowing the old masters the measure of favour which accords with traditional esteem, continued to uphold the representatives of the old drama in its degeneracy--authors on the level of their audiences. But the Spanish court was now French, and in the drama, even more than in any other form of art, France was the arbiter of taste in Europe. With the restoration of peace accordingly began isolated attempts to impose the French canons of dramatic theory, and to follow the example of French dramatic practice; and in the middle of the century these endeavours assumed more definite form. Montiano's bloodless tragedy of _Virginia_ (1750), which was never acted, was accompanied by a discourse endeavouring to reconcile the doctrines of the author with the practice of the old Spanish dramatists; the play itself was in blank verse (a metre never used by Calderon, though occasionally by Lope), instead of the old national ballad-measures (the romance-measure with assonance and the rhymed _redondilla_ quatrain) preferred by the old masters among the variety of metres employed by them. The earliest Spanish comedy in the French form (a translation only, though written in the national metre)[67] (1751), and the first original Spanish comedy on the same model, Nicolas Moratin's _Petimetra_ (_Petite-Maîtresse_), printed in 1726 with a critical dissertation, likewise remained unacted. In 1770, however, the same author's _Hormesinda_, an historic drama on a national theme and in the national metre, but adhering to the French rules, appeared on the stage; and similar attempts followed in tragedy by the same writer and others (including Ayala, who ventured in 1775 to compete with Cervantes on the theme of Numantia), and in comedy by Iriarte and Jovellanos (afterwards minister under Godoy), who produced a sentimental comedy in Diderot's manner.[68] But these endeavours failed to effect any change in the popular theatre, which was with more success raised from its deepest degradation by R. de la Cruz, a fertile author of light pieces of genuine humour, especially _saynetes_, depicting the manners of the middle and lower classes. In literary circles Garcia de la Huerta's voluminous collection of the old plays (1785) gave a new impulse to dramatic productivity, and the conflict continued between representatives of the old school, such as Luciano Francisco Comella (1716-1779) and of the new, such as the younger Moratin, whose comedies--of which the last and most successful[69] was in prose--raised him to the foremost position among the dramatists of his age. In tragedy N. de Cienfuegos likewise showed some originality. After, however, the troubles of the French domination and the war had come to an end, the precepts and examples of the new school failed to reassert themselves.

Already in 1815 an active critical controversy was carried on by Böhl de Faber against the efforts of J. Faber and Alcalá Galiano to uphold the principles of classicism; and with the aid of the eminent actor Máiquez the old romantic masterpieces were easily reinstated in the public favour, which as a matter of fact they had never forfeited. The Spanish dramatists of the 19th century, after passing, as in the instance of F. Martinez de la Rosa and Bréton de los Herreros, from the system of French comedy to the manner of the national drama, appear either to have stood under the influence of the French romantic school, or to have returned once more to the old Spanish models. Among the former class A. Gil y Zarate, of the latter J. Zorrilla, are mentioned as specially prominent. The most renowned Spanish dramatist at the opening of the 20th century was the veteran politician and man of letters J. Echegaray.

Meanwhile, the old religious performances are not wholly extinct in Spain, and the relics of the solemn pageantry with which they were associated may long continue to survive there, as in the case of the _pasos_, which claim to have been exhibited in Holy Week at Seville for at least three centuries. As to the theatre itself, there can be no fear either that the imitation of foreign examples will satisfy Spanish dramatists--especially when, like the author of _Doña Perfecta_ (Perez Galdos), they have excellent home material of their own for adaptation,--or that the Spanish public itself, with fine actors and actresses still upholding the lofty traditions of the national drama, will remain too fatigued to consume the drama unless bit by bit--in the shape of _zarzuelas_ and similar one-act confections. Whatever may be the future of one of the noblest of modern dramatic literatures, it may confidently be predicted that, so long as Spain is Spain, her theatre will not be permanently either denationalized or degraded.

(d) _Portugal._

The Portuguese drama.

The Portuguese drama in its earlier phases, especially before in the latter part of the 14th century the nation completely achieved its independence, seems to have followed much the same course as the Spanish; and the religious drama in all its prevailing forms and direct outgrowths retained its popularity even by the side of the products of the Renaissance. In the later period of that movement translations of classical dramas into the vernacular were stimulated by the cosmopolitan example of George Buchanan, who for a time held a post in the university of Coimbra; to this class of play Teive's _Johannes_ (1553) may be supposed to have belonged. In the next generation Antonio Ferreira[70] and others still wrote comedies more or less on the classical model. But the rather vague title of "the Plautus of Portugal" is accorded to an earlier comic writer, the celebrated Gil Vicente, who died about 1536, after, it is stated, producing forty-two plays. He was the founder of popular Portuguese comedy, and his plays were called _autos_, or by the common name of _praticas_.[71] Among his most gifted successors are mentioned A. Ribeiro, called _Chiado_ (the mocking-bird), who died in 1590;[72] his brother Jeronymo, B. Dias, A. Pires, J. Pinto, H. Lopes and others. The dramatic efforts of the illustrious poet Luis de Camões (Camoens) are relatively of slight importance; they consist of one of the many modern versions of the _Amphitruo_, and of two other comedies, of which the earlier (_Filodemo_) was acted at Goa in 1553, the subjects having a romantic colour.[73] Of greater importance were the contributions to dramatic literature of F. de Sá de Miranda, who, being well acquainted with both Spanish and Italian life, sought early in his career to domesticate the Italian comedy of intrigue on the Portuguese stage;[74] but he failed to carry with him the public taste, which preferred the _autos_ of Gil Vicente. The followers of Miranda were, however, more successful than he had been himself, among them the already-mentioned Antonio Ferreira; the prose plays of Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos, which bear some resemblance to the Spanish _Celestina_, are valuable as pictures of contemporary manners in city and court.[75]

The later Portuguese dramatic literature seems also to have passed through phases corresponding to those of the Spanish, though with special features of its own. In the 18th century Alcino Mycenio (1728-1770), known as Domingos dos Reis Quito in everyday life, in which his avocation was that of Allan Ramsay, was remarkably successful with a series of plays,[76] including of course an _Inez de Castro_, which in a subsequent adaptation by J. B. Gomes long held the national stage. Another dramatist, of both merit and higher aspirations, was Lycidas Cynthio (_alias_ Manoel de Figueiredo, 1725-1801).[77] But the romantic movement was very late in coming to Portugal. Curiously enough, one of its chief representatives, the viscount da Almeida Garrett, exhibited his sympathy with French, revolutionary and anti-English ideas by a tragedy on the subject of Cato;[78] but his later works were mainly on national subjects.[79] The expansive tendencies of later Portuguese dramatic literature are illustrated by the translations of A. F. de Castilho, who even ventured upon Goethe's _Faust_ (1872). Among 19th-century dramatists are to be noted Pereira da Cunha, R. Cordeiro, E. Biester, L. Palmeirin, and Garrett's disciple F. G. de Amorim, by whom both political and social themes have been freely treated. The reaction against romanticism observable in Portuguese poetic literature can hardly fail to affect (or perhaps has already affected) the growth of the national drama; for the receptive qualities of both are not less striking than the productive.

(e) _France._

The French regular drama.

France was the only country, besides Italy, in which classical tragedy was naturalized. In 1531 the Benedictine Barthélemy of Loches printed a _Christus Xylonicus_; and a very notable impulse was given both to the translation and to the imitation of ancient models by a series of efforts made in the university of Paris and other French places of learning. The most successful of these attempts was the _Johannes Baptistes_ of George Buchanan, who taught in Paris for five years and at a rather later date resided at Bordeaux, where in 1540 he composed this celebrated tragedy (afterwards translated into four or five modern languages), in which it is now ascertained that he had in view the trial and condemnation of Sir Thomas More. He also wrote _Jephthah_, and translated into Latin the _Medea_ and _Alcestis_ of Euripides. At a rather later date the great scholar M. A. Muret (Muretus) produced his _Julius Caesar_, a work perhaps superior in correctness to Buchanan's tragic masterpiece, but inferior to it in likeness to life. About the same time the enthusiasm of the Paris classicists showed itself in several translations of Sophoclean and Euripidean tragedies into French verse.[80]

Jodelle.