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Part 1

PAPERS ON PLAY-MAKING

The New Art of Writing Plays

LOPE DE VEGA

TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM T. BREWSTER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

Printed for the Dramatic Museum of Columbia University _in the City of New York_ MCMXIV

CONTENTS

Introduction by Brander Matthews

The New Art of Writing Plays by Lope de Vega

Notes by B. M.

INTRODUCTION

By a significant coincidence the marvellous outflowering of the drama is simultaneous in Spanish literature and in English. Spain almost exhausted her immense resources in fitting out the invincible Armada; and England strained every nerve to compass the defeat of the dread fleet. Lope de Vega, the foremost of the Iberian playwrights, actually sailed as a soldier on the fatal voyage to the English channel; and it is dimly possible that Shakspere also saw service on blue water; the year of the running sea fight is one of those in his biography about which we have no information, and his use of sea-terms has been declared by an expert to be scientifically accurate. In this simultaneous development of the drama in England and in Spain at the moment when the energy of the two peoples was aroused to the utmost, we have a confirmation of Brunetière's theory that the foundation of our pleasure in the playhouse is the assertion of the human will.

Shakspere came forward after the English drama had already developed a variety of forms; and he found the road broken for him by Marlowe and Kyd, by Lyly and Greene. At first he followed in their footsteps, however far beyond them he was to advance in the end. Lope de Vega, on the other hand, was a pioneer; he it was who blazed the new trails in which all the succeeding playwrights of Spain gladly trod. Shakspere seems to have cared little for invention, borrowing his plots anywhere and everywhere, and reserving his imagination for the interpretation of tales first told by others. Lope, on the other hand again, abounded rather in invention than in the interpreting imagination; he was wonderfully fecund and prolific, unsurpassed in productivity even by Defoe or Dumas. It was he who made the pattern that Calderon and all the rest were to employ. It was he who worked out the formula of the Spanish _comedia_, often not a comedy at all in our English understanding of the term, but rather a play of intrigue, peopled with hot-blooded heroes who wore their hearts on their sleeves and who carried their hands on the hilts of their swords.

Where Lope de Vega and Shakspere are again alike is that they both wrote all their plays for the popular theater, apparently composing these pieces solely with a view to performance and caring nothing for any praise which might be derived from publication. Martinenche, in his study of the 'Comedia Espagnole' (p. 243, note) dwells on Lope's carelessness for the literary renown to be won by the printing of his dramatic poems; in his non-dramatic poems he took pride, just as Shakspere seems to have read carefully the proofs of his lyrical narratives altho he did not himself choose to publish a single one of his plays. And Molière, it may be noted, tells us frankly that he was completely satisfied with the success of his earlier pieces on the stage, and that he had been content to leave them unprinted until his hand was forced by a pirate-publisher.

Shakspere is abundant in his allusions to the art of acting and reticent in his illusions to the art of playmaking. In fact, there is no single recorded expression of his opinion in regard to the principles or the practice of dramaturgy; and here he is in marked contrast with Ben Jonson, who had a body of doctrine about the drama, which he set forth in his 'Discoveries' and in his prologs, as well as in his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden. In general Lope's attitude toward dramaturgic theory is the same as Shakspere's; but on one occasion he was induced to discuss the principles of the art he adorned, and to express his opinions upon its methods. This single occasion was when he was persuaded to deliver a poetic address upon the 'New Art of Making Plays in This Age.'

This 'Arte neuvo de hazer comedias en este tiempo' was originally published in the 'Rimas' of Lope de Vega, Madrid, 1609. A facsimile reprint was issued by Mr. Archer M. Huntington in New York in 1903. A critical edition with an introduction and notes by A. Morel-Fatio appeared in the _Bulletin Hispanique_ for October-December, 1904--and also in a separate pamphlet. The French editor accepts the year of publication as probably the year of delivery; and he believes the Academy of Madrid, before whom the poem was read, to be "no doubt one of those literary assemblies, imitated from those flourishing in Italy and holding their meetings at the house of some cultivated gentleman."

Lope's metrical address is plainly a remote imitation of Horace's epistle to the Pisos, the model of countless critical codes cast into verse. It is the chief Spanish example of this type, as Boileau's 'Art Poétique' is the chief French example and Pope's 'Essay on Criticism' the chief English example. While most of these Horatian imitations have for their main topic poetry and more especially dramatic poetry, attempts were not lacking to borrow the familiar form for non-literary themes; and as a result there are a host of poems in all the modern tongues on the 'Art of War' and the 'Art of Painting,' on the 'Art of Bookbinding' and on the 'Art of Cookery.' Even so late as the first half of the nineteenth century Samson (of the Comédie-Française) condensed his histrionic advice into riming couplets on the 'Art of Acting.'

Most of those imitations of Horace's didactic poem which deal with poetry and the drama borrow from the Latin lyrist not only their method but also much of their material. The supersubtle Italian theorists of the theater were relying on Horace even when they supposed that they were interpreting Aristotle; and these expounders of Horace had elaborated legislative enactments for the theater which were readily accepted by all who desired the purification of the drama. This Classicist code of rules for playwrights was mainly negative; it was made up largely of restrictions upon the poet's freedom; it ordered him to do a few things but it forbad him to do many things. It prescribed the total separation of tragedy and comedy, admitting nothing humorous into the former and excluding everything serious from the latter. It insisted severely upon the austere dignity of tragedy. It told the dramatist to avoid all scenes of violence; and it advised him to use messengers to narrate all events which might not be exhibited with propriety. Above all, it laid stress upon the strict observance of the Three Unities demanding that the playwright should have but one story to set on the stage; that he should show this single action in one place only; and that this single action, shown in a single place, should be begun and completed in a single day.

Lope's 'New Art of Making Plays' is not a familiar epistle like Horace's 'Ars Poetica'; rather is it a familiar discourse having the playful ease of an afterdinner speech. It consists of a series of paragraphs of irregular length, varying from four to forty lines each. It is written in blank verse, hendecasyllabics, except that the last two lines of every paragraph are in rime. These terminal couplets recall the riming exit-speeches common in contemporary Elizabethan drama; and in both cases apparently the rimes serve to heighten the emphasis at the end of the rhetorical period. At the conclusion of his address, Lope drops into Latin and inserts ten lines in that tongue--ten lines of unidentified origin. These Latin verses may be his own composition or they may yet be traced to some overlooked poem. They are brought into harmony with the rest of the work by the ingenious device of riming the last Latin line with a line in Spanish, thus making a couplet half in the learned language and half in the vernacular. These two hybrid lines are immediately followed by the usual terminal couplet, so that there are only three lines in Spanish after the ten lines of Latin. In the translation which follows the Latin verse has been rendered into English rime by Professor Edward Delavan Perry.

Professor Rennert in his authoritative biography of Lope (p. 179) declares that Lope's address "is written in a bantering spirit, and a vein of good humor pervades the whole poem. Lope evidently did not take the matter very seriously, nor reflect deeply on what he was about to say. It probably did not take him much longer to write the 'New Art of Making Plays' than it took him to write as many lines of a comedia. The versification, strangely enough, lacks Lope's habitual ease and fluency; it is careless and sometimes halting, while the sense is not always clear,--an additional sign that this treatise was hastily composed."

Morel-Fatio notes that the 'Arte Nuevo' was reprinted only three times during Lope's life-time, at Madrid in 1613 and 1621 and at Hueva in 1623; and he finds in the poem itself ample explanation for its lack of popularity. Lope was the superb leader of an astounding development of the Spanish drama; and he himself tells us that when he delivered this address he had already written nearly five hundred plays. Yet he utters no paean of triumph; he blows no bugle-blast of defiance to the defenders of other standards than those under which he himself was fighting; he does not anticipate the ardor and the fervor which were to animate Victor Hugo's preface to 'Cromwell'; he does not stand to his guns and point to what he has accomplished on the stage as his own justification and as a sufficient answer to the caviling of criticasters. His attitude seems to be humble and apologetic; he admits the validity of the Classicist code of rules; and in his own defence he proffers only what the lawyers call a plea of confession and avoidance, declaring that he would have obeyed the behest of the learned theorists if only he had been permitted by the public. He acknowledges the faultiness of all his dramatic works and throws the blame on the depravity of public taste, since

We who live to please, must please to live.

He supports his acceptance of the Classicist doctrine with a brave show of erudition and with mention of Cicero, Donatus, Robortello, Julius Pollux, Manetti, Plutarch, Athenaeus, Xenophon, Valerus Maximus, Pietro Crinito and Vitruvius; and Morel-Fatio declares that this pedantic parade has no solid foundation of scholarship, being derived entirely from two writers, Donatus, the commentator on Terence, and Robortello, the commentator on Aristotle and on Horace. In this second-hand echoing of the codifiers of critical theory the great Spanish playwright reveals no independence of interpretation, accepting without question whatever he has found in the commentaries and never asking himself whether the commentators had any valid reason for the rules they laid down so authoritatively. In other words, the 'Arte Nuevo' does not disclose Lope's possession of any critical curiosity or of any critical acumen, or even of any real interest in the discussion of critical theories.

We have no right to expect that those as richly endowed with the creative faculty as Lope indisputably was, should also have an equal share of the critical faculty. The analysis of the principles of their own special art by the poets and painters and playwrights who venture into the critical arena is always interesting but it is rarely philosophic and it is generally technical. And it is to technic that Lope devotes the most of his discourse. He trips lightly down the history of the new Spanish drama; and then he proceeds to bestow practical advice on aspiring young playwrights. He tells these novices that they must give the public what it wants, and he counsels them as to the best methods of tickling the taste of the uncritical playgoer. He descends to minute practical details; and, in short, his suggestions are those of a veteran of the craft supplying lessons in playwriting for a correspondence-school.

In so far as Lope lays down any critical principles at all, these are but the codification of his own instinctive practise. His address is like "the speech of a carpenter standing on the peak of a building he has just erected"--to borrow Richter's sarcastic phrase. Lope had himself succeeded as a practical playwright; and his plays had certain characteristics and were put together in a certain fashion. As these plays had pleased the public, beginners would do well to consider these characteristics and to follow this fashion. He utters his shrewd recommendations most unpretentiously, with no hint of arrogance and with a friendly geniality of tone. Behind his modest precepts stand his own plays in which his ideal is more sharply made manifest. Lope's ideal is that of all his contemporaries, including Calderon (who followed in his footsteps and often borrowed his plots). It is that the stage is intended primarily for story-telling, for presenting in action a serial tale which shall excite the constant interest of curiosity.

He bids the beginner to put together his story with the utmost care, laying the foundations in the first act, contriving unexpected complications for the second and concealing the solution of the action until the very last moment possible, as otherwise the spectators may get up and go out, when once they can foresee the end. He lays all his stress upon adroitness and ingenuity of plot-building; and such casual remarks as he makes upon character-delineation seem perfunctory. In thus emphasizing the primary importance of the action Lope is only echoing Aristotle,--altho he probably was not aware of this. And the practise of the Spanish playwrights under the lead of Lope was closely akin to that of their contemporaries, the English playwrights under the lead of Kyd, and again later under the lead of Beaumont and Fletcher. Like Lope, Kyd in his way and Beaumont and Fletcher in theirs, were story-tellers on the stage. Poets they were all of them, but as playwrights they depended on plot, on suspense and especially on surprize--often achieved only by contradiction of character.

The abiding interest of the 'Arte Nuevo' is two-fold. It resides partly in the suggestiveness of the elementary lessons in the art of playmaking, which Lope here proffers to apprentices in the art and which are invaluable as an aid for proper appreciating the methods of the Spanish playwrights of the Age of Gold. It resides partly in the curiously deprecating attitude taken by Lope toward his own works, altho he was approaching the pinnacle of his fame when he penned this didactic poem. Is the great Spanish playwright sincere in his humility before the code of the Classicists? Is his self-abasement genuine--or is it ironic? Morel-Fatio follows Menéndez y Pelayo in accepting it at its face value. Guillaume Huszar, in his useful book on Corneille and the Spanish theater, thinks that when Lope pretends to disparage his own plays he is not to be taken seriously. I confess that I should like to agree with this latter view; and there is some little internal evidence in support of it. But the balance is rather in favor of the former opinion. Yet however honest may be Lope's willingness to do penance to the Classicist code which he admits to have outraged, his is a proud humility after all. He is not really as abased and as plaintive as some of his critics have asserted. Modest as he may be, he takes care to make his own position plain. For all his easy attitude and his tolerant geniality, for all his lightness of touch on the one side and his pedantic citation on the other, he does not fail to insist on his authorship of nearly half a thousand plays and to remind his auditors that he has continuously succeeded in pleasing the public, even tho he had to violate the rules in order to win this success.

Lope assumes a detached attitude and his tone is bantering, as Professor Rennert has suggested. He does not here display the intense personal interest in the analysis of his own work which glows and burns thru all Corneille's 'Examens,' in spite of the French dramatic poet's occasional confession of a lapse from the strict letter of the law. Lope has none of the prophetic fire of Hugo's famous preface in anticipatory defence of the plays he was going to write. In fact, it is difficult to deny that this poem is a pretty careless piece of work, tossed off in an idle hour, evoked by a special occasion when it behooved the speaker to assume a self-deprecatory attitude. But it is not the "lamentable palinode" that Menéndez y Pelayo called it; nor is it exactly what Mr. Ormsby termed it (in the _Quarterly Review_ for January, 1894) "virtually the manifesto of a triumphant dictator, a dramatic Napoleon who, while professing the profoundest respect for the sovereign will of the public, scarcely cared to hide his contempt for its intelligence or its taste, which foreign critics, he says, justly called barbarous; or to disguise the fact that he owed his power to his knowledge and adroit manipulation of its weaknesses." That scholars so well equipt for the consideration of Spanish literature and so well fitted for the interpretation of the Spanish character as Ormsby and Rennert, Morel-Fatio and Menéndez y Pelayo can take views as conflicting as those severally expressed by them,--this is proof positive that Lope has not taken the pains necessary to make his position clear.

While Lope was willing at least to render lip-service to the code of the Classicists, one of his followers in the theater, Tirso de Molina, (best known as the author of the earliest dramatization of the Don Juan legend) in his 'Cigarrales de Toledo,' published in 1624, fifteen years after Lope's address, is bold in denying the validity of any rule limiting the duration of time or forbidding a change of scene, (See Breitinger's 'Unités d' Aristote' pp. 29 seq.) But Cervantes in the first part of 'Don Quixote,' published in 1605, four years before the delivery of the 'Arte Nuevo,' had revealed a plentiful lack of sympathy for the so-called Aristotelian rules. There is no disputing the irony in his portrait of the Canon of Toledo who demanded the appointment of "some intelligent and sensible person at the capital to examine all plays before they were acted, not only those produced in the capital itself, but all that were intended to be acted in Spain; without whose approval, seal and signature, no local magistracy should allow any play to be acted." (Ormsby's translation, ii, 387, chapter xlviii). Earlier remarks of the Canon show us that he was familiar with whole Classicist code; indeed, Ormsby (in a foot-note to his translation of this chapter) calls attention to the substantial identity of the Canon's opinions with those expressed by Sir Philip Sidney in the 'Apology for Poesy.' In another work of fiction written more than two centuries later, in the 'Nicholas Nickelby' of Dickens, we are introduced to a Mr. Murdle whose knowledge is obviously vaguer than the Canon's but who is quite as strenuous in his insistence upon "the preservation of the unities."

Into the vext question of the personal relations of Cervantes and of Lope, it is not needful to enter here. It would be pleasant to believe that each really appreciated the genius of the other; but however pleasant this is not quite possible. Cervantes seems not to have suspected the greatness of his own masterpiece; and it is plain that he had a special fondness for his plays, which had not succeeded. Lope must have been conscious of his own position at the head of all Spanish poets; he might assume a humble attitude when he was the author of less than five hundred plays but by the time that he had more than a thousand pieces to his credit the garment of humility is no longer becoming. Martinenche in his 'Comedia Espagnole' (pp. 113-4) follows Morel-Fatio in pointing out Lope's later satisfaction with what he had accomplished, even to the extent of claiming for himself the invention of the new type of play which had established itself on the Spanish stage.

When we consider the extraordinary vogue of Lope as a playwright in the Golden Age of Spanish literature and the swift diffusion of his fame thruout Europe, when we recall his unparalleled productivity, and when we remember his supreme importance as a representative of a superb development of the modern drama, we cannot fail to be surprised to discover that no adequate attempt has ever been made to present him to the English reading public. In French there are two translations of selections from his dramatic works; and there are also varied renderings into German. But in English there is little or nothing. Lord Holland in 1787 analized the 'Star of Seville' and turned the more striking episodes into English; and it was on this summary and on these fragments that Mrs. Kemble founded her five act 'Star of Seville' published in 1837. Holcroft had utilized Lope's 'Padre Engañado' in the plot of his 'Father Outwitted,' published in 1805. A perversion of Lope's play on the 'Romeo and Juliet' story had been issued in English in 1770; and this moved F. W. Cosens to print (for private distribution) in 1869 a careful translation of 'Castelvines y Montreses'. In the sixth volume of 'The Drama,' edited by Alfred Bates and published in 1903, there is a translation of the Terro del Hortelano,' (the 'Gardener's Dog') by W. H. H. Chambers. These scattered versions and perversions apparently represent all of Lope's dramatic work which has found its way into our language. It is greatly to be desired that at least one volume might be issued in English to contain the 'Star of Seville,' the 'Gardener's Dog,' the 'Romeo and Juliet,' and the 'Duchess of Malfi' plays, and also the 'Physician of his own Honor,' and the 'Alcalde of Zalamea,' of which Calderon's rehandlings are already accessible in Fitzgerald's free rendering.

A few scattered passages from the 'Arte Nuevo' were turned into English couplets by Lord Holland; and some of those were borrowed (without credit) in G. H. Lewes's stimulating study of the Spanish Drama, issued in 1846. An inadequate and incomplete version, derived mainly from the French translation of Dumas-Hinard, was included in an essay on Lope published in the _Catholic World_ for September, 1878. There is a careful abstract in Professor Rennert's standard biography of Lope (1904). But Professor Brewster's translation is the first attempt to render into English the whole of Lope's advice to the aspiring playwrights of his own time and country.

BRANDER MATTHEWS. (June 1914.)

THE NEW ART OF MAKING PLAYS IN THIS AGE

Addressed to the Academy at Madrid.

1. You command me, noble spirits, flower of Spain,--who in this congress and renowned academy will in short space of time surpass not only the assemblies of Italy which Cicero, envious of Greece, made famous with his own name, hard by the Lake of Avernus, but also Athens where in the Lyceum of Plato was seen high conclave of philosophers,--to write you an art of the play which is today acceptable to the taste of the crowd.