History of Spanish Literature (vol. 2 of 3)

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SECOND PERIOD.
(Continued.)

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[p. 4] 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[p. 5] 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[p. 6] 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[p. 7] 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,—

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,—

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[p. 8] 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,—

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[p. 9] 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[p. 10] 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 Come[p. 11]dias, 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 admira[p. 12]ble 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 com[p. 13]pel 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.

[p. 14]

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]

[p. 17]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:—

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[p. 19] 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[p. 20] 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[p. 21] 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.[p. 22] 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:—

[p. 23]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:—

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

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

[p. 24]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]

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 com[p. 26]pany 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[p. 27] 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[p. 28] 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[p. 29] 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 at[p. 30]tachment 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 Ga[p. 31]licia, 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]

[p. 32]

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 expec[p. 33]tations 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[p. 34] 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]

[p. 35]

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, dra[p. 36]matic 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.

[p. 37]

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[p. 38] 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[p. 39] 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.

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[p. 41] 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[p. 42] 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[p. 43] 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[p. 44] 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 move[p. 45]ments 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;[p. 46] 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[p. 47] 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[p. 48] 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,[p. 49] 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[p. 50] 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.

[p. 51]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]

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[p. 53] 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[p. 54] 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]

[p. 55]

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[p. 56] 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 after[p. 57]wards, 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 Christen[p. 58]dom; 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,[p. 59] 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][p. 60] 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 suf[p. 61]fered 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][p. 62] 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 success[p. 63]ful; 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[p. 64] 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[p. 65] 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,[p. 66] 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[p. 67] 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[p. 68] 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[p. 69] 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:—

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[p. 70] 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[p. 71] 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.

[p. 72]

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:—

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

[p. 73]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,—

[p. 75]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[p. 76] 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.

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[p. 78] 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[p. 79] 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[p. 80] 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, antiqui[p. 81]ties, 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,[p. 82] 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[p. 83] 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]

[p. 84]

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[p. 85] 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[p. 86] 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[p. 87] 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[p. 88] 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[p. 89] 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[p. 90] 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]

[p. 91]

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[p. 92] 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[p. 93] 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[p. 94] 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[p. 95] 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[p. 96] 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[p. 97] 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.[p. 98] 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[p. 99] 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]

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 pur[p. 101]pose 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 there[p. 102]fore 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[p. 103] 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[p. 104] 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[p. 105] 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[p. 106] 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.

[p. 107]

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[p. 108] 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[p. 109] 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]

[p. 110]

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[p. 111] 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,[p. 112] ‘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[p. 113] 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,[p. 114] 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 min[p. 115]gled 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[p. 116] 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[p. 117] 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[p. 118] 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[p. 119] 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]

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 extraordi[p. 121]nary 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][p. 122] 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[p. 123] 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]

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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[p. 125] 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]

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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[p. 127] 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]

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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 scat[p. 129]tered 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[p. 130] 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]

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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[p. 132] 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[p. 133] 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[p. 134] 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[p. 135] 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:—

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[p. 137] 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.

[p. 138]

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[p. 139] 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[p. 140] 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]

[p. 141]

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]

[p. 142]

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 liter[p. 143]ature 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[p. 144] 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[p. 145] 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.

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 possi[p. 147]ble 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:—

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]

[p. 149]

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[p. 150] 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[p. 151] 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[p. 152] 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[p. 153] 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[p. 154] 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[p. 155] 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[p. 156] 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[p. 157] 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[p. 158] 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,[p. 159] 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[p. 160] 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,[p. 161] 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[p. 162] 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[p. 163] 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]

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,[p. 165] 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 pecu[p. 166]liarly 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,—

[p. 167]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 Va[p. 168]lencian 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 else[p. 169]where,—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[p. 170] 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[p. 171] 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,—

[p. 172]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[p. 173] 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[p. 174] 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,[p. 175] 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[p. 176] 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[p. 177] 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[p. 178] 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[p. 179] 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[p. 180] 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[p. 181] 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[p. 182] 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:—

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 ad[p. 184]mirable 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[p. 185] 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,[p. 186] 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.

[p. 187]

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.

[p. 188]

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[p. 189] 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,—

To which she replies,—

This tone is maintained to the end, whenever the hero[p. 190]ine 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[p. 191] 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.

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.[p. 193] 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[p. 194] 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[p. 195] 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[p. 196] 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:—

[p. 199]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[p. 200] 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.

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[p. 201] 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,—

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[p. 202] 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 be[p. 203]tween 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[p. 204] 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 hus[p. 205]band, 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[p. 206] 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[p. 207] 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[p. 208] 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[p. 209] 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.”

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.

[p. 211]

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.

The story is less important than it is in many of[p. 212] 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[p. 213] 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[p. 214] 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[p. 215] 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[p. 216] 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, there[p. 217]fore, 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[p. 218] 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:—

Immediately after the fall, and therefore, according to[p. 220] 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,

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:—

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[p. 222] 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]

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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,—some[p. 224]times 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]

[p. 225]

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[p. 226] 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[p. 227] 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 extraor[p. 228]dinary 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 so[p. 229]lemnity;—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]

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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[p. 231] 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[p. 232] 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[p. 233] 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[p. 234] 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 cer[p. 235]emonial, 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[p. 236] 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.

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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[p. 238] 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.

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[p. 240] 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[p. 241] 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[p. 242] 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 atro[p. 243]cious 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[p. 244] 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[p. 245] 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 adopt[p. 246]ed, 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[p. 247] 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,

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[p. 248] 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,—

[p. 249]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 op[p. 250]portunities. 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 dramat[p. 251]ic 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[p. 252] 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[p. 253] 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[p. 254] 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.

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[p. 256] 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[p. 257] 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[p. 258] 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.

[p. 259]

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]

[p. 260]

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,

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,[p. 261] 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[p. 262] 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[p. 263] 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,[p. 264] 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]

[p. 265]

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[p. 266] 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]

[p. 267]

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[p. 268] 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]

[p. 269]

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]

[p. 270]

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[p. 271] 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[p. 272] 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[p. 273] 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[p. 274] 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[p. 275] to the broad and gross farce that is too often mingled with his satire.[494]

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]

[p. 277]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[p. 278] 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[p. 279] 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.

[p. 280]

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.

[p. 281]

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,—

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

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[p. 282] 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[p. 283] 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[p. 284] 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,[p. 285] 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[p. 286] 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[p. 287] 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[p. 288] 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[p. 289] 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.

[p. 290]

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 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[p. 292] 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[p. 293] 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.[p. 294] 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]

[p. 295]

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[p. 296] 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 Nin[p. 297]eveh, 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[p. 298] 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 de[p. 299]ranged, 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[p. 300] 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[p. 301] 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[p. 302] 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 hero[p. 303]ine, 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[p. 304] 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,[p. 305] 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,[p. 306] 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 festi[p. 307]val 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.

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[p. 309] 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, not[p. 310]withstanding 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[p. 311] 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 [p. 312]pictures of saints, and crying out, as he scatters holy water in every body’s face,—

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,—

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 his[p. 313]torical, 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]

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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.

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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 Ra[p. 316]chel,” 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[p. 317] 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[p. 318] 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[p. 319] 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]

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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 imputa[p. 321]tion 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.

[p. 322]

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 ad[p. 323]hering 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 scat[p. 324]tered 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 dra[p. 325]matic 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.[p. 326] 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[p. 327] 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 re[p. 328]ceived 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]

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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 de[p. 330]termined 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[p. 331] 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 sev[p. 332]enteenth 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]

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[p. 334] 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[p. 335] 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[p. 336] “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.[p. 337] 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 conse[p. 338]crated 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 Mæ[p. 339]cenas.”[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]

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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[p. 341] 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 Cal[p. 342]deron 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[p. 343] 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]

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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,[p. 345] 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[p. 346] 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,[p. 347] 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[p. 348] 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.

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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[p. 350] 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[p. 351] 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[p. 352] 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]

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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, dur[p. 354]ing 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,[p. 355] 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[p. 356] 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[p. 357] 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[p. 358] 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[p. 359] 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.

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,[p. 361] 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—

And again, where he says of another,—

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,—

[p. 363]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 per[p. 364]formers 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[p. 365] 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.[p. 366] 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, dis[p. 367]heartened 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.

[p. 368]

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:—

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.

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,[p. 370] 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.

[p. 371]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[p. 372] 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[p. 373] trusty friend, with written orders to destroy Mariamne in case of his own death, but adds passionately,—

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

and then goes off in despair, exclaiming,—

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.[p. 374] 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:—

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:—

[p. 376]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]

[p. 377]

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[p. 378] 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:—

[p. 379]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,—

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[p. 380] 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.

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][p. 382]—“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

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]

[p. 383]

“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.

[p. 384]

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:—

[p. 385]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.

[p. 386]

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.

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[p. 389] 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[p. 390] 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 Bo[p. 391]leyn 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[p. 392] 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[p. 393] 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[p. 394] 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.

[p. 395]

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[p. 396] “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,[p. 397] 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[p. 398] 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[p. 399] 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.

[p. 400]

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[p. 401] 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[p. 402] 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]

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[p. 404] 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[p. 405] 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 de[p. 406]luded 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[p. 407] 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.

[p. 408]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[p. 409] 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[p. 410] 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[p. 411] 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 nine[p. 412]teenth 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,[p. 413] 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 thea[p. 414]tre.[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 oc[p. 415]casionally 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]

[p. 416]

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[p. 417] 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.

[p. 418]

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.

[p. 419]

“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 trium[p. 420]phant 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[p. 421] 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[p. 422] 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[p. 423] 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[p. 424] 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[p. 425] 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]

[p. 426]

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[p. 427] 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 histori[p. 428]cal 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[p. 429] 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]

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]

[p. 431]

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[p. 432] 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[p. 433] 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 strug[p. 434]gling 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, in[p. 435]deed, 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[p. 436] 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 [p. 437]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[p. 438] 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 apo[p. 439]sentos 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[p. 440] 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 dra[p. 441]mas 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 intróy[p. 442]tos, 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]

[p. 443]

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 im[p. 444]portunate 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 ac[p. 445]tion 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, dan[p. 446]cing 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,—

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[p. 447] “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[p. 448] 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[p. 449] 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 oth[p. 450]er 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[p. 451] 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[p. 452] 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[p. 453] 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.

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.

[p. 455]

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,[p. 456]—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[p. 457] 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[p. 458] 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[p. 459] 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[p. 460] 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[p. 461] 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[p. 462] 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,[p. 463] 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[p. 464] 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[p. 465] 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[p. 466] 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[p. 467] 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]

[p. 468]

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]

[p. 469]

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]

[p. 470]

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[p. 471] 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[p. 472] 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[p. 473] 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[p. 474] 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 char[p. 475]acter 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[p. 476] 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[p. 477] 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 re[p. 478]ceived 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[p. 479] 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[p. 480] 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]

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[p. 482] “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]

[p. 483]

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[p. 484] 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[p. 485] 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[p. 486] 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[p. 487] 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.[p. 488] 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:—

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[p. 490] 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]

[p. 491]

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[p. 492] 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]

[p. 493]

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, per[p. 494]haps, 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[p. 495] 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-[p. 496]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[p. 497] 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[p. 498] 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[p. 499] 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[p. 500] 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[p. 501] 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[p. 502] 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 extrav[p. 503]agant. 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;[p. 504] 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.

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[p. 506] 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][p. 507] 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[p. 508] 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]

[p. 509]

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 un[p. 510]published 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[p. 511] 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[p. 512] 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[p. 513] them into a war against the infidel. In this spirit, he cries out,—

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[p. 514] 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.

[p. 515]

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;[p. 516] 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]

[p. 517]

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[p. 518] 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[p. 519] 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]

[p. 520]

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]

[p. 521]

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.

[p. 522]

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,—

[p. 523]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,—

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[p. 524] 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]

[p. 525]

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[p. 526] 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]

[p. 527]

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,[p. 528] 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[p. 529] 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[p. 530] 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[p. 531] 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]

[p. 532]

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[p. 533] 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]

[p. 534]

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[p. 535] 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]

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 proba[p. 537]bly 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[p. 538] 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[p. 539] 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[p. 540].”

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.

[p. 541]

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[p. 542] 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[p. 543] 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[p. 544] 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[p. 545] 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,[p. 546] 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.

[p. 547]

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:—

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[p. 548] 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[p. 549] 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]

[p. 550]

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[p. 551] 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.

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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.