History of Spanish Literature (vol. 2 of 3)

[p. i]

HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.

VOL. II.

[p. iii]

HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.

BY

GEORGE TICKNOR.

IN THREE VOLUMES. VOLUME II.

NEW YORK:

HARPER AND BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET.

M DCCC XLIX.

[p. iv]

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by George Ticknor, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

[p. v]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME SECOND.

SECOND PERIOD. (Continued.)

[p. 1]

HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.

The Literature that existed in Spain from the Accession of the Austrian Family to its Extinction, or from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the End of the Seventeenth.

(CONTINUED.)

[p. 3]

HISTORY OF SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.

(CONTINUED.)

CHAPTER VII.

Theatre. — Influence of the Church and the Inquisition. — Mysteries. — Castillejo, Oliva, Juan de Paris, and Others. — Popular Demands for Dramatic Literature. — Lope de Rueda. — His Life, Comedias, Coloquios, Pasos, and Dialogues in Verse. — His Character as Founder of the Popular Drama in Spain. — Juan de Timoneda.

The theatre in Spain, as in most other countries of modern Europe, was early called to contend with formidable difficulties. Dramatic representations there, perhaps more than elsewhere, had been for centuries in the hands of the Church; and the Church was not willing to give them up, especially for such secular and irreligious purposes as we have seen were apparent in the plays of Naharro. The Inquisition, therefore, already arrogating to itself powers not granted by the state, but yielded by a sort of general consent, interfered betimes. After the publication of the Seville edition of the “Propaladia” in 1520,—but how soon afterward we[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,—

But now I abjure this friardom poor,

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

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

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

’T is a vassalage hard,

Which gives grief for reward.[11]

The piece is curious, because it is a wild mixture of the spirit of the old Mysteries with that of Juan de la Enzina’s Eclogues and the Comedies of Naharro, and shows by what awkward means it was attempted[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,—

The suffering life we mortal men below,

Upon this terrene world, are bound to spend,

If we but carefully regard its end,

We find it very full of grief and woe:

Torments so multiplied, so great, and ever such,

That but to count an endless reckoning brings,

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

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

Other attempts followed this, or appeared at just about the same time, which approach nearer to the example set by Naharro. One of them is called “La Vidriana,” by Jaume de Huete, on the loves of a gentleman and lady of Aragon, who desired the author to represent them dramatically;[13] and another, by the same hand, is called “La Tesorina,” and was afterwards forbidden by the Inquisition.[14] This last is a[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]

Leno. Ah, Troico, are you there?

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

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

Troico. Why so, Leno?

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

Troico. What ill-luck?

Leno. What day is it to-day?

Troico. Thursday.

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

Troico. Tuesday is passed two days ago.

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

Troico. What do you ask that for?

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

Troico. I suppose so.

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

Troico. No doubt, on me.

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

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

Leno. Would to heaven that were all, Troico!

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

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

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

Leno. Then smell of this napkin.

Troico. Very well, I have smelt of it.

Leno. What does it smell of?

Troico. Something like butter.

[p. 15]

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

Troico. What do you mean, Leno?

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

Troico. Followed whom, villain? Timbria?

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

Troico. And what was that?

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

Troico. And who sent a pancake to me?

Leno. Why, Madam Timbria.

Troico. Then what became of it?

Leno. It was consumed.

Troico. How?

Leno. By looking at it.

Troico. Who looked at it?

Leno. I, by ill-luck.

Troico. In what fashion?

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

Troico. Well, what next?

Leno. I took it in my hand.

Troico. And then?

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

Troico. The upshot is, that you ate it?

Leno. It is not impossible.

Troico. In faith, you are a trusty fellow!

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

Troico. The business goes on well.

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

Troico. Of what sort?

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

Troico. You counsel well.

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

Troico. I? What have I to laugh about?

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

[p. 16]

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

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

[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:—

Peralta.

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