as autos sacramentales and entremeses, and a vast series of other literary compositions, has indisputably prejudiced his reputation with those to whom he is but a name and a number. Yet as a dramatist Lope more fully exemplifies the capabilities of the Spanish theatre than any of his successors, though as a poet Calderon may deserve the palm. Nor would it be possible to imagine a truer representative of the Spain of his age than a poet who, after suffering the hardships of poverty and exile, and the pangs of passion, sailed against the foes of the faith in the Invincible Armada, subsequently became a member of the Holy Inquisition and of the order of St Francis, and after having been decorated by the pope with the cross of Malta and a theological doctorate, honoured by the nobility, and idolized by the nation, ended with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips. From the plays of such a writer we may best learn the manners and the sentiments, the ideas of religion and honour, of the Spain of the Philippine age, the age when she was most prominent in the eyes of Europe and most glorious in her own. For, with all its inventiveness and vigour, the genius of Lope primarily set itself the task of pleasing his public,—the very spirit of whose inner as well as outer life is accordingly mirrored in his dramatic works. In them we have, in the words of Lope’s French translator Baret, “the movement, the clamour, the conflict of unforeseen intrigues suitable to unreflecting spectators; perpetual flatteries addressed to an unextinguishable national pride; the painting of passions dear to a people never tired of admiring itself; the absolute sway of the point of honour; the deification of revenge; the adoration of symbols; buffoonery and burlesque, everywhere beloved of the multitude, but here never defiled by obscenities, for this people has a sense of delicacy, and the foundation of its character is nobility; lastly, the flow of proverbs which at times escape from the gracioso” (the comic servant domesticated in the Spanish drama by Lope)—“the commonplace literature of those who possess no other.”
The plays of Lope, and those of the national Spanish drama in general, are divided into classes which it is naturally not always easy, and which there is no reason to suppose him always to have intended, to keep distinct from one another. After in his early youth composing eclogues, Comedias de capa y espada.pastoral plays, and allegorical moralities in the old style, he began his theatrical activity at Madrid about 1590, and the plays which he thenceforth produced have been distributed under the following heads. The comedias, all of which are in verse, include (1) the so-called c. de capa y espada—not comedies proper, but dramas in which the principal personages are taken from the class of society that wears cloak and sword. Gallantry is their main theme, an interesting and complicated, but well-constructed and perspicuous intrigue their chief feature; and this is usually accompanied by an underplot in which the gracioso plays his part. Their titles are frequently taken from the old proverbs or proverbial phrases of the people[1] upon the theme suggested, by which the plays often (as G. H. Lewes admirably expresses it) constitute a kind of gloss (glosa) in action. This is the favourite species of the national Spanish theatre; and to the plots of the plays belonging to it the drama of other nations owes a debt almost incalculable in extent. Heróicas.(2) The c. heróicas are distinguished by some of their personages being of royal or very high rank, and by their themes being often historical and largely[2] (though not invariably[3]) taken from the national annals, or founded on contemporary or recent events.[4] Hence they exhibit a greater gravity of tone; but in other respects there is no difference between them and the cloak-and-sword comedies with which they share the element of comic underplots. Occasionally Lope condescended in the opposite direction, to (3) plays of which the scene is laid in common life, but for which no special name appears to have existed.[5] Meanwhile, both he and his successors were too devoted sons of the church not to acknowledge in some sort her claim to influence the national drama. This claim she had never relinquished, even when she could no longer retain an absolute control over the stage. For a time, indeed, she was able to reassert even this; for the exhibition of all secular plays was in 1598 prohibited by the dying Philip II., and remained so for two years; and Lope with his usual facility proceeded to supply religious plays of various kinds. After a few dramas on scriptural subjects he turned to the legends of the saints; andComedias
de santos. the comedias de santos, of which he wrote a great number, became an accepted later Spanish variety of the miracle-play. True, however, to the popular instincts of his genius, he threw himself with special zeal and success into the composition of another kind of religious plays—a development of the Corpus Christi pageants, in honour of which all the theatres had to close their doors for a month. These were the famous autos sacramentales (i.e. solemn “acts” or proceedings in honour of the Sacrament), which Autos sacramentales.were performed in the open air by actors who had filled the cars of the sacred procession. Of these Lope wrote about 400. These entertainments were arranged on a fixed scheme, comprising a prologue in dialogue between two or more actors in character (loa), a farce (entremes), and the auto proper, an allegorical scene of religious purport, as an example of which Ticknor cites the Bridge of the World,—in which the Prince of Darkness in vain seeks to defend the bridge against the Knight of the Cross, who finally leads the Soul of Entremeses. Man in triumph across it. Not all the entremeses of Lope and others were, however, composed for insertion in these autos. This long-lived popular species, together with the old kind of dramatic dialogue called eclogues, completes the list of the varieties of his dramatic works.
The example of Lope was followed by a large number of writers, and Spain thus rapidly became possessed of a dramatic literature almost unparalleled in quantity—for in fertility also Lope was but the first among many. Among the writers of Lope’s school, his friend G. de Castro The school of Lope.(1569–1631) must not be passed by, for his Cid[6] was the basis of Corneille’s; nor J. P. de Montalban, “the first-born of Lope’s genius,” the extravagance of whose imagination, like that of Lee, culminated in madness. Soon after him died (1639) Juan Ruiz de Alarcon, in whose plays, as contrasted with those of Lope, has been recognized the distinctive element of a moral purpose. To G. Tellez, called Tirso de Molina (d. 1648), no similar praise seems due; but the frivolous gaiety of the inventor of the complete character of Don Juan was accompanied by ingenuity in the construction of his excellent[7] though at times “sensational”[8] plots. F. de Rojas Zorrilla (b. 1607), who was largely plundered by the French dramatists of the latter half of the century, survived Molina for about a generation. In vain scholars of strictly classical tastes protested in essays in prose and verse against the ascendancy of the popular drama; the prohibition of Philip II. had been recalled two years after his death and was never renewed; and the activity of the theatre spread through the towns and villages of the land, everywhere under the controlling influence of the school of writers who had established so complete a harmony between the drama and the tastes and tendencies of the people.
The glories of Spanish dramatic literature reached their height in P. Calderon de la Barca, though in the history of the Spanish theatre he holds only the second place. He elaborated some of the forms of the national drama, but brought about no changes of moment in any of them. Even the brilliancy Calderon.of his style, glittering with a constant reproduction of the same family of tropes, and the variety of his melodious versification, are mere intensifications of the poetic qualities of Lope, while
- ↑ El Azero de Madrid (The Steel Water of Madrid); Dineros son Calidad (= The Dog in the Manger), &c.
- ↑ La Estrella de Sevilla (The Star of Seville, i.e. Sancho the Brave); El Nuevo Mundo (Columbus), &c.
- ↑ Roma Abrasada (R. in Ashes—Nero).
- ↑ Arauco domado (The Conquest of Arauco, 1560).
- ↑ La Moza de cantaro (The Water-maid).
- ↑ Las Mocedades (The Youthful Adventures) del Cid.
- ↑ Don Gil de las calzas verdes (D. G. in the Green Breeches).
- ↑ El Burlador de Sevilla y Convivado de piedra (The Deceiver of Seville, i.e. Don Juan, and the Stone Guest).
