Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/581

CALDERON DE LA BARCA 575 philosophy, and law, and produced several plays which gained for him influential admirers and patrons. He left the university in 1619 to seek employment at the court, where Lope de Vega was among the first to praise his con- tributions to the contests for poetical composi- tion (1620-'22). In 1625 he hecame a soldier, and served respectably in Italy and Flan- ders, but was recalled to Madrid in 1635, on the death of Lope de Vega, and appointed by Philip IV. superintendent of the royal theatres and festivals. In 1636 he was made a knight of Santiago and took part in a campaign in Catalonia, remaining in the military service until the peace of 1641. The king now gave him a pension of 30 gold crowns monthly, and employed him exclusively in writing and pro- ducing plays and managing the festivals of the court, the expense of bringing out his pieces in the most costly style being borne by the royal treasury. In 1651 he obtained from the order of Santiago permission to become a priest, and two years later was appointed chaplain to the cathedral of Toledo. In 1663 he was attached to the royal chapel in Madrid, and received as a member of the brotherhood of St. Peter, by whom he was finally chosen to be their capellan mayor, and to whom on his death he bequeathed his large fortune. To the last he was incessantly engaged in writing, and his death was deplored as a public calamity, his popularity having gradually extended from the court, the clergy, and the higher classes to the masses of the people. His funeral, which at first took place, according to his request, with the utmost simplicity in the church of San Salvador, had to be celebrated over again in a more conspicuous manner, while public demonstrations of sympathy were made in Rome, Naples, Milan, and Lisbon. His re- mains were removed, April 19, 1841, to the campo santo adjoining the Atocha church, where a fine monument was erected in his honor by public subscriptions. Calderon had no superior in the fertility of his inventive power or in the skilful arrangement of in- genious, entertaining, and striking plots, and startling stage effects, which latter faculty was, according to Goethe, the most remarkable characteristic of his genius. His works con- tinue to be held in the highest esteem in Spain, and have been the source of inspiration for English, French, German, and Italian dra- matists. He was barely 15 when he wrote his first play, El carro del cielo, and over 80 when he wrote his last, Hado y divisa, founded on the story of Boiardo and Ariosto. His princi- pal productions may be divided into three class- es : I. Over 70 sacramental autos or religious outdoor plays for Corpus Christi day or other church festivals, and chiefly on allegorical sub- jects mixed with national and Scriptural inci- dents and stories, and also occasionally with amorous passages, especially the most celebra- ted of them, El ditino Orfeo, which is partly set to music, like many of his other plays. 140 VOL. HI. 37 The autos opened with a prologue (loa), which was recited or chanted ; next came a farcical entremes, and last the auto or sacramental act proper. They all abound in lyrical beauty, and were produced in a gorgeous manner, characteristic of the lingering Moorish elements in Spanish civilization. Some of them par take of such extravagance as Aristophanes displayed in the representation of Greek divini- ties, and others of the brilliancy of Ben Jon son's poetical masques. The all-pervading purpose was to exalt the doctrine of the real presence in the eucharist, and many shadowy characters are introduced to personate evils and blessings, Satan playing a conspicuous part in many fantastic forms. II. There are about 15 religious and miracle plays, though chiefly called so to evade the restraints im- posed in Spain on theatrical performances from 1644 to about 1649. Many of them were acted by priests in the palaces of the nobility, the sanctimonious title serving only as a cover for loose plots and free writing. Most admired among them was the Purgatorio de San Patricia, founded on the story of the Irish St. Patrick, with a regular love plot and the in- evitable clown (gracioso) ; and the Devotion de la cruz (translated into German by A. W. von Schlegel), which, though still more licentious, became a favorite even in Protestant countries on account of its exquisite devotional passages. The most famous of the miracle plays was El mdgico prodigioso, founded on the legend of St. Cyprian, and so Faust-like in its metaphysi- cal and mystical poetry that the German Rosen- kranz has written an explanatory work on it, entitled Ueber Calderon's Tragodie vom wun- derthatigen Magw (Halle, 1829). Milman has paraphrased it in his "Martyr of Antioch." III. Over 100 secular plays, different from the preceding ones in not assuming to be religious, and consisting of tragedies, dramas, comedies, and melodramas, and a few operas like La purpura de la rasa and Las fortunas de An- dromeda y Perseo, both adapted from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The best known of these plays in foreign countries is perhaps El prm- cipe constante, founded on the disastrous ex- pedition of the Portuguese infante Ferdinand against the Moors. The most powerful of those pieces in which the passions form the groundwork of the plot are Amar despues de la muerte; El medico de su honra; El pmtor de fu deshonra ; and above all, El mayor mon- struo lot zelos (" No Monster like Jealousy "), founded on the story of Herod in Josephus. This last named tragedy has been often com- pared to Shakespeare's Othello. The so-called comedias de capa y espada (cloak and dagger comedies), depending for success mainly on their intrinsic wit, illustrate Calderon's talent for brilliant dialogue and amusing complica- tions. Some of the most popular among these are La dama duende ("The Fairy Lady"), which he himself regarded as his masterpiece, and El astrologo fingido, adapted to the French