THE PREVAILING QUALITY OF THE SPANISH DRAMA—TYPICAL EXAMPLES—‘LA DAMA MELINDROSA’—‘EL TEJEDOR DE SEGOVIA’—‘EL CONDENADO POR DESCONFIADO’—THE PLAYS ON “HONOUR”—‘A SECRETO AGRAVIO SECRETA VENGANZA’—THE “AUTO SACRAMENTAL”—THE “LOA”—THE ‘VERDADERO DIOS PAN’—‘LOS DOS HABLADORES.’
The prevailing quality of the Spanish drama.

There may well seem to be something over-bold, even impudent, in the attempt to give an account of the different kinds of Spanish drama in one brief chapter. Its abundance alone would appear to render the effort vain, and the common elaborate classification of the plays into heroic, romantic, religious, of “cloak and sword,” and so forth, seems to imply the existence of a number of types distinct from one another, and calling for separate treatment. Yet though I cannot hope to be exhaustive, it is, in my opinion, possible to be at least not wholly inadequate. The task is materially facilitated by the great uniformity of the Spanish drama. No matter what the name may be, the action is much the[92] same, and the characters do not greatly vary. It has been said that Calderon’s personages are all like bullets cast in a mould; and though this, as is the case with most sweeping assertions, fails to take notice of the exceptions, it has much truth, and may be applied to others. The Spanish drama is above all a drama of action, conducted by fixed types. Juan de la Cueva had said in a spirit of prophecy that the artful fable was the glory of the Spanish stage, and Lope appeared in good time to prove him right. The types who move in the action are the Dama, the Galan, the Barba, and the Gracioso—the Lady, the Lover, the Old Man, and the Clown. They have the stage to themselves in the comedia de capa y espada. This phrase, when translated into French or English, has an air of romance about it which is somewhat misleading. The cloak and sword were the distinctive parts of the dress of the private gentleman. Caballero de capa y espada was the man about town of our own Restoration plays, who is neither great noble, churchman, nor lawyer. The comedia de capa y espada was then the genteel comedy of Spain. But the Dama, the Galan, the Barba, and the Gracioso figure in every kind of play, even in those of religion. By these is meant the stage drama turning on some religious motive, and not the auto sacramental, which was a mystery differing from those of the Middle Ages only in this, that it was written by men of letters on whom, and on whose art, the Renaissance had had its influence. In the Romantic plays there is more passion, and the sword is more often out of its scabbard, but we find the same[93] types, the same general action. Spain produced a certain number of plays approaching our own comedy of humours. These are the comedias de figuron. La Verdad Sospechosa and the Lindo Don Diego are the best known examples. But here again the “humour”—the figuron—is placed in the midst of the stock types and the customary action.
Typical examples.

To show what these types and this action were in general terms would be easy enough, but perhaps a better, and certainly a more entertaining, method is to take half-a-dozen typical plays, and to give such an analysis of them as may enable the reader to appreciate for himself that skilful construction of plot at which the Spaniards aimed, and to judge how far it is true that however much the subject differed, the dramatis person? did not greatly vary. For this purpose it is not necessary to take what is best but what is most characteristic. I have selected as an example of the comedy of lively complicated action the Dama Melindrosa, which may be translated ‘My Lady’s Vapours,’ by Lope de Vega; as a romantic play, the Tejedor de Segovia—‘The Weaver of Segovia’—by Juan Ruiz de Alarcon; as a religious play, the Condenado por Desconfiado—‘Damned for want of Faith’—of Tirso de Molina; for the play which has “honour” for its motive, the A Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza—‘A Secret Vengeance for a Hidden Wrong’—of Calderon. The Dama Melindrosa draws a little towards the comedia de figuron, but it is none the less a perfect specimen of the cloak-and-sword comedy, and a good example of Lope. It is chosen also because[94] it possesses a plot sufficiently entangled to show the Spanish enredo (i.e., tangle), and yet not so complicated as to be obscure in the telling. Specimens of the romantic, and religious, play might have been easily found in Calderon, but to show the general quality of a literature, we must not confine ourselves to the greater men. There remain the auto sacramental, and the short interludes, which under various names surrounded, and enlivened, the comedia. For the first we must go to Calderon, and none seems more fit to show what the Renaissance had done with these survivals of the Middle Ages than the Verdadero Dios Pan—‘The True God Pan.’ For an example of the smaller pieces we can take the Dos Habladores—‘The Two Chatterers’—of Cervantes, who excelled in this, and only in this, dramatic form.[35]
La Dama Melindrosa.

Belisa, the Dama Melindrosa, the lady with the vapours, of Lope’s comedy, is the daughter of a rich widow, Lisarda, and she has a brother, Don Juan. The brother spends his nights serenading ladies, in company with his friend Eliso, and lies in bed till midday. Belisa has hitherto refused all the husbands proposed by her mother, giving more or less fantastical reasons in each case, and is a very airy whimsical young person. In the first scene of the play Lisarda confides her troubles with her children to her brother Tiberio, the barba—beard, or old[95] man—of the piece. Lisarda professes her desire to get her children married and settled in life, in order that she may retire to the country with one gentlewoman and a slave, there to bewail her lost lord (who, we learn, has been dead for about a year), like the tender turtle on a thorn. Tiberio pooh-poohs his sister’s sentiments, and makes the unsympathetic remark that widows generally seem to find solitude a thorn, to judge by their perpetual fidgeting, but offers to use his influence to persuade Belisa to marry. Then follows a scene with the young lady. She knows she is going to be sermonised, and puts on all her airs and graces. A chair is brought for Tiberio and cushions for the ladies, who squat on them in the old Spanish fashion. Mme. d’Aulnoy, the author of the fairy tales, who came to Spain as wife of the French Ambassador, has explained how intolerable she found this attitude. Belisa provokes her uncle, who has the usual peppery temper of the barba, into expressing a desire to box her ears, but will accept no husband. To this party enter an alguacil, or officer of police, with an escribano, a species of attorney and process-server. We learn that Lisarda has a claim on her son’s friend Eliso, who owed her husband money, and will not pay it. She has therefore sued out a writ, and is sending the officers to seize a prenda, or pledge, which she can keep or sell for the discharge of the debt, if Eliso will not pay what he owes.

The scene now changes to the house of Eliso, who is found discussing with his servant Fabio the question whether it is better to pay the debt or[96] compound by marrying Belisa, with her vapours. His conversation is broken off by the hurried entry of Felisardo, sword in hand. He has found a Navarrese cavalier persecuting Celia, who is on her way home from church, with unwelcome attentions. The usual duel has followed. The Navarrese is on the pavement, and Felisardo is on his way to take sanctuary, bringing Celia with him to leave her under the protection of Eliso. Of course Eliso behaves like a gentleman, orders his front door to be shut in case the police-officers are in pursuit, and gives his friends refuge. He persuades the two to disguise themselves in the holiday dresses of his Morisco slaves, Pedro and Zara, who are absent on his estate. Meanwhile Fabio reports that there are police-officers below, and is sent down with orders to delay them as long as he can. Eliso has a soliloquy on the hazards of love, in the form of a half-burlesque sonnet in which all the last words are esdrújulo, accented on the antepenult. At last the alguacil is admitted, deeply angered by the delay, and announces that he has come to serve Lisarda’s writ. Eliso is relieved, and tells him to take what he likes—and he takes the two supposed slaves. The scene now returns to Lisarda’s house. She is much pleased by the intelligence of the alguacil, and the attractive appearance of the supposed Pedro and Zara. Belisa, too, is impressed by the gallant bearing of Felisardo, who enters into the game with spirit. Meanwhile Don Juan is at last up. He finds Celia among the servants, and on learning who she is supposed to be, observes that his[97] friend Eliso was wise not to let him see her. Of course he makes hyperbolical love to her at once. Celia is not pleased at the admiration of Lisarda’s female servants for Felisardo, and he is jealous of Don Juan. And so the first act ends. Lope, it will be seen, has carried out his dramatic scheme so far with great success. He has introduced his persons, and knitted his intrigue. Everything has happened in a probable way, and there are infinite possibilities of complications and cross purposes.

The second act opens with Belisa’s confession of her love for the supposed Pedro. It is made to the indispensable confidante, who, as a matter of course, is her servant Flora, the counterpart of the gracioso, and the soubrette of the French comedy. Belisa speaks largely in infantile little lines of six syllables. She explains and excuses her own melindres at considerable length, and asks Flora how to escape from a love which she feels is disgraceful, and half considers as a punishment for her whims. Flora makes the ferocious suggestion that she should insist on having Pedro branded on the face, after the manner of runaway slaves. This was a rebus formed of the letter s, pronounced “es,” and a nail—clavo—which together make the word esclavo, a slave. The object of this precious device is to kill Belisa’s love by degrading its object. The melindrosa hesitates, but finally takes her servant’s counsel, and when her mother, who is as much in love with Pedro as herself, declines, threatens hysterics. Lisarda in despair applies to Tiberio, who advises that the rebus should be painted on the faces of the slaves,[98] which will quiet Belisa, and do no harm. In the meantime Eliso pays a visit to Lisarda. He has at last made up his mind to become Belisa’s suitor. The mother warns him of her daughter’s humours, but promises her help, insisting, however, that he must make her a present of the slaves, although he has now satisfied the debt. Eliso, who knows he gives nothing, consents with just sufficient appearance of reluctance to provoke the lady’s wishes still further. He also drops hints that the slaves are not what they seem. In a short conversation with Felisardo, Eliso tells him that the Navarrese still lives, though in danger, that the police are seeking for him and Celia, and that they will be wise to stay where they are. They agree, and allow the infamatory mark to be painted on their faces. The play need no longer be told scene by scene, and could not be so told except at inconvenient length. Lisarda hankers after the man slave, and Don Juan makes furious love to Celia. Belisa finds her love is not cured by the supposed branding of Pedro, and is perpetually either making advances to him, or flying off in more or less affected hysterics. Celia for her part is jealous of the mother and daughter. She and her lover are twice surprised in talk, and have to use their wits to escape discovery. There is no small truth in the part Belisa plays. Lope accepted slavery as a matter of course, and was writing to amuse, not to enforce a moral, but he comes very near the best passages in that powerful book Uncle Tom’s Cabin,—the scenes which follow the death of St Clair. Mrs Beecher Stowe wrote to prove that slavery makes it[99] possible for a weak self-indulgent nature to be horribly brutal in act. Belisa is not allowed to go beyond whims. The second act ends by her insisting that an iron collar shall be put on Pedro’s neck, which makes an effective “curtain,” and no doubt left the audience highly excited as to what was coming next.

The third act opens with a scene between Lisarda and Eliso, who reproaches her with ill-treating the slaves, and repeats his warning that they are not what they appear to be. This only excites Lisarda in her determination to marry Pedro. Then Eliso is angered by Don Juan’s servant Carrillo, the gracioso of the piece, who tells him that the slave is making love to Belisa. With a want of scruple too common with the Spanish galan, he eggs on Don Juan to persevere in his pursuit of Celia. Belisa also has begun to have her suspicions as to the real character of the slaves, but cannot believe that a free man and woman would allow themselves to be branded. Now follows a set of scenes hovering between farce and melodrama. In a more than usually exalted state of the vapours, Belisa pretends to faint, in order that Pedro may carry her to her room. She has first given him a ring. Pedro is not a little embarrassed, but finally takes her up with disgusted resignation, and is about to carry her to her room, when Celia comes in, and “makes him a scene of jealousy.” Supposing the melindrosa to be insensible they address one another by their true names, and say some uncomplimentary truths of Belisa. At last Felisardo puts Belisa down on a sofa, as Celia insists upon it, gives his lady-love the[100] ring as a proof of his loyalty, and walks off to the stable. Belisa is furious, puzzled, but still doubtful. In a fit of rage she accuses Celia of stealing the ring, and the dama is in some danger of learning that it is perilous to play the part of slave. She is, of course, rescued from the officious Carrillo, who is eager to inflict the punishment ordered by his mistress, by Don Juan. The young gentleman is in high indignation, and swears that he will marry the slave. His mother, who means to do the same with Pedro, is not on that account the less angry with him. Being now thoroughly tired of Don Juan’s rebellion and Belisa’s whims, she begs the help of Tiberio to bring about her marriage with the slave. The helpful Tiberio has a resource. He has seen a gentleman named Felisardo about the court who is wonderfully like Pedro. Let the slave be dressed as a gentleman and introduced as Lisarda’s proposed husband. In the meantime Don Juan has plotted with Eliso that Celia shall be helped to resume her true place, when he will of course marry her, and present his mother with the accomplished fact. After a well-handled passage of mutual reproaches between mother and daughter, there comes a stage device which the play-goer will recognise as now worn threadbare, but which is always effective. Lisarda decides that when Tiberio returns with Felisardo, whom she still believes to be the slave Pedro, she will put out the light by an affected accident, and seize the opportunity to make a declaration of love. What follows need hardly be told. The light is put out. Everybody says the wrong thing to everybody,[101] and when the candles are lit again the play is over. Felisardo is married to Celia, who arrives at the right moment. Belisa, her vapours being no longer heeded, consents to marry Eliso. Carrillo is paired off with Flora. Lisarda declares herself satisfied, and so the play being played out, the puppets return to their box.

Here, it will be allowed, is a play—and it is one of many—which may well have amused a Spanish audience for an afternoon. We may confess that this was its main purpose. Yet it is also amusing to read. Lope, indeed, wrote well. His verse in its various forms, including blank verse, which has been comparatively little written by other Spaniards, is accomplished, when haste did not make him careless; and it has the qualities of the prose of our own Vanbrugh—straightforward simplicity and natural ease. The actors must have found it pleasant to learn. His characters, again, have a respectable measure of general truth to human nature. They are not, indeed, the living persons we meet in Molière and Shakespeare. Even Belisa is only a dama with melindres, and as Celia is, so his other damas are; nor does one galan, gracioso, or barba differ essentially from another. Yet they are true, with the measure of truth possible to conventional types, and their doings are lively. The doings are always the essential thing. Whatever literary merit Lope’s play may have, it is always strictly subordinate to the purely theatrical purpose, to the necessity of pleasing an audience by a lively action which must be full of surprises in the[102] details, but always intelligible in the general lines. Of this purely theatrical art he was a master. He knew how to bring about a good situation, how to lead up to an effective ending to his act, how to make the wildly improbable look probable on the boards. In so far he is very modern. The popular play of to-day, the French comedy of quiproquo, is only Lope’s comedy of intrigue in modern trappings. It is never better in these qualities than his are at their best. He had discovered all the devices which the playwright finds more effective, and much easier to produce, than passion, or thought, or poetry. And he did at least present them in poetic form. He was the most poetic of playwrights, and the ancestor of all who write merely for the stage, whose aim it is to amuse, and to move by direct appeal to the eye, and the laughter, or tears, which lie near the surface.
El Tejedor de Segovia.

The enredo supplied the canvas on which, or the background against which, the Spanish dramatist had to place whatever romantic, religious, or other figure or action he wished to present to his audience. In the Tejedor de Segovia—‘The Weaver of Segovia’—of Alarcon we have romance of the most approved type, the story of a gentleman who is driven by oppression to become a Robin Hood, a “gallant outlaw,” and who finally earns pardon, and restoration to his honours, by service against the Moor. This is Don Fernando Ramirez, whose father has been unjustly put to death by the king Don Alfonso, at the instigation of the favourite, the Marques Suero Pelaez. It is supposed that Fernando has also been killed, but[103] he is living disguised as a weaver at Segovia, with his dama Teodora. A sister, Do?a Ana Ramirez, is living in retirement near the town with a servant, Florinda. She is in love with the Count Don Julian, son of Suero Pelaez, who neglects her, and is tired of her. Don Julian has caught sight of Teodora, and has fallen in love with her in the usual fire-and-flames style. He is determined to carry her off, and when the play opens, is prowling about the weaver’s house with his servant Fineo. Don Julian is convinced that a mere mechanic will not dare to resist the son of so powerful a man as Suero Palaez. As a matter of fact the weaver is absent, and Teodora is alone in the house with the servant Chinchon, the gracioso of the piece, and an accomplished specimen of the greed, cowardice, brag, and low cunning proper to the type. A moderately experienced reader of romance sees at once what the course of the story must be. The count endeavours to gain admittance. Chinchon the coward proves no protection. He is rather a traitor, and Teodora is assailed by the count, when the weaver returns. Fernando takes a high line with Don Julian, and when the count endeavours to carry things with a high hand, shows that, weaver as he appears to be, he can use a sword like a gentleman. The count and his servant are ignominiously driven into the streets. Then the storm breaks on the weaver. He is imprisoned, and Teodora has to fly to hiding. In prison the weaver finds Don Garceran de Miranda, and various others, who form the raw material of a model band of brigands. The courage and craft of Fernando[104] aiding, they all break out and take to “the sierra”—the hillside—which is the Spanish equivalent of our green wood. Through many adventures, each coming one out of the other, all the personages playing their part with that sense of the theatre which Lope had conveyed to his countrymen, Don Fernando works back to his own, and to revenge. It is a Robin Hood story, told by a Spaniard for the stage, and with Spanish types.

There are individual scenes of the best Spanish romance. One is that in which Suero Pelaez, the barba, the personification of austere Castilian honour and loyalty, reproaches his son with his disorderly life. Suero Pelaez is the typical père noble, the heavy father of the stage, comparable for rigid loftiness of sentiment to the Ruy Gomez of Hernani. Victor Hugo would have done the scene magnificently, and as Alarcon wrote it, it will stand comparison with the best of the French romantic plays. In another scene Teodora and Fernando are prisoners to the count, and she saves her lover by pretending to betray him. She asks to be allowed to kill him, and when supplied with a sword for that atrocious purpose, cuts his bonds and gives him the weapon—a coup de théatre repeated with more or less disguise many thousands of times, but unfailing in its effect. In a more thoroughly Spanish scene, Fernando forces the count to do justice to his sister, Do?a Ana, by promising to marry her, and having so salved the honour of his family, kills him in fair fight. Do?a Ana displays the philosophy rarely wanting in the second dama at the end of a play.[105] While Don Julian was alive, honour required her to insist on marriage; but now that he is dead, and she has been righted, she is quite prepared to marry Don Garceran, who has gallantly played his part as Patroclus, Achates, Horatio, Amyas Leigh’s Lieutenant Cary, or Jack Easy’s friend Gascoigne—in short, hero’s right-hand man. It is not King Lear, or even Phèdre, but it is very amusing reading, made of such stuff as romance is made of at all times.
El Condenado por Desconfiado.

With the play on a religious motive we come to what is far more alien to ourselves. In Tirso de Molina’s Condenado por Desconfiado we have something which, at any rate in such a form as this, is unknown on the modern stage. Paul the hermit is a man of thirty, who has fled from the world ten years ago, and is living in the practice of every austerity. Inappropriate as it may seem, he has with him a servant, Pedrisco, the gracioso of the piece, who differs in nothing from others of the same function on the Spanish stage. In the first scene Pedrisco is absent begging for the herbs on which the hermit lives. The play opens with a soliloquy by Paul, which is a rapid theatrical equivalent for Lord Tennyson’s monologue of St Simeon Stylites. The hermit is troubled by no doubts on any point of faith, but he is racked by anxiety to feel assured that his austerities have earned him salvation, and we see that he has yielded to spiritual pride. After giving expression to his doubts and fears, through which there pierces an aggrieved sense that heaven owes him salvation, Paul retires to his cave. We have a buffoon[106] interlude from Pedrisco, who complains of his diet (the gracioso is ever a glutton), and tells us that he smuggles in something more substantial than herbs for his own consumption. Then he goes into his cave to eat, and Paul returns in great agitation. He has dreamt, and in his dream has been taken to the judgment-seat of heaven. There he has seen his good deeds weighed against his evil, and the good have proved by far the lighter. He breaks into a wild prayer for assurance, for a sign, which is by far the finest passage of verse in the play. It is strictly according to tradition that he should be heard by the enemy of mankind. The devil tells us that he is empowered to tempt the holy man, that vulgar temptations have failed, but that now Paul is wavering in his faith in the divine mercy, and he will tempt him in another way. A disappointment now awaits the reader, who expects a scene of temptation, and gets a device for helping on the action. Satan appears in the shape of an angel, and tells Paul to go to Naples. There at a certain place near the harbour he will meet one Enrico, son of Anareto. He is to watch that man, for as the fate of Enrico is, so will his own be, the devil being a liar from the beginning. Paulo wonders, but obeys, and departs with Pedrisco for Naples.

There we precede him, and find ourselves with two gentlemen at the door of Celia, who is a courtesan. From the conversation of these two we learn of her beauty, her rapacity, her great wit, and many accomplishments, as also that she is devoted to one Enrico, a ruffler, gambler, and bully, who beats and robs her.[107] One of the two gentlemen has never seen her, and after due warning from his friend, it is decided that they shall go in on pretence of asking Celia, who is a poetess, for some love verses to be sent to their damas. They go in, bearing gifts, and then Enrico bursts in with his follower Galvan. Enrico plays the bully to perfection, drives off the two gentlemen, and seizes their gifts to Celia, who wheedles and adores him as the most valiant of men. All this scene is full of vigour, and is written with astonishing gusto. When placated by Celia, Enrico promises her a feast on her own money, and sending for friends, they go out to the sea-shore by the harbour. Here Paulo is waiting, as he was directed by the fiend. There is a scene, very intelligible, and not at all ridiculous to a Spanish audience of the day, in which Paulo proves his Christian humility by throwing himself on the ground and telling Pedrisco to trample on him. Then Enrico and his riotous party burst on the scene. Enrico has just tossed a troublesome old beggar into the sea out of pure wickedness, and is in jovial spirits. He glories and drinks deep, bragging of his own sins, and extorting the admiration of Celia and the subordinate scoundrels who form the party. This, again, is an excellent scene, and not untrue to nature. Paul recognises the man with whose fate his own is bound up, and is horrified. He feels convinced that this man can never be saved, and revolts at thinking that after all his austerities he is to be lost. In an explosion of passion, not unhuman, and certainly very southern, he decides that he too will lead a life of[108] crime and make the world fear one who, “although just,” has been condemned.

So ends the first act. In the second and third we have the perpetual contrast between the two men. Paulo has become a brigand, but is still in trouble about his soul. He has a warning by an angel, who appears in the shape of a shepherd-boy, and tells him a parable of the lost sheep. Paulo understands, but still his doubts haunt him. Meanwhile we learn, with some surprise, that Enrico has one virtue amid his thousand crimes—a tender affection for his old father. He refuses to kill an aged man, though he has taken pay to kill him. The old man’s resemblance to his father disarms Enrico. When reproached by his employer he kills him. He has now to fly Naples, and in order to escape pursuit has to take to the water. Before plunging in he prays for God’s mercy, for though a sinner Enrico has never doubted. Considerations of time and space troubled the Spanish dramatist but little. Enrico swims from Naples to the place where Paulo is camped with his band. He falls into the hands of the ex-hermit. Paulo now conceives a hope. If he can find that Enrico is repentant there will be a chance for his salvation. He causes his prisoner to be tied to a tree blindfold, in order that he may be shot to death, and then resuming his hermit’s dress, exhorts him to prepare for death. But Enrico will not go beyond a general acknowledgment that the divine mercy can save him if God so pleases. Of confession and repentance he will not hear a word, but is in all respects a hardened sinner.[109] Paulo is again plunged into despair, and repeats his determination to exceed the crimes of Enrico, “since it is to be all one in the end.” The words are trivial, but they contain blasphemy in the real sense. The close of the play finds Paulo still revolving his weary doubt, and Enrico in a dungeon waiting for execution. Here we have another very arbitrary and pointless scene of temptation. The fiend shows Enrico a means of escape, but he hears voices warning him to stay, and he stays. The scene has no purpose, for the devil makes no attack on the prisoner’s faith, and Enrico remains still an unbending sinner. At last he yields to the prayers of his old father, confesses, and makes an edifying end. In the last scene, while Paulo soliloquises, the soul of Enrico is borne to heaven by two angels. But Paulo will not believe that so great a sinner can have been saved. He does not, it is true, see the vision, and has only the word of Pedrisco for Enrico’s pious end. Then Paulo is killed by soldiers who are hunting him down. Flames are seen round his dead body, and his voice is heard announcing that he is lost for ever, “por desconfiado,” as one who did not trust God’s mercy.

The morality and doctrine of this play need not concern us here, all the more because they are not unfamiliar. There is some virtue in a name, for if the Maestro Tirso de Molina had called his play ‘Justification by Faith,’ as he well might, he would have been in peril of ending at the stake. Head of a house of Nuestra Se?ora de la Merced Calzada at Soria, as he was, his play might pass for an illustration[110] of Luther’s much-debated “pecca fortiter.” The purely literary interest of the piece is great. The scenes filled with the crimes and violence of Enrico are written with the greatest brio. Indeed this venerable churchman Gabriel Tellez excelled in drawing types, and more especially a type of woman, of the simple, sensuous, and passionate order. He appears to have had a strong sympathy with them, and a belief, less monastic than sound, that there was something better in their unfettered loyalty to nature than in the coward virtue of those who fly the battle. His Enrico is a better fellow from the first than the hermit. There is a manfulness about him which is more hopeful than the self-seeking, conventional piety of Paulo. Whether Tirso de Molina meant so much or not, his lost hermit is a vigorous rough sketch of the stamp of man who is not essentially good, but only very much afraid of hell-fire, and abjectly eager to escape it by acting according to rule. The play, it will be seen, does not differ essentially from the accepted model of the Spanish drama. There is no development of character. The action is imposed on the personages, not produced by them. Enrico does not repent in any real sense of the word. He only makes a pious end, because his father, whom he loves, persuades him, and the act is sufficient. As Paulo is at the beginning so he remains to the end.
The plays on “honour.”

With the play on the “point of honour” we return to more familiar regions. There are hundreds of modern comedies in which the leading personages are the lover, the wife, and the husband. But the[111] Spaniards were limited in their treatment of the theme. Neither the Church nor their own more than half-oriental sentiment permitted of the presentation of adultery as sympathetic, or even pardonable. When they took this subject it was only for the purpose of showing by a lively action how the husband vindicated his “honour.” This honour, as has been already said, lay in the opinion the world had of him. Don Gutierre Alfonso, in the Médico de su Honra, kills his wife, not because he believes her guilty, but because she has been pursued by a lover and he will not have it said that this has been, and that he has not avenged himself. To do this effectually he must kill both—the innocent woman and the lover who sought to seduce her. If you ask Why? he answers “Mi opinion”—which means not what I believe, but what the world may believe of me—leaves me no choice. If I do not, it will say, There is a man whose wife was courted, and she lives. Where one failed another may succeed. There must be no doubt of my “honour.” And so after a little complaint over the tyranny of the world he kills her with no more scruple than he would show in despatching a worthless horse or hound. The father, or brother, who is head of a house, is under the same obligation as the husband. His honour is concerned in seeing that his daughter or sister gives no occasion to the evil tongues of the world. In Calderon’s very typical comedia de capa y espada, the Dama Duende—the ‘Fairy Lady’—the heroine is a young and beautiful widow living with a brother, who keeps her in a separate set of rooms in[112] his house, and will not let her be seen. She accepts this tyranny as a matter of course, and has no more doubt of her brother’s right to control, and if she is found disobeying his orders, to punish her, than she would have had of a husband’s. How far all this gives a true picture of the society of the time has been a debated question. It certainly was the picture which that society liked to see drawn of itself. We may accept it as giving no more than an exaggerated theatrical representation of truth. Spain is a country of the Roman law, which allows a husband to kill an unfaithful wife and her lover. It had also been affected by the long Moorish dominion, and the women of all ranks were certainly less independent than in England. In the higher classes they were, and in provincial towns where ancient customs linger, still are, much secluded.
A Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza.

None of the many plays in which Calderon set forth this conception of honour is more interesting than A Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza. The action takes place in Portugal in the reign of Don Sebastian, just before that king sails on his disastrous expedition to Africa. Don Lope de Almeida, a Portuguese gentleman of great fortune, has made a contract of marriage with Do?a Leonora de Guzman, a Castilian lady. He has never seen his future wife, who is travelling to Lisbon under the escort of Don Lope’s uncle, Don Bernardino, when the play opens. In the first scene Don Lope informs the king of his approaching marriage, and asks leave not to accompany him on his[113] invasion of Morocco. Then after a brief conversation with his servant Manrique, the inevitable gracioso, he catches sight of an old friend, Don Juan de Silva, who comes on the stage poorly dressed. Don Lope greets him warmly, and with some difficulty learns his story. In a long speech, disfigured, according to a fault too common with Calderon, by repetitions, apostrophes, and frigid ornament, Don Juan explains that at Goa he has killed the son of the governor, and has been compelled to fly, leaving his possessions, and is a ruined man. The provocation was great, for Manuel de Sousa had given him the lie. Don Juan describes how he drew at once and killed the insulter on the spot—not, be it observed, in a duel, but by a thrust delivered before Sousa could draw his sword. A passage of this speech is very necessary for the understanding of the play. Don Juan breaks into an outcry against “the tyrannical error of men,” the folly of the world, which allows honour to be destroyed by a breath. He labours the point, he repeats himself to insist that his honour was destroyed when he was called a liar, and that though he avenged himself in the not very heroic fashion described, still it will remain the fact that he has been called a liar. At a later stage of the play this works. For the present Don Lope gives his old friend refuge, and tells him of his marriage. We are now introduced to Do?a Leonor, and learn that she has had a lover, in all honour of course, Don Luis de Benavídes. He, she thinks, is dead on an expedition to Africa. She is marrying because she is forced, but will carry his love to the[114] altar. Beyond that it shall not go, for it would touch her honour. But Don Luis is not dead. He appears, and makes himself known to her by pretending to be a diamond-merchant, and sending her by the hand of Don Bernardino a ring she has formerly given him. There is a scene of reproach and explanation between them, but Do?a Leonor is loyal to honour so far. Her husband now comes on the scene, and greets her with a sonnet, to which she answers with another of double meaning. It is addressed both to Don Luis and her husband—each may read it his own way, the first as a farewell, the second as a promise of faithful obedience. Don Luis decides to follow her to Portugal and die for his love, if die he must. So the personages being introduced, and the intrigue on foot, the first act ends.

Now Don Luis establishes himself near the house of Don Lope, and is for ever prowling about the neighbourhood. Don Lope sees him, and wonders what he is doing. He suspects wrong at once, for the wronged husband of these plays is not of a free and noble nature. From the Spanish, and Italian, point of view he who is not suspicious is credulous, and a fool. Yet he will not believe at once, his wife being what she is, and he what he is. He shows his confidence by asking his wife’s leave to join the king’s expedition to Africa. Leonor gives it, and he sees no danger. But his friend Don Juan does. He drops a hint that it is strange the lady should be ready to part with her husband so soon. Again Don Lope is set speculating and wondering. Meanwhile Don Luis has been persecuting Leonor for a last[115] interview, and she agrees to see him in the house, in the early morning, when she thinks she will not be discovered by her husband. Don Luis comes and is caught by Don Lope, but invents a story to the effect that he has taken refuge in the house to escape an enemy. Don Lope pretends to believe, but does not, and warns Don Luis plainly enough, though not in direct terms, that he will permit no trifling with his honour. Now the action advances very rapidly. Don Juan warns Don Lope by putting the supposed case of a man who knows that an insulting word has been used of a friend, who has not heard it, and asking whether he ought to be told. Don Lope advises silence, because the more an offence to honour is repeated, the worse. But he knows what is meant, and makes his mind up to take a secret revenge for the secret wrong when once he is sure. The king refuses to take him to Africa, on the ground that he is more needed in his own house. “Is my wrong already so public?” is Don Lope’s comment.

Now a very skilful use is made of Don Juan’s story to influence the mind of Don Lope. Don Juan hears himself described by two cavaliers as the man to whom the lie was given by Manuel de Sousa. He draws, kills one, and drives the other off. Then, in a paroxysm of grief, he once more complains to Don Lope of the injustice which compels the insulted man to bear the stigma of a public insult for ever. This incident confirms Don Lope’s intention to be secret in his revenge, lest it should make his wrong known. Fortune throws a chance in his way. Do?a Leonor,[116] encouraged by what she believes has been her escape from discovery, invites Don Luis to meet her on the other side of the river in a garden. He comes on the stage reading her letter, and meets Don Lope. The husband does not know what is in the letter, but he suspects. He invites Don Luis to cross the river with him, pushes off without the boatman, stabs his enemy in mid-stream, and upsets the boat. Then he swims ashore to the garden where his wife is waiting for Don Luis. To her he tells a story of an accident, and gives her the name of the Castilian gentleman who has perished. Leonor faints, and thus confirms Lope’s belief that she meant to betray him. He pretends that her anxiety was for himself; but that night he fires his house, strangles his wife in the confusion, and appears from among the flames bearing her body in his arms, pretending that she has been stifled by the smoke. The scene between husband and wife is not given. At the end he tells the king what has happened as to the death of Don Luis, and says that being no longer needed in his own house he is ready to sail for Africa. Don Sebastian approves of his hidden vengeance for the secret wrong, and we are left to suppose that Don Lope goes to perish at Alcázar el Quebir.

This is a powerful drama, and a good example of Calderon’s command of stage effect. It is written in the finished poetic form with which he replaced the free-flowing dialogue of Lope de Vega. The defect of this lay in the temptation it afforded to redundancy and undramatic ornament, but it has a sparkling[117] icy beauty of its own. There is no development, even very little play, of character. The interest lies in the consistent working of a fierce, sullen, suspicious jealousy.
The Auto Sacramental.

The Auto Sacramental is very Spanish, very remote from us. These mysteries were performed during the month containing the feast of Corpus Christi in the streets, not in the theatres, which were shut at this time, but they were acted by professional actors. “Andar en los carros”—to go in the cars—was the regular phrase used by the actors for this form of their work. The cars were elaborate structures, covered, but capable of being opened to show scenes, and of letting down drawbridges which served as the stage. They were taken to different parts of the town, so that performances might be given in the squares, or before the houses of distinguished people.

The True God Pan may represent for us what the Auto Sacramental had become in Calderon’s hands when his genius was at its fullest development.[36] Calderon was fond of taking classical myths for his autos, and treating them as symbols of things to come since fulfilled. He used the story of Psyche and Cupid, and also the Andromeda. The application of the myth of Pan to Christianity was not uncommon in the Renaissance. Pan in Spanish means “bread,” and the auto was especially meant to set[118] forth the mystery of the Sacrament. This play on words is the key to the whole auto. If the reader thinks the conceit puerile, and of more than dubious taste, he must remember that he is asked to look not at what would please us, but at what did please the Spaniards,—what was accepted by their still medi?val simplicity of piety, and was in keeping with their love for playing on words. The loa. First came the loa, or praise. This was an introductory piece, sometimes delivered by a single speaker, sometimes containing a little action. It was common on the secular stage, but had no necessary connection with the piece to follow, being only part of the surroundings and dependencies of the comedia. Calderon’s loa was a regular introduction to the auto. In The True God Pan there are five personages in the loa—History, Poetry, Fable, Music, and Truth. History, the dama, begins by announcing that in this time of general joy it becomes her to speak, since she by the mouth of Paul and John has told how the Bread (Pan) became flesh, and the Word had become flesh. She calls in Music and the other personages. A forfeit dance takes place—that is to say, all sing as they dance, and each who makes a fault is called upon to pay a small forfeit. This was, and is, a form of amusement in Spain. The songs all refer to the mystery of the Sacrament, and the faults are the successive departures of Music, Poetry, and the others from the Catholic truth. Fable promises to pay her forfeit by telling one of her stories, and beginning with the[119] Spanish once upon a time—“érase que se era”—gives an allegorised version of the myth of Pan. Poetry promises an auto on the same subject, to show that the heathen had foreknowledge of our pure truths, but being blind, without the light of Faith, applied them to their own False Gods. The auto shall be on the True God Pan. With a loyal address to Charles the Consoler—the unhappy Carlos II., then a small boy, before whom the auto was performed—the loa ends.
El Verdadero Dios Pan.

The personages of the auto are—Pan, Night, the Moon, the World, Judaism, Synagogue, Heathenism, Idolatry, Apostasy, Malice, Simplicity, the Fiend, Faith, a child, shepherds, shepherdesses, with musicians and attendants. Pan comes out of a tent, and begins by a lyric appeal to Night. Night comes, and Pan explains that his birth was at Bethlehem, which in Hebrew means house of grain, and from that point goes on to allegorise, in a fashion which it is difficult to interpret, out of its own proper language of piety and poetry, without offence. He asks Night to lead him to the Moon, and then again allegorises, explaining that she is Luna in heaven, Diana on earth, and Proserpine in hell, therefore the type of human nature, which dwells on earth, aspires to heaven, and can sink to the infernal regions. Night refuses, telling him that all the country is ravaged by a monster of whom Paul, Chrysostom, and Saint Augustine speak. Here we have an example of those “impertinences” which excited the ridicule of Madame[120] D’Aulnoy, who would, no doubt, have found Ben Jonson’s masques “impertinent.” Pan recognises the monster as “Sin,” and announces that he will retire to the desert while the Gentiles sing to their false gods. The last words are taken up by a chorus, and we have now a scene at the altar of the Moon. Judaism, Heathenism, Synagogue, and the others appear, only to quarrel and debate. The auto goes on, with constant interludes of singing and dancing. The monster “Sin” is heard of, ravaging the flocks. All prove hireling shepherds except Pan, who appears to help Luna in her distress. There is a scene of defiance between him and the Fiend, quite in the style of the comedia when galan is opposed to galan. The Fiend flies, leaving the trunk of a tree with which he meant to strike down Pan. The comic element is not wanting. Judaism takes up the weapon which the Fiend has dropped, and threatens Pan with it, but he only succeeds in knocking down, and killing, Synagogue. Then he carries off the body, saying in an aside that though all the world knows Synagogue is dead, yet he will always consider him as alive. Judaism rejects Pan, and Apostasy will not be persuaded that Flesh can be Bread. Apostasy, of course, stands for the heretics who will not accept the doctrine of transubstantiation. But Heathenism is persuaded, and Luna, typifying human nature, believes. Pan takes her as “spouse,” and both ascend to the celestial mansions.
Los Dos Habladores.

The entremes—interlude or farce—was by nature a slight thing. In the Dos Habladores—‘The Two[121] Chatterers’—of Cervantes we have the simple story of a gentleman who is plagued in the streets by a ragged gabbler of insufferable fluency. He makes several attempts to shake him off without success, but at last sees how to make use of him. Sarmiento, the pestered gentleman, has a talkative wife. He takes the bore home, introduces him as a poor relation, and sets him at her. Roldan the chatterer drives the woman frantic by torrents of talk which leave her no chance to speak. The merit of the piece on the stage lay no doubt in the opportunity it presented for “patter” and comic acting. Yet the entremeses—not this one only, but the whole class—have great literary interest as storehouses of vivid, richly coloured, familiar Castilian.

A drama which flowered for a century, and was so productive as the Spanish, cannot be fully illustrated by six examples. Yet these may serve to show the reader what he may expect to find there. Much he will not find, or will find only in passing indications. Perfection of poetic form in the verse is too rare; the more than human beauty of the Elizabethan lyric, the “mighty line,” whether of Marlowe, Shakespeare, or Corneille, the accomplishment of Molière or Racine, are wanting. The personages are constantly recurring types, with here and there a humour. The Juan Crespo of Calderon’s Alcalde de Zalamea stands almost alone among the characters of the Spanish stage as a being of the real world fixed for us by the poet. What has been called the au delà of Molière, and what is[122] found in the very greatest masters—the something which transcends the mere action before us, and is immortally true of all human nature—is not on the Spanish stage. But there is much good verse, easy, with a careless grace, and spirited in Lope, or stately with a peculiar Spanish dignity in Calderon; there is a fine wind of romance blowing all through, and there is ingenious, unresting, yet lucid action. If it never reaches the highest level of our Elizabethan drama, neither does it fall to the vacant horseplay which is to be found side by side with the tragedy of Marlowe or Middleton. And though this essentially theatrical drama cannot be said to have held the mirror up to nature, yet it does give a picture of the time and the people, adapted and coloured for the boards, but still preserving the likeness of the original. This may be said to be its weakness. Spanish dramatic literature is so much a thing of Spain, and of the seventeenth century, that it must needs appeal the less on that account to other peoples and later times. None the less the spectacle is picturesque in itself, while the great theatrical dexterity of the Spanish playwrights will always make their work interesting to all who care for more than the purely literary qualities of drama. The religion of the Spaniard is conspicuous in his plays. It has been said that Calderon was the poet of the Inquisition, and if this is not said as mere blame, it conveys a truth. That solution of the riddle of the painful earth which A. W. Schlegel professed to have found[123] in him, is no doubt only the teaching of the medi?val Church. We may on this account decline very properly to receive him as a deeper thinker than Shakespeare, but that teaching of the Church, to which the Inquisition strove to confine all Spaniards, had been the guide and consolation of all civilised Europe. To have given it a lofty poetical expression for the second time, as Dante had for the first, was no contemptible feat.