sion of a woman, and is less powerful than God, which he knew by the fiend's own confession at the beginning. It is an edifying story to all who accept the premisses and the parade of scholastic argument, and are prepared to allow for the time, the nation, and the surroundings. Calderon. Calderon wound up and rounded off the historical development of the Spanish drama so completely that little need be said of his school, which indeed only means contemporaries who wrote Lope's drama with Calderon's style. Yet Moreto was a strong man, and to him also belongs the honour of having put on the stage an enduring type, the Lindo Don Diego, who was the ancestor of our own Sir Fopling Flutter, of Lord Foppington, and of many another theatrical dandy. Francisco de Roxas, too, has left a point-of-honour play, not unworthy of his master, Del Rey Abajo, Ninguno— 'From the King downwards, Nobody.' One feature common to all the later writers for the old Spanish stage may be noticed. It was their growing tendency to re-use the situations and plots of their predecessors. Moreto was a notable proficient in this, and Calderon himself did as much. It seems as if a theatre which dealt almost wholly with intrigue and situation had exhausted all possible combinations and could only repeat. When men began to go back in this fashion the end was at hand. Calderon, less fortunate than Velasquez, outlived the king who was their common patron, and saw with his own eyes the decadence of Spain. Beyond him there was only echo, and then dotage prolonged into the eighteenth century. 91 CHAPTER IV. FORMS OF THE SPANISH DRAMA. THE PREVAILING QUALITY OF THE SPANISH DRAMA-TYPICAL EXAM- 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 The prevailing quality of the Spanish drama. 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 figure in every kind Galan, the Barba, and the Gracioso 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 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 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 examples. 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 persona 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 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.1 drosa. Belisa, the Dama Melindrosa, the lady with the vapours, of Lope's comedy, is the daughter of a rich La Dama Melin- 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 1 Those who wish to make a closer acquaintance with the minor forms of the Spanish play may be referred to the Entremeses, Loaas, y Jácaras, of Don Luis Quiñones de Benavente (?-1652), edited by Don C. Rosell in the Libros de Antaño. Madrid, 1872. |