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LETTER XIV

Revolutions and progress of the Spanish Drama.

Madrid, August 6th, 1778.

In the present critical moment, it is impossible for an Englishman to be lukewarm, who has a true love for his country. —Though our enemies were ever so numerous, we surely are equal to dangers, let them be ever so great. —A thousand duties call me home, I long to be with you, and to take a more active part in this noble struggle; you have my best wishes, that such vigorous exertions may be crowned with success; I cannot submit to the idea of yielding even the length of a wave on our natural element: Oh fairest island! may thy dominion ever be acknowledged, and thy spirit of freedom, commerce and happiness, be revered and admired till time shall be no more! —In this pensive strain I saunter through the streets of Madrid, take my evening’s walk in the Prado, and then return home, and prepare matters for my departure from hence: but I have hitherto said nothing to you of the theatre, and you will of course expect something on that subject. If you will give me leave, I will take up the subject from a very early date, since I have seen the stately remains of an antient Roman theatre at Morviedro, near Valencia, which shews that these entertainments were known in Spain under the Romans, though we cannot ascertain at what period. If you believe the report of Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius Tyanaeus, the inhabitants of Boetica had never seen any theatrical entertainments, and when a few indigent strollers first appeared amongst them, they gazed with the utmost astonishment at their awkward gestures; the citizens of Ipula in particular were so astonished at a tragedy performed by these actors, that the audience stood aghast, and considered them as so many fiends, from whom they fled with the utmost precipitancy; all which is supposed to have happened under the reign of Nero. Be this as it may, most probably they totally ceased under the ravaging hand of the Goth: at last the Trobadours revived the Roman spirit, which extended itself to the kingdom of Aragon, with the dramatic muse in the days of the marquis of Villena, and at its union to Castile, began to dawn in this latter kingdom.

The Cancionero of the poet Juan de la Encina, contains many dramatic pieces of his, acted during Christmas, Shrovetide, and Easter, in the house of the Duke of Alva. These entertainments not only consisted of pastoral dialogues, and subjects of love, but were moreover adapted to the sacred page, and represented the passion of our saviour and other parts of scripture, but such pieces could give but a feeble idea of the powers of the drama; as to their other performances, the actors were mostly dissolute men, incapable, from the depravity of their manners to feel the delicate sentiments of the Greek or Roman muse, or those noble passions which inflame a generous mind; much less to represent their effects: so that the compositions of the times were suitable to the turn of the actors, and restricted to scenes of low life, similar to those manners which constituted their principal characters. These gave origin to that noted one of the Celestina, in the Tragi-comedy of Calixto and Melibea, translated long since into English, under the title of The Spanish rogue, a piece totally unworthy of the stage, in which vice is depicted in such lively colours and immorality so openly exhibited, as to excite our utmost indignation. Its author is unknown, though from its classic language some have attributed it to Juan de Mena, others to Roderic de Cota. The original piece had only one act, and was afterwards completed by Fernando de Rocas. It was first written in prose, then turned into verse by Juan de Sedeno at Salamanca, in 1540. It has been twice translated into French, first by an anonymous hand at Lyons in I529, and reprinted at Paris in 1542, where it was again translated by Thomas Laverdin in 1598. The same dissolute temper infected the Portuguese drama; the comedies of George Ferreira Vasconcellos, after they were printed at Evora in 1566, were immediately suppressed; in other respects he united the comic powers of Plautus and Terence; they were translated into Spanish at Madrid in 1631, by Don Fernando Ballesteros y Saavedro, and have been again reprinted here in 1735, by Don Blas Nassarre, under the feigned name of Don Domingo Ferruno Quexilloso. —While the Spanish drama laboured under all these disadvantages, a new Roscius arose in the person of Lope de Rueda of Seville, whose pieces do honour to his memory, as well as his theatrical abilities as a performer; he was a gold-beater by trade, and it is praise sufficient for him that Cervantes who was his contemporary, has spoken highly in his favour, adding that none had equalled him as an actor, or in the natural turn of his dialogue and justness of character. His prologues and interludes are distinguished by the name of passos, which shews the antiquity of those compositions known at present by the names of Loas, Entremeses and Saenetes. —Alonso de la Vega succeeded Rueda as a writer and a performer, but is much inferior to him as a writer. His Tholomea consists of eight scenes, but his Duquesa de la Rosa is not divided into scenes or acts, and forms one continued series.

The stage in those days made a very mean and inconsiderable figure; Cervantes informs us, that in the time of Lope de Rueda all the apparatus of a theatre might be wrapped up in a bag, being nothing more than four gilt leather skins, as many false beards and heads of hair, with three or four staves. Comedies were then nothing more than pastoral dialogues between shepherds and shepherdesses, with interludes, in which the ribaldry of a negro, the boasts of a coward, and the blunders of a Biscayner, like the bulls of our Teague, form the principal part, and we owe to them our Bobadil, a name nevertheless of great renown in Spain, as Falstaff certainly was in England, till it fell under the displeasure of Shakespeare. Lope de Rueda was admirable in all these characters, and doubtless would have made an excellent Abel Drugger, though inferior in other respects to the great Roscius with us. In those days there were no changes of scenes, no battles with horse and foot between Christians and Moors, no passages for the actors in the centre of the stage, the whole of which consisted of a few boards laid over benches, no machinery of any kind, an old curtain drawn across, divided the part where the actors were to dress, and where the musicians sung without the assistance of instruments. —Lope de Rueda died at Cordova, and in consideration of his great merit was interred in the Cathedral between the two choirs near the famous jester Luis Lopez. As an actor he had a successor in Naharro of Toledo, who imitated Rueda in the low comic. The bag was re placed by trunks to hold the additional furniture, he placed the musicians before the stage, abolished the general use of false beards, reserving them for their true characters; he introduced battles, clouds, thunder, lightning, storms, and shipwreck. As a writer, Rueda was followed by Christoval de Castillejo, and were it not for want of decency, his pieces would be excellent, particularly the Constanza, which is in manuscript in the Escurial. After this a more polite genius, Juan de la Cueva, of Seville, improved the Spanish stage, and greatly refined the language of the drama, by his soft and melodious numbers. His theatrical pieces were acted at Seville in 1579, and printed there in 1588. —I come now to speak of the great author of Don Quixote as a play-writer. —The titles of his plays are La Gran Turquesca, La Batalla Naval, La Jerusalem, La Amaranta o Mayo, El Bosque Amoroso, La Arsinda, and La Confusa, printed at Madrid in 1615, and reprinted in 1740. He was the first who divided the drama into three Jornadas, or acts, and was a strenuous assertor of the true taste of the antients; on which account he attacked Lope de Vega with all his might, but the popular applause was too great in favour of his antagonist, who ingratiated himself so much with the people by indulging their versatile humour, added to his exuberance of fancy, and the justness of his characters, that he carried all before him, like an impetuous torrent breaking down all the barriers of opposition: by which means, as another Shakespeare, Lope de Vega acquired universal admiration. The fecundity of his genius was so great, and his productions so rapid, that he did not give leisure to the public to distinguish the efforts of genius from the wild sallies of intemperate fancy; nor could the several attacks of Cervantes, Villegas, Christoval de Mesa, and others, prevail against this favourite bard. —His successors copied his defects without possessing his beauties; Calderon, who came after him, gave the finishing hand to the fatal plan of Lope, and with the same advantages of language and wit, perverted the minds of the people. His scenes are repeated triumphs of vice, in which the fair sex are taught to sacrifice everything to the impressions of love, to despise the advice of tender parents, and yield to the insidious arts of seducers. He gives every encouragement to licentiousness and revel, and his wit was the more dangerous from being delivered with the most beautiful expression; his plots are well laid and ingeniously supported, all which in such able hands might have been applied to the most, laudable purposes; though some of his plays have been more correct and escaped the general censure. Solis is not inferior to Calderon in elegance and style, particularly in La Gitanilla de Madrid, El Alcazar del Secreto, and Un Bobo haze ciento. Some of Moreto’s comedies are not without merit, such as El desden con el desden, to which may be added, El Hechizado por fuerza, written by Zamora, also his Castigo de la miseria, and some others, that do honour to his memory.

With respect to tragedy, they date it from the end of the 15th century, or beginning of the 16th, when Vasco Diaz Tanco de Fregenal produced three tragedies that never were printed, wherein they may dispute the palm with the Italians, who have none of an earlier date than the Sophinisba of Tressino, and another on the same subject in 1502, by Galeoto, marquiss of Carreto. To these may be added, the tragedies of Hernan Perez de Oliva, printed in 1586, La Vengenza de Agamemnon and La Hecuba Triste, composed on the model of the Greeks. The two tragedies of Nise Lastimosa and Nise Laureada, by Bermudez, published in 1577, have not only great variety of versification and harmony of numbers, but infinite merit in their compositions; the same may be said of the tragedies of Juan de la Cueva; as for those of Gabriel Lasso, they fall much short of the former, either in language or invention. Cervantes praises those of La Isabela, La Filis and La Alexandra, which were written by Lupercio de Argensola.

In 1609 five tragedies of Christoval de Virues were printed, which had but a middling reputation, no more than that of the Pompeyo of Christoval de Mesa in 1618: as to Lope de Vega, I reserve myself to speak to you more fully concerning him in my next letter. —Little can be said in favour of the tragedy of Dona Ines de Castro, by Mexia de la Cerda, or Los Siete Infantes de Lara, by Zarate, in 1651, which, with some other pieces void of particular merit, brings us near to the demise of Charles the 2d.

Since the accession of the House of Bourbon, the tragic muse has been chaster, and the genius of the French drama has rendered them more correct. Don Augustin de Montiano, in his tragedies of Virginia, and Alaulpho, published in 1750 and 1753, may be stiled the Spanish Sophocles, and be said to be e qual to Corneille and Racine in the justness, of the drama, uniting the fire of the Gallic eagle with the melody of the swan. Mr. Hermilly has translated his Virginia into French, as well as his first discourse upon Spanish tragedy which precedes it, and to him I must refer you for the present.

Adieu !

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