Chapter X: The Age of Felipe IV. and Carlos the Bewitched (2)

Less remarkable as a playwright than as a novelist, the lawyer, LUIS VÉLEZ DE GUEVARA (1570-1643); is reputed to have written no fewer than four hundred pieces for the stage. Of these, eighty survive, mostly on historic themes, which—as in _El Valor no tiene Edad_—are treated with tiresome extravagance; but the most difficult critics have found praise for _Más pesa el Rey que la Sangre_ (King First, Blood Second). The story is that, in the thirteenth century, Guzmán the Good held Tarifa for King Sancho; the rebel Infante, Don Juan, called upon him to surrender under pain of his son's death; for answer, Guzmán threw his dagger over the battlement, and saw the boy murdered before his eyes. Rarely has the old Castilian tradition of loyalty to the King been presented with more picturesque force, and few scenes in any dramatic literature surpass that last one on the raising of the siege, when Guzmán points to his child's corpse. Vélez de Guevara collaborated with Rojas Zorrilla and Mira de Amescua in _The Devil's Suit against the Priest of Madrilejos_, a play in which a lunatic girl saves her life by pleading demoniacal possession. The idea is characteristic of Guevara's uncanny invention; but the Inquisition frowned upon stage representatives of exorcism, and, though the author's orthodoxy was not questioned, the play was withdrawn. He is best remembered for his satire _El Diablo Cojuelo_ (1641), which describes observations taken during a flight through the air by a student who releases the Lame Devil from a flask, and is repaid by glimpses of life in courts and slums and stews. Le Sage, in his _Diable Boiteux_, has greatly improved upon the first conception; but the original is of excellent humour, and the style is as idiomatic as the best Castilian can be. Felipe IV. is said to have smiled only three times in his life—twice at quips by Guevara, who was his chamberlain.

Of all Lope's imitators the most undisguised is the son of the King's bookseller, Doctor JUAN PÉREZ DE MONTALBÁN (1602-38), who became a priest of the Congregation of St. Peter in 1625. His father was plain Juan Pérez (as who should say John Smith), and the son was cruelly bantered for his airs and graces:—"Put Doctor in front and Montalbán behind, and plebeian Pérez shines an aristocrat." It was rumoured that his _Orfeo_ (1624), written to compete with Jáuregui, was really Lope's work, given by the patriarch to start his favourite in life. The story is probably false, for the verse lacks Lope's ease and grace; but the _Orfeo_ won Montalbán a name, and—there is no such luck for modern minor poets—in 1625 a Peruvian merchant expressed his admiration by settling a pension on the young priest. Montalbán lived in closest intimacy with Lope, who taught his young admirer stagecraft, and helped him with introductions to managers. Unluckily he sought to rival his master in fecundity as well as in method, and the effort broke him. He is often credited with writing the _Tribunal of Just Vengeance_, a work which describes Quevedo as "Master of Error, Doctor of Impudence, Licentiate of Buffoonery, Bachelor of Filth, Professor of Vice, and Archdevil of Mankind." Quevedo, on his side, had a grievance, inasmuch as Pérez, the bookseller, had pirated the _Buscón_. He prophesied that Montalbán would die a lunatic, and, in fact, his words came true.

Pellicer credits Montalbán with literary theories of his own, but they are mere repetitions of Lope's precepts in the _Arte Nuevo_. Like his master, Montalbán has a keen eye for a situation, for the dramatic value of a popular story, as he shows in his _Amantes de Teruel_, those eternal types of constancy; but he writes too hurriedly, with more ambition than power, is infected with _culteranismo_, and, though he apes Lope with superficial success in his secular plays, fails utterly when he attempts the sacred drama. His own age thought most highly of _No hay Vida como la Honra_, one of the first pieces to have a "run" on the Spanish stage; but the _Amantes_ is his best work, and its vigorous dialogue may still be read with emotion.

These lovers of Teruel were also staged by a man of genius whose pseudonym has completely overshadowed his family name of Gabriel Téllez. The career of TIRSO DE MOLINA (1571-1648) is often dismissed in six lines packed with errors; but the publication of Sr. Cotarelo y Mori's study has made such summary treatment impossible in the future. Writers whose imagination does service for research have invented the fables that Tirso led a scandalous, stormy life, and that the repentant sinner took orders in middle age. These legends are baseless, and are conceived on the theory that Tirso's outspoken plays imply a deep knowledge of human nature's weak side and of the shadiest picaresque corners. It appears to be forgotten that Tirso spent years in the confessional: no bad position for the study of frailty. It seems certain that he was born at Madrid, and that he studied at Alcalá is clear from Matías de los Reyes' dedication of _El Agravio agraviado_. The date of his profession is not known; but he is named as a Mercedarian monk and as "a comic poet" by the actor-manager, Andrés de Claramonte y Corroy, in his _Letanía moral_, written before 1610, though not printed till 1613. His holograph of _Santa Juana_ is dated in 1613 from Toledo, where he also wrote his _Cigarrales_. Passages in _La Gallega Mari Hernández_ imply a residence in Galicia. That he lived in Seville, and visited the island of Santo Domingo, is certain, though the dates are not known. In 1619 he was Superior of the Mercedarian convent at Trujillo, an appointment which implies that he was a monk of long standing. In 1620 Lope dedicated to him _Lo Fingido verdadero_, and in the same year Tirso returned the compliment by dedicating his _Villana de Vallecas_ to Lope. Though he competed in 1622 at the Madrid feasts in honour of St. Isidore, he failed to receive even honourable mention. Ten years later he became official chronicler of his order, and showed his opinion of his predecessor, Alonso Remón—with whom he has been confounded, even by Cervantes—by rewriting Remón's history. In 1634 he was made _Definidor General_ for Castile, and his name reappears as licenser of books, or in legal documents. He died on March 21, 1648, being then Prior at Soria, renowned as a preacher of most tranquil, virtuous life, the very opposite of what ignorant fancy has feigned of him. He is known to have written plays so recently as 1638, for the holograph of his _Quinas de Portugal_ bears that date; but the preface to the _Deleitar Aprovechado_ shows that his popularity was on the wane in 1635. His last years were given to writing a _Genealogía del Conde de Sástago_ and the chronicle of the Mercedarian Order.

Tirso's earliest printed volume is his _Cigarrales de Toledo_ (1621 or 1624), so called from a local Toledan word for a summer country-house set down in an orchard. The book is a collection of tales and verse, supposed to be recited during five days of festivity which have followed a wedding. Tirso, indeed, announces stories and verse which shall last twenty days; yet he breaks off at the fifth, announcing a Second Part, which never appeared. Critics profess to find in Tirso's tales some traces of Cervantes, who is praised in the text as the "Spanish Boccaccio": the influence of the Italian Boccaccio is far more obvious throughout, and—save for a tinge of Gongorism—_Los Tres Maridos burlados_ might well pass as a splendid adaptation from the _Decamerone_. Still, even in the _Cigarrales_ the born playwright asserts himself in _Cómo han de ser los Amigos_, in _El Celoso prudente_, and in one of Tirso's most brilliant pieces, _El Vergonzoso en Palacio_. A second collection entitled _Deleitar Aprovechado_ (Business with Profit), issued in 1635, contains three pious tales of no great merit, and several _autos_, one of which—_El Colmenero divino_—is Tirso's best attempt at religious drama.

Essentially a dramatist, he is to be but partially studied in his theatre, of which the first part appeared in 1627, the third in 1634, the second and fourth in 1635, and the fifth in 1637. A famous play is the _Condenado por Desconfiado_ (The Doubter Damned), of which some would deprive Tirso; yet the treatment is specially characteristic of him. Paulo, who has left the world for a hermitage, prays for light as to his future salvation, dreams that his sins exceed his merits, and is urged by the devil to go to Naples to seek out Enrico, whose ending will be like his own. Paulo obeys, discovers Enrico to be a rook and bully, and in despair takes to a bandit's life. Meanwhile Enrico shows a hint of virtue by refusing to slay an old man whose appearance reminds the bully of his own father, and kills the master who taunted him with flinching from a bargain. He escapes to where Paulo and his gang are hidden. Garbed as a hermit, Paulo vainly exhorts Enrico to confess, though the criminal finally repents, and is seen by Pedrisco—Paulo's servant—passing to heaven. Duped by the devil, Paulo refuses to believe Pedrisco's story, and dies damned through his own distrust and pride. The substance of this play, which is contrived with abounding skill and theological knowledge, is the old conflict between free-will and predestination. Some would ascribe the play to Lope, because the pastoral scenes are in his manner, but the notion that Lope would publish under Tirso's name is untenable. Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo will not be suspected of a prejudice against Lope; and he avers, in so many words, that the only playwright in Spain with enough theology to write the _Condenado_ was Tirso, who, had he written nothing else, would rank among the greatest Spanish dramatists.

The piece which has won Tirso immortality is his _Burlador de Sevilla y Convidado de Piedra_ (The Seville Mocker and the Stone Guest), first printed at Barcelona in 1630 as the seventh of _Twelve New Plays by Lope de Vega Carpio, and other Authors_; and the omission of the _Burlador_ from all authorised editions has led critics of authority to question Tirso's authorship.[27] The discovery in 1878 of a new version caused Manuel de la Revilla to declare that the play was by Calderón, on the ground that Calderón's name is on the title-page, and that Calderón never trespassed on other men's property. This is an overstatement: to mention but a few instances, Calderón's _Á Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza_ is re-arranged from Tirso's _Celoso prudente_; his _Secreto á Voces_ from Tirso's _Amar por Arte mayor_, while the second act of Calderón's _Cabellos de Absalón_ is lifted, almost word for word, from the third act of Tirso's _Venganza de Tamar_. On the whole, then, Tirso may be taken as the creator of Don Juan. No analysis is needed of a play with which Mozart, the most Athenian of musicians, has familiarised mankind; nor is translation possible in the present corrupt state of the text. Whether or not there existed an historic Don Juan at Plasencia or at Seville is doubtful, for folklorists have found the story as far away from Spain as Iceland is; but it is Tirso's glory to have so treated it that the world has accepted it as a purely Spanish conception. The _Festin de Pierre_ (1659) by Dorimond, the _Fils Criminel_ (1660) of De Villiers, the _Dom Juan_ (1665) of Molière, the _Nouveau Festin de Pierre_ (1670) of Rosimond, and the arrangement of Thomas Corneille, are but pale reflections of the Spanish type which passes onward from Shadwell's _Libertine_ (1676) till it reaches the hands of Byron and Zorrilla and Barbey d'Aurévilly and Flaubert (whose posthumous sketch comes closer back to the original). Of these later artists not one has succeeded in matching the patrician dignity, the infernal, iniquitous valour of the original. To have created a universal type, to have imposed a character upon the world, to have outlived all rivalry, to have achieved in words what Mozart alone has expressed in music, is to rank among the great creators of all time.

If Tirso excelled in sombre force, he was likewise a master in the lighter comedy of _El Vergonzoso en Palacio_, where Mireno, the Shy Man at Court, is rendered with rare sympathetic delicacy, and in the farcical intrigue of _Don Gil de las Calzas verdes_ (Don Gil of the Green Breeches), where the changes of Juana to Elvira or to Don Gil are such examples of subtle, gay ingenuity as delight and bewilder the reader no less than the comic trio of the _Villana de Vallecas_, or the picture of unctuous hypocrisy in _Marta la piadosa_. Tirso's fate was to be forgotten, not merely by the public, but by the very dramatists who used his themes; and, as in Lope's case, the neglect is partly due to the rarity of his editions. Yet, even so, his eclipse is unaccountable, for his various gifts are hard to match in any literature. He has not the disconcerting cleverness of Lope, nor has he Lope's infinite variety of resource; moreover, his natural frankness has won him a name for indecency. Yet has he imagination, passion, individual vision, knowledge of dramatic effect. He could create character, and his women, if less noble, are more real than Lope's own in their frank emotion and seductive abandonment. At whiles his diction tends to Gongorism, as when—in _El Amor y la Amistad_—a personage, at sight of a mountain, babbles of "the lofty daring of the snow, the pyramid of diamond"; but this is exceptional, and his hostility to _culteranismo_ inspired Góngora to write more than one stinging epigram. Tirso had not Lope's matchless facility, and, considering the maturity of the Spanish genius, it is strange that he should have written no play before 1606 or 1608. Moreover, he composed by fits and starts in moments snatched from duty, and, beginning late, he ended early. Even in these circumstances he could boast in 1621 that he had produced three hundred plays—a number afterwards raised to four hundred. Only some eighty survive: in other words, four-fifths of his theatre has vanished, and the loss is surely great for those who would fain know every aspect of his genius. But enough remains to justify his high position, and his fame, like Lope's, grows from day to day.

Of such dramatists as the courtly Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza (? 1590-1644), and the festive Luis Belmonte y Bermúdez (1587-? 1650) mere mention must suffice: the former's _Querer por sólo querer_ may be read in an excellent version made by Sir Richard Fanshawe during his imprisonment "by Oliver, after the Battail of Worcester." Antonio Mira de Amescua (? 1578-1640), chaplain of Felipe IV., mingled the human with the divine, was praised by all contemporaries from Cervantes onwards, had the right lyrical note, and, if his plays were collected, might prove himself worthy of his dramatic fame; as it is, he is best known as a playwright from whom Calderón, Moreto, and Corneille have borrowed themes. A more original talent is shown by JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCÓN (? 1581-1639), whose father was administrator of the Tlacho mines in Mexico. Ruiz de Alarcón left Mexico for Spain in 1600, and studied at Salamanca for five years; he returned to America in 1608 in the hope of being elected to a University chair, but the deformity—a hunched back—with which he was taunted his life long was against him, and he made for Spain in 1611. He entered the household of the Marqués de Salinas, wrote some laudatory _décimas_ for the _Desengaño de la Fortuna_ in 1612, and next year produced his first play, the _Semejante de sí mismo_, founded, like Tirso's _Celosa de sí misma_, on the _Curious Impertinent_. It was no great success, but it made him known and hated. He was far too ready to attack others, being himself most vulnerable. Cristóbal Suárez de Figueroa, who had jeered at Cervantes for "writing prologues and dedications when at death's door," spoke for others besides himself when he lampooned Alarcón as "an ape in man's guise, an impudent hunchback, a ludicrous deformity." Tirso befriended the Mexican, while Mendoza, Lope, Quevedo, and the rest scourged him mercilessly; and when his _Antecristo_ (which Voltaire used in _Mahomet_) was played, a band of rioters ruined the performance by squirting oil on the spectators and firing squibs in the pit. Yet the women always crowded the house when his name was in the bill, and they made his fortune by contriving that his play, _Siempre ayuda la Verdad_—probably written in collaboration with Tirso—should be given at court in 1623. Three years later he was named Member of Council for the Indies. His collected pieces were published in 1628 and 1634.

Ruiz de Alarcón was never popular in the sense that Lope and Calderón were popular; still, he had his successes, and no Spanish dramatist is better reading. Compared with his rivals he was sterile, for the total of his plays is less than thirty, even if we accept all the doubtful pieces ascribed to him. Lope excels him in invention, Tirso in force and fun, Calderón in charm; Ruiz de Alarcón is less intensely national than these, and the very individuality—the _extrañeza_—which Montalbán noted with perplexity, makes him almost better appreciated abroad than at home. Corneille has based French tragedy upon Guillén de Castro's _Mocedades del Cid_; French comedy is scarcely less influenced by his adaptation of the _Menteur_ from Ruiz de Alarcón's _Verdad Sospechosa_ (Truth Suspected). García has lied all his life, lies to his father, his friends, his betrothed, lies to himself, and defeats his own purpose by his ingenuity. He would speak the truth if he could, but he has no talent that way. Why trouble with truth when lying comes easier? His father, Beltrán, perceives that the miser enjoys money, that murder slakes vengeance, that the drunkard grows glorious with wine; but his son's failing is beyond him. The noble Philistine has not the artist's soul, and cannot understand why García should lie for lying's sake, against his own interest. Throughout the play Ruiz de Alarcón is never once at fault, and the gay ingenuity with which he enforces the old moral, that honesty is the best policy, is equalled by his masterly creation of character. Ethics are his preoccupation; yet, though almost all his plays seek to enforce a lesson, he nowhere descends to pulpiteering or merges the dramatist in the teacher. While in _Las Paredes Oyen_ (Walls have Ears) and in _El Examen de Maridos_ (Husbands Proved) the triumph of the _Verdad Sospechosa_ is repeated, the more national play is admirably exampled in _El Tejedor de Segovia_ (The Weaver of Segovia) and _Ganar Amigos_ (How to Win Friends).

There are greater Spanish playwrights than Ruiz de Alarcón: there is none whose work is of such even excellence. In so early a piece as the _Cueva de Salamanca_, though there is manifest technical inexperience, the mere writing is almost as good as in _La Verdad Sospechosa_. The very infertility at which contemporaries mocked is balanced by equality of execution. Lope and Calderón have written better pieces, and many worse: no line that Ruiz de Alarcón published is unworthy of him. While his contemporaries were content to improvise at ease, he sat aloof, never joining in the race for money and applause, but filing with a scrupulous conscience to such effect that all his work endures. His chief titles to fame are his power of creating character and his high ethical aim. But he has other merits scarcely less rare: his versification is of extreme finish, and his spirited dialogue, free from any tinge of Gongorism, is a triumph of fine idiom over perverse influences which led men of greater natural endowment astray. His taste, indeed, is almost unerring, and it goes to form that sober dignity, that individual tone, that uncommon counterpoise of faculties which place him below—and a little apart from—the two or three best Spanish dramatists.

If there be an exotic element in the quality of Ruiz de Alarcón's distinction as in his frugal dramatic method, the _españolismo_ of the land is incarnate in the genius of PEDRO CALDERÓN DE LA BARCA HENAO DE LA BARREDA Y RIAÑO (1600-1681), the most representative Spaniard of the seventeenth century. His father was Secretary to the Treasury, and, on this side, Calderón was a highlander, like Santillana, Lope, and Quevedo; he inherited a strain of Flemish blood through his mother, who claimed descent from the De Mons of Hainault. He was educated at the Jesuit Colegio Imperial in Madrid, and fond biographers declare that he studied civil and canon law at Salamanca; this is mere assertion, unsupported by any proof. Though he is said to have written a play, _El Carro del Cielo_, at thirteen, he was not very precocious for a Spaniard, his first authentic appearances being made at the Feast of St. Isidore in 1620 and 1622. On the latter occasion he won the third prize, and was praised by the good-natured Lope as one "who in his tender years earns the laurels which time commonly awards to grey hairs." His Boswell, Vera Tasis, reports that he served in Milan and Flanders from 1625 to 1635; but there must be an error of date, for in 1629 he is found at Madrid drawing his sword upon the actor, Pedro de Villegas, who had treacherously stabbed Calderón's brother, and who fled for sanctuary to the Trinitarian Church. The Gongorist preacher, Paravicino, referred to the matter in public; Calderón replied by scoffing at "sermons of Barbary," and was sent to gaol for insulting the cloth. Pellicer signals another outburst in 1640, when the dramatist whipped out his sword at rehearsal and came off second best. These are pleasing incidents in a career of sombre respectability, though one half fears that the second is fiction. In 1637 Calderón was promoted to the Order of Santiago, and in 1640 he served with his brother knights against the Catalan rebels, hastily finishing his _Certamen de Amor y Celos_ (Strife of Love and Jealousy) so as to share in the campaign. He was sent to Madrid on some military mission in 1641; received from the artillery fund a monthly pension of thirty gold crowns; was ordained priest in 1651; was made chaplain of the New Kings at Toledo in 1653; became honorary chaplain to Felipe IV. in 1663, when he joined the Congregation of St. Peter, which elected him its Superior in 1666. On taking orders, Calderón's intention was to forsake the secular stage, but he yielded to the King's command, and, so late as 1680, celebrated Carlos II.'s wedding with Marie Louise de Bourbon. "He died singing, as they say of the swan," wrote Solís to Alonso Carnero. When death took him he was busied with an _auto_, which was finished by Melchor de León—a fit ending to a happy, blameless life.

Calderón's prose writings are small in volume and in importance. The description (written under the name of his colleague, Lorenzo Ramírez de Prado) of the entry into Madrid of Felipe IV.'s second queen is an official performance. More interest attaches to a treatise on the dignity of painting, first printed in the fourth volume of Francisco Mariano Nifo's _Cajón de Sastre literato_ (1781):—"Painting," says Calderón, "is the art of arts, dominating all others and using them as handmaids." He had an admirable gift of appreciation, and he proves it by rescuing from the oblivion of the _Cancionero General_ such a ballad as Escribá's, which he quotes in _Manos Blancas no ofenden_, and again in _El Mayor Monstruo de los Celos_. Churton's version of the song is not unhappy:—

"_Come, death, ere step or sound I hear,
Unknown the hour, unfelt the pain;
Lest the wild joy to feel thee near,
Should thrill me back to life again._

_Come, sudden as the lightning-ray,
When skies are calm and air is still;
E'en from the silence of its way,
More sure to strike where'er it will._

_Such let thy secret coming be,
Lest warning make thy summons vain,
And joy to find myself with thee
Call back life's ebbing tide again._"

A great lyric poet, his lyrics are mostly included in his plays. One ballad, supposed to be a description of himself, written at a lady's request, is often quoted, and has been well Englished by Mr. Norman MacColl; it is, however, unauthentic, being due to a Sevillan contemporary, Carlos Cepeda y Guzmán.[28] The earliest play printed with Calderón's name is _El Astrólogo fingido_ (1632), and from 1633 onwards collected editions of his works were published; but he had no personal concern in these issues, which so presented him that, as he protested, he could not recognise himself. Though he printed a volume of _autos_ in 1676, he was so indifferent as to the fate of his secular plays that he never troubled to collect them. Luckily, in 1680 he drew up a list of his pieces for the Duque de Veragua, the descendant of Columbus, and upon this foundation Vera Tasis constructed a posthumous edition in nine volumes. Roughly speaking, we possess one hundred and twenty formal plays, and some seventy _autos_, with a few _entremeses_ of no great account.

Calderón has been fortunate in death as in life; for though his vogue never quite equalled that of his great predecessor, Lope, it proved far more enduring. From Lope's death to the close of the seventeenth century, Calderón was chief of the Spanish stage; and, though he underwent a temporary eclipse in the eighteenth century, his sovereignty was restored in the nineteenth by the enthusiasm of the German Romantics. He has suffered more than most from the indiscretion of admirers. When Sismondi pronounced him simply a clever playwright, "the poet of the Inquisition," he was no further from the truth than the extravagant Friedrich Schlegel, who proclaimed that "in this great and divine master the enigma of life is not merely expressed, but solved": thus placing him above Shakespeare, who (so raved the German) only stated life's riddle without attempting a solution. James the First once said to the ambassador whom Ben Jonson called "Old Æsop Gondomar":—"I know not how, but it seems to be the trade of a Spaniard to talk rodomontade." It was no less the trade of the German Romantic, who mistook lyrism for scenic presentation. Nor were the Germans alone in their enthusiasm. Shelley met with Calderón's ideal dramas, read them "with inexpressible wonder and delight," and was tempted "to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the grey veil of my own words." The famous speech of the Spirit replying, in the _Mágico Prodigioso_, to Cyprian's question, "Who art thou, and whence comest thou?" has become familiar to every reader of English literature:—

"_Since thou desirest, I will then unveil
Myself to thee;—for in myself I am
A world of happiness and misery;
This I have lost, and that I must lament
For ever. In my attributes I stood
So high and so heroically great,
In lineage so supreme, and with a genius
Which penetrated with a glance the world
Beneath my feet, that was by my high merit.
A King—whom I may call the King of kings,
Because all others tremble in their pride
Before the terrors of his countenance—
In his high palace roofed with brightest gems
Of living light—call them the stars of heaven—
Named me his counsellor. But the high praise
Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose
In mighty competition, to ascend
His seat, and place my foot triumphantly
Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know
The depth to which ambition falls: too mad
Was the attempt, and yet more mad were now
Repentance of the irrevocable deed;
Therefore I close this ruin with the glory
Of not to be subdued, before the shame
Of reconciling me with him who reigns
By coward cession. Nor was I alone,
Nor am I now, nor shall I be alone;
And there was hope, and there may still be hope,
For many suffrages among his vassals
Hailed me their lord and king, and many still
Are mine, and many more shall be.
Thus vanquished, though in fact victorious,
I left his seat of empire._"

This "grey veil" serves but to heighten the noble poetic quality which turned a cooler head than Shelley's. Goethe was moved to tears, and, though towards the end he perceived the mischief wrought in Germany by the uncritical idolatry of Calderón, he never ceased to admire the only Spanish poet that he really knew. And in our time men like Schack and Schmidt have dedicated their lives to the propagation of the Calderonian gospel. Some part of the poet's fame is due to his translators, some also to the fact that for a long time there was no rival in the field. To the rest of Europe he has stood for Spain. Readers could not divine (and in default of editions they could not contrive to learn) that Calderón, great as he is, comes far short of Lope's freshness, force, and invention, far short of Tirso's creative power and impressive conception. But Spaniards know better than to give him the highest place among their dramatic gods. He is too brilliant to be set aside as a mere follower of Lope's, for he rises to heights of poetry which Lope never reached; yet it is simple history that he did but develop the seed which Lope planted. He made no attempt—and there he showed good judgment—to reform the Spanish drama; he was content to work upon the old ways, borrowing hints from his predecessors, and, in a lazy mood, incorporating entire scenes. If we are to believe Viguier and Philarète Chasles, he went so far as to annex Corneille's _Heraclius_ (1647), and publish it in 1664 as _En esta vida todo es verdad y todo es mentira_ (In this Life All's True and All's False); but, as he knew no French, the chances are that both plays derive from a common source—Mira de Amescua's _Rueda de la fortuna_ (1614). In attempts to create character he almost always fails, and when he succeeds—as in _El Alcalde de Zalamea_—he succeeds by brilliantly retouching Lope's first sketch. Goethe hit Calderón's weak spot with the remark that his characters are as alike as bullets or leaden soldiers cast in the same mould; and the constant lyrical interruptions go to show that he knew his own strength. Others might match and overcome him as a playwright: there was none to approach him in such magnificent lyrism as he allots to Justina in _El Mágico Prodigioso_—to be quoted here in FitzGerald's rendering:—

"_Who that in his hour of glory
Walks the kingdom of the rose,
And misapprehends the story
Which through all the garden blows;
Which the southern air who brings
It touches, and the leafy strings
Lightly to the touch respond;
And nightingale to nightingale
Answering a bough beyond...._

_Lo! the golden Girasolé,
That to him by whom she burns,
Over heaven slowly, slowly,
As he travels, ever turns,
And beneath the wat'ry main
When he sinks, would follow fain,
Follow fain from west to east,
And then from east to west again...._

_So for her who having lighted
In another heart the fire,
Then shall leave it unrequited
In its ashes to expire:
After her that sacrifice
Through the garden burns and cries,
In the sultry, breathing air,
In the flowers that turn and stare...._"

Such songs as these are, perhaps, better to read than to hear, and Calderón is careful to supply a more popular interest. This he finds in three sentiments which are still most characteristic of the Spanish temperament: personal loyalty to the King, absolute devotion to the Church, and the "point of honour." Through good report and evil, Spain has held by the three principles which have made and undone her. These three sources of inspiration find their highest expression in the theatre of Calderón. A favourite with Felipe IV., a courtly poet, if ever one there were, he becomes the mouthpiece of a nation when he deifies the King in the _Príncipe Constante_, in _La Banda y la Flor_ (The Scarf and the Flower), in _Guárdate de la Agua mansa_ (Beware of Still Water), and in a score of plays. Ticknor speaks of "Calderón's flattery of the great": he overlooks the social condition implied in the title of Rojas Zorrilla's famous play, _Del Rey abajo Ninguno_ (Nobody, under the King). A titular aristocracy, shorn of all power, counted for less than a foreigner can conceive in a land where half the population was noble, and the reverence which was centred on the person of the Lord's anointed evolved into a profound devotion, a fantastic passion as exaggerated as anything in _Amadís_. A Church which had inspired the seven-hundred-years' battle against the Moors, which had produced miracles of holiness and of genius like Santa Teresa and San Juan de la Cruz, which had stemmed the flood of the Reformation and rolled it back from the Pyrenees, was regarded as the one moral authority, the sole possible form of religion, and as the symbol of Latin unity under Spain's headship.

The "point of honour"—the vengeance wrought by husbands, fathers, and brothers in the cases of women found in dubious circumstances—is harder to explain, or, at least, to justify; yet even this was a perverted outcome of chivalresque ideals, very acceptable to men who esteemed life more cheaply than their neighbours. Calderón's treatment of such a situation may be followed in FitzGerald's version of _El Pintor de su Deshonra_. The husband, who has slain his wife and her lover, confronts her father and friends:—

Prince.

"_Whoever dares
Molest him, answers it to me. Open the door.
But what is this?_ [Belardo unlocks the door.

Juan (coming out).

_A picture
Done by the Painter of his own Dishonour,
In blood.
I am Don Juan Roca. Such revenge
As each would have of me now let him take
As far as our life holds—Don Pedro, who
Gave me that lovely creature for a bride,
And I return him a bloody corpse;
Don Luis, who beholds his bosom's son
Slain by his bosom friend; and you, my lord,
Who, for your favours, might expect a piece
In some far other style than this.
Deal with me as you list; 'twill be a mercy
To swell this complement of death with mine;
For all I had to do is done, and life
Is worse than nothing now._

Prince.

_Get you to horse
And leave the wind behind you._

Luis.

_Nay, my lord;
Whom should he fly from? Not from me at least,
Who lov'd his honour as my own, and would
Myself have help'd him in a just revenge
Ev'n on an only son._

Pedro.

_I cannot speak,
But I bow down these miserable grey hairs
To other arbitrament than the sword,
Ev'n to your Highness' justice._

Prince.

_Be it so.
Meanwhile—_

Juan.

_Meanwhile, my lord, let me depart;
Free, if you will, or not. But let me go,
Nor wound these fathers with the sight of me,
Who has cut off the blossom of their age—
Yea, and his own, more miserable than them all.
They know me: that I am a gentleman,
Not cruel, nor without what seem'd due cause
Put on this bloody business of my honour;
Which having done, I will be answerable
Here and elsewhere, to all for all._

Prince.

_Depart
In peace._

Juan.

_In peace! Come, Leonelo._"

Similar motives are used by Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina, both priests and grey-beards; but the effect is more emphatic in Calderón, and so early as 1683 his "immorality" was severely censured on the occasion of Manuel de Guerra y Ribera's eulogistic _aprobación_. In this matter, as in most others, he is satisfied to follow and to exaggerate an existing convention. His heroes are untouched by Othello's sublime jealousy: they kill their victims in cold blood as something due to the self-respect of gentlemen placed in an absurd position. He rehandles the theme in _Á Secreto Agravio Secreta Venganza_ and in _El Médico de su Honra_; but the right emotion is rarely felt by the reader, since Calderón himself is seldom fired by real passion, and writes his scene as a splendid exercise in literature.

His genius is most visible in his _autos sacramentales_, a dramatic form peculiar to Spain. The word _auto_ is first applied to any and every play; then, the meaning becoming narrower, an _auto_ is a religious play, resembling the mediæval Mysteries (Gil Vicente's _Auto de San Martinho_ is probably the earliest piece of this type). Finally, a far more special sense is developed, and an _auto sacramental_ comes to mean a dramatised exposition of the Mystery of the Blessed Eucharist, to be played in the open on Corpus Christi Day. The Dutch traveller, Frans van Aarssens van Sommelsdijk, has left an account of the spectacle as he saw it when Calderón was in his prime. Borne in procession through the city, the Host was followed by sovereigns, courtiers, and the multitude, with artificial giants and pasteboard monsters—_tarascas_—at their head. Fifers, bandsmen, dancers of decorous measures accompanied the train to the cathedral. In the afternoon the assembly met in the public square, and the _auto_ was played before the King, who sat beneath a canopy, the richer public, which lined the balconies, and the general, which filled the road. Even for an educated Protestant nothing is easier than to confound an _auto sacramental_ with a _comedia devota_ or a _comedia de santos_: thus Bouterwek, in his _History_, and Longfellow, in his _Outre-Mer_, have mistaken the _Devoción de la Cruz_ for an _auto_. The distinction is radical. The true _auto_ has no secondary interest, has no mundane personages: its one subject is the Eucharistic Mystery exposed by allegorical characters. Denis Florence M'Carthy's version of _Los Encantos de la Culpa_ (The Sorceries of Sin) enables English readers to judge the _genre_ for themselves:—

Sin.

"_... Smell, come here, and with thy sense
Test this bread, this substance,—tell me
Is it bread or flesh?_

The Smell.

_Its smell
Is the smell of bread._

Sin.

_Taste, enter;
Try it thou._

The Taste.

_Its taste
Is plainly that of bread._

Sin.

_Touch, come; why tremble?
Say what's this thou touchest._

The Touch.

_Bread._

Sin.

_Sight, declare what thou discernest
In this object._

The Sight.

_Bread alone._

Sin.

_Hearing, thou, too, break in pieces
This material, which, as flesh,
Faith proclaims, and penance preacheth;
Let the fraction by its noise
Of their error undeceive them:
Say, is it so?_

The Hearing.

_Ungrateful Sin,
Though the noise in truth resembles
That of bread when broken, yet
Faith and Penance teach us better.
It is flesh, and what they call it
I believe: that Faith asserteth
Aught, is proof enough thereof._

The Understanding.

_This one reason brings contentment
Unto me._

Penance.

_O man, why linger,
Now that Hearing hath firm fetter'd
To the Faith thy Understanding?
Quick, regain the saving vessel
Of the sovereign Church, and leave
Sin's so highly sweet excesses.
Thou, Ulysses, Circe's slave,
Fly this false and fleeting revel,
Since, how great her power may be,
Greater is the power of Heaven,
And the true Jove's mightier magic
Will thy virtuous purpose strengthen._

The Man.

_Yes, thou'rt right, O Understanding;
Lead in safety hence my senses._

All.

_Let us to our ship; for here
All is shadowy and unsettled."_

As a writer of _autos_ Calderón is supreme. Lope, who outshines him at so many points, is far less dexterous than his successor when he attempts the sacramental play. This kind of drama would almost seem created for the greater glory of Calderón. The personages of his worldly plays, and even of his _comedias devotas_, tend to become personifications of revenge, love, pride, charity, and the rest. His set pieces are disfigured by want of humour and by over-refinement—faults which turn to virtues in the _autos_, where abstractions are wedded to the noblest poetry, where the Beyond is brought down to earth, and where doctrinal subtleties are embellished with miraculous ingenuity. To assert that Calderón is incomparably great in the _autos_ is to imply some censure of his art in his secular dramas. The monotony and artifice of his sacramental plays might be thought inherent to the species, were not these two notes characteristic of his whole theatre. Nor is it an explanation to say that much writing of _autos_ had affected his general methods; for not merely are the secular plays more numerous—they are also mostly earlier than the _autos_, whose real defects are a lack of dramatic interest, an appeal to a taste so local and so temporary that they are now as extinct in Spain as are masques in England. Still the passing fashions which produced _Comus_ in the north, and the _Encantos de la Culpa_ or the _Cena de Baltasar_ in the south, are justified to all lovers of great poetry. The _autos_ lingered on the stage till 1765, but their genuine inspiration ended with Calderón, who, in all but a literal sense, may be held for their creator.

Lope de Vega is the greatest of Spanish dramatists; Calderón is amongst those who most nearly approach him. Lope incarnates the genius of a nation; Calderón expresses the genius of an age. He is a Spaniard to the marrow, but a Spaniard of the seventeenth century—a courtier with a turn for _culteranismo_, averse from the picaresque contrasts which lend variety to Lope's scene and to Tirso's. His interpretation of existence is so idealised that his stage becomes in some sort the apotheosis of his century. His characters are not so much men and women, as allegorical types of men and women as Calderón conceived them. It is not real life that he reveals, for he regarded realism as ignoble and unclean: he offers in its place a brilliant pageant of abstract emotions. He is not a universal dramatist: he ranks with the greatest writers for the Spanish stage, inasmuch as he is the greatest poet using the dramatic form. And, leaving aside his anachronisms and jumblings of mythology, he is a scrupulous artist, careful of his literary form and of his construction. The finished execution of his best passages is so irresistible that FitzGerald declared Isabel's characteristic speech in the _Alcalde de Zalamea_ to be "worthy of the Greek Antigone":—"Oh, never, never might the light of day arise and show me to myself in my shame! O fleeting morning star, mightest thou never yield to the dawn that even now presses on thine azure skirts! And thou, great Orb of all, do thou stay down in the cold ocean foam; let Night for once advance her trembling empire into thine! For once assert thy voluntary power to hear and pity human misery and prayer, nor hasten up to proclaim the vilest deed that Heaven, in revenge on man, has written on his guilty annals. Alas! even as I speak, thou liftest thy bright, inexorable face above the hills." Contrast with this impassioned lament (a little toned down in FitzGerald's version) the aphoristic wisdom of Pedro Crespo's counsel to his son in the same play:—"Thou com'st of honourable if of humble stock; bear both in mind, so as neither to be daunted from trying to rise, nor puffed up so as to be sure to fall. How many have done away the memory of a defect by carrying themselves modestly, while others, again, have gotten a blemish only by being too proud of being born without one. There is a just humility that will maintain thine own dignity, and yet make thee insensible to many a rub that galls the proud spirit. Be courteous in thy manner, and liberal of thy purse; for 'tis the hand to the bonnet, and in the pocket, that makes friends in this world, of which to gain one good, all the gold the sun breeds in India, or the universal sea sucks down, were a cheap purchase. Speak no evil of women; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves our respect; for of women do we not all come? Quarrel with no one but with good cause.... I trust in God to live to see thee home again with honour and advancement on thy back."

Had Calderón always maintained this level, he would be classed with the first masters of all ages and all countries. His blood, his faith, his environment were limitations which prevented his becoming a world-poet; his majesty, his devout lyrism, his decorative fantasy suffice to place him in the foremost file of national poets. But he was not so national that foreign adaptors left him untouched: thus D'Ouville annexed the _Dama Duende_ under the title of _L'Esprit follet_, which reappears as Killigrew's _Parson's Wedding_; thus Dryden's _Evening's Love_ is Calderón done from Corneille's French; thus Wycherley's _Gentleman Dancing Master_ derives from _El Maestro de danzar_. Yet, though Calderón's plots may be conveyed, his substance cannot be denationalised, being, as he is, the sublimest Catholic poet, as Catholicism and poetry were understood by the Spaniards of the seventeenth century: a local genius of intensely local savour, exercising his dramatic in local forms.

Archbishop Trench has suggested that in the three great theatres of the world the best period covers little more than a century, and he proves his thesis by a reference to dates. Æschylus was born B.C. 525, and Euripides died B.C. 406: Marlowe was born in 1564, and Shirley died in 1666: Lope was born in 1562, and Calderón died in 1681. With Calderón the heroic age of the Spanish theatre reached a splendid close. He chanced to outlive his Toledan contemporary, FRANCISCO DE ROJAS ZORRILLA (1607-? 1661), from whose _Traición busca el Castigo_ Le Sage has arranged his _Traître puni_, and Vanbrugh his _False Friend_. A courtly poet, and a Commander of the Order of Santiago, Rojas Zorrilla collaborated with fashionable writers like Vélez de Guevara, Mira de Amescua, and Calderón, of whom he is accounted a disciple, though his one great tragedy has real individual power. His two volumes of plays (1640, 1645) reveal him as a most ingenious dramatist, who carries the "point of honour" further than Calderón in his best known play, _Del Rey abajo ninguno_, a characteristically Spanish piece. García de Castañar, apparently a peasant living near Toledo, subscribes so generously to the funds for the expedition to Algeciras that King Alfonso XI. resolves to visit him in disguise. García gets wind of this, and receives his guests honourably, mistaking Mendo for Alfonso. Mendo conceives a passion for Blanca, García's wife, and is discovered by the husband at Blanca's door. As the King is inviolate for a subject, García resolves to slay Blanca, who escapes to court. García is summoned by the King, finds his mistake, settles matters by slaying Mendo in the palace, and explains to his sovereign (and his audience) that _none under the King_ can affront him with impunity. Rojas Zorrilla's style occasionally inclines to _culteranismo_; but this is an obvious concession to popular taste, his true manner being direct and energetic. His clever construction and witty dialogue are best studied in _Lo que son Mujeres_ (What Women are) and in _Entre Bobos anda el Juego_ (The Boobies' Sport).

A very notable talent is that of AGUSTÍN MORETO Y CAVAÑA (1618-69), whose popularity as a writer of cloak-and-sword plays is only less than Lope's. In 1639 Moreto graduated as a licentiate in arts at Alcalá de Henares. Thence he made his way to Madrid, where he found a protector in Calderón. He published a volume of plays in 1654, and is believed to have taken orders three years later. Moreto is not a great inventor, but so far as concerns stagecraft he is above all contemporaries. In _El Desdén con el Desdén_ (Scorn for Scorn) he borrows Lope's _Milagros del Desprecio_ (Scorn works Wonders), and it is fair to say that the _rifacimento_ excels the original at every point. Diana, daughter of the Conde de Barcelona, mocks at marriage: her father surrounds her with the neighbouring gallants, among whom is the Conde de Urgel. Urgel's affected coolness piques the lady into a resolve to captivate him, and she so far succeeds as to lead him to avow his love for her: he escapes rejection by feigning that his declaration was a jest, and the dramatic solution is brought about by Diana's surrender. The plot is ordered with consummate skill, the dialogue is of the gayest humour, the characters more life-like than any but Alarcón's; and as evidence of the playwright's tact, it is enough to say that when Molière, in his _Princesse d'Élide_, strove to repeat Moreto's exploit he met with ignominious disaster. In the delicacy of touch with which Moreto handles a humorous situation he is almost unrivalled; and in the broader spirit of farce, his _graciosos_—comic characters, generally body-servants to the heroes—are admirable for natural force and for gusts of spontaneous wit. In _El lindo Don Diego_ he has fixed the type of the fop convinced that he is irresistible, and the presentation of fatuity which leads Don Diego into marriage with a serving-wench (whom he mistakes for a countess) is among the few masterpieces of high comedy. Moreto's historical plays are of less universal interest; in this kind, _El Rico Hombre de Alcalá_ is a powerful and sympathetic picture of Pedro the Cruel—the strong man doing justice on the noble, Tello García—from the standpoint of the Spanish populace, which has ever respected _el Rey justiciero_. In his later years Moreto betook him to the _comedia devota_; his _San Francisco de Sena_ is extravagantly and almost ludicrously devout, as in the scenes where Francisco wagers his eyes, loses, is struck blind, and repents on recovering his sight. The devout play was not Moreto's calling: in his first and best manner, as a master of the lighter, gayer comedy, he holds his own against all Spain.

Among the followers of Calderón are Antonio Cuello (d. 1652), who is reported to have collaborated with Felipe IV. in _El Conde de Essex_; Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón (fl. 1664), whose _Perfecta Casada_ is a good piece of work; Juan Matos Fragoso (? 1614-92), who borrowed and plagiarised with successful audacity; but these, with many others, are mere imitators, and the Spanish theatre declines lower and lower, till in the hands of Carlos II.'s favourite, Francisco Antonio Bances Candamo (1662-1704), it reaches its nadir. The last good playwright of the classic age is ANTONIO DE SOLÍS Y RIVADENEIRA (1610-86), who, by the accident of his long life, lends a ray of renown to the deplorable reign of Carlos II. His dramas are excellent in construction and phrasing, and his _Amor al uso_ was popular in France through Thomas Corneille's adaptation.

But his title to fame rests, not on verse, but on prose. His _Historia de la Conquista de Méjico_ (1684) is a most distinguished performance, even if we compare it with Mariana's. Seeing that Solís lived through the worst periods of Gongorism, his style is a marvel of purity, though a difficult critic might well condemn its cloying suavity. Still, his work has never been displaced since its first appearance, for it deals with a very picturesque period, is eloquent and clear, and is almost excessively patriotic in tone and spirit. Gibbon, in his sixty-second chapter, mentions "an Aragonese history which I have read with pleasure"—the _Expedición de los catalanes y aragoneses contra turcos y griegos_ by Francisco de Moncada, Conde de Osuna (1586-1635). "He never quotes his authorities," adds Gibbon; and, in fact, Moncada mostly translates from Ramón Muntaner's Catalan _Crónica_, though he translates in excellent fashion. Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (1584-1648) writes with force and ease in his uncritical _Corona Gótica_, and in his more interesting literary review, the _República literaria_; his freedom from Gongorism is explained by the fact that he passed most of his life out of Spain. The Portuguese, FRANCISCO MANUEL DE MELO (1611-66), is ill represented by his _Historia de los Movimientos, Separación y Guerra de Cataluña_ (1645), where he is given over to both Gongorism and _conceptismo_: in his native tongue—as in his _Apologos Dialogaes_—he writes with simplicity, strength, and wit. Melo's life was unlucky: when he was not being shipwrecked, he was in jail on suspicion of being a murderer; and being out of jail, he was exiled to Brazil. His reward is posthumous: both Portuguese and Spaniards hold him for a classic, and Sr. Menéndez y Pelayo even compares him to Quevedo.