Chapter XVIII

LOPE DE VEGA, CONTINUED.--HIS CHARACTERISTICS AS A DRAMATIC WRITER.--HIS STORIES, CHARACTERS, AND DIALOGUE.--HIS DISREGARD OF RULES, OF HISTORICAL TRUTH, AND MORAL PROPRIETY.--HIS COMIC UNDERPLOT AND GRACIOSO.--HIS POETICAL STYLE AND MANNER.--HIS FITNESS TO WIN GENERAL FAVOR.--HIS SUCCESS.--HIS FORTUNE, AND THE VAST AMOUNT OF HIS WORKS.

The extraordinary variety in the character of Lope’s dramas is as remarkable as their number, and contributed not a little to render him the monarch of the stage while he lived, and the great master of the national theatre ever since. But though this vast variety and inexhaustible fertility constitute, as it were, the two great corner-stones on which his success rested, still there were other circumstances attending it that should by no means be overlooked, when we are examining, not only the surprising results themselves, but the means by which they were obtained.

The first of these is the principle which may be considered as running through the whole of his full-length plays,--that of making all other interests subordinate to the interest of the story. Thus, the characters are a matter evidently of inferior moment with him; so that the idea of exhibiting a single passion giving a consistent direction to all the energies of a strong will, as in the case of Richard the Third, or, as in the case of Macbeth, distracting them all no less consistently, does not occur in the whole range of his dramas. Sometimes, it is true, though rarely, as in Sancho Ortiz, he develops a marked and generous spirit, with distinctive lineaments; but in no case is this the main object, and in no case is it done with the appearance of an artist-like skill or a deliberate purpose. On the contrary, a great majority of his characters are almost as much standing masks as Pantalone is on the Venetian stage, or Scapin on the French. The _primer galan_, or hero, all love, honor, and jealousy; the _dama_, or heroine, no less loving and jealous, but yet more rash and heedless; and the brother, or if not the brother, then the _barba_, or old man and father, ready to cover the stage with blood, if the lover has even been seen in the house of the heroine,--these recur continually, and serve, not only in the secular, but often in the religious pieces, as the fixed points round which the different actions, with their different incidents, are made to revolve.

In the same way, the dialogue is used chiefly to bring out the plot, and hardly at all to bring out the characters. This is obvious in the long speeches, sometimes consisting of two or three hundred verses, which are as purely narrative as an Italian _novella_, and often much like one; and it is seen, too, in the crowd of incidents that compose the action, which not infrequently fails to find space sufficient to spread out all its ingenious involutions and make them easily intelligible; a difficulty of which Lope once gives his audience fair warning, telling them at the outset of the piece, that they must not lose a syllable of the first explanation, or they will certainly fail to understand the curious plot that follows.

Obeying the same principle, he sacrifices regularity and congruity in his stories, if he can but make them interesting. His longer plays, indeed, are regularly divided into three _jornadas_, or acts; but this, though he claims it as a merit, is not an arrangement of his own invention, and is, moreover, merely an arbitrary mode of producing the pauses necessary to the convenience of the actors and spectators; pauses which, in Lope’s theatre, have too often nothing to do with the structure and proportions of the piece itself.[420] As for the six plays which, as he intimates, were written according to the rules, Spanish criticism has sought for them in vain;[421] nor does any of them, probably, exist now, if any ever existed, unless “La Melindrosa”--The Prude--may have been one of them. But he avows very honestly that he regards rules of all kinds only as obstacles to his success. “When I am going to write a play,” he says, “I lock up all precepts, and cast Terence and Plautus out of my study, lest they should cry out against me, as truth is wont to do even from such dumb volumes; for I write according to the art invented by those who sought the applause of the multitude, whom it is but just to humor in their folly, since it is they who pay for it.”[422]

[420] This division can be traced back to a play of Francisco de
Avendaño, 1553. L. F. Moratin, Obras, 1830, Tom. I. Parte I. p.
182.

[421] “Except six,” says Lope, at the end of his “Arte Nuevo,”
“all my four hundred and eighty-three plays have offended gravely
against the rules [el arte].” See Montiano y Luyando, “Discurso
sobre las Tragedias Españolas,” (Madrid, 1750, 12mo, p. 47),
and Huerta, in the Preface to his “Teatro Hespañol,” for the
difficulty of finding even these six.

[422] Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias, Obras, Tom. IV. p. 406.

The extent to which, following this principle, Lope sacrificed dramatic probabilities and possibilities, geography, history, and a decent morality, can be properly understood only by reading a large number of his plays. But a few instances will partially illustrate it. In his “First King of Castile,” the events fill thirty-six years in the middle of the eleventh century, and a Gypsy is introduced four hundred years before Gypsies were known in Europe.[423] The whole romantic story of the Seven Infantes of Lara is put into the play of “Mudarra.”[424] In “Spotless Purity,” Job, David, Jeremiah, Saint John the Baptist, and the University of Salamanca figure together;[425] and in “The Birth of Christ” we have, for the two extremes, the creation of the world and the Nativity.[426] So much for history. Geography is treated no better, when Constantinople is declared to be four thousand leagues from Madrid,[427] and Spaniards are made to disembark from a ship in Hungary.[428] And as to morals, it is not easy to tell how Lope reconciled his opinions to his practice. In the Preface to the twentieth volume of his Theatre, he declares, in reference to his own “Wise Vengeance,” that “its title is absurd, because all revenge is unwise and unlawful”; and yet it seems as if one half of his plays go to justify it. It is made a merit in San Isidro, that he stole his master’s grain to give it to the starving birds.[429] The prayers of Nicolas de Tolentino are accounted sufficient for the salvation of a kinsman who, after a dissolute life, had died in an act of mortal sin;[430] and the cruel and atrocious conquest of Arauco is claimed as an honor to a noble family and a grace to the national escutcheon.[431]

[423] “El Primer Rey de Castilla,” Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid,
1621, ff. 114, etc.

[424] “El Bastardo Mudarra,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza, 1641.

[425] “La Limpieza no Manchada,” Comedias, Tom. XIX., Madrid,
1623.

[426] “El Nacimiento de Christo,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., _ut
supra_.

[427] It is the learned Theodora, a person represented as capable
of confounding the knowing professors brought to try her, who
declares Constantinople to be four thousand leagues from Madrid.
La Donzella Teodor, end of Act II.

[428] This extraordinary disembarkation takes place in the
“Animal de Ungria” (Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 137,
138). One is naturally reminded of Shakspeare’s “Winter’s Tale”;
but it is curious that the Duke de Luynes, a favorite minister
of state to Louis XIII., made precisely the same mistake, at
about the same time, to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, then (1619-21)
ambassador in France. But Lope certainly knew better, and I doubt
not Shakspeare did, however ignorant the French statesman may
have been. Herbert’s Life, by himself, London, 1809, 8vo, p. 217.

[429] See “San Isidro Labrador,” in Comedias Escogidas, Tom.
XXVIII., Madrid, 1667, f. 66.

[430] “San Nicolas de Tolentino,” Comedias, Tom. XXIV., Zaragoza,
1641, f. 171.

[431] “Arauco Domado,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629. After
reading such absurdities, we wonder less that Cervantes, even
though he committed not a few like them himself, should make the
puppet-show man exclaim, “Are not a thousand plays represented
now-a-days, full of a thousand improprieties and absurdities,
which yet run their course successfully, and are heard, not only
with applause, but with admiration?” D. Quixote, Parte II. c. 26.

But all these violations of the truth of fact and of the commonest rules of Christian morals, of which nobody was more aware than their perpetrator, were overlooked by Lope himself, and by his audiences, in the general interest of the plot. A dramatized novel was the form he chose to give to his plays, and he succeeded in settling it as the main principle of the Spanish stage. “Tales,” he declares, “have the same rules with dramas, the purpose of whose authors is to content and please the public, though the rules of art may be strangled by it.”[432] And elsewhere, when defending his opinions, he says: “Keep the explanation of the story doubtful till the last scene; for, as soon as the public know how it will end, they turn their faces to the door and their backs to the stage.”[433] This had never been said before; and though some traces of intriguing plots are to be found from the time of Torres de Naharro, yet nobody ever thought of relying upon them, in this way, for success, till Lope had set the example, which his school have so faithfully followed.

[432] “Tienen las novelas los mismos preceptos que las comedias,
cuyo fin es haber dado su autor contento y gusto al pueblo,
aunque se ahorque el arte.” Obras Sueltas, Tom. VIII. p. 70.

[433] Arte Nuevo, Obras, Tom. IV. p. 412. From an autograph MS.
of Lope, still extant, it appears that he sometimes wrote out
his plays first in the form of _pequeñas novelas_. Semanario
Pintoresco, 1839, p. 19.

Another element which he established in the Spanish drama was the comic underplot. All his plays, with the signal exception of the “Star of Seville,” and a few others of less note, have it;--sometimes in a pastoral form, but generally as a simple admixture of farce. The characters contained in this portion of each of his dramas are as much standing masks as those in the graver portion, and were perfectly well known under the name of the _graciosos_ and _graciosas_, or drolls, to which was afterwards added the _vegete_, or a little, old, testy esquire, who is always boasting of his descent, and is often employed in teasing the _gracioso_. In most cases, they constitute a parody on the dialogue and adventures of the hero and heroine, as Sancho is partly a parody of Don Quixote, and in most cases they are the servants of the respective parties;--the men being good-humored cowards and gluttons, the women mischievous and coquettish, and both full of wit, malice, and an affected simplicity. Slight traces of such characters are to be found on the Spanish stage as far back as the servants in the “Serafina” of Torres Naharro; and in the middle of that century, the _bobo_, or fool, figures freely in the farces of Lope de Rueda, as the _simplé_ had done before in those of Enzina. But the variously witty _gracioso_, the full-blown parody of the heroic characters of the play, the dramatic _pícaro_, is the work of Lope de Vega. He first introduced it into the “Francesilla,” where the oldest of the tribe, under the name of Tristan, was represented by Rios, a famous actor of his time, and produced a great effect;[434]--an event which, Lope tells us, in the Dedication of the drama itself, in 1620, to his friend Montalvan, occurred before that friend was born, and therefore before the year 1602.

[434] See the Dedication of the “Francesilla” to Juan Perez de
Montalvan, in Comedias, Tom. XIII., Madrid, 1620, where we have
the following words: “And note in passing that this is the first
play in which was introduced the character of the jester, which
has been so often repeated since. Rios, unique in all parts,
played it, and is worthy of this record. I pray you to read it
as a new thing; for when I wrote it, you were not born.” The
_gracioso_ was generally distinguished by his name on the Spanish
stage, as he was afterwards on the French stage. Thus, Calderon
often calls his _gracioso_ Clarin, or Trumpet; as Molière called
his Sganarelle. The _simplé_, who, as I have said, can be traced
back to Enzina, and who was, no doubt, the same with the _bobo_,
is mentioned as very successful, in 1596, by Lopez Pinciano,
who, in his “Philosofía Antigua Poética,” (1596, p. 402), says,
“They are characters that commonly amuse more than any other that
appear in the plays.” The _gracioso_ of Lope was, like the rest
of his theatre, founded on what existed before his time; only the
character itself was further developed, and received a new name.
D. Quixote, Clemencin, Parte II. cap. 3, note.

From this time the _gracioso_ is found in nearly all of his plays, and in nearly every other play produced on the Spanish stage, from which it passed, first to the French, and then to all the other theatres of modern times. Excellent specimens of it may be found in the sacristan of the “Captives of Algiers,” in the servants of the “Saint John’s Eve,” and in the servants of the “Ugly Beauty”; in all which, as well as in many more, the _gracioso_ is skilfully turned to account, by being made partly to ridicule the heroic extravagances and rhodomontade of the leading personages, and partly to shield the author himself from rebuke by good-humoredly confessing for him that he was quite aware he deserved it. Of such we may say, as Don Quixote did, when speaking of the whole class to the Bachelor Samson Carrasco, that they are the shrewdest fellows in their respective plays. But of others, whose ill-advised wit is inopportunely thrust, with their foolscaps and bawbles, into the gravest and most tragic scenes of plays like “Marriage in Death,” we can only avow, that, though they were demanded by the taste of the age, nothing in any age can suffice for their justification.

The last among the circumstances which should not be overlooked, when considering the means of Lope’s great success, is his poetical style, the metres he adopted, and especially the use he made of the elder poetry of his country. In all these respects, he is to be praised; always excepting the occasions when, to obtain universal applause, he permitted himself the use of that obscure and affected style which the courtly part of his audience demanded, and which he himself elsewhere condemned and ridiculed.[435]

[435] The specimens of his bad taste in this particular occur
but too frequently; e. g. in “El Cuerdo en su Casa” (Comedias,
Tom. VI., Madrid, 1615, ff. 105, etc.); in the “Niña de Plata”
(Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, ff. 125, etc.); in the
“Cautivos de Argel” (Comedias, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1647, p.
241); and in other places. But in opposition to all this, see his
deliberate condemnation of such euphuistical follies in his Obras
Sueltas, Tom. IV. pp. 459-482; and the jests at their expense
in his “Amistad y Obligacion,” and his “Melindres de Belisa”
(Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618).

No doubt, indeed, much of his power over the mass of the people of his time is to be sought in the charm that belonged to his versification; not unfrequently careless, but almost always fresh, flowing, and effective. Its variety, too, was remarkable. No metre of which the language was susceptible escaped him. The Italian octave stanzas are frequent; the _terza rima_, though more sparingly used, occurs often; and hardly a play is without one or more sonnets. All this was to please the more fashionable and cultivated among his audience, who had long been enamoured of whatever was Italian; and though some of it was unhappy enough, like sonnets with echoes,[436] it was all fluent and all successful.

[436] Sonnets seem to have been a sort of choice morsels thrown
in to please the over-refined portion of the audience. In
general, only one or two occur in a play; but in the “Discreta
Venganza” (Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629) there are five. In
the “Palacios de Galiana” (Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638,
f. 256) there is a foolish sonnet with echoes, and another in
the “Historia de Tobias” (Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621, f.
244). The sonnet in ridicule of sonnets, in the “Niña de Plata,”
(Comedias, Tom. IX., Barcelona, 1618, f. 124), is witty, and has
been imitated in French and in English.

Still, as far as his verse was concerned,--besides the _silvas_, or masses of irregular lines, the _quintillas_, or five-line stanzas, and the _liras_, or six-line,--he relied, above every thing else, upon the old national ballad-measure;--both the proper _romance_, with _asonantes_, and the _redondilla_, with rhymes between the first and fourth lines and between the second and third. In this he was unquestionably right. The earliest attempts at dramatic representation in Spain had been somewhat lyrical in their tone, and the more artificial forms of verse, therefore, especially those with short lines interposed at regular intervals, had been used by Juan de la Enzina, by Torres Naharro, and by others; though, latterly, in these, as in many respects, much confusion had been introduced into Spanish dramatic poetry. But Lope, making his drama more narrative than it had been before, settled it at once and finally on the true national narrative measure. He went farther. He introduced into it much old ballad-poetry, and many separate ballads of his own composition. Thus, in “The Sun Delayed,” the Master of Santiago, who has lost his way, stops and sings a ballad;[437] and in his “Poverty no Disgrace,” he has inserted a beautiful one, beginning,

[437] “El Sol Parado,” Comedias, Tom. XVII., Madrid, 1621, pp.
218, 219. It reminds one of the much more beautiful _serrana_ of
the Marquis of Santillana, beginning “Moza tan formosa,” _ante_,
Vol. I. p. 372.

O noble Spanish cavalier,
You hasten to the fight;
The trumpet rings upon your ear,
And victory claims her right.[438]

[438] “Pobreza no es Vileza,” Comedias, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629,
f. 61.

Probably, however, he produced a still greater effect when he brought in passages, not of his own, but of old and well-known ballads, or allusions to them. Of these his plays are full. For instance, his “Sun Delayed,” and his “Envy of Nobility,” are all-redolent of the Morisco ballads, that were so much admired in his time; the first taking those that relate to the loves of Gazul and Zayda,[439] and the last those from the “Civil Wars of Granada,” about the wild feuds of the Zegris and the Abencerrages.[440] Hardly less marked is the use he makes of the old ballads on Roderic, in his “Last Goth”;[441] of those concerning the Infantes of Lara, in his several plays relating to their tragical story;[442] and of those about Bernardo del Carpio, in “Marriage and Death.”[443] Occasionally, the effect of their introduction must have been very great. Thus, when, in his drama of “Santa Fé,” crowded with the achievements of Hernando del Pulgar, Garcilasso de la Vega, and whatever was most glorious and picturesque in the siege of Granada, one of his personages breaks out with a variation of the familiar and grand old ballad,--

[439] He has even ventured to take the beautiful and familiar
ballad, “Sale la Estrella de Venus,”--which is in the Romancero
General, the “Guerras de Granada,” and many other places,--and
work it up into a dialogue. “El Sol Parado,” Comedias, Tom.
XVII., Madrid, 1621, ff. 223-224.

[440] In the same way, he seizes upon the old ballad, “Reduan
bien se te acuerda,” and uses it in the “Embidia de la Nobleza,”
Comedias, Tom. XXIII., Madrid, 1638, f. 192.

[441] For example, the ballad in the Romancero of 1555, beginning
“Despues que el Rey Rodrigo,” at the end of Jornada II., in “El
Ultimo Godo,” Comedias, Tom. XXV., Zaragoza, 1647.

[442] Compare “El Bastardo Mudarra” (Comedias, Tom. XXIV.,
Zaragoza, 1641, ff. 75, 76) with the ballads, “Ruy Velasquez de
Lara,” and “Llegados son los Infantes”; and, in the same play,
the dialogue between Mudarra and his mother, (f. 83), with the
ballad, “Sentados á un ajedrez.”

[443] “El Casamiento en la Muerte,” (Comedias, Tom. I.,
Valladolid, 1604, ff. 198, etc.), in which the following
well-known old ballads are freely used, viz.:--“O Belerma! O
Belerma!” “No tiene heredero alguno”; “Al pie de un túmulo
negro”; “Bañando está las prisiones”; and others.

Now Santa Fé is circled round
With canvas walls so fair,
And tents that cover all the ground
With silks and velvets rare,--[444]

[444] It is in the last chapter of the “Guerras Civiles de
Granada”; but Lope has given it, with a slight change in the
phraseology, as follows:--

Cercada está Sancta Fé
Con mucho lienço encerado;
Y al rededor muchas tiendas
De terciopelo y damasco.

It occurs in many collections of ballads, and is founded on the
fact, that a sort of village of rich tents was established near
Granada, which, after an accidental conflagration, was turned
into a town, that still exists, within whose walls were signed
both the commission of Columbus to seek the New World, and the
capitulation of Granada. The imitation of this ballad by Lope is
in his “Cerco de Santa Fé,” Comedias, Tom. I., Valladolid, 1604,
f. 69.

it must have stirred his audience as with the sound of a trumpet.

Indeed, in all respects, Lope well understood how to win the general favor, and how to build up and strengthen his fortunate position as the leading dramatic poet of his time. The ancient foundations of the theatre, as far as any existed when he appeared, were little disturbed by him. He carried on the drama, he says, as he found it; not venturing to observe the rules of art, because, if he had done so, the public never would have listened to him.[445] The elements that were floating about, crude and unsettled, he used freely; but only so far as they suited his general purpose. The division into three acts, known so little, that he attributed it to Virues, though it was made much earlier; the ballad-measure, which had been timidly used by Tarraga and two or three others, but relied upon by nobody; the intriguing story, and the amusing underplot, of which the slight traces that existed in Torres Naharro had been long forgotten,--all these he seized with the instinct of genius, and formed from them, and from the abundant and rich inventions of his own overflowing fancy, a drama which, as a whole, was unlike any thing that had preceded it, and yet was so truly national and rested so faithfully on tradition, that it was never afterwards disturbed, till the whole literature, of which it was so brilliant a part, was swept away with it.

[445] He says this apparently as a kind of apology to foreigners,
in the Preface to the “Peregrino en su Patria,” 1603, where he
gives a list of his plays to that date.

Lope de Vega’s immediate success, as we have seen, was in proportion to his rare powers and favorable opportunities. For a long time, nobody else was willingly heard on the stage; and during the whole of the forty or fifty years that he wrote for it, he stood quite unapproached in general popularity. His unnumbered plays and farces, in all the forms that were demanded by the fashions of the age, or permitted by religious authority, filled the theatres both of the capital and the provinces; and so extraordinary was the impulse he gave to dramatic representations, that, though there were only two companies of strolling players at Madrid when he began, there were, about the period of his death, no less than forty, comprehending nearly a thousand persons.[446]

[446] See the curious facts collected on this subject in
Pellicer’s note to Don Quixote, ed. 1798, Parte II., Tom. I. pp.
109-111.

Abroad, too, his fame was hardly less remarkable. In Rome, Naples, and Milan, his dramas were performed in their original language; in France and Italy, his name was announced in order to fill the theatres when no play of his was to be performed;[447] and once even, and probably oftener, one of his dramas was represented in the seraglio at Constantinople.[448] But perhaps neither all this popularity, nor yet the crowds that followed him in the streets and gathered in the balconies to watch him as he passed along,[449] nor the name of Lope, that was given to whatever was esteemed singularly good in its kind,[450] is so striking a proof of his dramatic success, as the fact, so often complained of by himself and his friends, that multitudes of his plays were fraudulently noted down as they were acted, and then printed for profit throughout Spain; and that multitudes of other plays appeared under his name, and were represented all over the provinces, that he had never even heard of till they were published and performed.[451]

[447] This is stated by the well-known Italian poet, Marini, in
his Eulogy on Lope, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. p. 19.

[448] Obras Sueltas, Tom. VIII. pp. 94-96, and Pellicer’s note to
Don Quixote, Parte I., Tom. III. p. 93.

[449] This is said in a discourse preached over his mortal
remains in St. Sebastian’s, at his funeral. Obras Sueltas, Tom.
XIX. p. 329.

[450] “Frey Lope Felix de Vega, whose name has become universally
a proverb for whatever is good,” says Quevedo, in his Aprobacion
to “Tomé de Burguillos.” (Obras Sueltas de Lope, Tom. XIX. p.
xix.) “It became a common proverb to praise a good thing by
calling it _a Lope_; so that jewels, diamonds, pictures, etc.,
were raised into esteem by calling them his,” says Montalvan.
(Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 53.) Cervantes intimates the same
thing in his _entremes_, “La Guarda Cuidadosa.”

[451] His complaints on the subject begin as early as 1603,
before he had published any of his plays himself, (Obras Sueltas,
Tom. V. p. xvii.), and are renewed in the “Egloga á Claudio,”
(Ib., Tom. IX. p. 369), printed after his death; besides which,
they occur in the Prefaces to his Comedias, (Tom. IX., XI., XV.,
XXI., and elsewhere), as a matter that seems to have been always
troubling him.

A large income naturally followed such popularity, for his plays were liberally paid for by the actors;[452] and he had patrons of a munificence unknown in our days, and always undesirable.[453] But he was thriftless and wasteful; exceedingly charitable; and, in hospitality to his friends, prodigal. He was, therefore, almost always embarrassed. At the end of his “Jerusalem,” printed as early as 1609, he complains of the pressure of his domestic affairs;[454] and in his old age he addressed some verses, in the nature of a petition, to the still more thriftless Philip the Fourth, asking the means of living for himself and his daughter.[455] After his death, his poverty was fully admitted by his executor; and yet, considering the relative value of money, no poet, perhaps, ever received so large a compensation for his works.

[452] Montalvan sets the price of each play at five hundred
reals, and says that in this way Lope received, during his life,
eighty thousand ducats. Obras, Tom. XX. p. 47.

[453] The Duke of Sessa alone, besides many other benefactions,
gave Lope, at different times, twenty-four thousand ducats, and a
sinecure of three hundred more per annum. _Ut supra._

[454] Libro XX., last three stanzas.

[455] “I have a daughter, and am old,” he says. “The Muses give
me honor, but not income,” etc. (Obras, Tom. XVII. p. 401.) From
his will, an abstract of which may be found in the Semanario
Pintoresco, 1839, p. 19, it appears that Philip IV. promised an
office to the person who should marry this daughter, and failed
to keep his word.

It should, however, be remembered, that no other poet ever wrote so much with popular effect. For, if we begin with his dramatic compositions, which are the best of his efforts, and go down to his epics, which, on the whole, are the worst,[456] we shall find the amount of what was received with favor, as it came from the press, quite unparalleled. And when to this we are compelled to add his own assurance, just before his death, that the greater part of his works still remained in manuscript,[457] we pause in astonishment, and, before we are able to believe the account, demand some explanation that will make it credible;--an explanation which is the more important, because it is the key to much of his personal character, as well as of his poetical success. And it is this. No poet of any considerable reputation ever had a genius so nearly related to that of an improvisator, or ever indulged his genius so freely in the spirit of improvisation. This talent has always existed in the southern countries of Europe; and in Spain has, from the first, produced, in different ways, the most extraordinary results. We owe to it the invention and perfection of the old ballads, which were originally improvisated and then preserved by tradition; and we owe to it the _seguidillas_, the _boleros_, and all the other forms of popular poetry that still exist in Spain, and are daily poured forth by the fervent imaginations of the uncultivated classes of the people, and sung to the national music, that sometimes seems to fill the air by night as the light of the sun does by day.

[456] Like some other distinguished authors, however, he was
inclined to undervalue what he did most happily, and to prefer
what is least worthy of preference. Thus, in the Preface to his
Comedias, (Vol. XV., Madrid, 1621), he shows that he preferred
his longer poems to his plays, which he says he holds but “as the
wild-flowers of his field, that grow up without care or culture.”

[457] This might be inferred from the account in Montalvan’s
“Fama Póstuma”; but Lope himself declares it distinctly in the
“Egloga á Claudio,” where he says, “The printed part of my
writings, though too much, is small, compared with what remains
unpublished.” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. IX. p. 369.) Indeed, we
know we have hardly a fourth part of his full-length plays;
only twelve _autos_ out of four hundred; only twenty or thirty
_entremeses_ out of the “infinite number” ascribed to him.

In the time of Lope de Vega, the passion for such improvisation had risen higher than it ever rose before, if it had not spread out more widely. Actors were expected sometimes to improvisate on themes given to them by the audience.[458] Extemporaneous dramas, with all the varieties of verse demanded by a taste formed in the theatres, were not of rare occurrence. Philip the Fourth, Lope’s patron, had such performed in his presence, and bore a part in them himself.[459] And the famous Count de Lemos, the viceroy of Naples, to whom Cervantes was indebted for so much kindness, kept, as an _apanage_ to his viceroyalty, a poetical court, of which the two Argensolas were the chief ornaments, and in which extemporaneous plays were acted with brilliant success.[460]

[458] Bisbe y Vidal, “Tratado de Comedias,” (1618, f. 102),
speaks of the “glosses which the actors make extempore upon lines
given to them on the stage.”

[459] Viardot, Études sur la Littérature en Espagne, Paris, 1835,
8vo, p. 339.

[460] Pellicer, Biblioteca de Traductores Españoles, (Madrid,
1778, 4to, Tom. I. pp. 89-91), in which there is a curious
narrative by Diego, Duke of Estrada, giving an account of one of
these entertainments, (a burlesque play on the story of Orpheus
and Eurydice), performed before the viceroy and his court.

Lope de Vega’s talent was undoubtedly of near kindred to this genius of improvisation, and produced its extraordinary results by a similar process, and in the same spirit. He dictated verse, we are told, with ease, more rapidly than an amanuensis could take it down;[461] and wrote out an entire play in two days, which could with difficulty be transcribed by a copyist in the same time. He was not absolutely an improvisator, for his education and position naturally led him to devote himself to written composition, but he was continually on the borders of whatever belongs to an improvisator’s peculiar province; he was continually showing, in his merits and defects, in his ease, grace, and sudden resource, in his wildness and extravagance, in the happiness of his versification and the prodigal abundance of his imagery, that a very little more freedom, a very little more indulgence given to his feelings and his fancy, would have made him at once and entirely, not only an improvisator, but the most remarkable one that ever lived.

[461] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. pp. 51, 52.