Chapter XXXIX: Letter 32: 668 In “El Canto Junto al Encanto,” and in “Pedir Favor.”

Perhaps the very extravagance of such representations made them comparatively harmless. It was, in the days of the Austrian dynasty, so incredible that a brother should put his sister to death merely because she had been found under his roof with her lover, or that one cavalier should fight another in the street simply because a lady did not wish to be followed, that there was no great danger of contagion from the theatrical example. Still, the immoral tendency of the Spanish drama was not overlooked, even at the time when Calderon’s fame was at the highest. Guerra, one of his great admirers, in an _Aprobacion_ prefixed to Calderon’s plays in 1682, praised, not only his friend, but the great body of the dramas to whose brilliancy that friend had so much contributed; and the war against the theatre broke out in consequence, as it had twice before in the time of Lope. Four anonymous attacks were made on the injudicious remarks of Guerra, and two more by persons who gave their names,--Puente de Mendoza and Navarro;--the last, oddly enough, replying in print to a defence of himself by Guerra, which had then been seen only in manuscript. But the whole of this discussion proceeded on the authority of the Church and the Fathers, rather than upon the grounds of public morality and social order; and therefore it ended, as previous attacks of the same kind had done, by the triumph of the theatre;[669]--Calderon’s plays and those of his school being performed and admired quite as much after it as before.

[669] Things had not been in an easy state, at any time, since
the troubles already noticed in the reigns of Philip II. and
Philip III., as we may see from the Approbation of Thomas de
Avellaneda to Tom. XXII., 1665, of the Comedias Escogidas, where
that personage, a grave and distinguished ecclesiastic, thought
it needful to step aside from his proper object, and defend the
theatre against attacks, which were evidently then common, though
they have not reached us. But the quarrel of 1682-85, which was
a violent and open rupture, can be best found in the “Apelacion
al Tribunal de los Doctos,” Madrid, 1752, 4to, (which is, in
fact, Guerra’s defence of himself written in 1683, but not before
published), and in “Discursos contra los que defienden el Uso de
las Comedias,” por Gonzalo Navarro, Madrid, 1684, 4to, which is a
reply to the last and to other works of the same kind.

Calderon, however, not only relied on the interest he could thus excite by an extravagant story full of domestic violence and duels, but often introduced flattering allusions to living persons and passing events, which he thought would be welcome to his audience, whether of the court or the city. Thus, in “The Scarf and the Flower,” the hero, just returned from Madrid, gives his master, the Duke of Florence, a glowing description, extending through above two hundred lines, of the ceremony of swearing fealty, in 1632, to Prince Balthasar, as prince of Asturias; a passage which, from its spirit, as well as its compliments to the king and the royal family, must have produced no small effect on the stage.[670] Again, in “El Escondido y la Tapada,” we have a stirring intimation of the siege of Valencia on the Po, in 1635;[671] and in “Nothing like Silence,” repeated allusions to the victory over the Prince of Condé at Fontarabia, in 1639.[672] In “Beware of Smooth Water,” there is a dazzling account of the public reception of the second wife of Philip the Fourth at Madrid, in 1649, for a part of whose pageant, it will be recollected, Calderon was employed to furnish inscriptions.[673] In “The Blood-stain of the Rose”--founded on the fable of Venus and Adonis, and written in honor of the Peace of the Pyrenees and the marriage of the Infanta with Louis the Fourteenth, in 1659--we have whatever was thought proper to be said on such subjects by a favorite poet, both in the _loa_, which is fortunately preserved, and in the play itself.[674] But there is no need of multiplying examples. Calderon nowhere fails to consult the fashionable and courtly, as well as the truly national, feeling of his time; and in “The Second Scipio” he stoops even to gross flattery of the poor and imbecile Charles the Second, declaring him equal to that great patriot whom Milton pronounces to have been “the height of Rome.”[675]

[670] The description of Philip IV. on horseback, as he passed
through the streets of Madrid, suggests a comparison with
Shakspeare’s Bolingbroke in the streets of London, but it is
wholly against the Spanish poet. (Jorn. I.) That Calderon meant
to be accurate in the descriptions contained in this play can
be seen by reading the official account of the “Juramento
del Príncipe Baltasar,” 1632, prepared by Antonio Hurtado de
Mendoza, of which the second edition was printed by order of the
government, in its printing-office, 1605, 4to.

[671] It is genuine Spanish. The hero says,--

En Italia estaba,
Quando la _loca arrogancia_
Del Frances, sobre Valencia
Del Po, etc.

Jorn. I.

[672] He makes the victory more important than it really was,
but his allusions to it show that it was not thought worth while
to irritate the French interest; so cautious and courtly is
Calderon’s whole tone. It is in Tom. X. of the Comedias.

[673] The account, in “Guárdate de la Agua Mansa,” of the
triumphal arch, for which Calderon furnished the allegorical
ideas and figures, as well as the inscriptions, (both Latin and
Castilian, the play says), is very ample. Jornada III.

[674] Here, again, we have the courtly spirit in Calderon. He
insists most carefully, that the Peace of the Pyrenees and the
marriage of the Infanta are _not_ connected with each other; and
that the marriage is to be regarded “as a _separate_ affair,
treated at the same time, but quite independently.” But his
audience knew better.

From the “Viage del Rey Nuestro Señor D. Felipe IV. el Grande á
la Frontera de Francia,” por Leonardo del Castillo, Madrid, 1667,
4to,--a work of official pretensions, describing the ceremonies
attending both the marriage of the Infanta and the conclusion
of the peace,--it appears, that, wherever Calderon has alluded
to either, he has been true to the facts of history. A similar
remark may be made of the “Tetis y Peleo,” evidently written
for the same occasion, and printed, Comedias Escogidas, Tom.
XXIX., 1668;--a poor drama by an obscure author, Josef de Bolea,
and probably one of several that we know, from Castillo, were
represented to amuse the king and court on their journey.

[675] This flattery of Charles II. is the more disagreeable,
because it was offered in the poet’s old age; for Charles did
not come to the throne till Calderon was seventy-five years old.
But it is, after all, not so shocking as the sort of blasphemous
compliments to Philip IV. and his queen in the strange _auto_
called “El Buen Retiro,” acted on the first Corpus Christi day
after that luxurious palace was finished.

In style and versification, Calderon has high merits, though they are occasionally mingled with the defects of his age. Brilliancy is one of his great objects, and he easily attains it. But he frequently falls, and with apparent willingness, into the showy folly of his time, the absurd sort of euphuism, which Góngora and his followers called “the cultivated style.” This is the case, for instance, in his “Love and Fortune,” and in his “Conflicts of Love and Loyalty.” But in “April and May Mornings,” on the contrary, and in “No Jesting with Love,” he ridicules the same style with great severity; and in such charming plays as “The Lady and the Maid,” and “The Loud Secret,” he wholly avoids it,--thus adding another to the many instances of distinguished men who have sometimes accommodated themselves to their age and its fashions, which at other times they have rebuked and controlled. Everywhere his verses charm us by their delicious melody; everywhere he indulges himself in the rich variety of measures which Spanish or Italian poetry offered him,--octave stanzas, _terza rima_, sonnets, _silvas_, _liras_, and the different forms of the _redondilla_, with the ballad _asonantes_ and _consonantes_;--showing a mastery over his language extraordinary in itself, and one which, while it sometimes enables him to rise to the loftiest tones of the national drama, seduces him at other times to seek popular favor by fantastic tricks that were wholly unworthy of his genius.[676]

[676] I think Calderon never uses blank verse, though Lope does.

But we are not to measure Calderon as his contemporaries did. We stand at a distance too remote and impartial for such indulgence; and must neither pass over his failures nor exaggerate his merits. We must look on the whole mass of his efforts for the theatre, and inquire what he really effected for its advancement,--or rather what changes it underwent in his hands, both in its more gay and in its more serious portions.

Certainly Calderon appeared as a writer for the Spanish stage under peculiarly favorable circumstances; and, by the preservation of his faculties to an age beyond that commonly allotted to man, was enabled long to maintain the ascendency he had early established. His genius took its direction from the very first, and preserved it to the last. When he was fourteen years old he had written a piece for the stage, which, sixty years later, he thought worthy to be put into the list of dramas that he furnished to the Admiral of Castile.[677] When he was thirty-five, the death of Lope de Vega left him without a rival. The next year, he was called to court by Philip the Fourth, the most munificent patron the Spanish theatre ever knew; and from this time till his death, the destinies of the drama were in his hands nearly as much as they had been before in those of Lope. Forty-five of his longer pieces, and probably more, were acted in magnificent theatres in the different royal palaces in Madrid and its neighbourhood. Some must have been exhibited with great pomp and at great expense, like “The Three Greatest Wonders,” each of whose three acts was represented in the open air on a separate stage by a different company of performers;[678] and “Love the Greatest Enchantment,” brought out in a floating theatre which the wasteful extravagance of the Count Duke Olivares had erected on the artificial waters in the gardens of the Buen Retiro.[679] Indeed, every thing shows that the patronage, both of the court and capital, placed Calderon forward, as the favored dramatic poet of his time. This rank he maintained for nearly half a century, and wrote his last drama, “Hado y Devisa,” founded on the brilliant fictions of Boiardo and Ariosto, when he was eighty-one years of age.[680] He therefore was not only the successor of Lope de Vega, but enjoyed the same kind of popular influence. Between them, they held the empire of the Spanish drama for ninety years; during which, partly by the number of their imitators and disciples, but chiefly by their own personal resources, they gave to it all the extent and consideration it ever possessed.

[677] “El Carro del Cielo,” which Vera Tassis says he wrote at
fourteen, and which we should be not a little pleased to see.

[678] The audience remained in the same seats, but there were
three stages before them. It must have been a very brilliant
exhibition, and is quaintly explained in the _loa_ prefixed to it.

[679] This is stated in the title, and gracefully alluded to at
the end of the piece:--

Fué el agua tan dichosa,
En esta noche felice,
Que merecia ser Teatro.

[680] Vera Tassis makes this statement. See also F. W. V.
Schmidt, Ueber die italienischen Heldengedichte, Berlin, 1820,
12mo, pp. 269-280.

Calderon, however, neither effected nor attempted any great changes in its forms. Two or three times, indeed, he prepared dramas that were either wholly sung, or partly sung and partly spoken; but even these, in their structure, were no more operas than his other plays, and were only a courtly luxury, which it was attempted to introduce, in imitation of the genuine opera just brought into France by Louis the Fourteenth, with whose court that of Spain was now intimately connected.[681] But this was all. Calderon has added to the stage no new form of dramatic composition. Nor has he much modified those forms which had been already arranged and settled by Lope de Vega. But he has shown more technical exactness in combining his incidents, and arranged every thing more skilfully for stage-effect.[682] He has given to the whole a new coloring, and, in some respects, a new physiognomy. His drama is more poetical in its tone and tendencies, and has less the air of truth and reality, than that of his great predecessor. In its more successful portions,--which are rarely objectionable from their moral tone,--it seems almost as if we were transported to another and more gorgeous world, where the scenery is lighted up with unknown and preternatural splendor, and where the motives and passions of the personages that pass before us are so highly wrought, that we must have our own feelings not a little stirred and excited before we can take an earnest interest in what we witness or sympathize in its results. But even in this he is successful. The buoyancy of life and spirit that he has infused into the gayer divisions of his drama, and the moving tenderness that pervades its graver and more tragical portions, lift us unconsciously to the height where alone his brilliant exhibitions can prevail with our imaginations,--where alone we can be interested and deluded, when we find ourselves in the midst, not only of such a confusion of the different forms of the drama, but of such a confusion of the proper limits of dramatic and lyrical poetry.

[681] The two decided attempts of Calderon in the opera style
have already been noticed. The “Laurel de Apolo” (Comedias, Tom.
VI.) is called a _Fiesta de Zarzuela_, in which it is said (Jorn.
I.): “Se canta y se representa”;--so that it was probably partly
sung and partly acted. Of the _Zarzuelas_ we must speak when we
come to Candamo.

[682] Goethe had this quality of Calderon’s drama in his mind
when he said to Eckermann, (Gespräche mit Goethe, Leipzig, 1837,
Band I. p. 251), “Seine Stücke sind durchaus bretterrecht, es
ist in ihnen kein Zug, der nicht für die beabsichtigte Wirkung
calculirt wäre, Calderon ist dasjenige Genie, was zugleich den
grössten Verstand hatte.”

To this elevated tone, and to the constant effort necessary in order to sustain it, we owe much of what distinguishes Calderon from his predecessors, and nearly all that is most individual and characteristic in his separate merits and defects. It makes him less easy, graceful, and natural than Lope. It imparts to his style a mannerism, which, notwithstanding the marvellous richness and fluency of his versification, sometimes wearies and sometimes offends us. It leads him to repeat from himself till many of his personages become standing characters, and his heroes and their servants, his ladies and their confidants, his old men and his buffoons,[683] seem to be produced, like the masked figures of the ancient theatre, to represent, with the same attributes and in the same costume, the different intrigues of his various plots. It leads him, in short, to regard the whole of the Spanish drama as a form, within whose limits his imagination may be indulged without restraint; and in which Greeks and Romans, heathen divinities, and the supernatural fictions of Christian tradition, may be all brought out in Spanish fashions and with Spanish feelings, and led, through a succession of ingenious and interesting adventures, to the catastrophes their stories happen to require.

[683] A good many of Calderon’s _graciosos_, or buffoons, are
excellent, as, for instance, those in “La Vida es Sueño,” “El
Alcayde de sí mismo,” “Casa con Dos Puertas,” “La Gran Zenobia,”
“La Dama Duende,” etc.

In carrying out this theory of the Spanish drama, Calderon, as we have seen, often succeeds, and often fails. But when he succeeds, his success is sometimes of no common character. He then sets before us only models of ideal beauty, perfection, and splendor;--a world, he would have it, into which nothing should enter but the highest elements of the national genius. There, the fervid, yet grave, enthusiasm of the old Castilian heroism; the chivalrous adventures of modern, courtly honor; the generous self-devotion of individual loyalty; and that reserved, but passionate love, which, in a state of society where it was so rigorously withdrawn from notice, became a kind of unacknowledged religion of the heart;--all seem to find their appropriate home. And when he has once brought us into this land of enchantment, whose glowing impossibilities his own genius has created, and has called around him forms of such grace and loveliness as those of Clara and Doña Angela, or heroic forms like those of Tuzani, Mariamne, and Don Ferdinand, then he has reached the highest point he ever attained, or ever proposed to himself;--he has set before us the grand show of an idealized drama, resting on the purest and noblest elements of the Spanish national character, and one which, with all its unquestionable defects, is to be placed among the extraordinary phenomena of modern poetry.[684]

[684] Calderon, like many other authors of the Spanish theatre,
has, as we have seen, been a magazine of plots for the dramatists
of other nations. Among those who have borrowed the most from
him are the younger Corneille and Gozzi. Thus, Corneille’s
“Engagements du Hasard” is from “Los Empeños de un Acaso”; “Le
Feint Astrologue,” from “El Astrólogo Fingido”; “Le Géolier de
soi même,” from “El Alcayde de sí mismo”; besides which, his
“Circe” and “L’Inconnu” prove that he had well studied Calderon’s
show pieces. Gozzi took his “Pubblico Secreto” from the “Secreto
á Voces”; his “Eco e Narciso” from the play of the same name; and
his “Due Notti Affanose” from “Gustos y Disgustos.” And so of
others.