Spanish drama

“ But the drama was too deeply seated in the general favor, to be much modified, even by a power that overshadowed nearly every thing else in the state; and during the whole of the seventeenth century,—the century which immediately followed the severe legislation of Philip the Second and his attempts to control the character of the stage,—the Spanish drama was really in the hands of the mass of the people, and its writers and actors were such as the popular will required them to be. ”

“ In the absence of high original genius the Spanish dramatists began to turn to foreign models, though little supported in such attempts by popular sympathy; and it is only in more recent times that the Spanish drama has sought to reproduce the ancient forms from whose masterpieces the nation had never become estranged, while accommodating them to tastes and tendencies shared by later Spanish literature with that of Europe at large. ”

“ As to the theatre itself, there can be no fear either that the imitation of foreign examples will satisfy Spanish dramatists—especially when, like the author of Doña Perfecta (Perez Galdos) , they have excellent home material of their own for adaptation,—or that the Spanish public itself, with fine actors and actresses still upholding the lofty traditions of the national drama, will remain too fatigued to consume the drama unless bit by bit—in the shape of zarzuelas and similar one-act confections. ”

“ Under the influence of the nobility, who thronged to the royal residence, and led by the example of one of the most popular writers and men that ever lived, the Spanish theatre rose like an exhalation; and a school of poets—many of whom had hastened from Seville, Valencia, and other parts of the country, and thus extinguished the hopes of an independent drama in the cities they deserted—was collected around him in the new capital, until the dramatic writers of Madrid became suddenly more numerous, and in many respects more remarkable, than any other similar body of poets in modern times. ”

“ Nothing can be more truly national than the drama; and, as if fearful that a Spanish audience would feel too deeply the catastrophe, he introduces Spain, the river Duero, War, Sickness, and Famine, as allegorical personages, who, while they mourn over the present, prophesy the future triumphs of their country. Another merit of this play is one not usual in Spanish authors: it is of no more than the necessary length to develope its interest; there is no long spinning out, and except quite at the outset, before the poet had warmed to his subject, it has not a cold or superfluous line. ”

“ The Spanish drama is above all a drama of action, conducted by fixed types. Juan de la Cueva had said in a spirit of prophecy that the artful fable was the glory of the Spanish stage, and Lope appeared in good time to prove him right. The types who move in the action are the Dama, the Galan, the Barba, and the Gracioso—the Lady, the Lover, the Old Man, and the Clown. They have the stage to themselves in the comedia de capa y espada. This phrase, when translated into French or English, has an air of romance about it which is somewhat misleading. ”

“ Thus, Spanish didactic prose, which, from its original elements and tendencies, seemed destined to wear the attractions of an elevated and eloquent style, gradually became so formal, awkward, and pedantic, that, with a few striking exceptions, it can only be said to have maintained a doubtful and difficult existence during the long period when the less suspected and less oppressed portions of the literature of the country—its drama and its lyric poetry—were in the meridian of their success. ”

“ Nor, I trust, will such a people—still proud and faithful in its less favored masses, if not in those portions whose names dimly shadow forth the glory they have inherited—fail to create a literature appropriate to a character in its nature so poetical. The old ballads will not indeed return; for the feelings that produced them are with by-gone things. The old drama will not be revived;—society, even in Spain, would not now endure its excesses. ”

“ The national taste is, however, in favour of comedy, which, besides being more congenial to the character of the people, speaks more intelligibly to their uncultivated understandings. And, indeed, it must be confessed, that but for the infinite superiority of the language, the long speeches of the heroes of Spanish tragedy would be yet more wearying to listen to, than even the jingling, rhymed declamations of the French drama. ”

“ The Spanish drama may, no doubt, be worthy of especial study, but I confess that I have not felt it deserving of the extravagant praises which some writers have bestowed on it. It would surely be much happier for the people of every country to seek their greatest enjoyments in those of a domestic nature, rather than in those miscellaneous congregations where the quieter virtues can have little exercise. ”

“ The literature of Spain may be divided into four classes—the old Ballads, the Chronicles, the Romances of Chivalry, and the Drama. The most interesting of the old ballads are historical; but there are also ballads that have to do with private life wherein appear the effusions of love, the shafts of satire, the descriptions of pastoral life, and the oddities of burlesque. One and all, however, faithfully represent Spanish life. No such popular poetry is found in any other language. ”

“ The truth is, that, from the beginning of the sev [p. 332] enteenth century, the popular Spanish drama was too strong to be subjected either to classical criticism or to ecclesiastical control. In the “Amusing Journey” of Roxas, an actor who travelled over much of the country in 1602, visiting Seville, Granada, Toledo, Valladolid, and many other places, we find plays acted everywhere, even in the smallest villages, and the drama, in all its forms and arrangements, accommodated to the public taste far beyond any other popular amusement. ”

“ That the drama, however, the richest in Europe, and original and characteristic as only either the Greek or the English drama, should be so little represented is due to the fact that the fun of a Spanish comedy generally lies in the plot and in comic situations. ”

“ The dialogue in which he defends himself is extremely characteristic of the gallant style of the Spanish drama, especially in that ingenious turn and repetition of the same idea in different figures of speech, which grows more and more condensed as it approaches its conclusion. ”

“ Who so fit to be good Catholics as the favoured of the Pope, the authorized converters of the heathen Indians, and the people whose national life was a crusade against the Mahometan on their own soil? Who, too, so born to the pride of purity of blood? There is much to account for all this, with which descent has nothing to do, although, perhaps, there is more than the explanation of all this accounts for.
A ballad literature, rising to the level of the humbler epics, and a truly home-grown drama, are the self-evolved, indigenous elements of Spanish literature. ”

“ As in no long process of time, dramatic poetry became the distinctive and national turn of Spanish poetic genius, it would be ungrateful towards the originators of a species of composition imitated all over the world, and extolled by every man of taste, not to make mention of them. The first dawn of the drama has been mentioned: the representation of mysteries and autos being permitted by the clergy, leave was taken to exchange the purely religious for the pastoral or the moral. ”

“ It leads him to repeat from himself till many of his personages become standing characters, and his heroes and their servants, his ladies [p. 401] 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 ”

“ It is always in the name of loyalty, conjugal fidelity, respect for his ancestors, and the honour of his name, that he draws his iron-hilted sword, frequently against those whom he loves with all his soul, and whom he is compelled by stern necessity to immolate. From this struggle of the passions with the point of honour springs the interest of most of the pieces of the old Spanish theatre, a profound and sympathetic interest keenly felt by the spectators, who in a similar position would not have acted otherwise than the personages of the drama. ”

“ From the time of those great writers until the present, notwithstanding the predilection of the Spanish people for the stage, and the encouragement consequently given for genius to exert itself, no dramas had been produced to equal them in the public admiration. The younger Moratin, who may be justly termed the Spanish Molière, had rather introduced into Spain a new style of drama, that which we call genteel comedy, than followed the track of the ancient masters. ”

“ The latter, as has been suggested in the previous chapter, was the product of a long and heroic struggle on behalf of nationality and the Christian{27} Faith. Among its conspicuous traits, in consequence, were self-consciousness and inflated egoism; traits that, if you consider it, are those of the actor; the necessary groundwork on which he builds his better qualities as an artist.
The Spaniards are a race of actors. The arts in which they have most naturally expressed themselves are those of the drama and the novel of character and action. And this trait similarly affects their painting. ”

“ In burlesque poetry the Spaniards have been more successful: La Gatomaquia of Lope de Vega, and La Moschea of Villaviciosa (d. 1658) are agreeable examples of witty invention.
The departments of imaginative literature in which the genius of the new Spanish nation revealed itself with most vigour and originality are the novela and the drama. By novela must be understood the novel of manners, called picaresca (from pīcaro, a rogue or “picaroon”) Fiction. because of the social status of the heroes of those fictions; and this type of novel is a Spanish invention. ”

“ The eighteenth century, therefore, so far as the Spanish theatre is concerned, is entirely a period of revolution and change; and while, at its conclusion, we perceive that the old national drama can hardly hope to be restored to its ancient rights, it is equally plain that a drama founded on the doctrines taught by Luzan, and practised by the Moratins, is not destined to take its place. ”

“ The whole force of their dramatic art will lie in leading them to dream of themselves in a different, perhaps more glorious, position, in which their latent passions might be more splendidly expressed. These passions are intense and exceptionally definite; and this is the reason, I think, for the monotony of Spanish music, philosophy, and romantic drama. All eloquence, all issues, all sentiments, if they are not to seem vapid and trivial, must be such as each man can make his own, with a sense of enhanced vitality and moral glory. ”

“ But man is not studied philosophically; and in their dramas you seldom find those episodical figures so frequent in England's great tragic poet,—those life-like sketches which are only indirectly connected with the action of the piece, and have no other object than that of presenting another phase of the human soul, another original individuality, or reflection of the poet's mind. The Spanish author rarely allows the public to perceive anything of his own peculiar character until he asks pardon, at the conclusion of the drama, for the faults of which he has been guilty. ”

“ There are open-air concerts, and concerts in smoke-beclouded halls, greensward dances, and dances stepped on café tables among disordered clusters of bottles and glasses, and there is always the theatre, on which your Spaniard dotes.
In the winter season there is opportunity to enjoy classic drama at the Teatro Español, where the Bernhardt of Spain, "La Guerrero," supported by her grandee husband, Mendoza, holds sway. When I saw them they were using short farces of Cervantes and Lope de Rueda for curtain raisers to a romantic drama by Tirso de Molina and a modern society play by Echegaray. ”

“ The chorus, which in inferior hands offers irresistible temptations for wandering talk, always carries on the action, while what we see is the outward and visible sign of some terrible force working behind. This ever-present sense of the something reserved driving before it what we are allowed to see, with an undeviating directness of aim, gives by itself an awful unity of interest to the tragedy. The Spanish dramatist gains his unity by artful construction of his story, and by subordinating passion and character to the mere action. ”

“ To the auto sacramental corresponds the auto al nacimiento, or drama of the Nativity. In Spain, as elsewhere, the secular theatre is a product of the religious theatre. Expelled from the Church, the juegos de tscarnios took possession of the public squares and there attained free development; ceasing to be a mere travesty of dogma, they developed into a drama whose movement is no longer determined by the liturgy, and whose actors are borrowed from real life in Spanish society. ”

“ Spaniards are men, and, for the matter of that, Roman citizens as well. And times change: and, for all our worship of Cicero, he would be a dinner-bell [456] if he orated in the Theatre of Alcalá. Let poetry follow the requirements of its time. Another of these documents is the Apology for 347Spanish drama, prefixed to a collection of plays by Valencian authors in 1616, and signed by Ricardo de [l] Turia, a nom de guerre not yet certainly identified, which is a special defence of Spanish comedy (i.e., “drama”) as such. ”