invention, and a quickness of a quickness of thought and hand all but miraculous, Lope was marked out by nature for a founder and monarch of the stage. Whether from observation, or by instinct, he at once perceived what the spirit of his country and time required; and in obeying its impulse he found the way, of all others, the most apt to exercise and display his own marvellous endow ments. With the decision which is the herald of success, he seized on the materials prepared for him by the labours of a century; selecting whatever had life and substance, throwing aside all that was effete or uncongenial; supplying what was wanting from his own fertile brain, and moulding the whole into rhythmical form with a mastery of hand of which the world has no second example. He raised and diversified the story by well-chosen incidents, skilfully introduced and combined, and shown in natural and expressive action; he multiplied the characters, giving them new spirit, variety, and contrast; enriched and pointed the dialogue; and carried the whole composition along in a flow of easy and melodious verse. In short, in place of a crude series of flat and unfinished scenes, he produced for the first time on the boards a compact and living work of art, beautiful in its shape, and in substance full of genuine dramatic vigour. Of the model thus designed and finished, he proceeded to pour forth copy after copy,-each with some new grace of its own,-with a prodigality of power so rich and rapid that, were there not certain proof of its effects, would be utterly incredible. His very first acted plays had a force and symmetry till then 55 unknown; and as he went on producing others with amazing despatch, he no less rapidly advanced towards the completion of the style he had created; attentively feeling, as it were, the pulse of his audience, with his eye ever on the stage ;* intent on strengthening and adorning his work at every point in which further improvement could thus be suggested. In this manner, within a very few years, he had all but brought the Comedy of which he was the first author, to the last perfection that it was capable of ever attaining. No wonder that an apparition so bright and sudden should have been welcomed with a tumult of delight. All that had preceded it was effaced in an instant; all that was thenceforth offered to the public was bound to conform to the new model. Spanish comedy, as we know it, is the comedy of Lope; not merely as devised, but as developed by him. In no essential was anything afterwards changed, anything added: and great as were many of his rivals, disciples, or successors, he still towers above them all, in virtue of some principal requisites of scenic art, as the first not only in time but in excellence. Thus it was the fortune of Spanish drama to enjoy, from the instant of its birth, every advantage that was needed to force it into speedy bloom: it may be said, indeed, that there was hardly an hour between its dawn and its meridian. For a result so happy and surprising, a concurrence of fortunate circumstances beyond example could alone have sufficed. The time was ripe for the birth; but that at the auspicious moment a Lope de Vega should arise to forward it, was peninsula, especially at Seville and Valencia, was wholly concentrated in Castille, and, as soon as the Court was settled there, all but exclusively in Madrid. There, and there only, could those who wrote for the stage from thenceforth obtain credit or profit; and while poets flocked thither from every part of Spain, not a single new play of consequence was produced in any other principal city during the golden age of the drama; which therefore must be considered as entirely Castilian. Throughout the rest of the peninsula the actors contented themselves with borrowing, and the booksellers with reprinting or pirating, the comedies that had succeeded in 'the Court.' * This is attested by a contemporary. 'It is his habit while listening to plays, whether his own or by others, to notice what passages excite most interest and are the most applauded: these he carefully imitates, and seeks occasion for reproducing in the new pieces to which his prolific genius is incessantly giving birth.'-Prologue by Ricardo de Turia to the 2nd volume of the Collection of the Valencian dramatists, entitled Norte de la Poesia Española. Valencia. 1616. one of those rare coincidences, above the common favours of Destiny, which may justly be deemed prodigious. Lope alone had fancy and fertility enough to have kept any theatre alive, without other assistance. But it is always on the rich that fortune showers her benefits. No sooner had the new drama been installed, than all that was apt and lively in the genius of the time hastened to compete for its honours. At Lope's side there arose a little army of followers or companions; none inconsiderable; many of them in vivacity, abundance, and metrical skill second only to the master himself; some even surpassing him in certain special excellences. The profusion and glow of poetic life that illustrate this age of Lope have no counterpart in any other, and might well be supposed fabulous, but for evidence that leaves no room for distrust. It was, indeed, a time when the soil was charged with electric fire for which there was no vent elsewhere; and it rushed towards the stage, not only because it was drawn thither by the current of popular applause, but also because in every other direction it met the counterblast of priestly suspicion. While on all the rest of the intellectual field this evil was ever growing darker and more oppressive, the stage still had liberty and light; and the zest of its freedom was not a little heightened by the instant profit and praise that rewarded its successes. Accordingly, whoever in that day was born a poet became a dramatist. In what year, or even where the new era actually began, is not certain. The honour is disputed by Madrid and Valencia; and the question of priority depends on certain dates and incidents in Lope's life, which are still unsettled. From himself we know that the poet, born in 1562, had, as a mere boy, begun to write comedies,* such as were then in fashion. At the age of fifteen (1577), he had left the College of Madrid, to bear arms in an expedition to the Azores; but re-appears there soon afterwards in the household of the Bishop of Avila; by whom-probably in 1580-1-he is sent to complete his studies at Alcalá. When he returned from that university to the Court is not known; it may be guessed, about 1583 or 1584. We do know, however, that soon after his arrival and marriage there he had to fly to Valencia; where he passed some years of an exile which must have ended before 1588,-since in that year we find him once more a soldier, serving in the Armada. Whether he wrote for the public stage before the flight to Valencia, is doubtful; nor is it certain that he composed for the theatre in that city his earliest pieces now extant -of a pastoral sort, unlike his later ones-having been produced, one of them certainly, for the private recreation of his then patron, the Duke of Alva; and the other, most probably, for a similar object. We have thus to choose between Valencia in the years before 1588, and Madrid, after the wreck of the Armada,-say from 1590 or thereabouts. : Seeing that Valencia had long had a theatre of some pretensions, connected with the famous hospital, which at the time was well supported by a set of poets of her own, it seems natural that Lope, then past twenty, and already practised in one sort of dramatic writing, should be excited to compete openly with what he found there; or at least to exercise himself in composing plays, whether they were or were not acted in Valencia; so that in any case that city has a plausible claim. But that Lope actually began his dramatic career there, may not unreasonably be conjectured from the fact that his first followers, Tárrega, Aguilar, Guillen de Castro, and others less famous, were all Valencians, and are seen composing in the new manner soon after the period in question. Indeed, on comparing some of these Valencian plays with those in Lope's Prologue to the Verdadero amante (Com. de Lope, pt. xiv.), said to be his earliest known play, but probably retouched as we now have it. See also the Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias. 'Obras sueltas de Lope, tom. iv., 'Y yo las escribí de once y doce años,' on the pattern then current, of course. 1859.] When and where completely established. earliest manner, one is almost led to doubt whether they may not have preceded his;-so much of the rust of an older style still adheres to them. But there is no positive proof of this;* and as all are cast in a mould the invention of which by Lope has never been disputed, little stress can be laid on merely internal evidence. It is certain that, whatever steps were made before him, it was Lope who first took real possession of the field, with a superiority that defied competition, and an effect on the public so decisive, that from thenceforth no one could 57 hope to please but by treading in his footsteps. It was in Madrid, after 1590, that his reign was fully established. From thence it rapidly spread, with a lustre that kindled all Spain, and before long was seen with admiration by distant countries. I have said that the completion of his model was the work of but a few years; the finishing touch was given by introducing the droll -(figura del donayre, Lope himself terms it), -which was received with acclamation, and from thenceforth (under the title of gracioso) became an in * Mesonero Romanos (Contemporaneos á Lope, t. 1.) unhesitatingly places them after Lope; but his authority alone would not be conclusive, for reasons which have already been partly shown in a note to Chapter I. Riccoboni, a competent authority on this subject, complains that every kind of written drama in Italy was utterly supplanted, as early as the year 1620, by translations from the Spanish, which for a hundred years afterwards maintained exclusive possession of the stage in this department; the only native productions which kept their place during that period being those of the Comédie impromptu, as he styles it, improvised by perforiners in the provincial masks,--to which Carlo Gozzi, in the second half of the eighteenth century, gave for a time something of a poetic character, by adapting it, in his Fiabe, to a tramework filled up in its chief parts by passages written beforehand. See Riccoboni, Hist. du Théâtre Italien, Svo. Paris. 1728. Pp. 46 and 55. How much and how early the French theatre felt the influence of the Spanish, may be partly read in Puibusque (Hist. Comparée des Litt. Espagnole et Française, Paris, 2 vols., 8vo, 1843); although nothing like the whole case is stated in this essay, which is always shallow, and often inaccurate. I find Rotrou beginning his copies of Lope as early as 1628, with Le bague de l'oubli; Boisrobert, Beys, D'Ouville, L'Etoile, Desfontaines, De la Tissonnerie, follow; swelling a list which shows the more celebrated names of the two Corneilles, Molière, Scarron, and afterwards Quinault. How they repaid the debt, it is beyond my purpose to inquire. That the old English drama owed anything to the Spanish, I know no evidence sufficient to prove, and many reasons to presume the contrary. Identity of subject is no proof where the story was equally patent at the time to both nations; and in most instances adduced on this ground, where dates can be ascertained, the English is found the older of the two. It is so with the plays which Mr. Lewes supposes Fletcher, who died in 1625, to have borrowed from Calderon, none of whose pieces, so far as we know, were printed before 1632, and who was hardly noticed as a poet ten years earlier; it is all but certainly so with Webster's 'Duchess of Malfy,' and Lope's play on the same subject. I believe, indeed, that no comedies were brought hither from Spain until the Restoration; though possibly something may have been heard of them from Paris or Antwerp before the Civil War began. The most striking coincidence in subject and treatment that I know of has not, I think, been noticed-between Fletcher's 'Love's Cure,' namely, and 'Lo que puede la crianza,' by Villegas. There are two poets of the name, one certainly of Lope's time, whose plays are hopelessly confounded, and the date of this is uncertain; but its first known publication is in 1666 (Escogidas, Pt. 25); and no one acquainted with the subject will fancy that a Spanish author of that day could have seen or would have copied the English piece. In the Francesilla (Com, de Lope, Parte xiii.), as we learn from the Prologue. The date of this piece is unknown; but Lope says it was written before Montalvan, to whom he dedicates it, was born-that is to say, before 1602. I conjecture that it may be dated as far back as 1598, at least, for this reason. The list of his plays which Lope published in the Preface to the Peregrino (in 1604) contains a hundred, if not more, in which this comic part is found: now, as the theatres were closed from 1598, on Philip II.'s death, until 1600, and Lope consequently would cease writing for the stage during that interval, all these plays must either have been composed between 1600 and 1604, which is not likely, or must in part be referred to the time before 1598. dispensable part in every comedy.* This last finish may, for reasons already given in the note, be dated before 1598; from which period, for nearly a full century, the drama remained, without any material change, as Lope had completed it—a graceful creation of art, yet popular to the core, as well as national ;-sustained, indeed, altogether by the will of the people, in virtue of its incorporation of their idea of life, and of its thorough agreement with their tastes and predilections. In speaking here of the people, I must be understood to use the word in its largest sense-as embracing all classes, but chiefly pointing to the multitude. The common sort, who filled the patio (something like our pit), fancifully called mosqueteros, from the explosive style of their praise or censure, were ever the most hearty patrons, as well as the sharpest critics, of the playwright. Uneducated as they were, their quick mother-wit and genial disposition-which enabled them to follow with delight at a first hearing the most intricate plot, and to respond on the instant to every touch of genuine art,-made them fastidious and peremptory in rejecting whatever they felt to be weak or spurious. During the palmy days of the stage, the arbiters of success were not the Court gallants or the educated critics, but the mere populace of Madrid. Such being the case, it is especially worth our while to notice two qualities which distinguish this drama of the people from all others: its exquisite refinement of form, namely, in the richest poetic dress; and the all but unexceptionable decorum of its manner. On each of these heads it will be proper to say a few words. There is no example of poetry, written to be spoken on the stage, that comes near the Spanish in the charm of its numbers. There is more than a mere source of delight in the beauty of the medium through which, in this comedy, every part, however subordinate, simple, or humorous, is exhibited. By it the whole tone of the piece is raised above commonplace, and redeemed from vulgarity; the composition floats, as it were, in a poetic element, above the level to which the mean or ugly can ascend; and this advantage is felt in the substance no less than in the manner of the work. In comedies of Lope's age, especially, the versification is so *It was, however, used with far more discretion, as well as with more rich and natural humour, by Lope than by any other of the poets; of those of the second period (when it had become a standing figure) there are not a few-and Calderon above all, in his serious plays-prone to obtrude the gracioso with more importunity than wit. † See the passage, quoted by Von Schack (ii. 110), from Boisel, Voyage d'Espagne, 1660: "These people (tradesmen and mechanics) decide on the merits of the piece, so that the reputation and credit of the poets depend on them; and as they alternately applaud and hiss, and are ranged in rank and file on both sides, they are called Mosqueteros.' To this class belonged the famous shoemaker Sanchez, who, as Caramuel relates, was, during the years between 1650-60, the arbiter of stage success or failure; so that it was not unusual for young poets anxious for a favourable hearing to solicit his indulgence beforehand. On one occasion of this kind he is said to have replied, with becoming dignity, Make yourself easy, Sir Poet, your piece shall have the reception which its merits may justly deserve.' It was probably to this Aristarchus that Mde. d'Aulnoy, some ten years later (Voyage d'Espagne, iii. 21), alludes: 'Il y a entre autres un cordonnier qui en décide; et qui s'est acquis un pouvoir si absolu de le faire, que lorsque les auteurs les ont achevées, (les Comédies) ils vont chez lui pour briguer son suffrage; ils lui lisent leurs pièces; le cordonnier prend son air grave, dit cent impertinences, qu'il faut pourtant essuyer.' It is proper to say that I am indebted to Casiano Pellicer (Tratado Hist. sobre el Origen, &c. de la Comedia, Madrid, 1804) for the report by Caramuel; the folios of that voluminous and learned Cistercian being otherwise known to me by their titles only, in N. Antonio and Alvarez (Hijos de Madrid). I say 'spoken,' because the poetry written to be sung, by Italians, such as Metastasio (I will not speak of Quinault's French), may be put on the same level, as regards the grace of metrical form, at least. The pastorals by Guarini, Tasso, and others, were not stage pieces in the sense here meant. 1859.] Poetic in form and substance. rich and dainty, that it might seem to have been elaborately composed for a few nice judges, as a trial of metrical skill alone, without regard to any other purpose. Yet in this fine tissue the figures move with the utmost vivacity and ease; their passions and humours are marked with as much emphasis and point as the plainest prose could give, and lose nothing in spirit from the grace of their manner; while the business of the scene goes promptly forward, with every incident of contention, hurry, or surprise required for prompt dramatic effect, in verse that never halts, yet never seems to be sustained at the expense of the action. And this, be it remembered, is true not of one or two choice and elaborate specimens, but of pieces by the thousand, which the poets of that day, Lope above all, poured forth faster than the readiest scribe could now copy them in prose. One knows not which to admire the most-the taste of a populace which this fine workmanship was made to please, or the mastery of invention and language required to produce it with such ease and abundance. The poetic stamp is not on the outside only; you see it in every part of these plays; many passages, indeed, are introduced solely to make the impression more vivid. The insertion of picturesque descriptions and narratives purely ornamental, for which the stage business is willingly suspended, must be referred to this designthe relation of which to the older national poetry has already been noticed. Such mere decorations, many of them in the style of the romances, others in the richer garb of the Italian school, octaves, silvas (in the manner of odes), sonnets especially, must all, in a strict critical sense, be deemed excrescences in an acted drama. They would certainly, 59 and with reason, be heard with impatience by a modern audience. That they were, however, relished by those for whom they were written, is beyond doubt: nothing, indeed, which they could not admire would have been suffered on the stage of that day. And that they were heard with pleasure by the multitude of playgoers, shows what a love of poetry for its own sake must have been among them. This seen, it will be understood how the substance of these plays should be imbued with the same principle that beautifies their form, and even delights to load it with superfluous ornaments. Whatever the subject chosen, it is always taken up and presented, not as a plain transcript of reality, but in a picture, with more or less of an ideal tone. The vehicle, indeed, in which it is conveyed, necessarily has the effect of raising it above close imitation; holding it at a certain distance from the eye, by the force of its poetic colouring. But more than this was required to satisfy the imagination of the spectators. They wished to be carried by the poet beyond the narrow space and rude appliances of the stage; and he obeyed them by taking an extent of range, and a licence of invention, which engaged the fancy in proportion as they exceeded what stage-representation alone could show. While an ideal refinement of his story was grateful to his audience, the poet, in treating it with a freedom regardless of time or place, was barely keeping pace with their absolute demands. They required, above all things, an expansion of the fable in which the scenic part could not be conceived without liberal aid from the imagination: and they followed its progress with the mind as readily as with the eye. To this genial relation between the poet and his public, it greatly conduced,—by Lope, in the Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias, puts this with humorous exaggeration: la colera |