Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/383

 CASTILIAN,] SPAIN 359 1648), better known under the pseudonym of Tirso de Molina, one of the most flexible, ingenious, and inventive of the dramatists, displayed no less talent in the comedy of contemporary manners than in historical drama. El Jhirlador de Sevilla (Don Juan}, the most celebrated of his plays since the Italians and the French have taken possession of the subject, is reckoned his masterpiece ; but he showed himself a much greater poet in El Vergonzoso en Palacio, Don Gil de las Calm* Vtrdes, J fart a la Pia- dosa. Finally Juan Ruiz de Alarcon (died 1639), the most serious and most observant of Spanish dramatic poets, successfully achieved the comedy of character in La Verdad Sospechosa, closely followed by Corneille in his Menteur. The remaining play-writers hardly did anything but increase the number of the comedias ; they added nothing to the real elements of the drama. The second epoch of the classical drama is represented mainly by Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681), the Spanish dramatist who has obtained most celebrity abroad, where his pieces have been studied and admired (perhaps extra- vagantly) by certain critics who have not feared to rank him with Shakespeare. It is Calderon who first made honour, or more correctly the point of honour, an essen- tial motive in the conduct of his personages (e.g., El Medico de su Ilonra) ; it is he also who made the corned i a de capa y espada uniform even to monotony, and gave the comic " part " of the gracioso (confidential valet of the caballero) a fixity which it never previously possessed. There is depth and poetry in Calderon, but vagueness also and much bad taste. His most philosophic drama, La Vida es Sueno, is a bold and sublime idea, but indistinct and feebly worked out ; that his antos sacramentales give evidence of extensive theological knowledge is all that can be said in their favour. Calderon was imitated, as Lope had been, by exaggerating his manner and perverting his excellencies. Two poets only of the second half of the 17th century deserve to be cited along with him Francisco de Rojas, author of the fine historic play Del Rey abajo ninguno, and Agustin Moreto (1618-1662), author of some pleasant comedies. Among those who worked in secondary forms mention must be made of Luis Quinones de Benavente, a skilful writer of entremeses, and in fact the greatest master of the form. A new manner of writing appears with the revival of learning : the purely objective style of the old chroniclers, with their tagging on of one fact after another, without showing the logical connexion or expressing any opinion on men or things, begins to be thought puerile. An attempt is now made to treat the history of Spain in the manner of Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, whose methods of narra- tion were directly adopted. The 16th century, however, still presents certain chroniclers of the mediaeval type, with more erudition, precision, and a beginning of the critical element. La Cronica General de Espana by Ambrosio de Morales, the Compendia Historial of Esteban de Garibai, the Historia General de las Indicts Occidentals by Antonio de^Herrera, are, as far as the style is concerned, continuations of the last chronicles of Castile. Geronimo de Zurita (1512-1580) is emphatically a scholar; no one in the 16th century knew as he did how to turn to account documents and records for the purpose of completing and correcting the narratives of the ancient chronicles ; his Anales de la Corona de Aragon is a book of great value, though written in a painful style. With Juan de Mariana (1536-1623) history ceases to be a mere compilation of facts or a work of pure erudition, in order to become a work of art and of thought. The flistoria de Espana by the celebrated Jesuit, at first written in Latin in the in- terest especially of foreigners, was afterwards rendered by its author into excellent Castilian ; as a general survey of its history, well-planned, well written, and well thought out, Spain possesses nothing that can be compared with it ; it is eminently a national work, steeped throughout in the prejudices of the race. Various works of less extent, accounts of more or less important episodes in the history of Spain, may take their place beside Mariana's great monument : for example, the Guerra de Granada by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (a history of the revolt of the Moors of the Alpujarras under Philip II.), written about 1572, immediately after the events, but not published till about thirty years later, after the author's death ; the narrative of the expedition of the Catalans in the Morea in the 14th century by Francisco de Moncada (died 1635); that of the revolt of the same Catalans under the reign of Philip IV. by Francisco Manuel de Melo (died 1666), a Portuguese by birth ; and that of the conquest of Mexico by Antonio de Solis. Each of these writers has been more or less inspired by some Latin author, one pre- ferring Livy, another Sallust, etc. These imitations, it must be admitted, have something artificial and stilted, which in the long run proves as fatiguing as the unskil- fulness and heaviness of the chroniclers of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the historians of the wars of Flanders, such as Carlos Coloma, Bernardino de Mendoza, Alonso Vazquez, Francisco Verdugo, are less refined, and for that very reason are more vivid and more thoroughly interest us in that struggle of the two races, so foreign to each other and of such different genius. As for the accounts of the trans-Atlantic discoveries and conquests, they are of two kinds, either (1) memoirs of the actors or Avitnesses of those great dramas, as, e.g., the Historia Yerdadera de la Conquista de la Niieva Espana by Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of the companions of Cortes, and the Historia de las Indias by P. Bartolom6 de las Casas, the apostle of the Indians ; or (2) works by professional writers, such as Francisco Lopez de Gomara, official his- toriographers who wrote in Spain on information sent to them from the newly-discovered lands. Letter writers, a rather numerous body in Spanish Letter literature, are nearly related to the historians ; in fact, writers, letters written to be read by others than the persons addressed, or in any case revised afterwards, are only another method, a little more familiar, of writing history. Fernando del Pulgar appended to his Claros Yarones a series of letters on the affairs of his time ; and at the commencement of the 16th century Antonio de Guevara (died 1545) collected, under the title of Ejiistolas Fami- liares, his correspondence with his contemporaries, which throws a great light on the early part of the reign of Charles V., although it must be used with caution because of the numerous rifacimentos it has undergone. A cele- brated victim of Philip II., Antonio Perez (died 1611), revenged himself on his master by relating in innumer- able letters, addressed during his exile to his friends and protectors, all the incidents of his disgrace, and by selling to the ministers of France and England the secrets of the Spanish policy in which he had a hand ; some of these letters are little masterpieces of sprightliness and gallantry. Philosophy is rather poorly represented in the 16th and Philo- 17th centuries in the literature of the vernacular. The sophy. greater number of the Spanish thinkers of this epoch, whatever the school to which they belonged, scholastic, Platonic, Aristotelian, or independent, wrote in Latin. Ascetic and mystical authors alone made use of the vulgar Mysti- tongue for the readier diffusion of their doctrine among cism. the illiterate, from whose ranks a good number of their disciples were recruited. Fr. Luis de Granada (died 1588) the great preacher, Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591), Fr. Luis de Leon (1528-1598), Teresa de Jesus (1515-