Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/139

Rh VEGA 123 lie kept a steady watch upon all that was published in Italy, cultivated carefully the connexions he had established with Italian writers of repute, and was always flattered by the eulogies which reached him from that quarter. His principal friend and corre spondent in Italy was the Neapolitan poet, G. B. Marini, one of the worst corrupters of Italian literature (see vol. xiii. p. 511). He puts himself at Marini s feet, calls him antistes Musarum and Italiue dccos, sends him his portrait, and humbly begs his in dulgence for a drama which he has been so bold as to dedicate to him (see dedication to Virtud, Pobreza, y Mugcr). Lope knew French also, and his works give evidence of an acquaintance with French poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries such as is rare in Spain ; he occasionally quotes Ronsard and Malherbe, and shows solicitude as to French opinion about his dramatic writings. In a word, his literary culture was chiefly Latin-Italian ; and, if he defends the tradition of the nation, and the pure simplicity of the old Castilian against &quot; los de la nueva poesia,&quot; that is to say, the innovators of the school of Gongora, and against the jargon of the &quot;cultos,&quot; still he does not wish to be taken for an unin formed person, for a mere casual litterateur devoid of classical training : he especially emphasizes the fact that he has passed through the university, and is continually accentuating the differ ence between the &quot; ingenios cicntificos &quot; (those who know Latin) and &quot;legos ignorantes&quot; (ignorant laymen). With what a sense of superiority, for example, does he mention that Cervantes was not to his mind sufficiently &quot; cieutiiico &quot; (preface to Las Fortunas de Diana), the fact being that Cervantes had been neither at Alcala nor at Salamanca ! For a rapid survey of the works of Lope, it is convenient to begin with those which the Spaniards include under the name of Obras Siicltas, the title of the large collection of the poet s non-dramatic works (Madrid, 21 vols. 4to, 1776-79). We shall enumerate the most important of these, as far as possible in the order of publication. The Arcadia (1598), a pastoral romance, composed at the instance of the duke of Alva, and inspired by Sanna/aro, Montcniayor, and Cervantes, is one of the poet s feeblest and most wearisome productions. Isidro (1599), a narrative of the life of Isidore, patron of Madrid, is called a Castilian poem on account of the rhythm in which it is composed, quintillas of octo syllabic verse. The Nermosura de Angelica (1602), in three books, is a sort of continuation of the Orlando Furioso, in octaves after the fashion of the original poem. Similar in form is La Dragontca, a fantastic history of the last expedition and the death of Sir Francis Drake, who was such a terror to the fleets and the coast of Spain that his name had become a synonym for that of the evil one. Finally the Rimas are a miscellany of short pieces. In 1604 was published the Pcrcgrino en su Patria, a romance in prose and verse, similar in kind to the ^thiopica of Heliodorus ; it is a mediocre work, but of great bibliographical interest, on account of its authentic list of the comedies which Lope recognized as having been written by him up to that date, a list which he augmented by 114 new titles in the 1618 edition of the novel. The more Lope composed poetry the more he went to the Italian poets for inspiration, labouring to show that the mechanism of the Italian octave was as familiar to him as that of the national redondilla. Having imitated Ariosto, he proceeded to imitate Tasso ; but his Jerusalem Conquis- tada (1609) has preserved nothing of the art shown in its model, and is a dull and insipid performance. Little need be said about the Pastor es de Belen (1612), a sort of pious pastoral, dedicated to his son Carlos, which forms a pendant to his secular Arcadia, or about the incidental pieces which he published in connexion with the solemnities of the beatification and canonization of St Isidore in 1620 and 1622. And it is enough simply to mention La Filomcna (1621), La Circe (1624), and other poems published about the same date, as also the four prose novels, Las Fortunas de Diana, El Des- dichado por la ffonra, La Mas Prudente Venganza, and Guzman el Bravo. The great success of the Nuvclas Egemplares of Cervantes (1613) had stimulated Lope, who wished to measure himself with the author of Don Quixote on the field of the novel ; and, as this literary form had been borrowed from the Italians, he expected to achieve a success as great as that which he supposed to be already his in the fields of pastoral romance and epic poetry. But in this instance at least the &quot; cientifico &quot; was completely defeated by the &quot;lego&quot;: Lope s novels have none of the grace, naturalness, or interest which characterize those of his rival. The last important work which has to be mentioned before we leave the narrative poetry of Lope is the Laurel de Apolo (1630). This piece describes the coronation of the poets of Spain on Helicon by Apollo. All of them good, middling, and bad share in the ceremonial, and among the poets properly so called appear some other men of letters, certain important personages to whom Lope felt under obligations, which could not be more satisfactorily paid than in the current coin of verse which he had so readily at his command. This work is more meritorious as a bibliographical manual of Spanish poetry at that time than as genuine poetry. One other &quot;obra suelta,&quot; closely akin to Lope s dramatic works, though not properly speak ing a drama, is La Dorotca (1632). Lope describes it as an &quot; action in prose,&quot; but it is rather a &quot;romance in dialogue&quot;; for, although divided into acts, the narrative has nothing dramatic about it ex cept its outward form ; and on account of its size and the digres sions with which it is encumbered it has never succeeded in finding its way to the stage. It belongs to the class of which Celcstina is the type, in so far as one of the principal characters, La Gerarda, is a go-between ; but Lope has amplified his model, idealized it, and purged away much of the grossness belonging to the mean sur roundings of the character of the original Celestina and common to the numerous works of the 16th and 17th centuries to which it gave rise. Of all Lope s productions Dorotea is undoubtedly that which shows most observation and study ; the style also is unusually simple arid easy. The attempt has sometimes been made to dis cover in the adventures of Fernando, one of its heroes, allusions to Lope s early youth ; but there is nothing conclusive in any of the supposed coincidences between fact and fiction which Fauriel and others after him have sought to establish. Of all this mass of Obras Sueltas, filling more than twenty volumes, very little (leaving Dorotea out of account) holds its own in the impartial judgment of posterity. The long epic or narrative poems are quite unreadable, and almost the same must be said of the pastorals and novels. The lyrical element alone retains some vitality. From the Rimas and other collections of detached pieces one could compile a pleasing anthology of sonnets, epistles, elegies, and romances, to which it would be proper to add the Gatomaquia, a burlesque poem pub lished along with other metrical pieces in 1634 by Lope under the pseudonym of Tome de Burguillos. But here the list would have to stop. It is, however, to his dramatic writings that Lope owes his very considerable place in literary history. It is very curious to notice how he himself seizes every available occasion for depreciating the work of the drama, treats the art of comedy -writing as one of the humblest of trades (de pane lucrando}, and protests against the supposition that in writing for the stage his aim is glory and not money. 1 The reason is not far to seek. The Spanish drama, which, if not literally the creation of Lope, at least owes to him its defini tive form the three-act comedy was totally regardless of the pre cepts of the school, the pseudo-Aristotelianism of the doctors of the period. Lope accordingly, who stood in awe of the criticism of the &quot; cientificos,&quot; felt bound to let them see that, from the point of view of literary art, he attached no value to the &quot; rustic fruits of his humble vcga.&quot; In his Artc Nuevo de Hacer Comcdias en Este Tiempo, which was published in 1609 and is the Ars Poetica of the new school, Lope begins by showing that he knows as well as any one the established rules of poetry, and then excuses himself for his in ability to follow them on the ground that the &quot;vulgar&quot; Spaniard cares nothing about them. &quot;Let us then speak to him in the language of fools, since it is he who pays us.&quot; Under such condi tions all that the dramatic poet can do is to plan ingenious plots, so as adroitly to sustain the interest and retard as long as possible the denouement, for nothing is more displeasing to the ordinary public than to be able to divine too soon the solution of the problem set before them on the boards of the theatre. Such, with a few pieces of advice as to the choice of metres and the costume of the actors, is the recipe for the new or free comedy, a barbarous kind of literature, according to Lope, and outside the region of art, yet the only drama possible in Spain. 2 Another reason, more serious still, which made it necessary for him to speak deprecatingly of his dramatic works is the circumstance that the vast majority of them were written in haste and to order, precisely like so many feuilleton romances of Alexandre Dumas ; they are for the most part comcdias de rcpcnte, hurriedly conceived at the request of some grandee or of some impresario or manager. The poet does not hesitate to con fess that &quot; more than a hundred of my comedies have taken only twenty -four hours to pass from my brain to the boards of the theatre.&quot; Perez de Montalban, who lias a great admiration for this kind of cleverness, tells how, at Toledo, on a certain occasion, Lope composed fifteen acts in fifteen days that is to say, five entire comedies, which he read to his friends step by step with the process of their composition. On another occasion, when pressed by a manager who wanted something for the carnival, Lope took Mon talban as a collaborateur ; the two friends parcelled out the comedy between them, Lope undertaking the first act, Montalban the second, and the third, to save time, was divided between them. In two days they had finished the first two acts, and on the third Mon talban rose at two in the morning and at eleven he had finished. Then he went in search of Lope, who, when questioned as to his progress, replied : &quot; I got up at five, finished the act, break fasted, wrote an epistle of fifty tercets, and have now finished watering the garden, and a rather tough business it has been.&quot; This is not art ; it is handicraft, and one understands why Lope sometimes found it prudent to lay stress on the fact that his come dies had been written for the ears of spectators, not for readers in 1 Algunos quo picnsan que las escribo por opinion ; desengatleles V. M. y 2 Las comedias de Espafia no gn.irdan el arte. . . porque con aquel rigor de niuguna inanera fuerau oidas de los Espanoles.