Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/474

* SPANISH LITERATURE. 410 SPANISH LITERATURE. otiier novel, the Persiles y Sigismunda (pv.I)- lislied postluimously ), but that he could handle the shorter tale with skill is proved by his JfoveJas ejeinplares. Among those who cultivated the tale after the time of Cervantes were Lope de Vega. Tirso de Molina (in his Cigarrales de Toledo. 1021), Montalban (Para todos, 1632), Maria de Zayas, Solorzano, Salas" Barbadillo, and Luis Velez de Guevara (with his famous Diablo cojuelo, 1641, the source of Lesage's Diahle boiteux). Quevedo (1580-1645) was the fore- most of the prose satirists of the age; in his witty and sarcastic Suei'ios, cartas del eaballero de la tenaza, etc., he cries out against abuses with which bitter pai'sonal experience had made him acquainted. As a literary form the drama had been prac- tically unrepresented since the end of the twelfth century; but now, at the end of the fifteenth cen- tury, it was to revive and receive an unsurpassed development. Juan del Encina (c. 1468-1534) be- gins the new order. Encina spent some years In Italy; hence an Italian influence on his work is not improbable. The comic elements in some of the pieces may show an influence of the French farce. Disciples of Encina were Lucas Fernandez, who employs the terms 'farsa' and 'comedin' ; the Portuguese Gil Vicente ; and Torres Naharro, whose art shows considerable progress over that of the master. In his plays we meet for the first time with a division into acts. The pieces of the foregoing authors were intended for the refined audiences of the Court; those of Diego Sfinchez (c. 1530-47) seem to have been meant for per- formance amid more popular surroundings. Italian influence is unmistakable in the comedias of Lope de Rueda, an actor ( c. 1540-66 ), famed for his short and witty pasos or entremeses. The Latin tragedy is obviously imitated in the first really important Spanish tragedy, the T^iimavcia of Cer- vantes. Avendafio in 1533 first adopts the divis- ion into three acts instead of five. Juan de la Cueva (1550-1607), the first Spanish drama- tist to deal with incidents taken from the na- tional history, adopted a division into four acts. But by common consent there is awarded to Lope de" Vega (1562-10351 and to his younger compeer Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-81) supremacy among the many gifted dramatic au- thors. Inventive beyond conception and amaz- ingly prolific in production. Lope is known to have composed over 1,500 plays, irrespective of a number of atitos (one-act plays of a religious and allegorical nature), loas (preludes), and entre- meses (interludes) ; of these pieces about 500 are still extant. The number of enduring masterpieces among his pieces is remarkably large, especially in the case of his historical dramas, such as El mejor alcalde el rey and Los Tellos de Meneses;, and we even still find hardly less interesting and powerful than they such a play as the Estrella de Secilla and not a few of his comedias de capa y espada or plays dealing with every-day life. Lope's disciples included Mira de Amescua (e.l578-164n. Luis Velez de Guevara (1570- 1644), :MontaIban, and Euiz de Alarcon (died 1039). Alarcon wrote the comedy La verdnd sosppclwsn. the model of Corneille's Mentenr. In talent. Lope was most nearly approached by the cleric Gabriel Tfllez (1570-1048; kno™ also by the pseudonym Tirso de Molina). After Lope's death Calderon reigned on the stage. Though less inventive, Calderon paid more attention to details of form, simplifying somewhat the multitudinous metrical forms in use in the drama. In philosopiiie insight he was inferior to Lope, yet in La vida es siieiio ("Life is a Dream") he cannot really be deemed unsuccessful in his endeavor to give dramatic reality to one of the most transcendental of ideas. He first gave great importance on the boards to the pundonor (the point of honor) as an actuat- ing impulse of the Spaniard's life, and he gave its greatest development to the stock figure of the gracioso or clown. He devoted no little at- tention to the type of religious play called the aiilo sacramental. Of his followers, two were men of distinguished talents: Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla ( 1607-C.1660) . who produced the excel- lent play, Del rey abajo ninguno, and Agustfn Moreto (c. 1618-1669), to whom we owe El desd^n con el desdin. Swift and deep was the decline in Spanish let- ters that followed the siglo de oro. and it went hand in hand with a decay in things national and political, which the advent to the throne of the French Bourbon house could do little to check. By the opening years of the eighteenth century Gongorism had thoroughly vitiated lyric verse, the novel had become unimportant, and the stage was controlled by dull or absurdly fantastic imi- tators of the older national drama. Not a single Spanish writer of the first order made his ap- pearance during the first three decades of the eighteenth century, and during that period the onlv event of importance was the establishment in 1714 of the Spanish Academy (La Real Aca- demia Espauola), whose Dictionary appeared in 1726-39. With the fourth decade came a new movement, the chief object of which was to chasten popular taste by the introduction of foreign aesthetic canons, particularly those of France. The impulse to the new movement was given bylgnacio de Luzfln. (1702-54), a man of great talent and greater culture, who set forth in his Pot'^ica ( 1737) the principles that ought to govern poetic produc- tion. Luz.'in preached that the various literary genres should not be intermingled and that the Spanish drama should be subjected to the French system of unities. The doctrines which he thus laid down were taken vp and applied by his disciples Nassare (1689-1751), Montiano (1697- 1765), the author of two tragedies, and by Luis Jos6 Velazquez (1722-72), in his Origenes de la poesia casfellann (1749). In his Teatro critico (1726-29) and in his Cartas eriiditas y cfiriosas (1742-60), Benito FeijOo (1676?-1764) first made known to a large part of the Spanish nation many of the scientific developments and discov- eries of the age. Jos^ Francisco de Isla (1703- 81), in his amusing though rather long-winded novel. Bistoria del famoso predicador. Fray Ge- rnndio de Campazas (1758), ridiculed unmerci- fully the extravagance, ignorance, and pedantry that characterized most of the pulpit eloquence of his time. Isla is also famous for his attempt to appropriate to Spanish literature the Gil Bias of Lesage. A party headed by Garcfa de la Huerta (1734- 87 ) strove, but inettectually. to curb the growing tendency to imitate French models. On the other hand, the followers of Luzftn formed a strong school, known as the Salamancan school. The foremost member of this new school was Juan