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Spanish Comedias as Pot Boilers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Sturgis E. Leavitt
Sturgis E. Leavitt*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Extract

The comedias of the Golden Age in Spain present a field of investigation that seems to be inexhaustible. The dramatic productions of that unbelievably exuberant period are so numerous that no one can hope to read them all. Even to try to keep up with the research based upon them is a task of the first magnitude. These plays have been studied from the point of view of sources, dramatic technique, versification, style, dates of the plays, authorship, and much, much else.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 2 , May 1967 , pp. 178 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 “Sans doute quelqu'une de ces assemblées littéraires, imitées de celles qui fleurissaient alors en Italie et qui tenaient leurs séances chez quelque grand seigneur lettré.” Alfred Morel-Fatio, “L“Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo' de Lope de Vega,” BH, iii (1901), 367.

2 In a note to me Bruce Wardropper makes this comment: “I would myself be more inclined to think (with Menéndez Pidal!) that Lope is being ironic. Is he not saying in effect: ‘You fellows, students of dramatic theory, think you know all there is to writing plays. I, as a mere practitioner of the art, know nothing, of course.‘ Irony, if my reading is correct, is anything but polite.”

3 George Ticknor, History of Spanish Literature (Boston, 1863), ii, 177.

4 Alfred Morel-Fatio, La Comedia espagnole du XVII siècle (Paris, 1885), p. 31.

5 James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, History of Spanish Literature (New York, 1910), p. 255.

6 Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (Madrid, 1907–20), iii (1920), 433.

7 Hugo A. Rennert, y Américo Castro, Vida de Lope de Vega (Madrid, 1919), p. 187.

8 Ramón Menéndez Pidal, “Lope de Vega: ‘El Arte nuevo’ y la nueva biografía,” RFE, xxii (1935), 352.

9 George Tyler Northup, An Introduction to Spanish Literature (Chicago, 1925), p. 271; 3rd ed., revised and enlarged by Nicholson B. Adams (Chicago, 1960), p. 272.

10 “La paradoja del ‘Arte nuevo’,” Rev. de Occidente, Año ii, 2a época (1964), p. 314.

11 In the introduction to Ocho comedias Cervantes writes: “Vendíselas al tal librero … él me las pagó razonablemente, yo cogí mi dinero con suavedad sin tener cuenta con dimes ni diretes de recitantes.”

12 A. G. de Amezúa y Mayo, “Como se hacía un libro en nuestro siglo de oro,” in Opúsculos histórico-literarios (Madrid, 1951), i, 331–373.

13 “Lope de Vega y la condition económico-social del escritor en el siglo XVII,” CHA, Nos. 161–162 (May–June, 1963), 249–261. Rennert and Castro (La vida de Lope de Vega, Ch. xiii) dwell at length on the poverty of Lope.

14 R. Trevor Davies, Spain in Decline, 1621–1700 (London, 1957), p. 104. These figures do not quite agree with Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501–1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), p. 370. He gives mutton at 26 maravedís a pound in 1605, and wine at 173.8 an arroba (8 azumbres) in 1605. Casiano Pellicer quotes a statement made in 1614 by one of the hospitals in Madrid: “[el pan] se había subido de tres quartos y medio a seis: el carnero de cinco y medio a siete y medio.” Tratado histórico …, p. 160. Can this be as much as 51 maravedís for bread, and 65 maravedís for mutton?

Bruce Wardropper has called my attention to a statement by W. Somerset Maugham: “[Lope's] main source of livelihood was his pen. The managers paid fifty ducats for a play. A ducat was worth five shillings, but so far as I can make out its purchasing power was about equal to that of a pound. Since this does not mean very much I have had the curiosity to note the relative prices that were paid for certain commodities. According to the contriver in Cervantes' Coloquio de Cipión y Berganza a man could live on a real and a half a day, and there were eleven reales in a ducat. From La Gitanilla I gather then ten ducats was a good price to pay for a donkey; fifty, as I have just said, for a three act play; and when Cervantes was rescued from slavery in Algiers his ransom was five hundred. On the other hand when a middle-aged gentleman desired to be rid of Cervantes' daughter, who had been living under his protection, he had to provide her with a house and two thousand ducats. From this it is evident that a play was worth ten times as much as a donkey and a man of genius fifty times; but a maiden's innocence was worth more than four times as much as a man of genius. The price of a virtuous woman, as we know, is far above rubies.” Don Fernando, or Variations on Some Spanish Themes (Garden City, N. Y., 1935), p. 152.

15 Cristobal Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos acerca del histrionismo español en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1901), and “Nuevos datos acerca del histrionismo español en los siglos XVI y XVII. Segunda serie,” BH, xiv (1902), 300–317. Here are some of these contracts: 1632. Obligación de María Calderón, de ir a la villa de Pinto … haciendo los primeros papeles … Nuevos datos, p. 226. 1636. Obligacion de Francisco Maire y su mujer Jacinta Vélez de ir a la villa de Algete para ayudar a representar dos comedias … haciendo Jacinta la primera parte en las representaciones y cantar y bailar … Nuevos datos, p. 247. 1637. Concierto de María de Quiñones … durante un año para representar todos los papeles principales de dama … Nuevos datos, p. 258. 1639. Obligation de Francisca Paula Pérez … durante un año, para hacer todos los principales papeles y cantar y bailar … Nuevos datos, p. 303.1641. Obligación de Isabel María, mujer soltera, de asistir en la compañía de Antonio de Rueda durante un año para hacer los principales papeles o segundos de dama, y no menos … BH, xiv, p. 309. And this was not the whole story of the demands of the actresses. It seems to have been fairly common for these high-strung ladies to insist upon having two horses available for them when the company was on the road. They had no intention of travelling in the baggage car. And in one contract the manager agrees to get a trunk out of hock in order to coax the lady to sign on the dotted line.

16 RPh, vii (1953), 19–26.

17 Rennert and Castro mention only one play, La dama boba, that Lope wrote for a specific actress, Jerónima de Burgos (Vida de Lope, pp. 176–177, 217, 259).

18 “The rallying cry of El Caudillo's opponents was 'No pasarán.' First to use the war cry was the foremost woman Communist of the time, La Pasionaria, Basque-born Dolores Ibarruri, whose fiery orations urging women to fight Franco 'with knives and burning oil' made world headlines. Today, at 66, she lives in exile here [Moscow], is always present at Red rallies. She also delivers four or five anti-Franco broadcasts weekly over Radio Moscow and Radio Prague. Each ends, in hoary Red tradition, ‘Workers of the World, Unite’,” Newsweek, 2 July 1962, p. 10.

19 In the comment to the recording of this play by RCA Española, we find the following: “En esta [versión] se respeta casi enteramente el original, sustituyendo algunas palabras y conceptos, y se suprimen los personajes del hidalgo Don Mendo y su criado Nuño, por considerar que su interventión, ajena a la línea directa del drama, es menos comprensible si no se pueden ver sus dos figuras, trasunto de las de Don Quijote y su escudero Sancho Panza.”

20 See Sturgis E. Leavitt, “Pedro Crespo and the Captain in Calderón's Alcalde de Zalamea,” Hispania, xxxviii (1955), 430–431. Bruce Wardropper says: “He [Pedro Crespo] appeals for a gentlemanliness which he knows will not be forthcoming because he must exhaust all possibilities of a lawful peaceable solution before taking the law into his own hands.”

21 Rennert y Castro, Vida de Lope de Vega, p. 222.

22 Rennert y Castro, Vida de Lope de Vega, p. 261.