No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Spoken Letters in the Comedias of Alarcón, Tirso, and Lope
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Alarconian criticism has been given direction largely by Pérez de Montalbán's remark about the dramatist's extrañeza; consequently, much attention has been addressed to the spirit of his work—his philosophy, his moral concepts, his characterizations, his mexicanismo—but relatively little to the structure of his comedias. Thus the mechanical elements of Alarcón's plays have been largely neglected, this neglect apparently arising from the belief that in the matter of structure Alarcón relied heavily upon his masters Tirso and Lope. I have made some preliminary studies of the structure of the Alarconian comedia, and my examination of this subject reveals that in at least one respect Alarcón was demonstrably independent of these masters. The letter which is read aloud on the stage clearly illustrates how the poet departed from the practices of his contemporaries; in point of fact, the letter proves significant since a comparative study of Alarcón, Tirso, and Lope shows special patterns to be distinctive of each of these poets.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947
References
1 J. Pérez de Montalbán, Para todos. Memoria de los que escriben comedias en Castilla solamente (Madrid, 1632).
2 Julio Jiménez Rueda, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón y su tiempo (México, 1939).
3 Ibid., p. 159.
4 Professor Jiménez Rueda identifies two of the “grandes dramaturgos sus contemporáneos” elsewhere in this same work as Lope and Tirso:
“Lope y Alarcón representan los dos polos opuestos en la trayectoria de la literatura dramática Europea… . Por ahora pensaba seguir el camino que había trazado el madrileño. Juan Ruiz de Alarcón lo siguió, fué en un principio discípulo aprovechado del maestro.” (p. 135).
“En estas reuniones don Juan Ruiz de Alarcón conoció y trató, seguramente, al monje mercedario. Ciertas afinidades unían los espíritus del mexicano y del madrileño. Algunas de las comedias del primero están cortadas más por el patrón de Tirso, que por el de Lope” (p. 269).
5 I have left the function of the letter for later consideration.
6 These tables appear below in the text.
7 Antonio Castro Leal, Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, su vida y su obra (México, 1943), p. 73.
8 These periods are taken from: S. Griswold Morley and Courtney Bruerton, The Chronology of Lope de Vega's Comedias (New York: The Modern Language Association, 1940), pp. 49-65.
9 Parte primera … (Madrid, 1628); Parte segunda … (Barcelona, 1634). References, except where otherwise noted, are to BAE, xx.
I am deeply indebted to Sr. D. Alfonso Reyes for his kindness and generosity in permitting me the use of all his photographic data.
10 These were consulted in BAE, v, and NBAE, iv and ix.
11 Amor y celos hacen discretos and Por el sótano y el torno, both of which carry Tirso's name in the closing lines.
12 El vergonzoso en palacio, Cómo han de ser los amigos, and El celoso prudente.
13 Op. cit. All these plays were consulted in the Acad., the Acad. N., and the BAE.
14 Occasionally Lope used, along with regular décimas, a stanza of twelve lines, rhyming: ABBAACCDDEED. Morley and Bruerton (op. cit., p. 12) classify this as an augmented décima.
In a note on El duque de Viseo (BAE, xli, p. 440) Hartzenbusch has apparently erred, in expressing the opinion: “Falta un verso para completar décima.” Menéendez y Pelayo (Acad., x, p. 440) accepts Hartzenbusch's judgment without comment. I believe that the first three lines of the letter, which appears on the pages mentioned above, are the last three lines of a duodécima, and that the next eight lines of the letter form the first eight lines of another duodécima. The scene is then closed by a regular décima.
15 The eighth letter is preceded by romance, and followed by redondillas.
16 Additionally, redondillas appear before or after seven other prose letters in Tirso, the other passage being in quintillas on four occasions, once in silvas, and once in octavas reales; quintillas precede and follow two such letters, and octavas reales, one letter.
In Lope, 12.3 per cent of the prose letters are preceded or followed by redondillas, and the other passage is romance (nine times), quintillas (four times), octavas reales (three times), sueltos (three times), and coplas reales (once). Other passages in which Lope set prose letters are: sueltos (11.7 per cent), quintillas (8 per cent), romance (7.4 per cent), octavas reales (2.5 per cent), coplas reales (1.2 per cent), and silvas (0.6 per cent). In addition to these, some prose letters (8 per cent) are preceded by one type of verse other than redondilla, and followed by a different type.
17 The other is in a passage of redondillas.
18 One verse is omitted from the redondilla which follows Sancho's letter in La crueldad por el honor (BAE, xx, p. 458). Here is the redondilla as it appears in the princeps, except for modernization:
Sancho Aulaga.
Esto es, en suma
lo que me responde aquí.
Urg. Lo mismo me escribe a mí.
D. Ra. Y aquí trasladó la pluma …
19 In Lope only one such letter is not preceded or followed by redondillas, a letter in a passage of sueltos.
20 One of Tirso's letters in redondillas is found in a passage of romances, and another is preceded by romance and followed by redondillas.
21 La discreta venganza (BAE, xli, p. 323). Two letters are found in a single laisse in El hidalgo Bencerraje (Acad., xi, p. 65).
22 On one occasion, Tirso put a letter in romance in a passage of redondillas, and on another occasion, he used one line of romance before, and redondillas after.
Alarcón once used redondillas before such a letter, and romance after.
23 See Morley and Bruerton, op. cit., p. 53.
24 Two exceptions are found in Tirso: in La huerta de Juan Fernández (BAE, v, p. 641), the reading of a letter in prose occupies the entire scene; and in Amar por razón de estado (BAE, v, p. 167), the Duke, during a long monolog in redondillas, finds the scattered bits of a letter, and incorporates these in the passage. In a somewhat similar situation in Lope's El maestro de danzar (Acad. N., xii, p. 499), Tebano intersperses in a monolog in redondillas a few scattered pieces of a torn letter. Other examples in Lope are: Los embustes de Fabia (Acad. N., v, p. 79); El ingrato arrepentido (Acad. N., vi, p. 543), where the reader believes that she is alone, but others, hidden, are listening; El juez en su causa (Acad. N., vi, p. 664); and El poder en el discreto (Acad. N., II, p. 477).
25 El disdichado en fingir (BAE, xx, pp. 141, 142). This letter consists of 52 lines of romance, the reading of which is interrupted sixteen times. It is a ballad, and is accepted as such in the play. The fact that it is addressed to another, furnishing him interesting news (the function is expositional), leads me to list it here.
Although no redondilla or décima is broken in any letter, Alarcón often put the formal closing or the signature in a following redondilla, as in El desdichado en fingir (p. 150), La crueldad por el honor (p. 458), and La industria y la suerte (p. 27); but in La verdad sospechosa (p. 328), the signature is included in the redondilla that forms the body of the letter.
26 La verdad sospechosa, ii, i.
27 Cómo han de ser los amigos and Todo es dar en una cosa (NBAE, iv).
28 Acad. N., x, p. 38.
29 Parle primera, p. 118; cf. BAE, xx, p. 105.
30 BAE, xx, p. 113.
31 Ibid., p. 115.
32 Acad., v, pp. 726, 730, 731, 738, and 739.
33 NBAE, v, p. 438.
34 Ibid., p. 439.
35 Ibid., p. 107.
36 Ibid., p. 164.
37 NBAE, iv, p. 648.
38 Ibid., p. 655.
39 Op. cit., pp. 49-107.
40 Doña Beatriz de Silva (NBAE, iv, p. 513).
41 Lope's El anzuelo de Fenisa (Acad., xiv, p. 505); his De cosario a cosario (Acad. N., xi, p. 650); and Alarcón's La manganilla de Melilla (BAE, xx, p. 311); but see Note 46 below.
42 Tirso's Don Gil de las calzas verdes (BAE, v, p. 415).
43 NBAE, ix, pp. 62, 71, and 72.
44 Ibid., pp. 288 and 298.
45 Pedro Henríquez Ureña (“Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcón,” El libro y el pueblo, x, Núm. 2, abril de 1932, México, p. 15, n. 5) expressed himself in this manner: “Paréceme que hay, por lo menos, dos períodos en la carrera de Alarcón: uno de ensayo y otro de madurez, que acaso estén divididos por el año de 1614, en que comienza el que llamaré período madrileño. Aun en el de ensayo podrían señalarse dos subdivisiones: años de Salamanca y Sevilla (1600 y 1608) [sic] y años de México (1608 a 1613). Al primer período pertenecen, quizás: La culpa busca la pena, El desdichado en fingir, La cueva de Salamanca, Quien mal anda en mal acaba, La industria y la suerte, Mudarse por mejorarse, El semejante a sí mismo, y aún otras que se habían juzgado posteriores … . ”
The essay from which this excerpt was taken was originally delivered as a lecture December 6, 1913, and was first published in Nosotros, Mayo de 1914.
Sr. Alfonso Reyes kindly furnished me the rare issue from which I have quoted.
Antonio Castro Leal is of the opinion (op. cit., p. 129) that Mudarse por mejorarse was probably written 1617-1618, a little later than the date indicated by Henríquez Ureña, and that La industria y la suerte was written “1605-1608?” (Ibid., p. 101), which is essentially in agreement with Henríquez Ureña's statement.
See Dr. Castro Leal's interesting treatment of the chronology of Alarcón's comedias, particularly pages 73-76 in the work just cited.
46 La manganilla de Melilla (BAE, xx, p. 311). It is not improbable that Alima had her friend, Arlaja, write the letter for her, or that Arlaja had received this very letter from some suitor
47 Alfonso Reyes, Capítulos de literatura española (México, 1939), p. 198, with his happy faculty for just evaluations, observes: “Representa la obra de Alarcón una mesurada protesta contra Lope, dentro, sin embargo, de las grandes líneas que éste impuso al teatro español.”
48 Moreover, it seems probable that further objective studies of a comparative nature in this field may be highly fruitful, and that if the comedias often attributed to Alarcón, those which did not appear in his collected works, should be examined in the light of these modest findings on epistolary practices, some faint clues to their authenticity might be revealed. I am now engaged in the preparation of a study on this subject.