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Pedro Calderon de la Barca and Madrid's Theatrical Calendar, 1700–1750: A Question of Priorities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2014
Extract
Until recently, the subject of Calderón's dominance of eighteenth-century popular theatre has been a closed case. What discussion there had been was centered on the heated polemics which surged during the second half of the century between the rabidly anti-Calderonian neo-classicists and the pro-Calderonian nationalists. Despite their conflicts over the literary and dramatic quality of his work, the general consensus on both sides was that Calderón's plays enjoyed widespread popularity among theatre-goers, and that his style influenced successive generations of dramatists throughout the century.
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NOTES
1 The most vociferous defender of Calderón was Juan Cristóbal Romea y Tapia, whose tract El escritor sin título was as much ana pology for Calderón and the auto sacramental as it was a direct attack against José Clavijo y Fajardo's anti-Calderonian stance, as expressed in his periodical El Pensador. A more moderate viewpoint was presented by Mariano Nipho in his periodical El Diario Extranjero and in his essay La nación defendida. Nipho recognizes Calderón's dramatic genius though he is quick to point out the glaring defect of inverisimilitude inherent to most Golden Age drama. See Cook, John A., Neo-Classic Drama in Spain (Dallas: Southern Methodist Press, 1959), pp. 175–79Google Scholar (Romea) and pp. 180–201 (Nipho); see also Alborg, Juan, Historia de la literatura española, siglo XVIII (Madrid: Gredos, 1972), pp. 579–83.Google Scholar
2 The number of critics who attacked Golden Age drama in general and Calderón's works in particular shows that, at least among the emerging neo-classic movement's leaders, seventeenth-century Spanish drama was a scourge upon hispanic culture. Bias Antonio Nasarre was one of the most adamant critics, and referred to Lope and Calderón as the first and second corrupters of Spanish theatre. Luis José Velázquez, José Clavijo y Fajardo and Nicolás Fernández de Moratín all soundly condemned Calderón and his pernicious influence. See Cook, , Neo-Classic Drama, pp. 86–107Google Scholar (Nasarre), pp. 137–45 (Velázquez), pp. 159–75 (Clavijo), and pp. 209–23 (Moratín).
3 Andioc, René, Teatro y sociedad en el Madrid del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Fundación Juan March and Castalia, 1976), pp. 18–20.Google Scholar Future references will be made within the text.
4 In Andioc's earlier French version of Teatro y sociedad (Sur la querelle du Théâtre au temps de Leandro Fernández de Moratín) [Tarbes: Imprimerie Saint-Joseph, 1970], he offers fascinating statistical evidence to suggest that, contrary to the protestations of numerous eighteenth-century writers that Calderón's support in the theatres was limited to the lower classes, it was actually the upper-class theatre audience who attended Calderón's plays most consistently. See Sur la querelle, pp. 41–43, and Teatro y sociedad, pp. 24–29.
5 My statistics are based on research done on the theatre documents housed in the Archivos Municipales de Madrid. Foremost among the thousands of items there are the Libros de Productos y Gastos, the daily financial recordsfor performances in the Cruz and Principe theaters. The books are complete for the period 1708 to 1740, and list the title of the play performed, the gross profits — broken down according to the various sections in the theatre — and many of the production and administrative costs incurred. For more detailed information on theatre administration and these documents I refer the reader to my doctoral thesis, “Theatrical Production in Madrid s Cruz and Principe Theaters During the Reign of Felipe V,” University of Texas at Austin 1980.
6 Professor Mildred Boyer (University of Texas, Austin) has suggested to me that there might be a possible correlation between the administration's contractual definition of comedia nueva as including any play not performed in ten years and the numbers of Golden Age plays which appeared under the label Comedia Nueva in suelta editions printed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
7 The terms comedia de intermedio and comedia diaria are not exactly synonymous. Comedia de intermedio was a contractual term used by the administration to refer to a category of plays within the repertory from a temporal perspective — that is, plays not performed in two years. Comedia diaria, on the other hand, was a label describing a type of production in which there was little or no stagecraft involved. In practice the large majority of plays in both categories were Golden Age ones.
8 The core repertory was made up almost entirely by plays from the seventeenth century. Apart from Calderón, his contemporaries Agustín Moreto, Juan de Matos Fragoso and Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla were among the Golden Age dramatists represented in this group. Only two eighteenth-century playwrights had works in this category: Cañizares (El dómine Lucas and El falso Nuncio de Portugal) and Zamora (El hechizado por fuerza).
9 Beginning in 1720, performances on specific holidays were given after the autos in late July and August in an attempt by the administration to keep the companies in Madrid for the entire theatre season. These performances were considered to be part of the primera temporada and did not diminish the effect of the opening production in September, either on the audiences or on the performers.
10 During the period 1708 to 1740, for example, forty ofthe sixty Christmas productions were premiere performances.
11 An exception was made if the next performance day was a Sunday, since receipts were invariably higher on those days and it was assumed that the Sunday performance would earn substantially more than the minimum. Although this regulation existed, the companies could choose to ignore it, though they risked losing administrative financial support for any such extra performances. Conversely, the productions were often changed before the minimum profit margin had been reached, so that such a change is not always indicative of low profits.
12 In 1740 the contracts reflected a change in this procedure; The two-year performance restriction on comedias de intermedio was lifted, but a stipulation was added that no play was to be performed more than twice in a season. This reflects a major shift in the administration's attitude toward the standard repertory in favor of an expanded core repertory.
13 One production, December 18–19, 1714, has been excluded from the table as no financial data was available.
14 On more than one occasion the season opening was delayed, as when the 1721 Spring opening was postponed for two days because the lead actor's costumes were late in arriving in Madrid from his home in Badajoz, where he had gone for the Lenten break.
15 Although Calderonian works dominated the opening productions, other works which received this honor included El desdén con el desdén, El diablo predicador and El tejedor de Segovia (parts one and two).
16 In a document dated 1714, Alonso Pérez de Saavedra, Conde de la Jarosa, clearly describes the theatre administration's reasons for assuming financial responsibility for the auto productions: “Cesó el festejo de los autos y S. M. sirvió mandar aplicar a las urgencias de la guerra el caudal destinado a este fin, y aunque se ha continuado la representación al público ha sido la costa a expensas del mismo producto no sin grave sentimiento de que las razones políticas de la común diversión sean privilegiadas a la causa piadosa que se ha defraudado” (Archivos Municipales de Madrid, 3–400–24). Apparently the decision to use city funds in order to maintain the auto productions was made despite serious reservations that it would drain the already meager financial resources of the theatre administration. The causa piadosa referred to by Pérez is the financial support which the city proffered to various charitable institutions in Madrid with profits from the theatres. Still, the administration ultimately decided that keeping the general public entertained during politically unstable times was far more important than having a solvent fund for the charities.
17 Wardropper, Bruce (Introducción al teatro religioso del siglo de oro [Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1953], p. 54)Google Scholar mentions that in 1647 autos were performed apart from the Corpus festivities in the theatres, which had been closed to normal theatrical productions because of the death in 1646 of Prince Baltazar Carlos. Wardropper writes: “A principios de 1647, aunque no era la estación del Corpus, para aprovecharse de los teatros desocupados, algunas compañías decidieron representar en ellos autos sacramentales, la única forma dramática autorizada en época de luto nacional. Por primera vez se pusieron los autos bajo el régimen del teatro profano: las compañías tuvieron que pagar contribuciones y entregar parte de los beneficios a los hospitales. Perdieron, desde luego, su carácter festivo. Según parece, este experimento fracasó, ya que el día del Corpus volvieron a presentar los autos en carros en la manera tradicional.” The decision by the companies to perform autos in the public theatres strikes me, not as an experiment which broke with tradition, but rather as an attempt by the actors to maintain contact with the public during the ban on performances. If this had truly been an experiment to include the autos within the public theatre tradition, and assuming that the performances were at least moderately successful (which I think was very likely), then the companies surely would have continued the experiment in succeeding seasons. No record of such an attempt exists, however. The fact that the companies continued their outdoor performances for the Corpus productions merely serves to emphasize the close association between the traditional Corpus festival and the auto sacramental and the autonomous nature of those productions.
18 There were occasional comedia de santo productions of Golden Age plays, but they were rarely staged as comedias de teatro, which tends to confirm the subordinate status of seventeenth-century works as comedias diarias. Among those exceptions was San Franco de Sena by Agustín Moreto. It was one of the most frequently performed comedias de santo from the Golden Age, with seventeen productions in fifteen seasons between 1708 and 1732.
19 Andioc has suggested that Calderón's prominence in the eighteenth century was exaggerated due to this exclusive hold on auto and opening productions (Teatro y sociedad, pp. 19–20). 1 would insist that this Calderonian exclusivity was a confirmation rather than an exaggeration of Calderón's stature, relative to the general position of Golden Age dramatists within the priorities set by the theatre administration for the theatrical calendar's structure.