6

tion of Spanish examples. Italian comedy had fallen into decay, when its reform was undertaken by the wonderful theatrical genius of U. Goldoni (1707-1793). One of the most fertile and rapid of playwrights (of his 150 comedies 16 were written and acted in a single year), he at the same time pursued definite aims as a dramatist. Disgusted with the conventional buffoonery, and ashamed of the rampaut immorality, of the Italian comic stage, he drew his characters from real life, whether of his native city (Venice) or of society at large, and sought to enforce virtuous and pathetic sentiments without neglecting the essential objects of his art. Happy and various in his choice of themes, he produced, besides comedies of general human character,2 plays on subjects drawn from literary biography or from fiction. Goldoni, whose style was considered defective by-the purists whom Italy has at no time lacked, met with a severe critic and a temporarily successful rival in Count C. Gozzi (1722-1806), who sought to rescue the comic drama from its association with the real life of the middle classes, and to infuse a new spirit into the figures of the old masked comedy by the invention of a new species. His themes were taken from Neapolitan and Oriental fairy tales, to which he accommodated some of the standing figures upon which Goldoni had made war. This attempt at mingling fancy and humour-occasionally of a directly satirical turn-was in harmony with the tendencies of the modern romantic school, and Gozzi's efforts, which though successful found hardly any imitators in Italy, have a family resemblance to those of Tieck. During the latter part of the 18th and the early years of the present century comedy continued to follow the course marked out by its acknowledged master Goldoni, under the influence of the sentimental drama of France and other countries. Villi, Nelli, the Marquis Albergati Capacelli, Sografi, Federici, and Signorelli (the historian of the drama) are mentioned among the writers of this school; to the present century belong Count Giraud, Marchisio (who took his subjects especially from commercial life), and Nota, a fertile writer, among whose plays are three treating the lives of poets. Of still more recent date are Bon and Brofferio. Though no recent Italian comedies have acquired so wide a celebrity as that which has been obtained by the successful productions of the recent French stage, there seems no reason to predict a barren future for Italian comedy any more than for Italian tragedy. Both the one and the other have survived periods of a seemingly hopeless decline; tragedy has been rescued from the pedantry of a timid classicism, and comedy from the conventionalism of its most popular but least progressive form; and neither the opera nor the ballet has succeeded in ousting from the national stage the legitimate forms of the national drama.

To the above summary of the history of the modern Italian drama it would not have been inappropriate to append a brief account of that of the MODERN GREEK. The dramatic literature of the later Hellenes is a creation of the literary movement which preceded their glorious 1 Momolo Cortesan (Jerome the Accomplished Man); La Bottega La Vedova Scaltra (The Cunning Widow); La Putta Onorata (The Respectable Girl); La Buona Figlia; La B. Sposa; La B. Famiglia; La B. Madre (the last of which was unsuccessful; "goodness," says Goldoni, "never displeases, but the public weary of everything"), &c.; and Il Burbero Benefico called in its original French version Le Bourru Bienfaisant.

del Caffé, &c.

Molière; Terenzio; Tasso.

4 Pamela; Pamela Maritata; Il Filosofo Inglese (Mr Spectator). 5 L'Amore delle tre Melarance (The Three Lemons); Il Corvo. 6 Turandot; Zobeïde.

7 L'Amore delle tre M. (against Goldoni); L'Angellino Belverde The Small Green Bird), (against Helvetius, Roussean, and Voltaire).

struggle for independence, or which may be said to form part of that struggle. After beginning with dramatic dialogues of a patriotic tendency, it took a step in advance with the tragedies of J. R. Nerulos (1778-1850), whose name belongs to the political as well as to the literary history of his country. His comedies-especially one directed against the excesses of journalism'-largely contributed to open a literary life for the modern Greek tongue. Among the earlier patriotic Greek dramatists of the present century are T. Alkaos, J. Zampelios (whose tragic style was influenced by that of Alfieri),10 S. K. Karydis, and A. Valaoritis. A. Zoiros11 is noteworthy as having introduced the use of prose into Greek tragedy, while preserving to it that association with sentiments and aspirations which will probably long continue to pervade the chief productions of modern Greek literature. The love of the theatre is ineradicable from Attic as it is from Italian soil; and the tendencies of the young dramatic literature of Hellas seem to justify the hope that a worthy future awaits it.

Italy produced many brilliant growths, from which the dramatic literatures of other nations largely borrowed; but SPAIN is the only country of modern Europe which shares with England the honour of having achieved, at a relatively early date, the creation of a genuinely national form of the regular drama. So proper to Spain was the form of the drama which she produced and perfected, that to it the term romantic has been specifically applied, though so restricted a use of the epithet is clearly unjustifiable. The influences which from the Romance peoples-in whom Christian and Germanic elements mingled with the legacy of Roman law, learning, and culture-spread to the Germanic nations were represented with the most signal force and fulness in the institutions of chivalry,-to which, in the words of Scott, "it was peculiar to blend military valour with the strongest passions which actuate the human mind, the feelings of devotion and those of love." These feelings, in their combined operation upon the national character, and in their reflection in the national literature, were not peculiar to Spain; but nowhere did they so long or so late continue to animate, the moral life of a nation. Outward causes contributed to this result. For centuries after the crusades had become a mere memory, Spain was a battle ground between the cross and the crescent. And it was precisely at the time when the Renaissance was establishing new starting-points for the literary progress of Europe, that Christian Spain rose to the height of Catholic as well as national self-consciousness by the expulsion of the Moors and the conquest of the New World. From their rulers or rivals of so many centuries the Spaniards had derived that rich glow of colour which became permanently distinctive of their national-life, and more especially of its literary and artistic expressions; they had also perhaps derived from the same source an equally characteristic refinement in their treatment of the passion of love. The ideas of Spanish chivalry-more especially religious devotion and a punctilious sense of personal honour-asserted themselves (according to a process often observable in the history of civilization) with peculiar distinctness in literature and art, after the great achievements to which they had contributed in other fields had already been wrought. The ripest glories of the Spanish drama belong to an age of national decay-mindful, it is true, of the ideas of a greater past. The chivalrous enthusiasm pervading so many of the master-pieces of its literature is indeed a characteristic of

the Spanish nation in all, even in the least hopeful, periods | of its later history; and the religious ardour breathed by these works, though associating itself with what is called the Catholic Reaction, is in truth only a manifestation of the spirit which informed the noblest part of the Reformation movement itself. The Spanish drama neither sought nor could seek to emancipate itself from views and forms of religious life more than ever sacred to the Spanish people since the glorious days of Ferdinand and Isabella; and it is not in the beginnings but in the great age of Spanish dramatic literature that there is often most difficulty in distinguishing between what is to be termed a religious and what a secular play. After Spain had thus, the first after England among modern European countries, fully unfolded that incomparably richest expression of nasional life and sentiment in an artistic form-a truly national dramatic literature, the terrible decay of her greatness and prosperity gradually impaired the strength of a brilliant but, of its nature, dependent growth. In the absence of high original genius the Spanish dramatists began to turn to foreign models, though little supported in such attempts by popular sympathy; and it is only in more recent times that the Spanish drama has sought to reproduce the ancient forms from whose master-pieces the nation had never become estranged, while accommodating them to tastes and tendencies shared by later Spanish literature with that of Europe at large.

"

The earlier dramatic efforts of Spanish literature may without inconvenience be briefly dismissed. The reputed author of the Couplets of Mingo Revulgo (R. Cota the elder) likewise composed the first act of a story of intrigue and character, purely dramatic but not intended for representation. This tragic comedy of Calisto and Melibaa, which was completed (in 21 acts) by 1499, afterwards became famous under the name of Celestina; it was frequently imitated and translated, and was adapted for the Spanish stage by R. de Zepeda in 1582. But the father of the Spanish drama was J. de la Enzina (b. c. 1468), whose representaciones under the name of " eclogues were dramatic dialogues of a religious or pastoral character. His attempts were imitated more especially by Gil Vicente (fl. 1502-1536), a Portuguese who wrote both in Spanish and in his native tongue-the dramatic literature of which is stated to have produced nothing of equal merit afterwards. (The Portuguese literary drama is held to have begun with the prose comedies of Vicente's contemporary, F. de Sa de Miranda.) A further impulse came, as was natural, from Spaniards resident in Italy, and especially from B. de T. Naharro, who in 1517 published, as the chief among the "firstlings of his genius" (Propaladia), a series of eight commedias-a terin generally applied in Spanish literature to any kind of drama. He claimed some knowledge of the theory of the ancient drama, divided his plays into iornadas (to correspond to acts), and opened them with an introyto (prologue). Very various in their subjects, and occasionally odd in form, they were gross as well as audacious in tone, and were soon prohibited by the Inquisition. The church remained unwilling to renounce her control over such dramatic exhibitions as she permitted, and sought to suppress the few plays on not strictly religi. ous subjects which appeared in the early part of the reign of Charles I. The few translations published from the classical drama exercised no effect.

Thus the foundation of the Spanish national theatre was reserved for a man of the people. Cervantes has vividly

1 The term is the same as that used in the old French collective mysteries (journées).

In some of his plays (Comedia Serafina; C. Tinelaria) there is a mixture of languages even stranger than that of dialects in the Italian masked comedy.

sketched the humble resources which were at the command of Lope de Rueda (fl. 1544-1567), a mechanic of Seville, who with his friend the bookseller Timoneda, and two brother authors and actors in his strolling company, succeeded in bringing dramatic entertainments out of the churches and palaces into the public places of the towns, where they were produced on temporary scaffolds. The manager carried about his properties in a corn sack; and the "comedies" were still only "dialogues, and a species of eclogues between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess," enlivened at times by intermezzos of favourite comic figures, such as the negress or the Biscayan, " played with inconceivable talent and truthfulness by Lope." One of his plays at least,3 and one of Timoneda's,a seem to have been taken from an Italian source; others mingled modern themes with classical apparitions; one of Timoneda's was (perhaps again through the Italian) from Plautus. Others of a slighter description were called pasos,—a species afterwards termed entremeses and resembling the modern French proverbes. With these popular efforts of Lope de Rueda and his friends a considerable dramatic activity began in the years 1560-1590 in several Spanish cities, and before the close of this period permanent theatres began to be fitted up at Madrid. Yet Spanish dramatic literature might still have been led to follow Italian in turning to an imitation of classical models. Two plays by G. Bermudez (1577), called by their learned author "the first Spanish tragedies," treating the national subject of Inez de Castro, but divided into five acts, composed in various metres, and introducing a chorus; a Dido (c. 1580) by C. de Virues (who claimed to have first divided dramas into three jornadas); and the tragedies of L. L de Argensola (acted 1585, and praised in Don Quixote) alike pointed in this direction.

Such were the alternatives which had opened for the Spanish drama, when at last, about the same time as that of the English, its future was determined by writers of original genius. The first of these was the immortal Cervantes, who, however, failed to anticipate by his earlier plays (1584-1588) the great (though to him unproductive) success of his famous romance. In his endeavour to give a poetic character to the drama he fell upon the expedient of introducing personified abstractions speaking a "divine " or elevated language—a device which was for a time favourably received. But these plays exhibit a neglect or ignorance of the laws of dramatic construction; their action is episodical; and it is from the realism of these episodes (especially in the Numancia, which is crowded with both figures and incidents), and from the power and flow of the declamation, that their effect must have been derived. When in his later years (1615) Cervantes returned to dramatic composition, the style and form of the national drama had been definitively settled by a large number of writers, the brilliant success of whose acknowledged chief may previously have diverted Cervantes from his labours for the theatre. His influence upon the general progress of dramatic literature is, however, to be sought, not only in his plays, but also in those novelas exemplares to which more than one drama is indebted for its plot, and for much of its dialogue to boot.

Lope de Vega (1562-1635), one of the most astonishing geniuses the world has known, permanently established the national forms of the Spanish drama. Some of these were in their beginnings taken over by him from ruder predecessors; some were cultivated with equal or even superior success by subsequent authors; but in variety, as in fertility of dramatic production, he has no rivals. His 3 Los Engaños (Gli Ingannati). • Cornelia (Il Negromante). Lope, Armelina (Medea, and Neptune as deus ex machina modo machina adfuisset). • Minennos.

fertility, which was such that he wrote about 1500 plays, besides 300 dramatic works classed as autos sacramentales and entremeses, and a vast series of other literary compositions, has indisputably prejudiced his reputation with those to whom he is but a name and a number. Yet as a dramatist Lope more fully exemplifies the capabilities of the Spanish theatre than any of his successors, though as a poet Calderon may deserve the palm. Nor would it be possible to imagine a truer representative of the Spain of his age than a poet who, after suffering the hardships of poverty and exile, and the pangs of passion, sailed against the foes of the faith in the Invincible Armada, subsequently became a member of the Holy Inquisition and of the Order of St Francis, and after having been decorated by the Pope with the cross of Malta and a theological doctorate, honoured by the nobility, and idolized by the nation, ended with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips. From the plays of such a writer we may best learn the manners and the sentiments, the ideas of religion and honour, of the Spain of the Philippine age, the age when she was most prominent in the eyes of Europe and most glorious in her own. For, with all its inventiveness and vigour, the genius of Lope primarily set itself the task of pleasing his public, the very spirit of whose inner as well as outer life is accordingly mirrored in his dramatic works. In them we have, in the words of Lope's French translator Baret, "the movement, the clamour, the conflict of unforeseen intrigues suitable to unreflecting spectators; perpetual flatteries addressed to an unextinguishable national pride; the painting of passions dear to a people never tired of admiring itself; the absolute sway of the point of honour; the deification of revenge; the adoration of symbols; buffoonery and burlesque, everywhere beloved of the multitude, but here never defiled by obscenities, for this people has a sense of delicacy, and the foundation of its character is nobility; lastly, the flow of proverbs which at times escape from the gracioso" (the comic servant domesticated in the Spanish drama by Lope)-" the commonplace literature of those who possess no other."

The plays of Lope, and those of the national Spanish drama in general, are divided into classes which it is naturally not always easy, and which there is no reason to suppose him always to have intended, to keep distinct from one another. After in his early youth composing eclogues, pastoral plays, and allegorical moralities in the old style, he began his theatrical activity at Madrid about 1590, and the plays which he thenceforth produced have been distributed under the following heads. The comedias, all of which are in verse, include (1) the so-called c. de capa y espada-not comedies proper, but dramas the principal personages in which are taken from the class of society which wears cloak and sword. Gallantry is their main theme, an interesting and complicated, but well-constructed and perspicuous intrigue their chief feature; and this is usually accompanied by an underplot in which the gracioso plays his part. Their titles are frequently taken from the old proverbs or proverbial phrases of the people,1 upon the theme suggested by which the plays often (as Mr Lewes admirably expresses it) constitute a kind of gloss (glosa) in action. This is the favourite species of the national Spanish theatre; and to the plots of the plays belonging to it the drama of other nations owes a debt almost incalculable in extent. (2) The c. heróicas are distinguished by some of their personages being of royal or very high sank, and by their themes being often historical and largely2 (though not

1 El Amero de Madrid (The Steel Water of Madrid); Dineros son Calidad (-The Dog in the Manger), &c.

La Estrella de Sevilla (The Star of Seville, i.e., Sancho the Brave); El Nuevo Mundo (Columbus), &c.

invariably3) taken from the national annals, or founded on contemporary or recent events. Hence they exhibit a greater gravity of tone; but in other respects there is no difference between them and the cloak and sword comedies with which they share the element of comic underplots. Occasionally Lope condescended in the opposite direction, to (3) plays of which the scene is laid in common life, but for which no special name appears to have existed." Meanwhile, both he and his successors were too devoted sons of the church not to acknowledge in some sort her claim to influence the national drama. This claim she had never relinquished, even when she could no longer retain an absolute control over the stage. For a time, indeed, she was able to reassert even this; for the exhibition of all secular plays was in 1598 prohibited by the dying Philip II., and remained so for two years; and Lope with his usual facility proceeded to supply religious plays of various kinds. After a few dramas on scriptural subjects he turned to the legends of the saints; and the comedias de santos, of which he wrote a great number, became an accepted later Spanish variety of the miracle-play. True, however, to the popular instincts of his genius, he threw himself with special zeal and success into the composition of another kind of religious plays a development of the Corpus Christi pageants, in honour of which all the theatres had to close their doors for a month. These were the famous autos sacramentales (ie., solemn "acts or proceedings in honour of the Sacrament), which were performed in the open air by actors who had filled the cars of the sacred procession. Of these Lope wrote about 400. These entertainments were arranged on a fixed scheme, comprising a prologue in dialogue between two or more actors in character (loa), a farce (entremes), and the auto proper, an allegorical scene of religious purport, as an example of which Ticknor cites the Bridge of the World,-in which the Prince of Darkness in vain seeks to defend the bridge against the Knight of the Cross, who finally leads the Soul of Man in triumph across it. Not all the entremeses of Lope and others were, however, composed for insertion in these autos. This long-lived popular species, together with the old kind of dramatic dialogue called eclogues, completes the list of the varieties of his dramatic works.

The example of Lope was followed by a large number of writers, and Spain thus rapidly became possessed of a dramatic literature almost unparalleled in quantity-for in fertility also Lope was but the first among many. Among the writers of Lope's school, his friend G. de Castro (1569–1631) must not be passed by, for his Cid was the basis of Corneille's; nor J. P. de Montalvan (1612-1638), "the first-born of Lope's genius," the extravagance of whose imagination, like that of Lee, culminated in madness. Soon after him died (1639) Ruiz de Alarcon, in whose plays, as contrasted with those of Lope, has been recognized the distinctive element of a moral purpose. To G. Tellez, called Tirso de Molina (d. 1648), no similar praise seems due; but the frivolous gaiety of the inventor of the complete character of Don Juan was accompanied by ingenuity in the construction of his excellent though at times "sensational "8 plots. F de Roxas y Zorilla (b. 1607), who was largely plundered by the French dramatists of the latter half of the century, survived Molina for about a generation. In vain scholars

3 Roma Abrasada (R. in Ashes-Nero).
Arauco Domado (The Conquest of Arauco, 1560).

5 La Moza de Cantaro (The Water-maid).

Las Mocedades (The Youthful Adventures) del Cid.

7 Don Gil de las Calzas Verdes (D. G. in the Green Breeches).

8 El Burlador de Sevilla y Convivad de Pierra (The Deceiver of Seville, i.e., Don Juan, and the Stome Guest).