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05 August 2013

Theatre in Spain’s “Siglo de Oro” I: Background, Religious Drama and Major Playwrights



Unlike the rest of Europe, the Moors occupied much of Spain during the Middle Ages, beginning in 711 and gradually decreasing until the late fifteenth century.  Learning flourished, Spain’s unique architectural style developed, but because of 
The Moorish influence on Spanish
architecture - The Alhambra
Court of Lions
Muslim beliefs not much happened in the way of theatre in Spain until after 1469.  In that year the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella united the two major portions of the kingdom under a Roman Catholic rule, and they gradually expelled both the Moors and the Jews from the country (the infamous Spanish Inquisition began in 1480).  In 1492 the defeat of the Moors at Granada created a completely unified Spain, which by 1550 had become the strongest nation in the western world, as a result of a combined faith (for better or worse) in God, Church, and the State. At this time Spain embarked on a siglo de oro, a golden age, which included its theatre
      
Religious dramas were being used to educate and strengthen Catholic Spain at the very time the rest of Europe was banning religious drama.  The religious plays became associated with the
Autos sacramentales re-enacted in Valencia
 Feast of Corpus Christi, as many in the rest of Europe had done during the Medieval era). A reminder: Corpus Christi emphasized the power of the sacraments (there are seven and perhaps the most important is Holy Communion, which celebrates the “body of Christ”).  Because they focused on the sacraments, they became known as autos sacramentales.  These plays about the sacraments combined characteristics of morality plays and cycle plays.  Human and supernatural characters mingled with allegorical characters, such as sin, grace, grief, and so on.  Stories could be drawn from any source, as long as they displayed the validity of the sacraments and Church dogma.
      
Until approximately 1550 trade and religious guilds called cofradias staged the autos. These were confraternities, church-based charity organizations that fed and clothed the poor and ran hospitals. By 1558 professional acting troupes were often employed by the cofradias to perform these religious pieces, and the autos were written by Spain’s finest dramatists. Compare this with Medieval religious drama in the rest of Europe where plays were performed by townspeople and where the names of few writers are known.  In Madrid, Spain’s capital, three autos were given each year until 1592; the number rose to 4 per year until 1647; and after 1647, two autos were presented each year. By the way, from 1647-1681, one writer, Calderon de la Barca, wrote all of the autos sacramentales staged in Madrid (nearly 80 plays).

     
We have visual evidence that the plays were staged on carros, two-storied wagons that were pulled up to portable platforms.  We know that in 1690 the carros were 16’ long and 36’ tall.  You’ll remember I hope that this is similar to Medieval staging on pageant wagons.
  
    
In the early sixteenth century, the Renaissance came to Spain via Italy, and playwrights began to translate Latin and Greek works into Spanish, and also to write plays based on these models.  One of the best-known writers was Fernando Rojas (c 1465 - c 1541), who wrote La Celestina in 1492 – this was not a play as such, rather a novel in dialogue form that influenced many later Spanish playwrights. Another early writer was Juan del Encina (1469-1529), who wrote religious plays and pastorals, including El triunfo del amor (The Triumph of Love) in 1497.

      
By the 1550s writers began working for the professional theatre.
  The first of these was Lope de Rueda (c 1510 - c 1565), also a well-known professional actor-manager who staged Corpus Christi plays in Vallodolid.  Lope wrote both religious plays and full-length secular comedies of earthy humor, such as The Frauds (1552-58). He is also known for short farcical sketches (pasos), such as The Olives.  Rueda himself acted in his plays, playing the fools and simpletons. 

Shortly after Rueda, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), author of the great novel Don Quixote, also found time to write about 30 plays between 1580 and 1587, of which 10 comedias (full length plays) and 8 entremises (interludes, short topical sketches) survive. Perhaps his best known comedia is The Siege of Numancia, about a Roman attack on a Spanish town in 134 BC.  But Cervantes’ dramatic work is almost never performed today, and seems somewhat stiff when compared to that of Lope de Vega.  To illustrate, Oscar Brockett in his History of Theatre compares Cervantes to the University Wits before Shakespeare.
      
Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1562-1635), generally known as Lope de Vega, has frequently been called the Shakespeare of Spain. 
Lope de Vega
 Lope is the first great playwright of Spain’s Golden Age.  This man led quite a life.  A member of the Spanish Armada, he was also became the secretary to a noble, participated in affairs of business and of love, and after 1614 took the vows of a priest.  In 1609 he claimed that he had written 483 plays in a form called comedia nueva, a term which refers to any full-length play, serious or comic, in a new style not unlike that which was being written by Shakespeare (though with somewhat less breadth and depth).  While Lope was not the only writer of this form, he was its major exponent, since he was so popular and prolific. Estimates of total numbers of Lope’s plays (which include short pieces and autos) have reached as high as 1800!  800 is more likely the total, and 331 that are his of certainty survive, with another 200 plays attributed to him.  Somewhere between the writing, the women, and all the other events in this life packed with events, he also found time to write a treatise on drama, in which he said that while he was familiar with the neoclassical rules, he was careful to lock them up whenever he sat down to write a play! 

Lope wrote in many styles. I’ve noted that he wrote many religious plays, but one of his favorite genres was a variety of the comedia 
nueva called the capa y espada (cape and sword), a term that 
described the young blood-blooded Spaniards who were featured 
in these plays about honor and how to achieve it. They were filled with romance and sword fights.  His greatest play (and one frequently revived today) Fuenteovejuna (c 1614) was written in a different manner.  A feudal lord has been lording it over his subjects in a more oppressive manner than usual, raping and murdering his subjects. In return he is murdered in the village of Fuenteovejuna. When the court convened by the king to find the murderer for punishment asks who killed the lord, each citizen answers, ”Fuenteovejuna.”  In other words, “We all did it.” This play is one of the first with what we can call a group protagonist, and was used by Russian revolutionaries in 1917 and after as an example of the workers rising up against corrupt bosses.
      
Other writers were active during Lope’s career, and though none achieved Lope’s fame (similarly to Elizabethan writers who worked during the time of Shakespeare), there are two worth mentioning because their plays were important models for later works.  Guillen de Castro, a friend of Lope’s, wrote several plays, but is remembered for Las Mocedades del Cid (The Youthful Adventures of the Cid) (1612-1618), which was the work on which Pierre Corneille modeled his play, Le Cid. We’ll learn much more
 of Corneille’s play later.  Equally important is Tirso de Molina (c 1584 - 1648) wrote nearly 400 plays, of which 80 survive. The only one Tirso is remembered for outside Spain is El Burlador de Sevilla, (The Trickster of Seville) (1616-1630?) which is the first treatment of the Don Juan story.  Why is this so important? There are more plays, operas, and movies about Don Juan than perhaps any other story in western dramatic literature, with the possible exception of the Faustus legend.
      
After Lope’s death, Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681) became the most prominent of Spanish playwrights.  Whereas 
Lope had penned most of his work for the public theatres, many of Calderon’s creations were written for the court.  Although he wrote his share of capa y espada plays, Calderon’s works often looked deeply into philosophical issues; he was less interested in action than in the mysteries of life.  His most famous play is Life is a Dream (c 1636). In it he writes about a prince. At his birth it was predicted that he would take his father’s throne, so he was kept
 isolated and imprisoned for his entire youth.  As a test to see what he’s really like, the young man was brought while sleeping to court. When he awakes he is no longer in a solitary cave but finds himself in sudden splendor, and he can’t believe it, he thinks he’s dreaming.  A courtier angers him and he kills the courtier!  When asleep again he’s taken back to his prison/cave,
and when he wakes this time he doesn’t know what is real versus what is illusion.  Indeed, he wonders if life could all be a dream from which death alone awakens one?  Whatever the answer, he vows that if ever he “dreams” of court again, he will act like a prince, and not like a boor.  He gets his chance and ultimately wins the kingdom, taking it as predicted from his father.  This play is still tremendously active in European theatres (the Royal Lyceum theatre of Edinburgh brought a production to the Brooklyn Academy of Music recently) and occasionally receives a production in a few of the bolder theatres in the U.S.  
from a 2008 Russian production
      
Recognize the actor?
Calderon, like Lope, lived a checkered life. After 1651 he too became a priest, and from then until his death he wrote primarily autos sacramentales, in fact he wrote all the autos produced in Madrid from 1647 to 1681.  Twenty other of his approximately 200 plays survive.   Calderon and Lope de Vega are the two great dramatic powers of the Spanish golden age.

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