The new art of writing plays

By Lope de Vega

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Title: The new art of writing plays

Author: Lope de Vega

Contributor: Brander Matthews

Translator: William T. Brewster

Release date: August 23, 2025 [eBook #76719]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Dramatic Museum of Columbia University, 1914

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEW ART OF WRITING PLAYS ***







  PAPERS ON PLAY-MAKING

  I

  The New Art of Writing Plays

  BY

  LOPE DE VEGA


  TRANSLATED BY
  WILLIAM T. BREWSTER


  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
  BRANDER MATTHEWS


  Printed for the
  Dramatic Museum of Columbia University
  _in the City of New York_
  MCMXIV




  COPYRIGHT 1914 BY
  DRAMATIC MUSEUM OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY




CONTENTS


Introduction by Brander Matthews

The New Art of Writing Plays by Lope de Vega

Notes by B. M.




INTRODUCTION

By a significant coincidence the marvellous outflowering of the drama
is simultaneous in Spanish literature and in English.  Spain almost
exhausted her immense resources in fitting out the invincible Armada;
and England strained every nerve to compass the defeat of the dread
fleet.  Lope de Vega, the foremost of the Iberian playwrights,
actually sailed as a soldier on the fatal voyage to the English
channel; and it is dimly possible that Shakspere also saw service on
blue water; the year of the running sea fight is one of those in his
biography about which we have no information, and his use of
sea-terms has been declared by an expert to be scientifically
accurate.  In this simultaneous development of the drama in England
and in Spain at the moment when the energy of the two peoples was
aroused to the utmost, we have a confirmation of Brunetière's theory
that the foundation of our pleasure in the playhouse is the assertion
of the human will.

Shakspere came forward after the English drama had already developed
a variety of forms; and he found the road broken for him by Marlowe
and Kyd, by Lyly and Greene.  At first he followed in their
footsteps, however far beyond them he was to advance in the end.
Lope de Vega, on the other hand, was a pioneer; he it was who blazed
the new trails in which all the succeeding playwrights of Spain
gladly trod.  Shakspere seems to have cared little for invention,
borrowing his plots anywhere and everywhere, and reserving his
imagination for the interpretation of tales first told by others.
Lope, on the other hand again, abounded rather in invention than in
the interpreting imagination; he was wonderfully fecund and prolific,
unsurpassed in productivity even by Defoe or Dumas.  It was he who
made the pattern that Calderon and all the rest were to employ.  It
was he who worked out the formula of the Spanish _comedia_, often not
a comedy at all in our English understanding of the term, but rather
a play of intrigue, peopled with hot-blooded heroes who wore their
hearts on their sleeves and who carried their hands on the hilts of
their swords.

Where Lope de Vega and Shakspere are again alike is that they both
wrote all their plays for the popular theater, apparently composing
these pieces solely with a view to performance and caring nothing for
any praise which might be derived from publication.  Martinenche, in
his study of the 'Comedia Espagnole' (p. 243, note) dwells on Lope's
carelessness for the literary renown to be won by the printing of his
dramatic poems; in his non-dramatic poems he took pride, just as
Shakspere seems to have read carefully the proofs of his lyrical
narratives altho he did not himself choose to publish a single one of
his plays.  And Molière, it may be noted, tells us frankly that he
was completely satisfied with the success of his earlier pieces on
the stage, and that he had been content to leave them unprinted until
his hand was forced by a pirate-publisher.

Shakspere is abundant in his allusions to the art of acting and
reticent in his illusions to the art of playmaking.  In fact, there
is no single recorded expression of his opinion in regard to the
principles or the practice of dramaturgy; and here he is in marked
contrast with Ben Jonson, who had a body of doctrine about the drama,
which he set forth in his 'Discoveries' and in his prologs, as well
as in his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden.  In general
Lope's attitude toward dramaturgic theory is the same as Shakspere's;
but on one occasion he was induced to discuss the principles of the
art he adorned, and to express his opinions upon its methods.  This
single occasion was when he was persuaded to deliver a poetic address
upon the 'New Art of Making Plays in This Age.'

This 'Arte neuvo de hazer comedias en este tiempo' was originally
published in the 'Rimas' of Lope de Vega, Madrid, 1609.  A facsimile
reprint was issued by Mr. Archer M. Huntington in New York in 1903.
A critical edition with an introduction and notes by A. Morel-Fatio
appeared in the _Bulletin Hispanique_ for October-December, 1904--and
also in a separate pamphlet.  The French editor accepts the year of
publication as probably the year of delivery; and he believes the
Academy of Madrid, before whom the poem was read, to be "no doubt one
of those literary assemblies, imitated from those flourishing in
Italy and holding their meetings at the house of some cultivated
gentleman."

Lope's metrical address is plainly a remote imitation of Horace's
epistle to the Pisos, the model of countless critical codes cast into
verse.  It is the chief Spanish example of this type, as Boileau's
'Art Poétique' is the chief French example and Pope's 'Essay on
Criticism' the chief English example.  While most of these Horatian
imitations have for their main topic poetry and more especially
dramatic poetry, attempts were not lacking to borrow the familiar
form for non-literary themes; and as a result there are a host of
poems in all the modern tongues on the 'Art of War' and the 'Art of
Painting,' on the 'Art of Bookbinding' and on the 'Art of Cookery.'
Even so late as the first half of the nineteenth century Samson (of
the Comédie-Française) condensed his histrionic advice into riming
couplets on the 'Art of Acting.'

Most of those imitations of Horace's didactic poem which deal with
poetry and the drama borrow from the Latin lyrist not only their
method but also much of their material.  The supersubtle Italian
theorists of the theater were relying on Horace even when they
supposed that they were interpreting Aristotle; and these expounders
of Horace had elaborated legislative enactments for the theater which
were readily accepted by all who desired the purification of the
drama.  This Classicist code of rules for playwrights was mainly
negative; it was made up largely of restrictions upon the poet's
freedom; it ordered him to do a few things but it forbad him to do
many things.  It prescribed the total separation of tragedy and
comedy, admitting nothing humorous into the former and excluding
everything serious from the latter.  It insisted severely upon the
austere dignity of tragedy.  It told the dramatist to avoid all
scenes of violence; and it advised him to use messengers to narrate
all events which might not be exhibited with propriety.  Above all,
it laid stress upon the strict observance of the Three Unities
demanding that the playwright should have but one story to set on the
stage; that he should show this single action in one place only; and
that this single action, shown in a single place, should be begun and
completed in a single day.

Lope's 'New Art of Making Plays' is not a familiar epistle like
Horace's 'Ars Poetica'; rather is it a familiar discourse having the
playful ease of an afterdinner speech.  It consists of a series of
paragraphs of irregular length, varying from four to forty lines
each.  It is written in blank verse, hendecasyllabics, except that
the last two lines of every paragraph are in rime.  These terminal
couplets recall the riming exit-speeches common in contemporary
Elizabethan drama; and in both cases apparently the rimes serve to
heighten the emphasis at the end of the rhetorical period.  At the
conclusion of his address, Lope drops into Latin and inserts ten
lines in that tongue--ten lines of unidentified origin.  These Latin
verses may be his own composition or they may yet be traced to some
overlooked poem.  They are brought into harmony with the rest of the
work by the ingenious device of riming the last Latin line with a
line in Spanish, thus making a couplet half in the learned language
and half in the vernacular.  These two hybrid lines are immediately
followed by the usual terminal couplet, so that there are only three
lines in Spanish after the ten lines of Latin.  In the translation
which follows the Latin verse has been rendered into English rime by
Professor Edward Delavan Perry.

Professor Rennert in his authoritative biography of Lope (p. 179)
declares that Lope's address "is written in a bantering spirit, and a
vein of good humor pervades the whole poem.  Lope evidently did not
take the matter very seriously, nor reflect deeply on what he was
about to say.  It probably did not take him much longer to write the
'New Art of Making Plays' than it took him to write as many lines of
a comedia.  The versification, strangely enough, lacks Lope's
habitual ease and fluency; it is careless and sometimes halting,
while the sense is not always clear,--an additional sign that this
treatise was hastily composed."

Morel-Fatio notes that the 'Arte Nuevo' was reprinted only three
times during Lope's life-time, at Madrid in 1613 and 1621 and at
Hueva in 1623; and he finds in the poem itself ample explanation for
its lack of popularity.  Lope was the superb leader of an astounding
development of the Spanish drama; and he himself tells us that when
he delivered this address he had already written nearly five hundred
plays.  Yet he utters no paean of triumph; he blows no bugle-blast of
defiance to the defenders of other standards than those under which
he himself was fighting; he does not anticipate the ardor and the
fervor which were to animate Victor Hugo's preface to 'Cromwell'; he
does not stand to his guns and point to what he has accomplished on
the stage as his own justification and as a sufficient answer to the
caviling of criticasters.  His attitude seems to be humble and
apologetic; he admits the validity of the Classicist code of rules;
and in his own defence he proffers only what the lawyers call a plea
of confession and avoidance, declaring that he would have obeyed the
behest of the learned theorists if only he had been permitted by the
public.  He acknowledges the faultiness of all his dramatic works and
throws the blame on the depravity of public taste, since

  We who live to please, must please to live.


He supports his acceptance of the Classicist doctrine with a brave
show of erudition and with mention of Cicero, Donatus, Robortello,
Julius Pollux, Manetti, Plutarch, Athenaeus, Xenophon, Valerus
Maximus, Pietro Crinito and Vitruvius; and Morel-Fatio declares that
this pedantic parade has no solid foundation of scholarship, being
derived entirely from two writers, Donatus, the commentator on
Terence, and Robortello, the commentator on Aristotle and on Horace.
In this second-hand echoing of the codifiers of critical theory the
great Spanish playwright reveals no independence of interpretation,
accepting without question whatever he has found in the commentaries
and never asking himself whether the commentators had any valid
reason for the rules they laid down so authoritatively.  In other
words, the 'Arte Nuevo' does not disclose Lope's possession of any
critical curiosity or of any critical acumen, or even of any real
interest in the discussion of critical theories.

We have no right to expect that those as richly endowed with the
creative faculty as Lope indisputably was, should also have an equal
share of the critical faculty.  The analysis of the principles of
their own special art by the poets and painters and playwrights who
venture into the critical arena is always interesting but it is
rarely philosophic and it is generally technical.  And it is to
technic that Lope devotes the most of his discourse.  He trips
lightly down the history of the new Spanish drama; and then he
proceeds to bestow practical advice on aspiring young playwrights.
He tells these novices that they must give the public what it wants,
and he counsels them as to the best methods of tickling the taste of
the uncritical playgoer.  He descends to minute practical details;
and, in short, his suggestions are those of a veteran of the craft
supplying lessons in playwriting for a correspondence-school.

In so far as Lope lays down any critical principles at all, these are
but the codification of his own instinctive practise.  His address is
like "the speech of a carpenter standing on the peak of a building he
has just erected"--to borrow Richter's sarcastic phrase.  Lope had
himself succeeded as a practical playwright; and his plays had
certain characteristics and were put together in a certain fashion.
As these plays had pleased the public, beginners would do well to
consider these characteristics and to follow this fashion.  He utters
his shrewd recommendations most unpretentiously, with no hint of
arrogance and with a friendly geniality of tone.  Behind his modest
precepts stand his own plays in which his ideal is more sharply made
manifest.  Lope's ideal is that of all his contemporaries, including
Calderon (who followed in his footsteps and often borrowed his
plots).  It is that the stage is intended primarily for
story-telling, for presenting in action a serial tale which shall
excite the constant interest of curiosity.

He bids the beginner to put together his story with the utmost care,
laying the foundations in the first act, contriving unexpected
complications for the second and concealing the solution of the
action until the very last moment possible, as otherwise the
spectators may get up and go out, when once they can foresee the end.
He lays all his stress upon adroitness and ingenuity of
plot-building; and such casual remarks as he makes upon
character-delineation seem perfunctory.  In thus emphasizing the
primary importance of the action Lope is only echoing
Aristotle,--altho he probably was not aware of this.  And the
practise of the Spanish playwrights under the lead of Lope was
closely akin to that of their contemporaries, the English playwrights
under the lead of Kyd, and again later under the lead of Beaumont and
Fletcher.  Like Lope, Kyd in his way and Beaumont and Fletcher in
theirs, were story-tellers on the stage.  Poets they were all of
them, but as playwrights they depended on plot, on suspense and
especially on surprize--often achieved only by contradiction of
character.

The abiding interest of the 'Arte Nuevo' is two-fold.  It resides
partly in the suggestiveness of the elementary lessons in the art of
playmaking, which Lope here proffers to apprentices in the art and
which are invaluable as an aid for proper appreciating the methods of
the Spanish playwrights of the Age of Gold.  It resides partly in the
curiously deprecating attitude taken by Lope toward his own works,
altho he was approaching the pinnacle of his fame when he penned this
didactic poem.  Is the great Spanish playwright sincere in his
humility before the code of the Classicists?  Is his self-abasement
genuine--or is it ironic?  Morel-Fatio follows Menéndez y Pelayo in
accepting it at its face value.  Guillaume Huszar, in his useful book
on Corneille and the Spanish theater, thinks that when Lope pretends
to disparage his own plays he is not to be taken seriously.  I
confess that I should like to agree with this latter view; and there
is some little internal evidence in support of it.  But the balance
is rather in favor of the former opinion.  Yet however honest may be
Lope's willingness to do penance to the Classicist code which he
admits to have outraged, his is a proud humility after all.  He is
not really as abased and as plaintive as some of his critics have
asserted.  Modest as he may be, he takes care to make his own
position plain.  For all his easy attitude and his tolerant
geniality, for all his lightness of touch on the one side and his
pedantic citation on the other, he does not fail to insist on his
authorship of nearly half a thousand plays and to remind his auditors
that he has continuously succeeded in pleasing the public, even tho
he had to violate the rules in order to win this success.

Lope assumes a detached attitude and his tone is bantering, as
Professor Rennert has suggested.  He does not here display the
intense personal interest in the analysis of his own work which glows
and burns thru all Corneille's 'Examens,' in spite of the French
dramatic poet's occasional confession of a lapse from the strict
letter of the law.  Lope has none of the prophetic fire of Hugo's
famous preface in anticipatory defence of the plays he was going to
write.  In fact, it is difficult to deny that this poem is a pretty
careless piece of work, tossed off in an idle hour, evoked by a
special occasion when it behooved the speaker to assume a
self-deprecatory attitude.  But it is not the "lamentable palinode"
that Menéndez y Pelayo called it; nor is it exactly what Mr. Ormsby
termed it (in the _Quarterly Review_ for January, 1894) "virtually
the manifesto of a triumphant dictator, a dramatic Napoleon who,
while professing the profoundest respect for the sovereign will of
the public, scarcely cared to hide his contempt for its intelligence
or its taste, which foreign critics, he says, justly called
barbarous; or to disguise the fact that he owed his power to his
knowledge and adroit manipulation of its weaknesses."  That scholars
so well equipt for the consideration of Spanish literature and so
well fitted for the interpretation of the Spanish character as Ormsby
and Rennert, Morel-Fatio and Menéndez y Pelayo can take views as
conflicting as those severally expressed by them,--this is proof
positive that Lope has not taken the pains necessary to make his
position clear.

While Lope was willing at least to render lip-service to the code of
the Classicists, one of his followers in the theater, Tirso de
Molina, (best known as the author of the earliest dramatization of
the Don Juan legend) in his 'Cigarrales de Toledo,' published in
1624, fifteen years after Lope's address, is bold in denying the
validity of any rule limiting the duration of time or forbidding a
change of scene, (See Breitinger's 'Unités d' Aristote' pp. 29 seq.)
But Cervantes in the first part of 'Don Quixote,' published in 1605,
four years before the delivery of the 'Arte Nuevo,' had revealed a
plentiful lack of sympathy for the so-called Aristotelian rules.
There is no disputing the irony in his portrait of the Canon of
Toledo who demanded the appointment of "some intelligent and sensible
person at the capital to examine all plays before they were acted,
not only those produced in the capital itself, but all that were
intended to be acted in Spain; without whose approval, seal and
signature, no local magistracy should allow any play to be acted."
(Ormsby's translation, ii, 387, chapter xlviii).  Earlier remarks of
the Canon show us that he was familiar with whole Classicist code;
indeed, Ormsby (in a foot-note to his translation of this chapter)
calls attention to the substantial identity of the Canon's opinions
with those expressed by Sir Philip Sidney in the 'Apology for Poesy.'
In another work of fiction written more than two centuries later, in
the 'Nicholas Nickelby' of Dickens, we are introduced to a Mr. Murdle
whose knowledge is obviously vaguer than the Canon's but who is quite
as strenuous in his insistence upon "the preservation of the unities."

Into the vext question of the personal relations of Cervantes and of
Lope, it is not needful to enter here.  It would be pleasant to
believe that each really appreciated the genius of the other; but
however pleasant this is not quite possible.  Cervantes seems not to
have suspected the greatness of his own masterpiece; and it is plain
that he had a special fondness for his plays, which had not
succeeded.  Lope must have been conscious of his own position at the
head of all Spanish poets; he might assume a humble attitude when he
was the author of less than five hundred plays but by the time that
he had more than a thousand pieces to his credit the garment of
humility is no longer becoming.  Martinenche in his 'Comedia
Espagnole' (pp. 113-4) follows Morel-Fatio in pointing out Lope's
later satisfaction with what he had accomplished, even to the extent
of claiming for himself the invention of the new type of play which
had established itself on the Spanish stage.

When we consider the extraordinary vogue of Lope as a playwright in
the Golden Age of Spanish literature and the swift diffusion of his
fame thruout Europe, when we recall his unparalleled productivity,
and when we remember his supreme importance as a representative of a
superb development of the modern drama, we cannot fail to be
surprised to discover that no adequate attempt has ever been made to
present him to the English reading public.  In French there are two
translations of selections from his dramatic works; and there are
also varied renderings into German.  But in English there is little
or nothing.  Lord Holland in 1787 analized the 'Star of Seville' and
turned the more striking episodes into English; and it was on this
summary and on these fragments that Mrs. Kemble founded her five act
'Star of Seville' published in 1837.  Holcroft had utilized Lope's
'Padre Engañado' in the plot of his 'Father Outwitted,' published in
1805.  A perversion of Lope's play on the 'Romeo and Juliet' story
had been issued in English in 1770; and this moved F. W. Cosens to
print (for private distribution) in 1869 a careful translation of
'Castelvines y Montreses'.  In the sixth volume of 'The Drama,'
edited by Alfred Bates and published in 1903, there is a translation
of the Terro del Hortelano,' (the 'Gardener's Dog') by W. H. H.
Chambers.  These scattered versions and perversions apparently
represent all of Lope's dramatic work which has found its way into
our language.  It is greatly to be desired that at least one volume
might be issued in English to contain the 'Star of Seville,' the
'Gardener's Dog,' the 'Romeo and Juliet,' and the 'Duchess of Malfi'
plays, and also the 'Physician of his own Honor,' and the 'Alcalde of
Zalamea,' of which Calderon's rehandlings are already accessible in
Fitzgerald's free rendering.

A few scattered passages from the 'Arte Nuevo' were turned into
English couplets by Lord Holland; and some of those were borrowed
(without credit) in G. H. Lewes's stimulating study of the Spanish
Drama, issued in 1846.  An inadequate and incomplete version, derived
mainly from the French translation of Dumas-Hinard, was included in
an essay on Lope published in the _Catholic World_ for September,
1878.  There is a careful abstract in Professor Rennert's standard
biography of Lope (1904).  But Professor Brewster's translation is
the first attempt to render into English the whole of Lope's advice
to the aspiring playwrights of his own time and country.

  BRANDER MATTHEWS.
  (June 1914.)




  THE NEW ART OF MAKING PLAYS
  IN THIS AGE

Addressed to the Academy at Madrid.

1. You command me, noble spirits, flower of Spain,--who in this
congress and renowned academy will in short space of time surpass not
only the assemblies of Italy which Cicero, envious of Greece, made
famous with his own name, hard by the Lake of Avernus, but also
Athens where in the Lyceum of Plato was seen high conclave of
philosophers,--to write you an art of the play which is today
acceptable to the taste of the crowd.

2. Easy seems this subject, and easy it would be for anyone of you
who had written very few comedies, and who knows more about the art
of writing them and of all these things; for what condemns me in this
task is that I have written them without art.

3. Not because I was ignorant of the precepts; thank God, even while
I was a tyro in grammar, I went through the books which treated the
subject, before I had seen the sun run its course ten times from the
Ram to the Fishes;

4. But because, in fine, I found that comedies were not at that time,
in Spain, as their first devisers in the world thought that they
should be written; but rather as many rude fellows managed them; who
confirmed the crowd in its own crudeness; and so they were introduced
in such wise that he who now writes them artistically dies without
fame and guerdon; for custom can do more among those who lack light
of art than reason and force.

5. True it is that I have sometimes written in accordance with the
art which few know; but, no sooner do I see coming from some other
source the monstrosities full of painted scenes where the crowd
congregates and the women who canonize this sad business, than I
return to that same barbarous habit, and when I have to write a
comedy I lock in the precepts with six keys, I banish Terence and
Plautus from my study that they may not cry out at me; for truth,
even in dumb books, is wont to call aloud; and I write in accordance
with that art which they devised who aspired to the applause of the
crowd; for, since the crowd pays for the comedies, it is fitting to
talk foolishly to it to satisfy its taste.

6. Yet true comedy has its end established like every kind of poem or
poetic art, and that has always been to imitate the actions of men
and to paint the customs of their age.  Furthermore, all poetic
imitation whatsoever is composed of three things, which are
discourse, agreeable verse, harmony, that is to say music, which so
far was common also to tragedy; comedy being different from tragedy
in that it treats of lowly and plebeian actions, and tragedy of royal
and great ones.  Look whether there be in our comedies few failings.

7. _Auto_ was the name given to them, for they imitate the actions
and the doings of the crowd.  Lope de Rueda was an example in Spain
of these principles, and today are to be seen in print prose comedies
of his so lowly that he introduces into them the doings of mechanics
and the love of the daughter of a smith; whence there has remained
the custom of calling the old comedies _entremeses_, where the art
persists in all its force, there being one action and that between
plebeian people; for an _entrémes_ with a king has never been seen.
And thus it is shown how the art, for very lowness of style, came to
be held in great disrepute, and the king in the comedy to be
introduced for the ignorant.

8. Aristotle depicts in his 'Poetics',--altho obscurely,--the
beginning of comedy; the strife between Athens and Megara as to which
of them was the first inventor; they of Megara say that it was
Epicarmus, while Athens would have it that Magnetes was the man.
Elias Donatus says it had its origin in ancient sacrifices.  He names
Thespis as the author of tragedy,--following Horace, who affirms the
same,--as of comedies, Aristophanes.  Homer composed the 'Odyssey' in
imitation of comedy, but the 'Iliad' was a famous example of tragedy,
in imitation of which I called my 'Jerusalem' an epic, and added the
term _tragic_; and in the same manner all people commonly term the
'Inferno,' the 'Purgatorio,' and the 'Paradiso' of the celebrated
poet Dante Alighieri a comedy, and this Manetti recognizes in his
prolog.

9. Now everybody knows that comedy, as if under suspicion, was
silenced for a certain time, and that hence also satire was born,
which, being more cruel, more quickly came to an end, and gave place
to the New Comedy.  The choruses were the first things; then the fixt
number of the characters was introduced; but Menander, whom Terence
followed, held the choruses in despite, as offensive.  Terence was
more circumspect as to the principles; since he never elevated the
style of comedy to the greatness of tragedy, which many have
condemned as vicious in Plautus; for in this respect Terence was more
wary.

10. Tragedy has as its argument history, and comedy fiction; for this
reason it was called flat-footed, of humble argument, since the actor
performed without buskin or stage.  There were comedies with the
_pallium_, mimes, comedies with the toga, _fabulae atellanae_, and
comedies of the tavern, which were also, as now, of various sorts.

11. With Attic elegance the men of Athens chided vice and evil custom
in their comedies, and they gave their prizes both to the writers of
verse and to the devisers of action.  For this Tully called comedies
"the mirror of custom and a living image of the truth,"--a very high
tribute, in that comedy ran even with history.  Look whether it be
worthy of this crown and glory!

12. But now I perceive that you are saying that this is merely
translating books and wearying you with painting this mixed-up
affair.  Believe me there has been a reason why you should be
reminded of some of these things; for you see that you ask me to
describe the art of writing plays in Spain, where whatever is written
is in defiance of art; and to tell how they are now written contrary
to the ancient rule and to what is founded on reason, is to ask me to
draw on my experience, not on art, for art speaks truth which the
ignorant crowd gainsays.

13. If then, you desire art, I beseech you, men of genius, to read
the very learned Robortello of Udine and you will see in what he says
concerning Aristotle and especially in what he writes about comedy,
as much as is scattered among many books; for everything of today is
in a state of confusion.

14. If you wish to have my opinion of the comedies which now have the
upper hand and to know why it is necessary that the crowd with its
laws should maintain the vile chimera of this comic monster, I will
tell you what I hold, and do you pardon me, since I must obey whoever
has power to command me,--that, gilding the error of the crowd, I
desire to tell you of what sort I would have them; for there is no
recourse but to follow art observing a mean between the two extremes.

15. Let the subject be chosen and do not be amused,--may you excuse
these precepts!--if it happens to deal with kings; tho, for that
matter, I understand that Philip the Prudent, King of Spain and our
lord, was offended at seeing a king in them; either because the
matter was hostile to art or because the royal authority ought not to
be represented among the lowly and the vulgar.

16. This is merely turning back to the Old Comedy, where we see that
Plautus introduced gods, as in his 'Amphitryon' he represents
Jupiter.  God knows that I have difficulty in giving this my
approbation, since Plutarch, speaking of Menander, does not highly
esteem Old Comedy.  But since we are so far away from art and in
Spain do it a thousand wrongs, let the learned this once close their
lips.

17. Tragedy mixed with comedy and Terence with Seneca, tho it be like
another minotaur of Pasiphae, will render one part grave, the other
ridiculous; for this variety causes much delight.  Nature gives us
good example, for through such variety it is beautiful.

18. Bear in mind that this subject should contain one action only,
seeing to it that the story in no manner be episodic; I mean the
introduction of other things which are beside the main purpose; nor
that any member be omitted which might ruin the whole of the context.
There is no use in advising that it should take place in the period
of one sun, tho this is the view of Aristotle; but we lose our
respect for him when we mingle tragic style with the humbleness of
mean comedy.  Let it take place in as little time as possible, except
when the poet is writing history in which some years have to pass;
these he can relegate to the space between the acts, wherein, if
necessary, he can have a character go on some journey; a thing that
greatly offends whoever perceives it.  But let not him who is
offended go to see them.

19. Oh! how lost in admiration are many at this very time at seeing
that years are passed in an affair to which an artificial day sets a
limit; tho for this they would not allow the mathematical day!  But,
considering that the wrath of a seated Spaniard is immoderate, when
in two hours there is not presented to him everything from Genesis to
the Last Judgment, I deem it most fitting, if it be for us here to
please him, for us to adjust everything so that it succeeds.

20. The subject once chosen, write in prose, and divide the matter
into three acts of time, seeing to it, if possible, that in each one
the space of the day be not broken.  Captain Virués, a worthy wit,
divided comedy into three acts, which before had gone on all fours,
as on baby's feet, for comedies were then infants.  I wrote them
myself, when eleven or twelve years of age, of four acts and of four
sheets of paper, for a sheet contained each act; and then it was the
fashion that for the three intermissions were made three little
_entremeses_, but today scarce one, and then a dance, for the dancing
is so important in comedy that Aristotle approves of it, and
Athenaeus, Plato, and Xenophon treat of it, though this last
disapproves of indecorous dancing; and for this reason he is vexed at
Callipides, wherein he pretends to ape the ancient chorus.  The
matter divided into two parts, see to the connection from the
beginning until the action runs down; but do not permit the untying
of the plot until reaching the last scene; for the crowd, knowing
what the end is, will turn its face to the door and its shoulder to
what it has awaited three hours face to face; for in what appears
nothing more is to be known.

21. Very seldom should the stage remain without someone speaking,
because the crowd becomes restless in these intervals and the story
spins itself out at great length; for, besides its being a great
defect, the avoidance of it increases grace and artifice.

22. Begin then, and, with simple language, do not spend sententious
thoughts and witty sayings on family trifles, which is all that the
familiar talk of two or three people is representing.  But when the
character who is introduced persuades, counsels or dissuades, then
there should be gravity and wit; for then doubtless is truth
observed, since a man speaks in a different style from what is common
when he gives counsel, or persuades, or argues against anything.
Aristides, the rhetorician, gave us warrant for this; for he wishes
the language of comedy to be pure, clear, and flexible, and he adds
also that it should be taken from the usage of the people, this being
different from that of polite society; for in the latter case the
diction will be elegant, sonorous, and adorned.  Do not drag in
quotations, nor let your language offend because of exquisite words;
for, if one is to imitate those who speak, it should not be by the
language of Panchaia, of the Metaurus, of hippogriffs, demi-gods and
centaurs.

23. If the king should speak, imitate as much as possible the gravity
of a king; if the sage speak, observe a sententious modesty; describe
lovers with those passions which greatly move whoever listens to
them; manage soliloquies in such a manner that the recitant is quite
transformed, and in changing himself, changes the listener.  Let him
ask questions and reply to himself, and if he shall make plaints, let
him observe the respect due to women.  Let not ladies disregard their
character, and if they change costumes, let it be in such wise that
it may be excused; for male disguise usually is very pleasing.  Let
him be on his guard against impossible things, for it is of the
chiefest importance that only the likeness of truth should be
represented.  The lackey should not discourse of lofty affairs, nor
express the conceits which we have seen in certain foreign plays; and
in no wise let the character contradict himself in what he has said;
I mean to say, forget,--as in Sophocles one blames Oedipus for not
remembering that he has killed Laius with his own hand.  Let the
scenes end with epigram, with wit, and with elegant verse, in such
wise that, at his exit, he who spouts leave not the audience
disgusted.  In the first act set forth the case.  In the second weave
together the events, in such wise that until the middle of the third
act one may hardly guess the outcome.  Always trick expectancy; and
hence it may come to pass that something quite far from what is
promised may be left to the understanding.  Tactfully suit your verse
to the subjects being treated.  _Décimas_ are good for complainings;
the sonnet is good for those who are waiting in expectation; recitals
of events ask for _romances_, though they shine brilliantly in
_octavas._  _Tercets_ are for grave affairs and _redondillas_ for
affairs of love.  Let rhetorical figures be brought in, as repetition
or anadiplosis, and in the beginning of these same verses the various
forms of anaphora; and also irony, questions, apostrophes, and
exclamations.

24. To deceive the audience with the truth is a thing that has seemed
well, as Miguel Sánchez, worthy of this memorial for the invention,
was wont to do in all his comedies.  Equivoke and the uncertainty
arising from ambiguity have always held a large place among the
crowd, for it thinks that it alone understands what the other one is
saying.  Better still are the subjects in which honor has a part,
since they deeply stir everybody; along with them go virtuous deeds,
for virtue is everywhere loved; hence we see, if an actor chance to
represent a traitor, he is so hateful to everyone that what he wishes
to buy is not sold him, and the crowd flees when it meets him; but if
he is loyal, they lend to him and invite him, and even the chief men
honor him, love him, seek him out, entertain him, and acclaim him.

25. Let each act have but four sheets, for twelve are well suited to
the time and the patience of him who is listening.  In satirical
parts, be not clear or open, since it is known that for this very
reason comedies were forbidden by law in Greece and Italy; wound
without hate, for if, perchance, slander be done, expect not
applause, nor aspire to fame.

26. These things you may regard as aphorisms which you get not from
the ancient art, which the present occasion allows no further space
for treating; since whatever has to do with the three kinds of stage
properties which Vitruvius speaks of concerns the impresario; just as
Valerius Maximus, Petrus Crinitus, Horace in his epistles, and others
describe these properties, with their drops, trees, cabins, houses,
and simulated marbles.

27. Of costume Julius Pollux would tell us if it were necessary, for
in Spain it is the case that the comedy of today is replete with
barbarous things: a Turk wearing the neck-gear of a Christian and a
Roman in tight breeches.

28. But of all, nobody can I call more barbarous than myself, since
in defiance of art I dare to lay down precepts, and I allow myself to
be borne along in the vulgar current, wherefore Italy and France call
me ignorant.  But what can I do if I have written four hundred and
eighty-three comedies, along with one which I have finished this
week?  For all of these, except six, gravely sin against art.  Yet,
in fine, I defend what I have written, and I know that, tho they
might have been better in another manner, they would not have had the
vogue which they have had; for sometimes that which is contrary to
what is just, for that very reason, pleases the taste.


  How Comedy reflects this life of man,
    How true her portraiture of young and old;
  How subtle wit, polished in narrow span,
    And purest speech, and more too you behold;
  What grave consideration mixed with smiles,
    What seriousness, along with pleasant jest;
  Deceit of slaves; how woman oft beguiles
    How full of slyness is her treacherous breast;
  How silly, awkward swains to sadness run,
    How rare success, though all seems well begun,


Let one hear with attention, and dispute not of the art; for in
comedy everything will be found of such a sort that in listening to
it everything becomes evident.

(_Translated by William T. Brewster._)




NOTES

1. The opening passage of Lope's poem is thus rendered into English
verse by Lord Holland:--

  Bright flow'rs of Spain, whose young academy
  Ere long shall that by Tully nam'd outvie;
  And match'd the Athenian porch where Plato taught,
  Whose sacred shades such throngs of sages sought,--
  You bid me tell the art of writing plays
  Such as the crowd might please, and you might praise,
  The work seems easy--easy it might be
  To you who write not much, but not to me.
  For how should I the rules of art explain,
  I, whom nor art nor rule should e'er restrain?
  Not but I studied all the antient rules:
  Yes, God be praised, long since in grammar schools,
  Scarce ten years old, with all the patience due,
  The books that subject treat I waded through:
  My case was simple,--in these latter days,
  The truant authors of our Spanish plays
  So wide had wander'd from the narrow road
  Which the strict fathers of the drama trod,
  I found the stage with barbarous pieces stor'd:--
  The critics censur'd; but the crowd ador'd.
  Nay more; these sad corrupters of the stage
  So blended taste, and so debauch'd the age,
  Who writes by rule must please himself alone,
  Be damn'd without remorse, and die unknown.
  Such force has habit--for the untaught fools,
  Trusting their own, despise the antient rules,
  Yet, true it is, I too have written plays,
  The wiser few, who judge with skill, might praise:
  But when I see how shew and nonsense, draws
  The crowd's, and, more than all, the fair's applause,
  Who still are forward with indulgent rage
  To sanction every monster of the stage.
  I, doom'd to write, the public taste to hit,
  Resume the barbarous dress 'twas vain to quit;
  I lock up every rule before I write,
  Plautus and Terence drive from out my sight,
  Lest rage should teach these injur'd wits to join,
  And their dumb books cry shame on works like mine.
  To vulgar standards then I square my play,
  Writing at ease; for, since the public pay,
  'Tis just, methinks, I by their compass steer,
  And write the nonsense that they love to hear.


The two lines in which Lope declares that he locks up Plautus and
Terence with six keys were quoted by Victor Hugo in the proclamation
of his theories of dramatic art prefixt to his unactable 'Cromwell'
(1827).  But Souriau in his annotated edition of the 'Préface de
Cromwell' thinks it possible that Hugo may have borrowed the
quotation second-hand from a pamphlet by Scudery, 'La Preuve des
Passages' put forth during the quarrel over Corneille's 'Cid.'  It is
amusing to note that M. Emile Faguet, quoting these lines in his
'Drame Ancien, Drame Moderne' (p. 122) inadvertently credits them to
Cervantes.

Fitzgerald, in the preface to his translations from Calderon, asserts
that certain of the defects discoverable in these pieces do not
represent "Calderon's own better self, but concession to private
haste or public taste by one who so often relied upon some striking
dramatic crisis for success with a not very accurate audience."  It
may be objected that this plea is dangerous in that it is based on
the unwarrantable assumption that Calderon's private taste was
different from that of the public to which he appealed; but it can be
urged in behalf of Lope as potently as in behalf of Calderon.  Lope's
own plea that he must give the public what it wants is more
effectively put by Molière, in the preface to the 'Précieuses
Ridicules'; "I should needlessly offend all Paris, if I accused it of
having applauded a piece of stupidity; as the public is the absolute
judge of works of this sort, it would be impertinent in me to
contradict it; and even if I had the worst possible opinion of my
'Précieuses' before the performance, I ought now to believe that it
has some value, since so many persons together have spoken well of
it."

6. Morel-Fatio points out that this paragraph is practically a
literal translation from Robortello's 'Paraphrases in libram Horatii
De Comedia.'  It is mainly from Robortello that Lope derives all his
parade of erudition.

8. In this paragraph, as Morel-Fatio informs us, Lope is again
relying on Robortello and also on Donatus.

9. At the end of this paragraph Lope, following Donatus blindly,
attributes to Terence the loftiness of style to which Plautus
occasionally attained.  As Damas-Hinard noted in his French
translation of certain of Lope's plays, the Spanish poet is here
sinning against light, since he had a first-hand knowledge of the
comedies of both the Latin dramatists.

15. Professor Rennert (p. 180) points out that this distinction
between tragedy and comedy is arbitrary and un-Aristotelian, altho it
was "the one that obtained thruout the Renascence and down to the end
of the period of Classicism."  It was the doctrine of Robortello and
of the later Italian theorists that it was "the rank of the
characters, and this only, which distinguished a tragedy from a
comedy."  This is the distinction which Sir Philip Sidney maintains
in his 'Defence of Poesy.'

Here is Lord Holland's metrical version of the concluding lines of
this passage:

  Once to behold a monarch on the stage,
  England, 'tis said, our prudent Philip's rage;
  Or that he deem'd such characters unfit
  For lively sallies and for comic wit;
  Or crowns debas'd, if actors were allow'd
  To bring the state of kings before a low-born crowd.


In his 'Hamburg Dramaturgy,' (p. 394-5 of the English version in
Bohn's series) Lessing translates a score of these lines, ending with
Lope's assertion that nature has set us the example of commingling
the ludicrous with the serious; and then he asks: "Is it true that
nature sets us an example of the common and the sublime, the farcical
and the serious, the merry and the sad?  It seems so.  But if this is
true, Lope has done more than he intended; he has not only glossed
over the faults of his stage, he has really proved that these are no
faults, for nothing can be a fault that is an imitation of nature."
But Mezières in the introduction he prefixt to the French translation
of Lessing's dramatic criticism quotes a passage from Diderot on the
danger of uniting tragedy and burlesque: "Tragicomedy is never be
more than a bad species, because in it are confounded two disparate
species, separated by a natural barrier."  Here Lessing, who had
derived so much from Diderot, reveals himself as in advance and on
firmer ground than his French contemporary.  It is amusing to note
that Diderot, so often hailed as a forerunner of the Romanticists, is
here a belated echo of so strict a classicist as Sir Philip Sidney
who asserted that the plays he saw on the English stage were "neither
right tragedies, nor right comedies, mingling Kings and Clowns, not
because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in Clowns by head and
shoulders, to play a part in magestical matters, with neither decency
nor discretion: So as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor
the right sportfulness is by their mongrel Tragicomedy attained."

16. Morel-Fatio notes that this passage also is derived directly from
Robortello.

17. These lines Lord Holland turns into English couplets:

  The tragic with the comic muse combin'd,
  Grave Seneca with sprightly Terence join'd,
  May seem, I grant, Pasiphaë's monstrous birth,
  Where one half moves our sorrow, one our mirth.
  But sweet variety must still delight,
  And, spite of rules, dame Nature says we're right,
  Thru' all her works she this example gives,
  And from variety her charms derives.


With this statement of Lope's may be compared the theory set forth by
Victor Hugo in the preface to 'Cromwell.'

19. Here once more, as Morel-Fatio has shown, Lope is leaning upon
Robortello.  Three and a half lines of this passage Lord Holland
translates freely in this triplet:

  Who seated once, disdain to go away,
  Unless in two short hours they see the play
  Brought down from Genesis to judgment day.


This popular liking for the whole story without selection or omission
is a survival from the middle ages when the mystery play began with
Genesis and ended, if not with judgment day, at least with the
casting of the wicked into Hell-Mouth.  To the Classicists this
prolongation of the action was always most offensive.  Lord Holland
turned into English the four lines in which Boileau denounces the
custom:

  The Spanish bard, who no nice censure fears,
  In one short day includes a lapse of years.
  In those rude acts the hero lives so fast,
  Child in the first, he's greybeard in the last.


And Sir Philip Sidney had earlier expressed his disgust for this
license, blaming the English playwrights for their liberal allowance
of time, "for ordinary it is that two young Princes fall in love.
After many traverses, she is got with child, delivered of a fair boy;
he is lost, groweth up a man, falls in love, and is ready to get
another child; and all this in two hours' space: which how absurd it
is in sense even sense may imagine, and Art hath taught, and all
ancient examples justified."  With this may be compared Corneille's
opinions in his 'Discourse on the Three Unities' and in his
discussion of his own 'Mélite.'

Lope's limitation of the duration of performance is exactly
equivalent to Shakspere's "two hours traffic of the stage."  But
Shack, and after him Morel-Fatio, adduce evidence that the customary
stay of the spectators in the Spanish theaters was two hours and a
half.

20. Lope's advice, that a play should first be written in prose to be
turned later into verse, Menendez y Pelayo believes to be borrowed
from a passage in Vida's Latin poem on the poetic art,--a passage
thus rendered in English in Pitt's translation:

  At first without the least restraint compose
  And mold the future poem with prose,
  A full and proper series to maintain
  And draw the just connection in a chain.
  By stated bounds your progress to control,
  To join the parts and regulate the whole.


Morel-Fatio thinks this very likely, since Lope was familiar with
Vida's work.  Oddly enough, the principle Lope here lays down was not
in accord with his own practise, since the state of the existing
manuscripts seems to show that he composed originally in verse, altho
on occasion he drew up a preliminary scenario in prose.  It may be
noted that the method here recommended by Lope was that actually
adopted by Moliére, who (in his haste to meet the wishes of Louis
XIV) had to call on Corneille to versify more than half of the
'Psyche' which he had completely constructed in prose and which he
had not been able wholly to turn into verse within the limits of time
set by the king.

Lord Holland thus renders certain lines of this paragraph into
English couplets:

  Plays of three acts we owe to Virues' pen,
  Which ne'er had crawled but on all fours till then;
  An action suited to that helpless age,
  The infancy of wit, the childhood of the stage.
  Such plays not twelve years old did I complete,
  Four sheets to every play, an act on every sheet.


And Ticknor also employs the rimed couplet for his translation of a
longer passage:

  The Captain Verues, a famous wit,
  Cast dramas in three acts, by happy hit;
  For, till his time, upon all fours they crept,
  Like helpless babes that never yet had stept.
  Such plays I wrote, eleven and twelve years old;
  Four acts--each measured to a sheet's just fold--
  Filled out four sheets; while still, between,
  Three _entremeses_ short filled up the scene.


But Camille de Senne and Guillot de Saxe in the preface of their
study of the 'Star of Seville' (Paris, 1913, p. 44, note) assert that
the three-act form had established itself in the Spanish theater half
a century anterior to Verues.  And Lessing in his 'Hamburg
Dramaturgy' (Dec. 4th, 1767) had pointed out the discrepancy between
Lope's assigning the credit of this change to Verues and Calderon's
claim, (in the preface to his comedies), that he was the first to
make this reduction.

If Lope had been familiar with Aristotle he might have justified the
three-act form as simply the carrying out the Greek critic's
principle that a play must have an action with a beginning, a middle
and an end.

As Attic tragedies were acted without any intermission they had only
a single prolonged act,--altho a trilogy was a story shown in three
acts.  Yet the traditional five-act form of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries is indirectly derived from the Athenian drama,
wherein the number of choral passages came in time to be limited to
four, separating five passages in dialog, which when the lyric
interludes were omitted, stood forth as five separate acts.  Horace,
probably following the precepts of the Alexandrian critics,
prescribes five acts (see Weil's 'Etudes sur le Drame Antique,' p.
325).  The MSS. of Latin comedy show no division into acts (see
Fairclough's edition of Terence's 'Andria,' pp. lii, liii,).  It may
be noted that as soon as the five-act form was disestablished the
tendency of the leading modern dramatists has been to adopt the
logical three-act form.  Most of Ibsen's social dramas are in three
acts, just as Lope's are.

Commenting on Lope's strange prescription of the number of pages a
comedy should have, Professor Rennert (p. 163, note) tells us that
"this rule, as to the length of the _comedia_, which Lope here lays
down, was carefully followed by all the other dramatists of the time,
and deviations from it are rare.  Four sheets--sixteen leaves for
each act, that is forty-eight leaves to a _comedia_.  An examination
of Lope's autograph plays shows how strictly he adhered to this rule.
Where slight variations are found they are due to the difference in
the size of the leaves--the _comedia_ always consisting of about
three thousand lines....  On the other hand, the comedies of Miguel
Sanchez, a predecessor of Lope, contain about four thousand lines."

Lope, like his fellow dramatists Calderon and Corneille, Moliére,
Voltaire and Goldoni, had been a pupil of the Jesuits; and it was
doubtless when he was a youthful student of the Jesuit school in
Madrid that he became acquainted with the critical theories of the
Italian commentators of Horace and Aristotle.

21. The rule forbidding the dramatist ever to leave the stage empty
Morel-Fatio traces to a passage in Donatus dealing with the omission
of the chorus from the New Comedy of the Greeks.  Altho Corneille
does not expressly discuss this rule, he obeyed it; and it was
generally obeyed by all the French dramatists who accepted the
Classicist theory, possibly because the leaving of the stage empty
became the conventional signal of the end of the act.  Even today at
the Théâtre Français, the curtain does not always fall on the
termination of an act; the stage is left unoccupied for a moment and
then the three raps of the wooden hammer are heard, whereupon the
characters enter who are to begin the next act.  On the
English-speaking stage this rule has never established itself; and
our dramatic poets have now and again achieved an effect of
expectancy by leaving the stage bare and letting the spectators
wonder who is next to appear.

23. A part of this paragraph is turned into English couplets by Lord
Holland:

  In ten line staves should wailing grief be shown;
  The sonnet suits a man who speaks alone;
  Let plain narration flow in ballad lines;
  Though much a tale in copious octaves shines;
  Grand weighty thoughts the triplet should contain
  But _redondillas_ suit the lover's strain.


In the introduction to his 'Select Plays of Calderon' Norman Maccoll
gives a clear explanation of the various sorts of verse that Lope
mentions here:--_Romances_ are "octo-syllabic trochaics--the
customary measure of the Spanish ballads.  As in the ballads, these
trochaics are sometimes rimed and sometimes assonant.  _Redondillas_
are arranged in strophes of four lines each.  Strong endings and weak
endings are both employed.  The first and fourth lines rime together,
and so do the second and third.  This is the simplest of the riming
measures in common use....  _Quintillas_ are arranged in strophes of
five lines each.  The only rule observed in the riming is that the
same rime must not occur in more than two successive lines....  The
_Decima_ is a combination of two _quintillas_ in one strophe of ten
lines.  The arrangement of rimes is as follows: the first five are
disposed ... a, b, b, a, a, and the second five are arranged c, c, d,
d, c....  Three other forms of iambic verse are borrowed from the
Italians, the _Terceto_ (the _terza rima_ of the Italians), the
_Octava_ (or _ottava rima_) and the Sonnet."  Maccoll in his turn
renders several of Lope's lines into English rimes:

  In _décimas_ finds voice the mourner's wail;
  The sonnet's fitted for the action's stay;
  _Romances_ serve to tell the player's tale.
  Yet octaves well can stirring news convey;
  While deed of high import in _terzas_ shines,
  And _redondillas_ are the lover's lines.


The incessant employment of these various lyric measures is evidence,
were any needed, of the prevailing lyrical quality of the dialog of
the Spanish drama when Lope and Calderon were its chiefs.  It may be
noted that in 'Prunella, a Fantasy in Three Acts,' by Lawrence
Hausman and Granville Barker, the authors emphasize the lyrical
element in their rococo story by scattering riming stanzas at
irregular intervals thruout the dialog.

That the sonnet with its artificial and arbitrary scheme of
intricately interlaced rimes should be intercalated into dramatic
dialog may seem to modern readers a strange suggestion.  Yet Lope was
here only recommending a practise inherited from the medieval
mysteries wherein various fixt forms of verse were frequently
employed.  Their stanzaic rigidity did not prevent the deviser of a
French passion-play from utilizing the triolet, the ballade, and even
the long-sustained and stately chant-royal; and the playwright
availed himself of their aid not only in passages of lyrical emotion
but also in the swift give and take of the intenser dramatic moments
of the action.  This tradition of the religious pieces was taken over
by the founders of the secular drama in most of the modern
languages,--in English as well as in French and in Spanish.
Corneille's first play 'Mélite' was composed especially to bring in a
sonnet; and even as late as the 'Cid' Corneille cast his lyrical
monologs into stanzas, for which he was censured by the Abbé d'
Aubignac and by Voltaire; and Brunetière (in his annotated edition of
Corneille's more important plays) likens the lyrical soliloquy of
Rodrigue at the end of the first act to the bravura solo of a tenor,
coming down to the footlights with his hand on his heart (p. 69).
Shakspere used the looser Elizabethan sonnet for the prolog to 'Romeo
and Juliet' spoken by Chorus; and Ben Jonson employs it for the
Prolog for the Court of his 'Staple of News.'  The incongruity of the
fixt form is least obvious when the sonnet is thus kept outside the
play itself and when it is utilized only in the address to the
audience before the action begins.  But Shakspere did not hesitate to
employ this fixt form inside the play; in 'Love's Labor's Lost' (act
iii, scene 2) and also in 'All's Well that ends Well' (act iii, scene
4) he casts a letter into fourteen lines, with three riming quatrains
and a terminal couplet.  And again in 'Romeo and Juliet' where hero
and heroine meet and fall in love at first sight, the lyrical
significance of this meeting is suggested by the employment of the
fourteener, Romeo speaking the first quatrain, Juliet the second,
while the third quatrain and the final couplet are shared between
them, each taking in turn a line or two.  M. Rostand prefixes a
sonnet to every act of his 'Chantecler,' utilizing them for a
poetical description of the successive sets in which the action of
his lyrical play is supposed to take place.

The ballade is to be found in two nineteenth century French plays,
the 'Gringoire' of Théodore de Banville, and the 'Cyrano de Bergerac'
of Rostand; but in both these pieces it is frankly presented as what
it is,--a poem composed in the fixt form by the hero of the play.
Maccoll suggests that sonnets were introduced by the Spanish
playwright "to please the more cultivated part of the audience"; and
he remarks that "from their nature [they] could be employed
sparingly--not more than two or three sonnets were usually put into a
play."  He notes that in one of Calderon's pieces, 'Gustos y
Disgustos' a duenna who is in doubt as to her immediate duty, begins
her speech "by saying that she must either indulge in a soliloquy or
pronounce a sonnet.  She elects the former, and proceeds to
soliloquize in _redondillas_."

28. Lord Holland has turned these lines into English couplets:

  None than myself more barbarous or more wrong,
  Who hurried by the vulgar taste along,
  Dare give my precepts in despite of rule.
  When France and Italy pronounce me fool.
  But what am I to do? who now of plays,
  With one complete within these seven days,
  Four hundred eighty-three in all have writ,
  And all, save six, against the rules of wit.


It needs to be recorded that Lope's commentators have been sadly put
to it in their endeavor to identify the half dozen of Lope's plays
which he here claims to be in accord with the theories of the
Classicists.

Attention has been called also to the similarity of attitude between
Lope here and that taken by Webster in the preface to his 'White
Devil,' published in 1612, only three years after the Spanish poem
had been delivered:--"If it be objected that this is no true Dramatic
Poem, I shall easily confess it; _non potes in nugas dicere plura
meas Ipse ego quam dixi_; willingly, and not ignorantly, in this kind
have I faulted; for should a man present to such an Auditory the most
contentious Tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical
laws, as height of style and gravity of person, enrich it with the
sententious chorus, and, as it were, life 'n Death in the passionate
and weighty Nuntius, yet after all this divine rapture, _O dura
messorum ilia_, the breath that comes from the incapable multitude is
able to poison it; and ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix
to every scene this of Horace,

_Haec Porcis hodie comedenda relinques._"

B. M.




  OF THIS BOOK THREE HUNDRED AND
  THIRTY-THREE COPIES WERE PRINTED
  FROM TYPE BY CORLIES, MACY AND
  COMPANY IN NOVEMBER : MCMXIV




PUBLICATIONS

_of the_

Dramatic Museum

OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK


_First Series_

Papers on Playmaking:

I THE NEW ART OF WRITING PLAYS. By Lope de Vega.  Translated by
William T. Brewster.  With an Introduction and Notes by Brander
Matthews.

II THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PLAY.  By Bronson Howard.  With an
Introduction by Augustus Thomas.

III THE LAW OF THE DRAMA.  By Ferdinand Brunetière. Translated by
Philip M. Hayden.  With an Introduction by Henry Arthur Jones.

IV ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AS A DRAMATIST.  By Arthur Wing Pinero.
With an Introduction and Bibliographical Appendix by Clayton Hamilton.











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