Dramatic Convention in the Spanish Theater from Juan Del Encina to Lope De Vega
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RONALDE. SURTZ THE BIRTH OFATHEATER DRAMATIC CONVENTION IN THE SPANISH THEATER FROM JUAN DEL ENCINA TO LOPE DE VEGA PRINCETON Department of Romance Languages and Literatures PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, U.S.A. EDITORIAL CASTALIA MADRID-10 - ESPAÑA THE BIRTH OF A THEATER Dramatic convention in the Spanish theater from Juan del Encina to Lope de Vega PUBLICACIONES DEL DEPARTAMENTO DE LENGUAS Y LITERATURAS ROMÁNICAS DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE PRINCETON BMAN J. DENDLE. The Spanish novel of religious thesis (1876-1936). JOHN Β. HUGHES. Arte y sentido de Martín Fierro. DAVID L STLXRUDE. The early poetry of Pedro Salinas. RONALD Ε. SURTZ. The birth of a Theater. Dramatic convention in the Spanish theater from Juan del Encina to Lope de Vega. RONALD Ε. SURTZ THE BIRTH OF A THEATER DRAMATIC CONVENTION IN THE SPANISH THEATER FROM JUAN DEL ENCINA TO LOPE DE VEGA PRINCETON UNIVERSITY EDITORIAL CASTALIA DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES ZURBANO, 39 PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, U.S.A. MADRID, 10 - ESPAÑA © RONALD Ε. SURTZ, 1979 EDITORIAL CASTALIA, ZURBANO, 39 MADRID. ESPAÑA PRINTED IN SPAIN I.S.B.N.: 84-7039-303-0 Depósito Legal: M-8329-1979 Impreso por: Unigraf, S.A. Fuenlabrada (Madrid) To my son Daniel, whose timely napping and joyful awakenings made this study possible. The publication of this study was made pos sible by grants from the Solomon Lincoln Fund of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of Harvard University and the Uni versity Committee on Research in the Human ities and Social Sciences of Princeton University. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 9 I. THE ORIGINS OF THE CASTILIAN DRAMA 15 Theater in Medieval Castile 15 The Fifteenth-Century Milieu 20 Possible Models: Pageantry and Liturgy 31 II. LITURGY AND THEATER 35 The Allegorical Interpretation of the Liturgy 35 Encina's Earliest Plays 42 Other Plays: Temporal and Spatial Ambiguity 44 Later Plays: The Here-and-Now of the Audience 51 Towards Mimesis 59 III. THE COURT ENTERTAINMENT IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 67 "Actors" and "Spectators" 74 The Here-and-Now of the Spectators 76 The Sacred and the Profane 78 Politics and Panegyric 80 Magic Action 81 IV. PAGEANTRY AND DRAMA 85 The Here-and-Now of the Audience 88 Audience Contact 90 The Pastoral Transposition: Personal Advancement 95 The Pastoral Transposition: Politics and Panegyric 98 The Sacred and the Profane 101 Festival Plays and Magic 104 The Glad Tidings Ill 8 CONTENTS Topical Relevance 114 The Court Play 123 V. THE FUNCTION OF THE DRAMATIC PROLOGUE 125 The Origins of the Peninsular Prologues 125 The Prologue as Mediator Between Audience and Play 129 The Present Time and Space of the Audience 142 The Later Development of the Prologue 144 VI. REPRESENTATION AND READING 149 Performance and Non-Performance 149 Criteria for Performance 154 Reading 161 Two Dramatic Models 170 VII. THE CASTILIAN DRAMA IN THE LATE SIXTEENTH AND EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES , 175 The School Drama 175 The Early Commercial Theater 178 The "Comedia" 181 INTRODUCTION THE SPANISH theater prior to Lope de Vega has more in common with the dramatic rituals of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages than with the illusionistic theater of Renaissance Italy and the nineteenth century.l This intention is evident even in such early texts as the first two eclogues of Juan del Encina, which were performed as two parts of a single representation on Christmas Eve of 1492. In thé first eclogue the shepherd-poet representing Encina himself in a setting presumably shared by the fifteenth-century audience suddenly becomes in the second eclogue a shepherd in the fields near Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity, a shepherd who speaks as if he were St. John the Evan gelist. Rather than having to imagine themselves transported to biblical Judea, Encina's spectators see the sacred event happening right there in the room in the Duke of Alba's palace where they have gathered to hear Matins. There is no strict division between the play world and the world of the audience, for the shepherd Juan's direct address of the Duchess of Alba in the audience has incorporated the spectators into the reality of the play.2 The case of Encina's first eclogues is only one example of the absence of a sense of dramatic illusion in the early peninsular theater. Many other such plays are "self-conscious" to the extent that the characters appear to express the realization that they are in a play and seem to reveal their awareness of the audience watching them. Gil Vicente's 1 Cf. J. E. Gillet, " Propalladia" and Other Works of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, IV, ed. O. H. Green (Philadelphia, 1961), p. 567. 2 Texts in H. López Morales, ed., Églogas completas de Juan del Enzina (New York, 1968), pp. 69-89. 10 INTRODUCTION actors often address directly the royal personages who are witnessing the performance of the play. In his Comediado Viúvo (1514?) two sisters, Paula and Melicia, ask Prince John of Portugal (later King John III), who was present at the performance, which of them should wed Don Rosvel. A stage direction in the printed text tells us that at the first performance the prince decided that the eldest daughter should marry first, and that the play then continued.3 In the Dança de los pe cados of Diego Sánchez de Badajoz (fl. 1525-1540) the shepherd who comes to announce the beginning of the performance must make way for himself and the rest of the players through the crowd of spectators.4 He then remains near the playing area during the principal action to comment upon what happens and to make certain the audience understands the theological meaning of what they see. Gil Vicente's Auto da Lusitânia (1532) is a play-within-a-play that opens with a series of scenes concerning a Jewish tailor and his family. Two other Jews enter and announce that the royal family will soon arrive and that they must prepare some sort of entertainment in their honor. The tailor suggests that the Jews watch an auto by Gil Vicente to find out how to go about devising their own entertainment. Thereupon, a li cenciado enters to read the argumento, and the play proper finally begins.5 The preparation for the royal performance within the reality of the play thus becomes the actual play witnessed by the real royal family in the audience. The Philosopher who reads the argumento of Gil Vicente's Floresta de Engaños (1536) warns the audience not to tell anyone what they will see, lest Cupid (who is twice fooled in the course of the play) find out that his secret has been revealed.6 The seventh and eighth eclogues7 of Juan del Encina are (among other things) plays about role-playing, plays about illusion. At the end of the seventh eclogue, the squire Gil is required to become a shepherd if the shepherdess Pascuala is to accept him as her beloved. In the eighth eclogue Gil decides to abandon his pastoral disguise and to remain at court. He invites the three "real" shepherds to join him, and they become courtiers by dressing up in courtly finery. 3 Gil Vicente, Obras dramáticas castellanas, ed. Τ'. R. Hart (Madrid, 1962), pp. 154-155. 4 Diego Sánchez de Badajoz, Recopilación en metro, ed. F. Weber de Kurlat (Buenos Aires, 1968), p. 529. 5 Gil Vicente, Obras completas, ed. Marques Braga, VI (Lisboa, 19683), pp. 47-67. 6 Ibid., Ill (Lisboa, 1971 <»), p. 175. 7 Texts in López Morales, op. cit., pp. 147-181. INTRODUCTION 11 The notion of theater embodied in the above plays is closer to the French mystères or to the English cycle plays or to Brecht's epic theater than to the "realistic" stage conventions to which we have become accustomed since the nineteenth century. Realistic theater as illusion requires the spectator to believe that the action he sees and hears taking place on the stage is happening in a time different from that of the moment and duration of the representation, and in a space different from that of the stage itself. The playgoer further consents to accept the reality of the character the actor represents and to accept as rea} the world created by the playwright as it unfolds in word and action before his eyes. Such conventions originated in the context of the revivals and imitations of classical plays in Italy during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.8 The Italian humanists who staged and imitated the comedies of Plautus and Terence were confronted with a model of the self-contained play,9 for the Roman playwrights draw a clear distinction between the world of the spectators and that of the stage.i0 The spectators are passive onlookers, even though, in the case of Plautus, a limited amount of extra-dramatic address may be used for comic effect, n In Plautus' Amphitryo, for example, Mercury, speaking of his father Jupiter, tells the audience : "At the present moment he wants to fool Amphitryo ; so I shall make it my business to see that he is well and truly fooled; as you shall see, ladies and gentlemen."!2 This kind of device is never used by Terence, however, and the important theorist Evanthius, whose De Fabula preceded Donatus' frequently printed commentary to the plays of Terence, praises Terence for not breaking the dramatic illusion: "nihil ad populum facit actorem uelut extra comoediam loqui, quod uitium Plauti frequentissimum."!3 Donatus himself quotes a definition attributed to Cicero according to which comedy is an "imitationem uitae, speculum consuetudinis, imaginem 8 See, for example, chapter I (pp.