[204] In the “Fama Póstuma.”

[205] This curious passage is in the Epistle, or Metro Lyrico, to D. Luis de Haro, Obras Sueltas, Tom. IX. p. 379:—

I do not quite make out how this can have happened in 1577; but the assertion seems unequivocal. Schack (Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur in Spanien, Berlin, 1845, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 164) thinks the fifteen years here referred to are intended to embrace the fifteen years of Lope’s life as a soldier, which he extends from Lope’s eleventh year to his twenty-sixth,—1573 to 1588. But Schack’s ground for this is a mistake he had himself previously made in supposing the Dedication of the “Gatomachia” to be addressed to Lope himself; whereas it is addressed to his son, named Lope, who served, at the age of fifteen, under the Marquis of Santa Cruz, as we shall see hereafter. The “Cupid in arms,” therefore, referred to in this Dedication, fails to prove what Schack thought it proved; and leaves the “fifteen years” as dark a point as ever. See Schack pp. 157, etc.

[206] These are the earliest works of Lope mentioned by his eulogists and biographers, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 30), and must be dated as early as 1582 or 1583. The “Pastoral de Jacinto” is in the Comedias, Tom. XVIII., but was not printed till 1623.

[207] In the epistle to Doctor Gregorio de Ángulo, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 420), he says: “Don Gerónimo Manrique brought me up. I studied in Alcalá, and took the degree of Bachelor; I was even on the point of becoming a priest; but I fell blindly in love, God forgive it; I am married now, and he that is so ill off fears nothing.” Elsewhere he speaks of his obligations to Manrique more warmly; for instance, in his Dedication of “Pobreza no es Vileza,” (Comedias, 4to, Tom. XX., Madrid, 1629), where his language is very strong.

[208] See Dorotea, Acto I. sc. 6, in which, having coolly made up his mind to abandon Marfisa, he goes to her and pretends he has killed one man and wounded another in a night brawl, obtaining by this base falsehood the unhappy creature’s jewels, which he needed to pay his expenses, and which she gave him out of her overflowing affection.

[209] Act. I. sc. 5, and Act. IV. sc. 1, have a great air of reality about them. But other parts, like that of the discourses and troubles that came from giving to one person the letter intended for another, are quite too improbable and too much like the inventions of some of his own plays, to be trusted. (Act. V. sc. 3, etc.) M. Fauriel, however, whose opinion on such subjects is always to be respected, regards the whole as true. Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1, 1839.

[210] Lord Holland treats him as the old Duke (Life of Lope de Vega, London, 1817, 2 vols., 8vo); and Southey (Quarterly Review, 1817, Vol. XVIII. p. 2) undertakes to show that it could be no other; while Nicolas Antonio (Bib. Nov., Tom. II. p. 74) speaks as if he were doubtful, though he inclines to think it was the elder. But there is no doubt about it. Lope repeatedly speaks of Antonio, the grandson, as his patron; e. g. in his epistle to the Bishop of Oviedo, where he says,—

Obras Sueltas, Tom. I. p. 289.

He, however, praised the elder Duke abundantly in the second, third, and fifth books of the “Arcadia,” giving in the last an account of his death and of the glories of his grandson, whom he again notices as his patron. Indeed, the case is quite plain, and it is only singular that it should need an explanation; for the idea of making the Duke of Alva, who was minister to Philip II., a shepherd, seems to be a caricature or an absurdity, or both. It is, however, the common impression, and may be found again in the Semanario Pintoresco, 1839, p. 18. The younger Duke, on the contrary, loved letters, and, if I mistake not, there is a Cancion of his in the Cancionero General of 1573, f. 178.

[211] The truth of the stories, or some of the stories, in the Arcadia may be inferred from the mysterious intimations of Lope in the Prólogo to the first edition; in the “Egloga á Claudio”; and in the Preface to the “Rimas,” (1602), put into the shape of a letter to Juan de Arguijo. Quintana, too, in the Dedication to Lope of his “Experiencias de Amor y Fortuna,” (1626), says of the Arcadia, that, “under a rude covering, are hidden souls that are noble and events that really happened.” See, also, Lope, Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX. p. xxii., and Tom. II. p. 456. That it was believed to be true in France is apparent from the Preface to old Lancelot’s translation, under the title of “Délices de la Vie Pastorale” (1624). It is important to settle the fact; for it must be referred to hereafter.

[212] The Arcadia fills the sixth volume of Lope’s Obras Sueltas. Editions of it were printed in 1599, 1601, 1602, twice, 1603, 1605, 1612, 1615, 1617, and often since, showing a great popularity.

[213] Her father, Diego de Urbina, was a person of some consequence, and figures among the more distinguished natives of Madrid in Baena, “Hijos de Madrid.”

[214] Montalvan, it should be noted, seems willing to slide over these “frowns of fortune, brought on by his youth and aggravated by his enemies.” But Lope attributes to them his exile, which came, he says, from “love in early youth, whose trophies were exile and its results tragedies.” (Epístola Primera á D. Ant. de Mendoza.) But he also attributes it to false friends, in the fine ballad where he represents himself as looking down upon the ruins of Saguntum and moralizing on his own exile:—“Bad friends,” he says, “have brought me here.” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVII. p. 434, and Romancero General, 1602, f. 108.) But again, in the Second Part of his “Philomena,” 1621, (Obras Sueltas, Tom. II. p. 452), he traces his troubles to his earlier adventures; “love to hatred turned.” “Love-vengeance,” he declares, “disguised as justice, exiled me.”

[215] His relations with Claudio are noticed by himself in the Dedication to that “true friend,” as he justly calls him, of the well-known play, “Courting his own Misfortunes”; “which title,” he adds, “is well suited to those adventures, when, with so much love, you accompanied me to prison, from which we went to Valencia, where we ran into no less dangers than we had incurred at home, and where I repaid you by liberating you from the tower of Serranos [a jail at Valencia] and the severe sentence you were there undergoing,” etc. Comedias, Tom. XV., Madrid, 1621, f. 26.

[216] Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. pp. 430-443. Belardo, the name Lope bears in this eclogue, is the one he gave himself in the Arcadia, as may be seen from the sonnet prefixed to that pastoral by Amphryso, or Antonio Duke of Alva; and it is the poetical name Lope bore to the time of his death, as may be seen from the beginning of the third act of the drama in honor of his memory. (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 494.) Even his Peruvian Amaryllis knew it, and under this name addressed to him the poetical epistle already referred to. This fact—that Belardo was his recognized poetical appellation—should be borne in mind when reading the poetry of his time, where it frequently recurs.

[217] Belisa is an anagram of Isabela, the first name of his wife, as is plain from a sonnet on the death of her mother, Theodora Urbina, where he speaks of her as “the heavenly image of his Belisa, whose silent words and gentle smiles had been the consolation of his exile.” (Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 278.) There are several ballads connected with her in the Romancero General, and a beautiful one in the third of Lope’s Tales, written evidently while he was with the Duke of Alva. Obras, Tom. VIII. p. 148.

[218] For instance, in the fine ballad beginning, “Llenos de lágrimas tristes,” (Romancero of 1602, f. 47), he says to Belisa, “Let Heaven condemn me to eternal woe, if I do not detest Phillis and adore thee”;—which may be considered as fully contradicted by the equally fine ballad addressed to Filis, (f. 13), “Amada pastora mia”; as well as by six or eight others of the same sort; some more, some less tender.

[219]

Egloga á Claudio, Obras, Tom. IX. p. 356.

[220] One of his poetical panegyrists, after his death, speaking of the Armada, says: “There and in Cadiz he wrote the Angelica.” (Obras, Tom. XX. p. 348.) The remains of the Armada returned to Cadiz in September, 1588, having sailed from Lisbon in the preceding May; so that Lope was probably at sea about four months. Further notices of his naval service may be found in the third canto of his “Corona Trágica,” and the second of his “Philomena.”

[221] Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Count of Lemos and Marquis of Sarria, who was born in Madrid about 1576, married a daughter of the Duke de Lerma, the reigning favorite and minister of the time, with whose fortunes he rose, and in whose fall he was ruined. The period of his highest honors was that following his appointment as Viceroy of Naples, in 1610, where he kept a literary court of no little splendor, that had for its chief directors the two Argensolas, and with which, at one time, Quevedo was connected. The Count died in 1622, at Madrid. Lope’s principal connections with him were when he was young, and before he had come to his title as Count de Lemos. He records himself as “Secretary of the Marquis of Sarria,” in a sonnet prefixed to the “Peregrino Indiano” of Saavedra, 1599, and on the title-page of the “San Isidro,” printed the same year; besides which, many years afterwards, when writing to the Count de Lemos, he says: “You know how I love and reverence you, and that, many a night, I have slept at your feet like a dog.” Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVII. p. 403. Clemencin, Don Quixote, Parte II., note to the Dedicatoria.

[222] Epístola al Doctor Mathias de Porras, and Epístola á Amarylis; to which may be added the pleasant epistle to Francisco de Rioja, in which he describes his garden and the friends he received in it.

[223] On this son, see Obras, Tom. I. p. 472;—the tender Cancion on his death, Tom. XIII. p. 365;—and the beautiful Dedication to him of the “Pastores de Belen,” Tom. XVI. p. xi.

[224] Obras, Tom. I. p. 472, and Tom. XX. p. 34.

[225] Obras, Tom. IX. p. 355.

[226] “El Remedio de la Desdicha,” a play whose story is from the “Diana” of Montemayor, (Comedias, Tom. XIII., Madrid, 1620), in the Preface to which he begs his daughter to read and correct it; and prays that she may be happy in spite of the perfections which render earthly happiness almost impossible to her. She long survived her father, and died, much reverenced for her piety, in 1688.

[227] The description of his grief and of his religious feelings as she took the veil is solemn, but he dwells a little too complacently on the splendor given to the occasion by the king, and by his patron, the Duke de Sessa, who desired to honor thus a favorite and famous poet. Obras, Tom. I. pp. 313-316.

[228] Obras, Tom. XI. pp. 495 and 596, where his father jests about it. It is a Glosa. He is called Lope de Vega Carpio, el mozo; and it is added, that he was not yet fourteen years old.

[229] Obras, Tom. I. pp. 472 and 316.

[230] In the eclogue, (Obras, Tom. X. p. 362), he is called, after both his father and his mother, Don Lope Felix del Carpio y Luxan.

[231] Pellicer, ed. Don Quixote, Tom. I. p. cxcix.

[232] I notice the title Familiar del Santo Oficio as early as the “Jerusalen Conquistada,” 1609. Frequently afterwards, as in the Comedias, Tom. II., VI., XI., etc., he puts no other title to his name, as if this were glory enough. In his time, Familiar meant a person who could at any moment be called into the service of the Inquisition; but had no special office, and no duties, till he was summoned. Covarruvias, ad verb.

[233]

Obras Sueltas, Tom. XI. p. 69.

[234] The “Fiestas de Denia,” a poem in two short cantos, on the reception of Philip III. at Denia, near Valencia, in 1598, soon after his marriage, was printed in 1599, but is of little consequence.

[235] The point where it branches off from the story of Ariosto is the sixteenth stanza of the thirtieth canto of the “Orlando Furioso.”

[236] La Angélica, Canto III.

[237] Cantos IV. and VII.

[238] La Hermosura de Angélica was printed for the first time in 1604, says the editor of the Obras, in Tom. II. But Salvá gives an edition in 1602. It certainly appeared at Barcelona in 1605. The stanzas where proper names occur so often as to prove that Lope was guilty of the affectation of taking pains to accumulate them are to be found in Obras, Tom. II. pp. 27, 55, 233, 236, etc.

[239] “Considerations touching a War with Spain, inscribed to Prince Charles, 1624”; a curious specimen of the political discussions of the time. See Bacon’s Works, London, 1810, 8vo, Vol. III. p. 517.

[240] Mariana, Historia, ad an. 1596, calls him simply “Francis Drake, an English corsair”;—and in a graceful little anonymous ballad, imitated from a more graceful one by Góngora, we have again a true expression of the popular feeling. The ballad in question, beginning “Hermano Perico,” is in the Romancero General, 1602, (f. 34), and contains the following significant passage:—

Romancero General, Madrid, 1602, 4to, f. 35.

[241] He was in fact of Devonshire. See Fuller’s Worthies and Holy State.

[242] There is a curious poem in English, by Charles Fitzgeffrey, on the Life and Death of Sir Francis Drake, first printed in 1596, which is worth comparing with the Dragontea, as its opposite, and which was better liked in England in its time than Lope’s poem was in Spain. See Wood’s Athenæ, London, 1815, 4to, Vol. II. p. 607.

[243] The time of the story is quite unsettled.

[244] At the end of the whole, it is said, that, during the eight nights following the wedding, eight other dramas were acted, whose names are given; two of which, “El Perseguido,” and “El Galan Agradecido,” do not appear among Lope’s printed plays;—at least, not under these titles.

[245] Among the passages that have the strongest air of reality about them are those relating to the dramas, said to have been acted in different places; and those containing descriptions of Monserrate and of the environs of Valencia, in the first and second books. A sort of ghost-story, in the fifth, seems also to have been founded on fact.

[246] The first edition of the “Peregrino en su Patria” is that of Madrid, 1604, 4to, and it was soon reprinted; but the best edition is that in the fifth volume of the Obras Sueltas, 1776. A worthless abridgment of it in English appeared anonymously in London in 1738, 12mo.

[247] Lope insists, on all occasions, upon the fact of Alfonso’s having been in the Crusades. For instance, in “La Boba para los otros,” (Comedias, Tom. XXI., Madrid, 1635, f. 60), he says,—

But the whole is a mere fiction of the age succeeding that of Alfonso, for using which Lope is justly rebuked by Navarrete, in his acute essay on the part the Spaniards took in the Crusades. Memorias de la Academia de la Hist., Tom. V., 1817, 4to, p. 87.

[248] See the Prólogo. The whole poem is in Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIV. and XV.

[249]

Obras Sueltas, Tom. XVI. p. 332.

[250] Obras, Tom. XIII., etc.

[251] For instance, the sonnet beginning, “Yo dormiré en el polvo.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 186.

[252] Such as “Gertrudis siendo Dios tan amoroso.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 223.

[253] Some of them are very flat;—see the sonnet, “Quando en tu alcazar de Sion.” Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 225.

[254] Triumfos de la Fé en los Reynos de Japon. Obras, Tom. XVII.

[255] See ante, Vol. I. p. 338, and Vol. II. p. 79.

[256] The successful poem, a jesting ballad of very small merit, is in the Obras Sueltas, Tom. XXI. pp. 171-177.

[257] An account of some of the poetical joustings of this period is to be found in Navarrete, “Vida de Cervantes,” § 162, with the notes, p. 486; and a good illustration of the mode in which they were conducted is to be found in the “Justa Poética,” in honor of our Lady of the Pillar at Saragossa, collected by Juan Bautista Felices de Caceres, (Çaragoça, 1629, 4to), in which Joseph de Valdivielso and Vargas Machuca figured. Such joustings became so frequent at last as to be subjects of ridicule. In the “Caballero Descortes” of Salas Barbadillo, (Madrid, 1621, 12mo, f. 99, etc.), there is a certámen in honor of the recovery of a lost hat;—merely a light caricature.

[258] The details of the festival, with the poems offered on the occasion, were neatly printed at Madrid, in 1620, in a small quarto, ff. 140, and fill about three hundred pages in the eleventh volume of Lope’s Works. The number of poetical offerings was great, but much short of what similar contests sometimes produced. Figueroa says in his “Pasagero,” (Madrid, 1617, 12mo, f. 118), that, at a festival, held a short time before, in honor of St. Antonio of Padua, five thousand poems of different kinds were offered; which, after the best of them had been hung round the church and the cloisters of the monks who originally proposed the prizes, were distributed to other monasteries. The custom extended to America. In 1585, Balbuena carried away a prize in Mexico from three hundred competitors. See his Life, prefixed to the Academy’s edition of his “Siglo de Oro,” Madrid, 1821, 8vo.

[259] “But let the reader note well,” says Lope, “that the verses of Master Burguillos must be supposititious; for he did not appear at the contest; and all he wrote is in jest, and made the festival very savory. And as he did not appear for any prize, it was generally believed that he was a character introduced by Lope himself.” Obras, Tom. XI. p. 401. See also p. 598.

[260] The proceedings and poems of this second great festival were printed at once at Madrid, in a quarto volume, 1622, ff. 156, and fill Tom. XII. of the Obras Sueltas.

[261] The edition which claims a separate and real existence for Burguillos is that found in the seventeenth volume of the “Poesías Castellanas,” collected by Fernandez and others. But, besides the passages from Lope himself cited in a preceding note, Quevedo says, in an Aprobacion to the very volume in question, that “the style is such as has been seen only in the writings of Lope de Vega”; and Coronel, in some décimas prefixed to it, adds, “These verses are dashes from the pen of the Spanish Phœnix”; hints which it would have been dishonorable for Lope himself to publish, unless the poems were really his own. The poetry of Burguillos is in Tom. XIX. of the Obras Sueltas, just as Lope originally published it in 1634. There is a spirited German translation of the Gatomachia in Bertuch’s Magazin der Span. und Port. Literatur, Dessau, 1781, 8vo, Tom. I.

[262] The poems are in Tom. II. of the Obras Sueltas. The discussion about the new poetry is in Tom. IV. pp. 459-482; to which should be added some trifles in the same vein, scattered through his Works, and especially a sonnet beginning, “Boscan, tarde llegamos”;—which, as it was printed by him with the “Laurel de Apolo,” (1630, f. 123), shows, that, though he himself sometimes wrote in the affected style then in fashion, to please the popular taste, he continued to disapprove it to the last. The Novela is in Obras, Tom. VIII.

[263] The three poems are in Tom. III.; the epistles in Tom. I. pp. 279, etc.; and the three tales in Tom. VIII.

[264] Obras Sueltas, Tom. VIII. p. 2; also Tom. III. Preface.

[265] There are editions of the eight at Saragossa, (1648), Barcelona, (1650), etc. There is some confusion about a part of the poems published originally with these tales, and which appear among the works of Fr. Lopez de Zarate, Alcalá, 1651, 4to. (See Lope, Obras, Tom. III. p. iii.) But such things are not very rare in Spanish literature, and will occur again in relation to Zarate.

[266] The account is found in a MS. history of Madrid, by Leon Pinelo, in the King’s Library; and so much as relates to this subject I possess, as well as a notice of Lope himself, given in the same MS. under the date of his death. It is cited, and an abstract of it given, in Casiano Pellicer, “Orígen de las Comedias,” (Madrid, 1804, 12mo), Tom. I. pp. 104, 105.

[267] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIII.

[268] A la Muerte de Carlos Felix, Obras, Tom. XIII. p. 365.

[269] See particularly the two beginning on pp. 413 and 423.

[270] It is in Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV.

[271] The atrocious passage is on p. 5. In an epistle, which he addressed to Ovando, the Maltese envoy, and published at the end of the “Laurel de Apolo,” (Madrid, 1630, 4to, f. 118), he gives an account of this poem, and says he wrote it in the country, where “the soul in solitude labors more gently and easily!”

[272] It is not easy to tell why these later productions of Lope are put in the first volume of his Miscellaneous Works, (1776-79), but so it is. That collection was made by Cerdá y Rico; a man of learning, though not of good taste or sound judgment.

[273] It fills the whole of the seventh volume of his Obras Sueltas.

[274] “Dorotea, the posthumous child of my Muse, the most beloved of my long-protracted life, still asks the public light,” etc. Egloga á Claudio; Obras, Tom. IX. p. 367.

[275] These three poems—curious as his last works—are in Tom. X. p. 193, and Tom. IX. pp. 2 and 10.

[276] “A continued melancholy passion, which of late has been called hypochondria,” etc., is the description Montalvan gives of his disease. The account of his last days follows it. Obras, Tom. XX. pp. 37, etc.; and Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. III. pp. 360-363.

[277] See Obras Sueltas, Tom. XIX.-XXI., in which they are republished;—Spanish, Latin, French, Italian, and Portuguese. The Spanish, which were brought together by Montalvan, and are preceded by his “Fama Póstuma de Lope de Vega,” may be regarded as a sort of justa poética in honor of the great poet, in which above a hundred and fifty of his contemporaries bore their part.

[278] Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX. p. 42. For an excellent and interesting discussion of Lope’s miscellaneous works, and one to which I have been indebted in writing this chapter, see London Quarterly Review, No. 35, 1818. It is by Mr. Southey.

[279] Philomena, Segunda Parte, Obras Sueltas, Tom. II. p. 458.

[280]

Obras Sueltas, Tom. IV. p. 412.

[281] Dramatic entertainments of some kind are spoken of at Valencia in the fourteenth century. In 1394, we are told, there was represented at the palace a tragedy, entitled “L’ hom enamorat e la fembra satisfeta,” by Mossen Domingo Maspons, a counsellor of John I. This was undoubtedly a Troubadour performance. Perhaps the Entramesos mentioned as having occurred in the same city in 1412, 1413, and 1415, were of the same sort. At any rate, they seem to have belonged, like those we have noticed (ante, Vol. I. p. 259) by the Constable Alvaro de Luna, to courtly festivities. Aribau, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Madrid, 1846, 8vo, Tom. II. p. 178, note; and an excellent article on the early Spanish theatre, by F. Wolf, in Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung, 1848, p. 1287, note.

[282] Jovellanos, Diversiones Públicas, Madrid, 1812, 8vo, p. 57.

[283] In one of his earlier efforts he says, (Obras, Tom. V. p. 346), “The laws help them little.” But of this we shall see more hereafter.

[284] It is probable, from internal evidence, that this eclogue, and some others in the same romance, were acted before the Duke Antonio de Alva. At any rate, we know similar representations were common in the age of Cervantes and Lope, as well as before and after it.

[285] Such dramas are found in the “Pastores de Belen,” Book III., and elsewhere.

[286] “El Verdadero Amante” is in the Fourteenth Part of the Comedias, printed at Madrid, 1620, and is dedicated to his son Lope, who died the next year, only fifteen years old;—the father saying in the Dedication, “This play was written when I was of about your age.”

[287] Montalvan says, “Lope greatly pleased Manrique, the Bishop of Avila, by certain eclogues which he wrote for him, and by the drama of ‘The Pastoral of Jacinto,’ the earliest he wrote in three acts.” (Obras, Tom. XX. p. 30.) It was first printed at Madrid, in 1617, 4to, by Sanchez, in a volume entitled “Quatro Comedias Famosas de Don Luis de Góngora y Lope de Vega Carpio,” etc.; and afterwards in the eighteenth volume of the Comedias of Lope, Madrid, 1623. It was also printed separately, under the double title of “La Selva de Albania, y el Çeloso de sí mismo.”

[288] It fills nearly fifty pages in the third book of the romance.

[289] In the first book. It is entitled “A Moral Representation of the Soul’s Voyage”;—in other words, A Morality.

[290]

El Peregrino en su Patria, Sevilla, 1604, 4to, f. 36. b.