that the principles of this school should be first laid down. The two pieces, of which we are about to give an analysis, stand alone in the lists of the Spanish drama: they were written before the romantic theatre was completely formed; the effect intended to be produced by them appears to be of a different description; and they are considered as barbarous, both by the most eminent critics of the native country of the author, and by the high modern authorities to which we have just adverted. Differing with all humility from the judgment pronounced on them by those authorities, we should remark, however, that amongst the Spaniards there exist two opinions with respect to the motives that influenced Cervantes in departing in their composition from those rules of the ancients, with which he appears to have been thoroughly acquainted, and to which he has afforded unqualified praise in several parts of his works: particularly in the dialogue between the Canon of Toledo and the Curate Pedro Perez, in Chap. 48, Part I. of his Don Quixote. It is believed by one party that he wrote these plays with the intention of exposing the extravagancies and absurdities of the plays of his time, by exhibiting them in their grossest point of view, in the same manner as his Don Quixote was designed to parody the equally popular romances of chivalry. The champions on the other side of the question assert, that his only object was to procure a livelihood, and that could not be obtained by a writer for the stage at Madrid, as at London or elsewhere, but by abandoning all refined notions of dramatic propriety, and accommodating his style to the notions and prejudices of the majority of the people. The chief of those who maintain the latter opinion is Don Ignacio de Luzan, a writer of high repute amongst his countrymen, whose "Poetica" has mainly contributed to occasion the general alteration in the tone and manner of Spanish literature, which became visible about the close of the last century, and has continued the same ever since. To us the theory of Luzan seems the more reasonable; and many passages in the other writings of Cervantes incline us to believe that, in this instance at least, he bowed to the will of the many. But it does sometimes happen that the many have reason on their side, and we shall endeavour to show that, though these pieces were framed on principles purely conventional, they are adapted to produce not merely the effect that was intended, but, in some instances, an effect that could not be attained by other means. Let us, however, first remind the reader of the slow progress which dramatic literature had made amongst the principal nations of Europe, previous to the appearance of these plays of Cervantes; and we shall then, as Mr. Sismondi has done, show him, in Cervantes' own words, what was the state of the Spanish drama when he first turned his attention to its cultivation; and, if he did not raise it at once to its perfection, let it be recollected that on this substructure, humble as it may seem, were heaped the ponderous labours of Lope de Vega, and the highly-magnified fairy structures of Calderon de la Barca. In Italy, not to mention the Sophonisba of Trissino, and the other tragedies of his time, composed on classic models, as were also the comedies of Ariosto, the first traces of originality sparkle in the comedies of Machiavel, the pastoral drama of Beccari, and the Aminta of Tasso. The former are frigid productions compared with the imaginative creations of the early Spanish dramatists; the latter are of a more regular, though not of so high an order of genius. Jodelle was the Eschylus of France, and the only dramatist, with the exception of Garnier, of whom little is known, who lived antecedently to the period of which we are now treating. Mairet and Tristan appeared subsequently. The latter was some time resident in England; and although he must have become familiar with the plays of Shakspeare, Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher, his Marianne is borrowed from a Spanish piece, the Tetrarca de Jerusalem. Corneille was born in 1606, and Rotrou in 1609. The Cid was published one year after the death of Lope de Vega, and is, as every one knows, taken from the Spanish play written on the same subject by Guillen de Castro: indeed a great proportion of the pieces of these two celebrated dramatists are derived from Spanish sources. In England there are not more than seven original dramas extant, exclusive of mysteries, moralities, and translations, which were written previous to the appearance of the "Numancia" and the "Trato de Argel" of Cervantes; of these the two most generally known are the Ferrex and Porrex of Lord Buckhurst and Thomas Norton, and the Appius and Virginia of Webster. Shakspeare was a contemporary of the great Lope, and did not begin to write for the stage much before the year 1591, although Mr. Malone assigns 1589 as the date of his earliest piece. The account given by Cervantes of the state of the Spanish stage, as he found it, is extremely curious; and we translate it from the preface prefixed to the edition of his later plays, which are compositions altogether of a different nature. "You must bestow your pardon on me, gentle reader, if in this preface I appear to depart somewhat from my usual modesty. I was a few days ago in the company of some friends where the conversation turned on plays and things appertaining thereto the subject was discussed with so much subtlety and acuteness, that to me it appeared the conclusion was most accurate. Allusion was then made to the man, who first of all, in Spain, took comedy out of the cradle and attired her in splendid and magnificent garments. As the oldest person present, I said I remembered having heard the great Lope de Rueda recite, a man equally remarkable for his powers of representation and his more than ordinary intelligence. He was born at Seville, and was, by trade, a gold-beater. He was admirable in pastoral poetry, and in that line had no superior before his time, and has not been surpassed since. Although I could form no judgment respecting the merit of his verses, being still a child when I saw him act, some of them nevertheless have dwelt upon my memory, which on recalling them to recollection, now that I have arrived at years of maturity, I consider worthy the reputation they attained. In the time of that celebrated Spaniard, all the properties of a writer of plays or manager of a theatre, were contained in a bag, and consisted of four shepherd's white robes or frocks, bordered with gilt leather, four beards and false heads of hair, and four crooks, more or less. Plays were nothing more than conversations, similar to eclogues, between two or three shepherds and a shepherdess; they were diversified and lengthened by two or three interludes, the characters in which were a negress, some intermeddlers, some stupid clowns, and some Biscayans. The same Lope used to perform these four different characters with all the excellence and discrimination imaginable. At this period there were no side scenes, no battles between Moors and Christians on foot and horseback, no figures issuing, or appearing to issue, out of the centre of the earth, by means of trap-doors; and the stage itself consisted of four or six planks, placed on four benches laid across, and forming by this means a platform raised about four palms above the ground. Angels were never seen descending from the skies, nor spirits mounted aloft on clouds: all the ornament of the stage was an old blanket, tied up by ropes, fastened from one side to the other, and dividing the dressing-rooms from the stage. The musicians were placed behind, and they usually sang some old romance unaccompanied by a guitar. Lope de Rueda died, and from respect to his excellence and celebrity, they interred him between the two choirs, in the great church at Cordova, where he died, just about the same spot where the famous fool Louis Lopez is also interred. Naharro, a native of Toledo, succeeded Lope de Rueda; he gained great reputation, especially in the part of a cowardly intermeddler. Naharro added a little to the stage decorations, and exchanged the clothes-bag for chests and trunks. He brought forward on the stage the musicians, whose place before was behind the curtain. He took away the beards from the buffoons, for up to his time nobody ventured to make his appearance on the stage without a beard. He made them all appear as they were, excepting those who played the parts of old men, or else entirely alter their faces. He invented side-scenes, clouds, thunder, lightning, duels, and battles. But in no particular were theatrical exhibitions carried to the perfection in which we now see them (and here it is that I feel compelled to transgress the bounds of modesty) until the Captives of Algiers, Numantia, and the Naval Engagement, all of them written by me, were represented in the theatre of Madrid. In these I ventured to reduce the acts or journadas from five, which was the number wherein all the plays before my time were comprehended, to three. I was the first who embodied the phantoms of imagination and the hidden thoughts of the soul, by introducing on the stage, with the general applause of the spectators, the attributes of morality. I composed, at that time, from twenty to thirty comedies, which all passed representation, without performers receiving volleys of cucumbers or oranges, or any of those missiles with which an audience is wont to assail bad actors: they ran their career unchecked by hisses, by tumult, or by clamour. After this, having wherewithal to occupy my thoughts, I laid down the pen and left off writing plays: and, at this juncture, that prodigy of nature, Lope de Vega, appeared," &c. M. KNIGHT TOGGENBURG.-FROM THE GERMAN OF SCHILLER. TRANSLATED BY MR. BOWRING. "O Knight! a sister's love for thee My bosom has confess'd; Then ask no other love from me, Nor wound a faithful breast. If cold to thee that love appears, Go, Knight! unmurmuring go- He heard-embrac'd her, but his tongue Then wildly broke away, and sprung On his war-horse array'd; To wear the Cross of Calvary There many a deed of glory bright And wherever there raged the bloodiest fight, His name alone could appal the heart Of the fiercest infidel But his spirit still groan'd with the secret smart, He bore that pang thro' a long, long year: A ship he sees on Joppa's strand And he speeds away to his father-land, And swift he flew to the castle-gate VOL. I. No. 1.-1821. R* When O! what terrible accents grate "She wears the Veil so pure and blest, And he left, and left alas! for ever, And the warrior's praise was heard no more, For the coarse, cold garment of hair he wore At the end of the dusky Linden aile And there he watch'd from the morning's break To the evening's hour of peaceAnd silent hope oft flush'd his cheek, As he sat in loneliness. For hours and hours he speechless sate, Of his heaven-devoted love- Then satisfied he sunk to rest: Until he saw her shadow bright And so he sate, and so he fell |