Lope and Calderon: The Tragic Pattern of El castigo sin venganza

LOPE AND CALDERÓN: THE TRAGIC PATTERN OF EL CASTIGO SIN VENGANZA GWYNNE EDWARDS University College of Wales, Abersytwyth Critical opinion of Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza has, to a greater or lesser extent, touched on the moral defects of its characters and sought to explain their tragic end accordingly. ' The Duke of Ferrara is, it is argued, a libertine who, unable to tolerate an arranged marriage to Casandra, shamelessly neglects his wife and quickly returns to his former ways. Casandra , resentful of her husband's treatment of her and attracted by his son Federico, seeks both compensation and vengeance on the Duke in an affair with him. Federico, the illegitimate child of one of his father's numerous affairs , smarts at his marriage, for it deprives him of his expected inheritance, is simultaneously attracted to Casandra and finally succumbs to her charms. The Duke, secretly informed of the affair, is aware both of his own contribution to it and of the need to punish the offence. By a fiendishly clever ruse he succeeds in getting Federico to murder Casandra and his subjects to kill the murderer, avenging thus the offence against himself and against the state. The action of the play, summarized thus, is seen to depend very clearly on the moral defects and wrongdoing of its characters, and to consist too of a series of events, each dependent on the other, in which selfish and imprudent motives are involved. ' It is a view which can be soundly argued and convincingly defended, but it is not, in my opinion, the only valid view of Lope's tragedy. In a recent study of Calderonian drama I have attempted to examine the tragic fate of Calderón's characters as something which is as much the consequence of forces outside themselves—of other people, of social attitudes and expectations, of circumstances , etc,—as of their own imprudent actions. ' El castigo sin venganza may, I believe, be profitably examined in the light of some of the principal characteristics of Calderonian tragedy, for between the older and the younger dramatist there is often in this particular respect a striking confluence of 107 108Bulletin ofthe Comediantes dramatic vision/ The theme of individuals as the prisoners of their situation, be it of their own or someone else's making, or both, is forcibly expressed in the plays of Calderón—and especially in Calderonian tragedy—in two important symbols: the prison and the labyrinth/ In Calderonian drama as a whole the labyrinth reflects both the complex and difficult nature of the events and the confused and bewildered situations in which the characters find themselves. Of the various forms employed to express the idea, the wood, with all its connotations of darkness, enclosure and entanglement, is a particularly striking one and occurs in many plays. In the second Act of La hija del aire (Primera parte), for example, Nino's horse bolts into the wood and the great King, hitherto master of himself and all he surveys, finds himself face to face with and fatally attracted to the beautiful Semíramis. The physical nature of the setting , described variously as ?? intrincado del monte' (1795) and 'de aqueste monte/los enmarañados senos' (1887-88), reflects perfectly Nino's emotional confusion, his inextricable involvement with Semíramis, and his powerlessness to extricate himself from the grip of passion/ If we consider Act 1 of El castigo sin venganza, it is evident that Lope too had in mind both the image of the labyrinth and the associations described above. Early in Act 1 Federico hears cries for help coming from the direction of the river, hurries to the rescue and encounters a young and beautiful woman (subsequently revealed to be Casandra) whose carriage has become stuck in the mud of the river-bed. Casandra's words evoke the trees that surround the spot: que me pareció cubierta de más árboles y sombras... 7 (381-82) Later, as the party is about to set out once more, the Marqués Gonzaga, Casandra's companion, speaks of the danger of this wooded place: y alegremente salgamos del peligro desta selva. (608-09) And Rutilio, who has...