Forum

FORUM GERALD E. WADE Emeritus, University of Tennessee (Knoxville) In «The New-Christian Dilemma in Two Plays of Lope de Vega» (BCom, summer of 1982), David Gitlitz discusses two of Lope's comedias in which sympathy is shown for a character in each play who is faulted by other characters because of his Jewish ancestry. As Gitlitz indicates, sympathy for conversos (New Christians) is unusual in Lope's comedias: like other dramatists, he preferred to make them targets of scorn and mockery because of their «unclean» blood. Gitlitz names well-known authorities who have written about the ¡impieza de sanare syndrome (my term), and he disagrees with those who have seen the tragic existence of the conversos as entirely too sensitive and indeed dangerous a subject for an expression of sympathy in the Comedia : It is on his page one that Gitlitz mentions a significant element of the Spanish society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: that it was the upper classes, the gentry and the nobility, who were «blood tainted» by Jewish ancestry. The commoners, on the contrary, were mostly of Old Christian lineage, free of Jewish blemish. This lack of«clean» blood among the nobility is an established fact, as persistent research has shown. The earlier materials published on the «clean blood» theme had an authoritative corroboration in J. H. Elliott's Imperial Spain, 1469-1716, published in 1964. Elliott recalls that it was during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella that the limpieza de sangre concept acquired irresistible momentum. As the reader recalls, the 121 122BCom, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Summer 1983) conflict between the New and the Old Christians resulted in a number of pogroms and, in 1492, in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. There is considerable irony in the fact that Ferdinand was himself partly of Jewish ancestry. The pervasive nature of the Jewish dilution of Christian lineage among the nobles had comment from the present writer in an article in BCom in the Spring issue of 1967. The article needs no further recollection here except the reminder that it gives the names of many of the noble families that were reported to be of converso blood; the names had appeared in one or another of the early records. The knowledge of the «blood taint» of the nobility was surely spread throughout Spain, although the genealogical records that got into print omitted that information. Now the commoners who were mostly of Old Christian stock included nearly all of those who wrote for the theater. Although several were of genteel lineage, there are only two who in the sources consulted for this study are recorded as of the noblility. One is Guillen de Castro who, on his mother's side, was descended from King Juan I of Aragon. The other is Jerónimo de Cáncer, of a noble though impoverished family. Carlos Boil Vives de Canesma, an illegitimate son of a genteel father, was later legitimized. Mira de Amescua was sired illegitimately by a gentleman. The father of Cristóbal de Virués was a famous physician. Juan Claudio de la Hoz y Mota, of hidalgo parentage , was made a knight of Santiago. Jerónimo de Cuéllar also became a knight of that Order and thereby gained some gentility that was apparently lacking in his parentage. Franciso de Rojas Zorrilla, of less than socially distinguished parentage, was made a knight of Santiago after an exhaustive investigation of the charge that he bore both Jewish and Moorish blood. Ruiz de Alarcón's Mexican parents were perhaps genteel but not noble. The information above comes from sources the first of which was Adolf Schaeffer's Geschichte des Spanischen Nationaldramas; Schaeffer lists sixty-seven dramatists. These were checked in the 1964 edition of the Diccionario de literatura española; not all of Schaeffer's names appear there. La Barrera's Catálogo del teatro antiguo español was examined. Finally the volumes of the Twayne series on individual authors were consulted, as also John Weiger's Valencian Dramatists of the Golden Age and Vem Williamsen's Minor Dramatists of 1 7th Century Spain, both published by Twayne. Several of the dramatists, perhaps (probably?) of...