Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation

Religious Drama (Spain)--Elizabeth Wright

Spain  Religiou< Drama  Elizabeth Wright I n 1637 Mateo Rodríguez, a rug weaver who resided in Madrid, received 200 lashes as punishment for “false sainthood.” His Inquisition trial, by accident, left a record of how a community of artisans experienced religious dramas. As historian María José del Río reveals, several witnesses called to report on Rodríguez’s actions as a popular street prophet also drew attention to play performances that they attended in his home on feast days.1 All but one of the plays that the witnesses mentioned were religious (a lo divino) in the inquisitors ’ terms, rather than secular (a lo humano). Private performances of religious dramas were allowed as a form of devotional activity. Yet testimony makes clear that the boundaries between religious and secularconcerns blurred. One neighbor thus described performances of comedias (three-­ act plays), plus comic entremeses (interludes or intermezzi) and festive dances on the feast of Saint Blaise. Though the plays were religious, the entremeses would have been farces propelled by raunchy humor. Witnesses also described how Rodríguez, costumed in blackface and women’s clothing, would dance before a makeshift stage. Looking back from this trial to the dawn of the early modern era, we find that similar tensions marked theemergence of theater as an autonomous art form. In Spain as elsewhere in Europe, scholars trace the birth of theater to the gradual emancipation of scripted performances from religious rituals during the later Middle Ages. Archival sources from the second half of the fifteenth century record how Church-­ sponsored performances designed to celebrate feast days tookon increasing importance in Spanish cities and towns. Members of artisans’ guilds typically performed the tasks associated with production and performance .Other important artistic developments emerged from more rarified confines of aristocratic palaces, where writers such as Juan del Encina (1468?–1529) and Gil Vicente (1465?–1536?) composed Christmas and Easter plays on commission. In urban areas, a major impetus for theatrical innovations followed from the increasingly elaborate Corpus Christi celebrations, typically anchored by one-­ act religious dramas based on biblical history and saints’ lives.These were in turn accompanied by entremeses, dances, and processions. Anxieties surfaced as a result of this mixture. For instance, in 1504 officials in Valladolid outlawed Corpus Christi entertainments judged “crude and scabrous.” Showing similar concerns a half-­ century later, the Council of Trent urged greater solemnity in spectacles planned for this feast.2 Such wariness among theologians intensified as a professional theater took shape in the later sixteenth century. Some averred that notoriously sinful actors would undercut didactic messages within religious plays.Others alleged that love plots were sapping Spain’s military power. But the theateralso attracted influential defenders. In 1604 Rodrigo de Calderón, then a powerful and controversial official in the court of Philip III, petitioned to overturn the exile of actress Jerónima de Burgos, who had been banished from court for “scandalous conduct.” He argued that her talents were crucial for Corpus Christi performances.Though this request failed, records for subsequent years show that this popular diva did appear again on the stage during this holiday . Yet there was more behind the public theater’s resilience than elite leisure. Portions of ticket receipts at public playhouses—known as corrales de comedias—supported hospitals and other charities. Some religious authorities also argued that dramas empowered individuals to act as their own theologians. Though such debates were not limited to religious theater, the tension between the moral imperative to edify and the commercial impulse to sell tickets was most pronounced there.3 When taking stock of Spain’s religious theater, the large number of surviving plays complicates generalizations. A brief consideration of two comedias and one auto sacramental —each of which Louise Burkhart discusses in terms of its reinterpretation in colonial Mexico—suggests how the baroque religious theater engaged popular devotional traditions and reflected the confessional agenda of the post-­ Tridentine Church, while providing entertainment. Fervent Marian devotion, a mode of piety often associated with Spanish people and rulers, shapes La madre de la mejor (The Mother of the Best). Its author, Lope de Vega Carpio (1562–1635), was the standard-­ bearer of the generation that broke with classical precepts to engender what contemporaries called the comedia nueva.4 The play tells the Marian nativity story in act 1 and the beginning of act 2, after which it pivots on festive songs and dances.This disjointed structure has not endeared the drama to direc- Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque 282 tors and scholars today. But hagiography mixed with song and dance resonated powerfully for Spaniards of the day, as the theater festivals in the home of Mateo Rodríguez demonstrate. A particularly fascinating example of a hagiographic comedia is El animal profeta y dichoso patricida (The Animal Prophet and the Blissful Patricide), which adapts the legend of Julian the Hospitaler.5 Although some editors published the play with Lope de Vega listed as the author, scholars now attribute it to Antonio Mira de Amescua (1574–1644?). In most versions of the Saint Julian story, a nobleman unwittingly kills his parents, as prophesied by a stag he hunted. Repentant, he devotes himself to aiding needy travelers.To spice up the hagiography, the playwright added the kind of seduction plot that irritated moralists. Action thus begins as Julian’s lackey,Vulcan, delivers a love letter to a young woman, Irene.This messenger epitomizes the stock characterof the gracioso, a linchpin of the comedia nueva as it had evolved from the late sixteenth century.The play’s first act ends as Julian, with Vulcan in tow, flees from his home to avoid fulfilling the prophecy. So doing, he also abandons Irene, who utters an angry curse that echoes the prophecy of patricide. The second act dramatizes the unwitting murder of his parents. In the final act, focused on repentance and redemption, the devil appears disguised as a poor traveler. He claims that the crime has doomed Julian and his parents, while Vulcan insists that his master’s good works can yield salvation. Christ then appears, confirming that Julian’s charity has indeed redeemed his parents from purgatory.This debate thus airs in simple terms the Catholic teaching that good works lead to salvation. The same message underpins the most famous auto sacramental , El gran teatro del mundo (The Great Theater of the World), by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681).6 It opens as a director of a professional theater company assigns parts to his actors, noting that this drama is life itself, so there will be no rehearsal. Action begins as a king flaunts his power; a rich man savors his wealth; a young woman revels in her beauty; and a day laborer protests his lot in life with colorful, even defiant language. The play ends as the company director calls back each player and judges his or her actions on earth, deciding each soul’s fate accordingly. Imagined in its original performance context, The Great Theater of the World would have spoken to many kinds of spectators. The most discerning baroque poet in the audience could have reveled in Calderón’s dazzling metaphors, as when the opening monologue conveys dew drops as shattered crystals. A no-­ nonsense market vendor might have enjoyed the earthy language with which the Labrador (Day Laborer or Plowman) protests his harsh lot in life. In light of the many levels on which Spain’s religious dramas communicated, widely held notions of early modern Spanish theater as an instrument of top-­ down control bear reconsideration. This paradigm anchors José Antonio Maravall’s influential Culture of the Baroque,7 a work justly revered for the way it prompted scholars to contextualize Spain’s Golden Age literature more rigorously and contemplate Spanish history in a broader European framework . Yet Maravall concentrated his analysis of plays on plot resolutions in which order is restored or reaffirmed. So doing, he overlooked the ironies and ambiguities inherent in literary language, plot twists, or performance contexts. A convincing refutation comes from Melveena McKendrick ’s analysis of how Lope de Vega depicted kings in a wide range of dramas. In more general terms, John Elliott warned that Maravallian conceptions of Spain’s “guided culture” do not always hold up in the face of archival evidence .8 Indeed, the inquisitorial testimony about theater festivals in Mateo Rodríguez’s home offers a case in point. The scenes’ witnesses show interpreters and spectators adapting theatrical traditions to suit their own notions of piety and community. The results might be as ambiguous as a gender-­ bending dance for Saint Blaise. Notes 1. María José del Río Barredo, “Representaciones dramáticas en casa de un artesano del Madrid de principios del siglo XVII,” in Teatros y vida teatral en el Siglo de Oro a través de las fuentes documentales , ed. Luciano García Lorenzo and J. E.Varey (London: Tamesis, 1991), 245–258. 2. The 1504 injunction is cited in N. D. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 86. The Council of Trent’s recommendation is discussed in Melveena McKendrick,Theater in Spain, 1490–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 39. 3. The Jerónima de Burgos exile is recorded in the CD-­rom edited by Teresa Ferrer Valls, Diccionario biográfico de actores del teatro clásicoespañol (DICAT) (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2008).Treatises and memoranda on theater by theologians are transcribed in Emilio Cotareloy Mori, Bibliografía de las controversias sobre la licitud del teatro en España [1904], ed. José Luis Suárez García (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1997), esp. 165–166. 4. Lope de Vega Carpio, La madrede la mejor, in Obras de Lopede Vega, vol. 3, ed. M. Menéndez Pelayo (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra , 1893). A transcription is also available online through the Proquest database Teatroespañol del Siglode Oro (http://teso.chadwyck .com). 5. Antonio Mira de Amescua, El animal profeta, ed. Aurelio Valladares Reguero, in Teatro completo, vol. 5, ed. Agustín de la Granja (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2005). A transcription is avail- religious drama (Spain) 283 able on the website of the Association for Hispanic Classical Theater (http://www.comedias.org). 6. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, El gran teatrodel mundo, ed. John J. Allen and Domingo Ynduráin (Barcelona: Crítica, 1997); translated by Rick Davis under the title The Great Theater of the World (Hanover : Smith and Kraus, 2008). 7. José Antonio Maravall,Cultureof the Baroque: Analysis ofa Historical Structure [1975], trans. Terry Cochran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). 8. Melveena McKendrick, Playing the King: Lope de Vega and the Limits of Conformity (London: Tamesis, 2000); J. H. Elliott, “Concerto Barroco,” review of Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure by J. A. Maravall, New York Review of Books 34, no. 6 (9 April 1987): 26–28. Suggested Further Reading Bass, Laura R. The Drama of the Portrait: Theater and Visual Culture in Early Modern Spain. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. Greer, Margaret R. “The Development of National Theatre.” In Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, ed. David T. Gies, 238–250. London: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Molina,Tirsode.Tamar’s Revenge.Trans. and adapted by James Fenton . London: Oberon Books, 2004. Thacker, Jonathan. A Companion to Golden AgeTheater.Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2007. Vega Carpio, Lope de. “The Great Pretenders (Lo fingido verdadero ).” In Two Plays (The Great Pretenders and The Gentleman from Olmedo). Trans. and adapted by David Johnson. Bath: Absolute Classics, 1992. ...