Note 389 — Chapter VI

The war between the Church and the theatre was kept up during the whole of the eighteenth century, and till the end of the reign of Ferdinand VII., in the nineteenth. Not that plays were at any time forbidden effectually throughout the kingdom, or silenced in the capital, except during some short period of national anxiety or mourning; but that, at different intervals,—and especially about the year 1748, when, in consequence of earthquakes at Valencia, and under the influence of the Archbishop of that city, its theatre was closed, and remained so for twelve years, (Luis Lamarca, Teatro de Valencia, Valencia, 1840, 12mo, pp. 32-36,) and about the year 1754, when Father Calatayud preached as a missionary and published a book against plays,—there was great excitement on the subject in the provinces. Ferdinand VI. issued severe decrees for their regulation, which were little respected, and in different cities and dioceses, like Lérida, Palencia, Calahorra, Saragossa, Alicant, Córdova, etc., they were from time to time, and as late as 1807, under ecclesiastical influence, and, with the assent of the people, suppressed, and the theatres shut up. In Murcia, where they seem to have been prohibited from 1734 to 1789, and then permitted again, the religious authorities openly resisted their restoration, and not only denied the sacraments to actors, but endeavoured to deprive them of the enjoyment of some of the common rights of subjects, such as that of receiving testamentary legacies. This, however, was an anomalous and absurd state of things, making what was tolerated as harmless in the capital of the kingdom a sin or a crime in the provinces. It was a sort of war of the outposts, carried on after the citadel had been surrendered. Still it had its effect, and its influence continued to be felt till a new order of things was introduced into the state generally. Many singular facts in relation to it may be found scattered through a very ill-arranged book, written apparently by an ecclesiastic of Murcia, in two volumes quarto, at different times between 1789 and 1814, in which last year it was published there, with the title of “Pantoja, ó Resolucion Histórica, Teológica de un Caso Prático de Moral sobre Comédias”;—Pantoja being the name of a lady, real or pretended, who had asked questions of conscience concerning the lawfulness of plays, and who received her answers in this clumsy way.

The state of the theatre, at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, can be well seen in the “Teatro Nuevo Español,” (Madrid, 1800-1, 5 tom. 12mo,) filled with the plays, original and translated, that were then in fashion. It contains a list of such as were forbidden; imperfect, but still embracing between five and six hundred, among which are Calderon’s “Life is a Dream,” Alarcon’s “Weaver of Segovia,” and many more of the best dramas of the old school. Duran, in a note to his Preface to Ramon de la Cruz, (Tom. I. p. v.,) intimates that this ostracism was in some degree the result of the influence of those who sustained the French doctrines.

The number of plays acted or published between 1700 and 1825, if not to be compared with that of the corresponding period preceding 1700, is still large. I think that, in the list given by Moratin, there are about fourteen hundred; nearly all after 1750.