Part 7 — DRAMATIC MORALISTS IN SPANISH AMERICA.

The truth is slowly dawning, at least to curious minds, that the people of the southern half of our New World have tastes not dissimilar to our own. Indeed, they seek other arts than those of revolution, and, here and there, have other stages and actors than those which represent the pronunciamiento, with all its malicious bombast and insignificant "sound and fury." We can count poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, scientists in the ranks of the most distinguished men of our nearest sister republic. Cuba, too, rejoices in the genius of her philosophic scholar, Caballero de la Luz, and of her poets, Heredia and Gertrudiz de Avellañeda, with the same spirit which Mexico brings to her admiration of the scientific versatility of Siguenza, the quaint ideality of Sor Juana Inez, and the literary culture of Carpio and Pesado. Nevertheless, such facts as these have aided but little in forming the common estimate of Spanish-American peoples, who are to some of us scarcely more than a Bedouin rabble fighting problematic wild-beasts in the shape of pronouncers, and struggling through clouds of desert-dust and battle-smoke to the light of freedom. That great rude reserve of race, the Indians, without which the business of one-half the continent could not be carried on, seems to be swept out of our moral consideration as with a broom; yet we must think hopefully of a race which has produced an artist so extraordinary as Cabrera and a ruler so enduring and persistent as Juarez—hopefully, at all events, of their mere abilities, if mother church does not teach us to look with a shrewder and kindlier eye upon their moral capabilities. In more than one country of Spanish America we find Indians among presidents, judges, governors, congressmen, writers, artists; and this being the case, historically or actually, why should it be a matter of surprise that Spanish America, with whatever Old World culture she may possess in union with native aptitude, should have some claims upon our attention on the score of taste and intelligence? Part of these claims we propose to set forth.

The present writer has sat in the orderly theatres of Vera Cruz and Mexico, and seen performances substantially as good as those of our northern capitals. The Zarzuelas, or operettas, of Barbieri and Gatzambide were as pleasant in 1868-69 to their hearers in the southern republic as the French comic opera to New Yorkers, and nevertheless seemed decent and spirited; besides, the Mexicans had the good fortune to enjoy Gatzambide's personal direction of his Zarzuelas, and Gatzambide (now deceased) was one of the most popular musicians of Spain. Another celebrity the Mexicans honored in the person of José Valero, a gentlemanlike Spanish actor, whose superior in versatile genius as tragedian and comedian it would be difficult to find anywhere. Entertainments were plentiful in Moctezuma's city, though subsisting, so to speak, upon diminished rations. Round about all these flickering pleasures flowed the strange dark tide of Mexican life—its ragged multitude, its concealed miseries, its settled and common melancholy, not to be dissipated by any class of illusions, not to be shaken off in a day, or a year, or any brief term of years. Nevertheless, the misfortunes of a war-worn people found as tasteful and respectable a solace as their theatres could afford. Their scholars were even encouraged to revive and celebrate some ancient glories of the Mexican stage; and at the opening of a season they crowned the bust of one of the fathers of the Spanish drama, whom with reason they regard as among the greatest of the small band of very eminent Mexicans. This laurelled bust was but one of a number to be seen in the various theatres, in several instances perpetuating the memory of Mexico's own dramatic authors. On the occasion referred to, poems by well-known poets—and, among the rest, if the writer remembers correctly, an eloquent composition by the highly-esteemed blind poet, Juan Valle—preluded the revival of that celebrated comedy, La Verdad Sospechosa, or, The Truth Suspected.

JUAN RUIZ DE ALARCON.

The author of this play was Alarcon, that thoughtful writer who, on the Spanish stage, ranks with Lope, Calderon, Moreto, and Tirso. Strange as it may appear to those who doubt whether any good can come out of Mexico, he was born and bred in that mysterious country. What his countrymen do not know of their great artist, Cabrera, they are able to tell of their chief literary glory—namely, the place and date of his baptism. Documents found in the royal university of Mexico established the several facts that Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza was baptized in that city on the 2d day of October, 1572, and received the grade of licentiate or lawyer from the university. It was for some time asserted that he was born at Tasco (for whose church Cabrera is said to have painted extraordinary works); but Chalco, not far from the capital, has also laid claim to the honor of his birth. He is represented as short, ugly, and humpbacked. To improve his fortunes, he sought the literary life of Madrid, but his first efforts were deemed of little importance. By the year 1621 he had written eight acted comedies, of which Las Paredes Oyen (The Walls Hear) is esteemed the best, as also one of the finest in any language. In spite of his physical imperfections his genius won him admirers, socially as well as otherwise. In 1628, he became clerk to the Council of the Indies, and held his office till his death in 1639; so that it seems our author was a contemporary of Shakespeare, Webster, Jonson, and other great lights of the English drama. His comedies are lauded as forming a system of practical philosophy, inasmuch as they give a delightful verification of the proverbial wisdom of his time, and preach capital sermons from common texts. "Luck and Labor," "The World's Favors," "No Evil that does not come for Good," "Before you Marry see what you are about," "The Truth made Suspicious," are the suggestive titles of some of his dramas, which appear to have lost nothing of their peculiar excellence by pointing morals. It was Alarcon who said:

To give to comedy a conscience and a purpose is the distinguishing design of Alarcon; but, while the public of Madrid never failed to perceive the moral of his humor, they could yet heartily laugh at the wit of his dialogues and the genuine comicality of his situations. In his plays cool reason walked hand in hand with sentiment and pleasantry, as they do in some of the most admired comedies of our own stage. The delight with which the Mexicans witnessed La Verdad Sospechosa proved that to Alarcon belonged not merely the ingenuity by which men are amused, but something of that magic by which their own wit and humor are excited. Alarcon could give logic to a whim, a fancy, or a passion. In the Prueba de las Promesas his lover expostulates:

An apology for woman made by a servant in Todo es Ventura (Luck is Everything) may be translated thus:

In Ganar Amigos (To Gain Friends) Don Fernando has killed the brother of Don Fadrique, and seeks and obtains refuge with the latter, who, however, does not know him. Don Fadrique, though at length made aware of the truth, faithfully keeps the pledge he has given the slayer of his brother. Seeing this, Don Fernando gratefully exclaims:

In the comedy of Mudarse por Mejorarse (To Change for the Better; or, more literally, to Change in order to Better One's Self), a certain Don Garcia, who was to marry Doña Clara, falls in love with her niece Leonor; whence this dialogue:

The discreet Leonor, compromised by the entangling suit of Don Garcia, is compelled to admit the attentions of a gallant and rich marquis, with whom at last she falls in love. The following passage explains the rest:

Here is the "retort courteous" in its most charming humor. The gallant grace and wit of these dialogues are evidence of the original art with which Alarcon could make his comedy a study of life, and compel his auditors to think somewhat after they ceased to laugh. This is the function of eminent high comedy, though we may not ask that it shall elaborate a severe or intrusive moral, and though we admit its possession, as in Shakespeare, of the liveliest poetic qualities. Another passage, this time from the famous Verdad Sospechosa, wherein Don Beltran reprimands his son, Don Garcia, for the vice of habitual lying, will further elucidate the method of Alarcon:

Who could preach with more wit a brief sermon like this than Alarcon? It is no small honor to the dramatist born in Mexico that the great Corneille, who, if we may credit the biographers of Alarcon, partly translated and partly imitated La Verdad Sospechosa in his famous Menteur, could avow that he would give two of his best plays to have invented the happy argument of the Spanish original. Molière and Voltaire were also among the admirers of the Spanish comedy, which Corneille at first judged to be the work of Lope de Vega. Of the general merits of Alarcon, the following estimate by his German critic, Schack, which we find in a Mexican notice of the dramatist, will doubtless suffice: "Happy in painting comic characters in order to chastise vice, as in the invention and development of heroes to make virtue adorable; rapid in action, sober in ornament; inferior to Lope in tender respect of feminine creations, to Moreto in liveliest comedy, to Firso in travesty, to Calderon in grandeur and stage effect, he excelled all of them in the variety and perfection of his figures, in the tact of managing them, in equality of style, in carefulness of versification, in correctness of language." To this large and discriminating praise we may add George Ticknor's comprehensive dictum: "On the whole, he is to be ranked with the very best Spanish dramatists during the best period of the National Theatre."

SOR JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ.

It would not be proper to dismiss from the list of Spanish-American dramatic writers Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, although the subjects to which this pious woman yielded her inventive imagination were mainly or wholly religious. She wrote, be it remembered, in that remarkable seventeenth century when a muse of religion walked through the scenes of the stage as well as through the gardens of the convent. Then were the patriarchs and apostles, the prophets and saints, the chief personages of a peculiar drama; and events and circumstances of the divine tragedy inspired such compositions as the Loas and Autos. It is upon one of these latter compositions that her merit as a dramatic writer rests; and we are glad to confirm in great part an opinion of her genius hitherto expressed by us, by here recalling the judgment of that eminent European critic of Spanish literature, Bouterwek, the more especially as our own Spanish scholar, Ticknor, seems to have inflicted such ungracious disparagement upon the subject of our notice: "Much as Inez de la Cruz was deficient in real cultivation," says Bouterwek, "her productions are eminently superior to the ordinary standard of female poetry.... The poems of Inez de la Cruz breathe a sort of masculine spirit. This poetic nun possessed more fancy and wit than sentimental enthusiasm, and whenever she began to invent her creations were on a bold and great scale. Her poems are of very unequal merit, and are all deficient in critical cultivation. But in facility of invention and versification Inez de la Cruz was not inferior to Lope de Vega; and yet she by no means courted literary fame.... In her dramatic works the vigor of her imagination is particularly conspicuous. The collection of her poems contains no comedies properly so-called, but it comprises a series of boldly conceived preludes (loas) full of allegorical invention, and it concludes with a long allegorical auto, which is superior to any of the similar productions of Lope de Vega. It is entitled El Divino Narciso, a name by which the author designates the heavenly bridegroom.... It would be impossible to give a brief and at the same time intelligible sketch of this extraordinary drama. With regard to composition, it is very unequal; in some respects offending by its bad taste, and in others charming by its boldness. Many of its scenes are so beautifully and romantically constructed that the reader is compelled to render homage to the genius of the poetess, while at the same time he cannot but regret the pitch of extravagance to which ideas really poetic are carried. There is one peculiarly fine scene, in which human nature, in the shape of a nymph, seeks her beloved, the real Narcissus, or the Christian Saviour." The pastoral passage, which in our notice of the writings of Sor Juana we laid before our readers, would seem to justify the best praises of our literary historian, Bouterwek. Ticknor, on the other hand, speaks of her as a remarkable woman, and not as a remarkable poetess; and, upon the whole, our thanks for the appreciative reburnishing of the ancient fame of an American genius—which, had it shone in Massachusetts three hundred years ago, would be deemed a very rare jewel among Northern scholars—are due rather to the European Bouterwek than the American Ticknor. The latter observes that she was born at Guipuzcoa; her Mexican biographer says at San Miguel de Nepantla, not far from the city of Mexico, one of whose convents she seems to have directed latterly. Time, place, the inferior standard of feminine culture, and the prevalence of a false poetic school, may account for Sor Juana's defects; for the rest, the issue (a large one) is between Bouterwek and Ticknor.

EDWARD GOROSTIZA.

After Alarcon, the principal lights of the actual Mexican stage are Gorostiza, Calderon, and Galvan; and, indeed, whatever original triumph that stage has enjoyed is almost if not quite limited to these few excellent though not glorious names. We cannot with propriety name that extraordinary woman, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, in the list of Mexico's dramatists, although, along with other poetry, she wrote some religious pieces in dramatic form. Nevertheless, the credit which remains to the literature of the country, after its few phenomenal names are omitted, is not inappreciable. Concerning Gorostiza, Madame Calderon de la Barca wrote: "Don José Eduardo Gorostiza, a native of Vera Cruz, is the son of a Spanish officer, and when very young went to Spain, where he was known politically as a liberal. He was distinguished as a writer of theatrical pieces, which have been and still are very popular. One of his pieces which we saw the other evening at the theatre—Con Tigo Pan y Cebolla (With Thee, Bread and Onions)—is delightful." Let us add to Madame Calderon's brief notice that Gorostiza won the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the war against Napoleon; that in 1823, while an exile from Spain in London, he wrote for the Edinburgh Review; and that since then, as minister to England and to the United States, and as secretary of state and finance, he has been eminent in the politics of his native land. In 1836, he was made intendant-general of the army, and during the war between Mexico and the United States took an active and heroic part in the defence of Churubusco. His efforts as a director of the poor-house, as a friend of education, and as the founder of a house of correction, are also deemed worthy of record. He died in 1851, at the age of sixty-two.

The best known of Gorostiza's comedies are those called The Intimate Friend, Last Year's Fashions, Don Dieguito, and Pardon for All, the last being mentioned by his biographer as celebrated. In the play of Don Dieguito, which may serve as well as any other to exhibit the character of Gorostiza's plots, Don Anselmo, a rich uncle, sends his nephew and heir, Don Dieguito, to Madrid to complete his education. While there, Dieguito falls in love with Doña Adelaida, whose father, Don Cleto, is a lawyer. Don Anselmo goes to Madrid to attend the wedding of his nephew, but does not like the family of his son's fiancée, and, accordingly, he schemes to break off the match. The mother, Doña Maria, sees from a worldly point of view the great advantage of her daughter's marriage with Don Dieguito. But now Anselmo tells her that he intends to marry, which excites her fear that his nephew will inherit nothing from him. She, therefore, proposes to her husband that Doña Adelaida shall marry the uncle, Anselmo, instead of the nephew, Dieguito. Don Simplicio, a friend of Don Cleto, endeavors to effect a general reconciliation of interests, and bring about the marriage of the young couple; but, finding that father and mother alike wish to break off the match, joins them in insulting the apparently hapless Dieguito. Don Anselmo at once perceives that his nephew has been fooled, and that the family of his betrothed would be glad to cast off Dieguito in order to capture his uncle's wealth. He concludes, therefore, to make his exit on the very day of the proposed marriage, taking with him his disenchanted nephew. When the day arrives, he announces that he has been ruined by the shipwreck of a vessel from Vera Cruz, and that he is compelled to return to his old business of selling pork, beans, chocolate, and sausages to make good his loss. Don Dieguito, though asked to return to his allegiance as a lover, declares that he is no fool, and prefers a wife who will not speculate at the expense of good faith, but will look after her children. As Don Anselmo has told the family of Doña Adelaida that his principal loss is in a cargo of chocolate, that spirited young lady vows she will not drink chocolate again; and the play ends in amusing recriminations.

FERNANDO CALDERON.

The next of our dramatists, Fernando Calderon, was born in 1809, and died at the age of thirty-six, having been a colonel, a state legislator, a magistrate, and the secretary of the government of Zacatecas, as well as an industrious writer. The most striking of his dramas are: The Tourney, Anne Boleyn, and The Return of the Crusader, which, says one of his admirers, are full of noble and chivalrous sentiments and spirited action. Calderon's talent was nothing if not dramatic; for even his lyrics, and especially his Soldier of Liberty, are characterized by a personal fire and animation. His plays, remarkable for warmth of sentiment, and his poems, chiefly lyrical, gained for him not only in Mexico, but in other Spanish-American republics, a degree of favor not often enjoyed by writers in the southern part of the New World. One of his most admired passages is the soliloquy of Isabella in The Tourney:

With good reason is this thoughtful and feeling soliloquy prized by Calderon's countrymen, whose vicissitudes have taught them peculiar sympathy with the tristful mood to which he lends expression. The tone and style of the passage are tragic in a most dignified sense, and reflect much credit upon Mexican literature. A supplement to the views of mortality and eternity set forth in The Tourney is contained in a fragment written by Calderon in 1825; and as it may interest a Northern public to know what a Mexican poet thinks of the future state, we extract from it these hopeful lines:

RODRIGUEZ GALVAN.

More praiseworthy, in some respects, than any of the modern poets of Mexico, is Rodriguez Galvan, the last of our trio of dramatists. He died in 1842, in his twenty-sixth year, after having without social advantages acquired a high reputation as a lyrical and dramatic writer. "At eleven years," says his biographer, "he was placed under the care of his uncle, in a book-store at the capital," and there his nightly studies made up for the impediments of his daily occupation, and "his happy disposition and love for work supplied the want of masters and fortune." An epical fragment entitled "The Fallen Angel," and his poems, "The Tomb," and "The Girandole," together with his dramas, "Muñoz" and "The Viceroy's Favorite," are mentioned as the most noted of his productions. A specimen of his dramatic style is the following piece of satire on the modern stage, from El Angel de la Guarda:

It would require, perhaps, an intimate knowledge of the Mexican stage as it was thirty years ago to appreciate the special application of these lines; but it is plain that the young dramatist conceived a genuine contempt for a bloodthirsty and iniquitous drama. What, then, must a writer of his promise and aspirations have felt regarding that more bitter melodrama acted all round him?—what must any poet with a tolerable amount of contemplative wisdom have thought of that political madness of which Mexico has been so long the victim? Certainly, it robbed them, as it robbed others, of peace and recompense; but war respects the stage even when it destroys better institutions, and it is probable that the dramatic culture of Mexico is as well preserved as any of which it can boast. To Galvan is ascribed the first effective production on the Mexican stage of Mexican subjects. Whether the following fable bears a more than ordinary social meaning, we cannot say; but it is an instance of the poet's lively manner:

THE SELFISH DOG.

There is nothing in Galvan's story except his way of telling it, which is certainly vivacious; but we esteem it for some flashes of satirical meaning cast upon a state of society of whose animal life the "hungry dog" is so commonplace an object. Not, however, in his plays, which, if we may credit his Mexican critic, sometimes reveal a certain immaturity, did Galvan find his very happiest expression. He wrote the most touching and charming lyric which, after much search, we have been able to find in Mexican literature. It was, we are led to think, in 1842, when, as one of a "legation extraordinary" to South America, he sailed for Havana, there to die of fever, that he wrote the tender "Farewell to Mexico" which his countrymen love to repeat:

AVELLAÑEDA AND MILANES.

There is more of this excellent lyric, but we let it pass in order to bring to a moment's attention a few of the most distinguished Cuban and South American dramatic writers. We nowhere discern the evidence of a luxurious dramatic growth among our tropical contemporaries; but as, in the most advanced and varied circles of our own literature, the drama holds but an inferior modern regard, we cannot deem this fact as peculiarly indicative. Almost chief among the writers of Cuba is Doña Avellañeda, to whom we owe the novels of Sab, the Baroness of Youx, the American romance of Guatimozin, and the Undine of the Blue Lake. She wrote four dramas, one of which, her tragedy of Alfonso Munio, is said to have made her famous. For one of her poems she received a crown of gold laurels from the lyceum of Madrid, and her Catholic devotion was signally manifested by her poem of the Cross and her Biblical drama of Saul. Surely, a most prolific, industrious, and vigorous writer was La Avellañeda, as her countrymen admiringly call her, notwithstanding her Isabellist attachments. To the name of Avellañeda let us add that of José Jacinto Milanes as among the ornaments of Cuban literature. His drama of Conde Alarcos, founded upon the celebrated Spanish tradition of the name, is noted by Ticknor for its passionate energy. Milanes seemed to delight in the themes and scenes of his own country; but his usefulness as a writer was cut short, we are informed, by a wasting infirmity.

SANSON, MAGARINOS, AND MARQUEZ.

Placido Sanson, Magarinos Cervantes, and Señor Marquez are among the most conspicuous South American dramatists we can now call to mind. Magarinos Cervantes was born in Montevideo in 1825, and, besides the novels of Caramuru and The Star of the South, has written the dramas of Vasco Nuñez and the Two Passions, besides the comedy of Percances Matrimoniales. He was one of the principal editors of an artistic and scientific cyclopædia printed in Madrid, and was once described as the youngest and most productive of well-known South American writers. Sanson, who was born in Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, 1815, has written ten or eleven dramas, among them Abenhamet and Herman Peraza, and has been an exceedingly industrious editor and translator. Señor Marquez, who was noticed fifteen years ago as a young poet of Lima, but twenty-three years of age, yet of exceeding promise, was known as the author of a drama which derived its title from the beautiful legend of The Flower of Abel.

This flower of dramatic poetry, as its warm admirers regard it, contains a charming and even what we might call a religious moral. One of the best known of its Peruvian critics described it as among the most spiritual creations of the day; a defense of innocence and charity in a heroic combat against the worldly selfishness which devours us; and Markham, to whose good taste we are indebted for information respecting the ancient and modern literature of Peru, affirms that its plot is original and ingenious, and that it is full of good passages. Abel, the first victim of selfishness, is described as "the mysterious messenger of celestial compassion," an angel of innocence. The innocent daughter of a proud and aged veteran becomes the possessor of the angel's flower of Abel—in other words, the blossom of innocence. This the heavenly visitor presents to her in a vision, warning her never to lose nor abandon it, nor let it leave its place in her bosom. But, eventually, the fair girl loses the flower, and wanders far and wide over the world in search of it, passing through many dangers, for she is unprotected and very beautiful. At length, she reaches her mother's grave, and, wearied and imploring, falls at the feet of an image of the Blessed Virgin, in whose hands she once more beholds her lost Flower of Abel. Prostrate before the altar of the Queen of Heaven, the spirit of Elena abandons the body, and is conducted to the skies by Abel, who recovers the mysterious flower and the pure soul of the maiden.

Reflecting that our own American dramatic literature can claim not many successful writers, the portion of Spanish America, in respect to the dramatists we have described, cannot be deemed contemptible. We have much yet to learn of our sister republics, painful though their problem be to democratic thinkers; and we cannot look through a more necessary and suggestive medium than their literature to become acquainted with their moral capacities and possibilities.