[SN: _The starting-point of the secular play._]
It has been customary to treat the _Celestina_ as the foundation, or at least an important part of the foundations, of the Spanish secular drama. This curious story in dialogue is indeed called a “tragi-comedy,” and it most unquestionably proves that its author, or authors, possessed the command of a prose style admirably adapted for the purposes of comedy. But the Spanish is a poetic, not a prose drama. The qualities which redeem the somewhat commonplace love-story of Calisto and Melibœa, and the tiresome pedantry of much of the _Celestina_, its realism, and its vivacious representation of low life and character, are seldom found on the Spanish stage. We shall do better to look for the starting-point of the comedy of Lope de Vega in the _Eclogas_ of Juan del Encina, who has been already mentioned as one of the last lights of the troubadour school.[28] The model here is obviously the little religious play of the stamp of Vicente’s _San Martinho_, modified by imitation of the classic Eclogue. The personages, generally shepherds, are few, the action of the simplest, and the verse somewhat infantile, though not without charm. Yet the mere fact that we have in them examples of an attempt to make characters and subjects, other than religious, matter of dramatic representation, shows that they were an innovation and a beginning. Juan del Encina, who was attached in some capacity to the Duke of Alva of his time, wrote these Eclogues to be repeated for the amusement of his patrons by their servants. It does not appear that they were played in the market-place, or were very popular. During the first half of the sixteenth century the Church endeavoured to repress the secular play. The struggle was useless, for the bent of the nation was too strong to be resisted. It conquered the Church, which, before the end of the century, found itself unable to prevent the performance of very mundane dramas within the walls of religious houses. Yet for a time the Inquisition was able to repress the growth of a non-religious drama at home. The working of the national passion for the stage, and for something other than pious _farsas_, is shown in the _Josefina_[29] of Micael de Carvajal. This long-forgotten work, by an author of whom nearly nothing is really known, was performed apparently for, and by, ecclesiastics at Valencia about 1520. It is on the subject of Joseph and his Brethren, is a religious play, but has divisions, and a machinery obviously adapted from the Latin, if not the Greek model. There are four acts, a herald who delivers a prologue to the first, second, and third, a chorus of maidens at the end of each. The dialogue has life, and there is a not unsuccessful attempt at characterisation in the parts of the brothers and of Potiphar’s wife. At the close comes the _villancico_, a simple form of song hovering towards being a hymn, which was obligatory at the close of the religious play. The _Josefina_ had no progeny, and is to-day mainly interesting as an indication of the struggle of the national genius to find its true path. We cannot say even that of the few direct imitations of the classic form produced by the Spaniards. Such works as the _Nise Lastimosa_--the Pitiable Agnes--a strictly Senecan play on the story of Ines de Castro, first written in Portuguese by Ferreira, and then adapted into Castilian by Gerónimo Bermudez, a learned churchman, and printed in 1577, are simply literary exercises. They show that the influences which inspired Jodelle, and Garnier in France, were not unfelt in Spain; but there, as in England, the national genius would have none of them. In Bermudez himself the imitation of Seneca was forced. The _Nise Lastimosa_ has a continuation called the _Nise Laureada_. The first, which ends with the murder of Agnes, is correct; but in the second, which has for subject the vengeance of the king, he throws aside the uncongenial apparatus of messenger and chorus, and plunges into horrors, to which the story certainly lent itself, with the zest of his contemporary Cristobal de Virues, or our own Kyd.