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SPANISH DRAMA IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY |
DURING
the early part of the eighteenth century Spain was very little
troubled by any ideas of progress in literature or the arts.
The drama was at its lowest ebb. Only the more vulgar plays had
survived from the previous century, and their presentation was
often accompanied by coarse and brutalizing features. Even the
language of Lope
de Vega and Calderón
had gone under eclipse, French being used at court and in smart
society. Fashionable people patronized Italian opera or the occasional
performance of a French play. Boileau's theories concerning poetry
and the drama were translated into Spanish in 1737, but it was
not until the latter half of the century, under the sovereignty
of Charles III, that men of letters were encouraged. About that
time some of the more severe restrictions of the Church were
removed, and there rose the school of Salamanca, whose purpose
was to revive interest in the literature of earlier days and
in the rich drama of Lope and Calderón. Jovellanos, belonging
to this school, left one good comedy, The Honest Criminal,
but his powers, for the greater part of his life, were applied
to politics rather than to literature.
Another group of writers during the eighteenth
century sought to foster French drama. The leaders of this movement,
one of whom was the elder Moratin, attacked the autos,
representing them as too degrading and blasphemous to be tolerated
by civilized people. Moratin wrote the first Spanish play modeled
upon the French pattern, The Female Coxcomb (Petimetra)
published in 1762. Moratin's son, Leandro, followed his father's
ideas concerning the superiority of French importations, and
as a dramatist was even more celebrated. He gained the title
of the "Spanish Molière," and his works are
still admired. The condemnation of the elder Moratin was so effective
that in 1768 the performances of the old sacred mysteries was
forbidden. The most successful writer for the stage during the
century was Ramon de la Cruz, who left upward of three hundred
dramatic compositions, based mostly upon the everyday experiences
of the middle and lower classes, and faithfully exhibiting national
types of character. La Cruz attempted almost every species of
stage entertainment, but was most capable in his farces, which
display a rough and ready wit and considerable invention.
This article was originally
published in A Short History of the Drama. Martha Fletcher
Bellinger. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1927. pp. 278-9.
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