by Lope de Vega
Lope called The Knight from Olmedo a tragicomedia, yet from beginning to end, and despite its many comic moments, the play is characterized by an underlying darkness, as well as by a deep tragic irony. 16 In the popular ballad which the peasant sings in Act Three, there is, for example, an ambiguity -- the brightest jewel of Olmedo meets his end in darkest night -- which exists throughout the play in the form of the love-death contrast. This was, of course, a common-
____________________ 13 The historical background is discussed in detail by Rico, ibid. 36-42.
14 See J. W. Sage, Lope de Vega, El caballero de Olmedo, Critical Guides to Spanish Texts ( London, 1974), 16.
15 On the Dance of the Knight from Olmedo, see ibid. 20-1, and Rico, El caballero de Olmedo, 45-51.
16 Ibid. 18-35.
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place in the poetry of the Golden Age, as it was indeed in European poetry in general, but in The Knight from Olmedo Lope develops the theme in a way which makes it central to the play's meaning. When, for example, Alonso first describes the beauty of Inés (1.63-150), he observes, in relation to some of her admirers, that her eyes 'spared many lives' but, in the case of others, inflicted 'the mortal wound'. As far as he is concerned, her love for him gives him life, notably when he is with her, while his absences from her deprive him of true life and constitute a living death. What is more, there is a very strong suggestion from the very beginning that the love of Alonso and Inés is inevitable, predestined, determined by the stars. In his opening speech Alonso wonders if between him and Inés there is a 'correspondence which is mutual' (1.16), while at the end of Act Two Tello has no doubts on the matter: 'We all | Know love is written in one's star!' (2.699-700). In short, the themes of love and death are also linked to the theme of fate, and what on one level may seem to be a commonplace in the literature of the period, begins to take on a deeper meaning as the action of the play unfolds.
The fateful outcome is, of course, already announced in the play's title, The Knight from Olmedo, which, for Lope and his contemporaries -- as well as for anyone familiar with Spanish literature -- is inevitably associated with the murder of the hero by his enemies on the road to his home town. References in the text to La Celestina would also have indicated to an audience of the time that Alonso's fate would be that of the tragic Calisto. And if this were not enough, Alonso compares himself at the beginning of Act Two to Leander, who each day swam the Hellespont to see his beloved Hero (2.2530), and who, as any educated audience would know, drowned while doing so. Similarly, Alonso is described by Fabia in terms of Hector, Achilles, and Adonis, classical heroes who all suffered a premature death. And so, in this context, the love-death-fate triangle, prominent already in the early part of the play, gradually assumes a deeper and darker significance, as well as a grim irony, as the action unfolds. In Act Three, prior to his murder, Alonso comes to Inés's window as if he 'had no life' (3.263). In the poem which he recites to Inés before his departure, he observes: 'I am convinced I am to die' (3.305); 'I go, then, to my death . . .' (3.331); 'How can I not be dead when I arrive?' (3.335). Furthermore, the irony in Alonso's words is to be found too in the comments of his deadly rival, Rodrigo.
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In Act One he complains to Inés of her coldness towards him: 'I pray that either Love | Or Death provide me with a remedy | For your disdain' (1.377-80), adding, a few lines later: 'If you'll not be | My life, then be my death!' (1.391-2). He is, of course, oblivious to the fact that in the end his feelings of rejection and his hatred of Alonso will, in fact, bring about his death. The love-triangle of Inés, Alonso, and Rodrigo is thus imbued with a linguistic irony whose tragic resonance becomes increasingly clear as the three characters are engulfed by events.
It is also worth noting that, although The Knight from Olmedo lacks the grim and horrific character of the final act of Punishment Without Revenge, it nevertheless satisfies many of the requirements of tragedy set out by Aristotle and inherited by the Renaissance. Spanish Golden Age theorists, such as Alonso López Pinciano in his Philosophía antigua poética (Ancient Poetic Philosophy) of 1596, and Francisco Cascales in his Tablas poéticas (Poetic Manual) of 1617, favoured tragedia patética, the kind of tragedy which moves the spectator through the spectacle of human suffering, and in this context considered that the tragic hero should be neither wholly good nor wholly bad but a mixture of the two, a rounded character whose good qualities will arouse admiration and whose downfall will therefore awaken a sense of pity. 17 Moreover, that downfall should come about not as the result of a deliberate error on his or her part, but as the consequence of some involuntary act or acts, which will in turn deepen feelings of pity and compassion and in which such outside influences as fortune or chance may play their part. In The Knight from Olmedo, Alonso is clearly such a character.
As far as good qualities are concerned, Alonso is a young man distinguished by his good looks, nobility of character, honest love for Inés, filial concerns, and, in particular, his bravery -- the latter most evident in the bullfight. Indeed, he is acclaimed by everyone, including the King, and is fully worthy of our admiration. Against this, his attraction to Inés seems to blind him to the imprudence of conducting his relationship with her in secret, and equally to the folly of employing a go-between, who has a reputation for witchcraft, to further that relationship -- though this mistake on his part
____________________ 17 See Gwynne Edwards, The Prison and the Labyrinth, Studies in Calderonian Tragedy ( Cardiff, 1978), pp. xvii-xviii.
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seems attributable less to a dishonest intention than to the force of his passion and a certain lack of foresight. Again, though brave, he seems to be over-conscious of his good name and reputation, and it is a fear of possibly being branded a coward which leads him to ignore all the warnings against venturing forth on the road to Olmedo, and which therefore leads to his death. In short, the spectacle of an essentially good man destroyed by flaws in his character which are in no way evil and a combination of circumstances -- his falling in love with Inés, which in turn fires the hatred of Rodrigo -- allows us to feel for him that deep sense of pity demanded by tragedy. The same is largely true of Inés, for she is an essentially good and beautiful young woman, yet such is the strength of her feelings for Alonso and her dislike of Rodrigo, that she engages in a duplicity which, though understandable in the circumstances, ultimately contributes to Alonso's death and her own empty future. Lope concluded the play with the words: 'So ends the tragic history of | The Knight from Olmedo' (3.759-60), a clear enough indication of how he intended his play to be regarded.
Another much-discussed aspect of the play concerns the time in which it is set: the reign of Juan II of Castile in the first half of the fifteenth century. As far as history is concerned, the period from 1420 to 1445 was one in which Juan II constantly faced the threat of attack from the Infante Enrique of Aragon and King Juan II of Navarre, and in which Castilian nobles began to support either Juan II of Castile or his enemies. Throughout this period Medina, one of the two focal points of the play, was often visited by the Castilian King and became a centre of support for him, while Olmedo became associated with support for the Infante of Aragon and the King of Navarre. The outcome of this rivalry proved to be the first Battle of Olmedo, which took place in 1445 on the plains between Olmedo and Medina.
In The Knight from Olmedo Lope emphasizes the fact that Alonso's presence distinguished the marriage celebrations of Juan II of Castile (1.688-700), which points, perhaps, to the fact that Alonso, unlike most people from Olmedo, was a supporter of the Castilian King. Indeed, in the course of the play Alonso travels from Olmedo to Medina specifically in order to pay homage to him, as the Constable indicates: 'He comes to | The fiesta, I believe, intent | On serving you' (2.604-6). And the King, in turn, thinks highly of Alonso's
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loyalty, bravery, and sense of honour. It has been suggested, therefore, that Lope clearly wished to establish a link between Alonso and the King
in terms of those particular qualities. 18 The argument has also been advanced that the envy and jealousy of Rodrigo towards Alonso, the principal source of which is the latter's love for Inés, are further fanned by the very fact that Alonso comes from Olmedo, which was traditionally hostile to Juan II of Castile. In these circumstances it would be particularly galling for Rodrigo to discover that Alonso has not only stolen the affections of Inés, but has also been favoured and honoured by the King. In short, Lope has placed the traditional story of a knight from Olmedo murdered by an enemy from Medina in the context of the historical rivalry between the two towns, accounts of which he would have found in various chronicles of the time. Although the historical background to the play is neither as extensive nor as crucially important as that of Fuente Ovejuna, it nevertheless serves to link the various elements of the plot, as well as to highlight particular themes -- honour, loyalty to the King, political divisions -- which were just as relevant to the Spain in which Lope lived.
As far as characterization is concerned, Alonso is to some extent a stereotype -- the traditional lover, noble, dashing, good-looking, and courageous. On the other hand, Lope constantly fills out the stereotype with touches which make him a truly interesting character. He is, despite the attributes outlined above, somewhat unworldly: an aspect of his character which explains why he employs Fabia, a woman of the world, to conduct his love-affair, and which also, in a sense, leads him to ignore the warnings he receives about proceeding on the journey to Olmedo, for he rather naively believes that Rodrigo will do him no harm. Again, it seems quite possible that the shadowy figure who appears to him as he sets out for Olmedo, as well as the Peasant who later sings the ominous song, are not so much figures of flesh and blood as projections of his own fearful imagination, already evident in the dream which he has at the end of Act Two. In this context, his refusal to listen to the warning could be seen to be an attempt to still the voice of his own fears, and therefore a pointer to the complexity of his character.
Of the other major characters, Fabia is the most memorable. In
____________________ 18 J. W. Sage, El caballero de Olmedo, 35-40, 90-105.
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many ways she is like Fernando de Rojas's Celestina: a go-between delivering messages for lovers and arranging their meetings; a sharp and cunning individual, well-known for her activities; an old woman who, no longer active herself in matters of love, takes delight in the relationships of others. On the other hand, although there are in the play various references to Fabia's spells and belief in her magical powers, she is a far less sinister character than Celestina. She is 'mischievous rather than devilish', and, as the episode involving the extraction of the tooth from the corpse of a highwayman suggests in Act One, the episodes involving her are often intended to be more comic than sinister. 19 Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of The Knight from Olmedo is the way in which the tragic tone of its final act are preceded in Acts One and Two by events which are markedly comic, and which largely derive from Fabia's scheming.
Tello, Alonso's servant, is, for the most part the traditional gracioso. Thus, in the incident involving the dead man's tooth he displays the cowardice associated with such a character and which is calculated to amuse the audience. He is also, in the same vein, materialistic. He is, however, like Mengo in Fuente Ovejuna, rather different from the traditional gracioso, for he is able to see things rather more clearly than his master and often advises him of the risks and hazards which accompany his affair with Inés -- not so much from a moral point of view, but so that his master might negotiate those dangers in a more practical way. To this extent he can be seen as a foil to his less pragmatic master.
Rodrigo too is in some respects a stereotype: the traditional rejected lover cast into despair. But in this case his feelings go much deeper and are transformed in the course of the play's action into desperation, hatred of Alonso, and a growing resolve to murder him. This said, it can be argued that Rodrigo is not so much a coldblooded villain as a man driven by his passions and overwhelmed by events over which he has no control. He can do nothing to oblige Inés to love him; he cannot prevent her from falling in love with Alonso; he finds himself in a situation in which he owes his life to his rival and in which, as a result of his heroism, Alonso also finds favour with the King. To this extent, Rodrigo is a victim of circumstance as well as a prisoner of his passions, and cannot but invite a
____________________ 19 Ibid. 53.
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certain sympathy. The fact that he murders Alonso in the way he does -- treacherously, with the assistance of accomplices -- is in one sense a condemnation of his character, but it illustrates too the degree of desperation which has transformed a man of nobility into someone who is out of control. In a way, the tragedy which occurs is as much his as Alonso's.
The other characters have fairly standard roles, but the play as a whole points to the fact that, as in Fuente Ovejuna, Lope was fully capable of putting on stage characters who are not only lively and credible but who also, in many cases, have considerable depth.
Punishment Without Revenge
Punishment Without Revenge, as the autograph manuscript proves, was written in 1631 and is therefore one of Lope de Vega's late and truly mature plays. First published in Barcelona in 1634 in the form of a suelta (a single play), it appeared in 1635, the year of his death, in Volume 21 of his works. In a prologue to the 1634 edition Lope states that the play received only one performance. He does not specify the date nor give the reason for its withdrawal, but it is generally agreed that it was probably staged in the middle of May 1632, by the company of Manuel Vallejo, the latter also playing the part of the Duke. As for its withdrawal, several reasons have been suggested, in particular the possibility that in 1632 the subject matter proved offensive to a Spanish audience. It was an age, after all, in which standards of propriety were -- at least officially -- very vigorously enforced, and in which decorum on the stage was strictly observed. A play in which a newly married woman has a sexual relationship with her stepson must clearly have been somewhat sensational, though against this it has to be noted that in May 1632 a licence for the first performance had been granted by the censor Pedro Vargas de Machuca. Another possible reason for the play's suppression is that its subject matter was regarded as reflecting, albeit implicitly, on the actions of royal personages. In this respect the King himself, Philip IV, was not unlike Lope de Vega's Duke in seeking the company of women of ill-repute. Furthermore, the relationship in the play between Casandra, the Duke's wife, and his son Federico was not unlike that between Prince Carlos, son of Philip II, and Isabel, who became Philip's wife and Carlos's step-
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mother. Even though these events -- the subject of Schiller's play, Don Carlos and Verdi's opera of the same name -- belonged to the past, they were still sufficiently recent to have been a cause of possible embarrassment to the royal family. In this context it should also be borne in mind that, even if the action of the play is located in Italy, the actors would have worn contemporary Spanish costumes, which would have given the subject a decidedly Spanish flavour and resonance. 20
The plot of Punishment Without Revenge derives, directly or indirectly, from a novella by the Italian writer Matteo Bandello ( 14851561) entitled How Niccolò III, Marquis of Este, having found his son in an adulterous liaison with his stepmother, had them both beheaded on the same day in Ferrara. A French version of Bandello's story had appeared in 1567 in Histoires tragiques by Bouistau and Belleforest, which in 1603 was published in a Spanish translation: Historias trágicas exemplares de Pedro Bouistan y Francisco de Belleforest, a book which Lope may well have read. 21 There may, of course, have been additional literary sources, and it is equally possible that Lope may have seen a dramatic performance of the story by one of the Italian theatre companies which during his lifetime often performed in Madrid.
Whatever Lope's source, he clearly followed the broad outline of the story but also introduced impo
rtant changes. Apart from giving the characters names which are essentially Spanish -- Bandello's Ugo became Federico, his stepmother Casandra (she is simply the Marchioness in the original story) -- and elevating the Marquis to the status of Duke of Ferrara, Lope's innovations were intended to create more dramatic and theatrical situations. In Bandello, for example, Ugo and the Marchioness know each other before she resolves to seduce him in order to take revenge on her wayward husband. In Lope's Act One they meet suddenly, before the Duke's marriage, and also without knowing one another's identity -- Federico rescues her when her carriage becomes stuck in a ford -- and are immediately attracted to each other: a case of 'love at first sight'. There is thus an instinctive mutual attraction between the two young people
