Three Major Plays

by Lope de Vega

  ____________________ 20 On the single performance of the play and possible reasons for its suppression, see C. A. Jones (ed.), Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza ( Oxford, 1966), 2-5.

  21 The version of the Bandello story in Historias trágicas is included in C. F. A. van Dam (ed.), Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza ( Gronigen, 1928).

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  which is not present in the source, and which, when in Act Two Casandra has been abandoned by the Duke, makes her relationship with Federico much more than an act of revenge. Again, the Duke's absence from home at this vital juncture occurs in different circumstances, for here he is not called away for reasons of business but summoned by the Pope to assist him in the war against his enemies -- a vital change which anticipates the Duke's return in Act Three as a reformed character, resolved to abandon his former way of life and to prove himself a good husband. Given his change of heart, the discovery of his wife's infidelity is the more ironic, and it is also brought about in the play in a more striking way -- not through a servant but by the receipt of an anonymous note. And what happens subsequently is very different from the source material. There the Marquis has the young couple arrested, and they are executed after the Court has been made aware of their crime. In Lope's play the Duke secretly verifies their guilt and, having done so, incites Federico to murder an 'enemy' who is held prisoner in the next room and whose face is concealed. The enemy, unknown to Federico, is Casandra, and when the murder has been carried out the Duke summons his courtiers, accusing Federico of having killed Casandra because she is pregnant with the Duke's child and because he, being illegitimate, fears the loss of his inheritance. Federico is immediately seized and killed, therefore, without the incestuous relationship becoming public knowledge, and consequently without the Duke's honour and reputation being publicly damaged. To himself the Duke justifies the action not in terms of honour avenged but as a divine punishment which he, given his religious conversion, has been called upon to administer.

  The punishment -- revenge issue -- its importance encapsulated in the play's title -- is one which requires close consideration. Indeed, Lope himself seems to have hesitated over what to call his play, and to have made up his mind only when he had finished writing it. It has been suggested, for example, that the title is unsatisfactory because the punishment imposed on Casandra and Federico by the Duke is not without a strong element of personal revenge on his part. 22 On the other hand, it has been pointed out that Casandra and Federico deserve to be punished for the sin they have committed,

  ____________________ 22 See C. F. A. van Dam (ed.), Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza ( Madrid, 1968), 20.

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  and to that extent the Duke's argument that he is acting as God's representative on earth is justified. 23 Accordingly, the title of the play points not to human revenge but to divine punishment, though it is perfectly true that the Duke's soliloquies are not devoid of 'thoughts of private vengeance and the laws of honour'. 24 The latter, demanding that an offence against one's honour and reputation be avenged, required too that, if the offence became public knowledge, the vengeance should be a public one, and that, if the offence remained secret, the vengeance should also be secret, thereby avoiding public disgrace. Indeed, no sooner has the Duke claimed that his actions will be a divine punishment than he refers specifically to the kind of revenge which honour demanded. In bringing about the deaths of Casandra and Federico in the way he does -- a truly cunning and Machiavellian deception in both cases -- the Duke effectively prevents their incestuous relationship and his own dishonour from becoming public knowledge, avenges the offence against himself, and at the same time leads the public at large to believe that the offence for which Federico dies is purely his murder of an innocent Casandra. In short, he is unable to separate punishment from revenge in spite of his attempts to do so. The argument has therefore been put forward that Lope's title was forced upon him by the contemporary Spanish concern with honour. Attracted by the Bandello story, Lope could not present the Duke's actions against the erring couple simply as a punishment -- which is the case in the original -for their behaviour offends not merely against public morality but also against his personal honour. On the other hand, Lope did not wish the Duke's actions to be seen merely as a private revenge for lost honour when larger moral questions were involved. The title points to his concern with both issues. 25

  Another aspect of the play which requires comment is Lope's designation of it as a tragedy on the first page of the autograph manuscript. In the light of this, the question has often been asked:

  ____________________ 23 See E. M. Wilson "Cuando Lope quiere, quiere", in Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, 161-2 ( 1963), 265-98, repr. in Spanish and English Literature of the 16th and 17th Centuries ( Cambridge, 1980), 155-83.

  24 Ibid. 180.

  25 See Jones, El castigo sin venganza, 12-13; T. E. May, "Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza: The Idolatory of the Duke of Ferrara", Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 37: 3 ( 1960), 154-82.

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  who is the tragic hero or heroine? One suggestion is that Casandra deserves to be regarded as such, for it is she who, slighted by the Duke, becomes entangled in a powerful but illicit relationship which brings upon her the most terrible consequences. 26 A different view is that the Duke should be regarded as the tragic protagonist, for all the events of the play stem from his actions and, although he does not die, he is left at the end with his life in ruins. 27 Against this, it can be argued that Lope's conception of tragedy did not, perhaps, demand a single tragic hero or heroine, and that the tragedy of the play consists of the situation itself, 'in which all the main characters are implicated, and in which all share in both guilt and loss, whether the loss be of life or of what makes life worth while'. 28

  This view of the play, with its emphasis on guilt, suggests, of course, that the play's tragic outcome stems purely from the moral defects and wrongdoing of its principal characters. Thus, the Duke is a libertine who, unwilling to put up with an arranged marriage to Casandra, shamelessly neglects her and quickly returns to his former way of life. She, upset by his callous treatment of her, seeks revenge on him and compensation for herself in an affair with her stepson Federico, while he, the illegitimate child of one of his father's innumerable escapades, and cast into deep depression by the thought that the marriage will deprive him of his inheritance, is not sufficiently strong-willed to reject his stepmother's advances. When the Duke learns of the incestuous affair he devises the cunning plan to punish the guilty couple for their crime and simultaneously avenge his honour, and in so doing is motivated in no small measure by an awareness of his own contribution to all that has happened. Thus, all the events of the play, each dependent on the other, are seen to involve selfish and imprudent motives. This is not, though, the only way of considering Lope's tragedy, for a closer examination will reveal that various factors outside the control of the characters -other people, social pressures, chance events -- also play an important and even crucial part in the shaping of events.

  ____________________ 26 See C. F. A. van Dam, Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, both editions.

  27 See A. A. Parker, The Approach to the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age ( London, 1957), 15-16. A revised version, "The Spanish Drama of the Golden Age: A Method of Analysis and Interpretation", appeared in Eric Bentley (ed.), The Great Playwrights: Twenty-five Plays with Commentaries by Critics and Scholars ( New York, 1970), 697-707.

  28 Jones, El castigo sin venganza, 16-17.

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  It cannot be denied that to a considerable degree each of the major characters' lives is influenced by other people to the point where their own choices count for little. The Duke, having sought to avoid marriage, is forced into it by his subjects, who will not accept the illegitimate Federico as his heir. Entrapment in a marriage he does not want intensifies his resolve to return to his old ways and, in turn, creates a set of circumstances whose repercussions cannot be avoided
. Again, on a social level the Duke cannot escape the demands of the honour code once his honour has been offended. As for Federico, he is from the outset unable to escape the consequences of his illegitimate status, for he is rejected by the Duke's subjects as heir to his possessions, and feels intensely the bitterness attendant on his possible disinheritance. Later he seems powerless to escape Casandra's hold upon him, and when their affair becomes known to the Duke, he is trapped by the implacable demands of honour and vengeance. Casandra is the pawn both of her father and her husband, pressurized by the former into a marriage she does not want and, as a wife, cast aside by a man who prefers women of the streets. In the affair with Federico she then becomes the prisoner of her own powerful emotions, and finally, like Federico, the victim of honour's tyranny. By the end of the play the three principal characters are manipulated by forces and pressures stronger than themselves.

  Circumstance is another important shaping factor in their lives. When Casandra and Federico first meet -- when her carriage becomes stuck in the ford -- they do so in total ignorance of each other's identity, which means that their attraction to each other is spontaneous and uninhibited by those constraints which a knowledge of their true relationship would impose upon them. First impressions are indeed powerful. Again, the Duke's unexpected departure from home comes at the crucial moment when Casandra, though offended by the Duke's neglect of her, has so far succeeded in containing her feelings for her stepson. The Duke's sudden absence literally throws the young couple into each other's arms and pushes them further along the path which leads to their tragic destiny.

  In short, the argument which suggests that the outcome of Lope's tragedy is determined by the moral defects and wrongdoing of the principal characters is a very narrow one, and can be countered, or at least modified, by an approach to the play which emphasizes

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  other factors outside the control of those characters. They may indeed have to make moral choices, but to make the right choice in the circumstances in which they find themselves would be a course of action better suited to saints than ordinary human beings. It is the interplay of individual motives and external events which therefore makes Punishment Without Revenge the great and complex play that it is, for the tragic pattern which it reveals is in many ways that of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy. 29

  It is clear from what has been said already that in this play Lope created his most rounded and fascinating characters. The Duke, Casandra, and Federico develop and change in the light of the circumstances in which they find themselves. Their complexity is selfevident, and it is no accident that there should be so many soliloquies, for at such moments characters reveal their most private thoughts. By the time Lope wrote this play -- he was 69 -- his experience of life and of love was considerable, and it shows.

  ____________________ 29 For a more detailed analysis of the play from this point of view, see Gwynne Edwards , "Lope and Calderón: The Tragic Pattern of El castigo sin venganza", Bulletin of the Comediantes, 33: 2 ( 1981), 107-20.

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  THE STAGING OF GOLDEN AGE PLAYS

  All three plays presented in this volume were written for and performed in the public theatres or corrales which developed in Spain, particularly in Madrid, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. 1 These were, as the word suggests, large rectangular courtyards in which the stage, with its projecting apron, was placed at one end. For economic reasons the staging of plays was relatively simple, and such great emphasis was placed on quick-moving action that complex scene-changes would have been impossible. Much was left, therefore, to the imagination of the audience.

  These factors result, in Fuente Ovejuna, for example, in a seamless, almost cinematic flow of action, a new scene beginning where the previous one ends without any interruption; the fact that the location has moved from, say, the village to the house of Fernán Gómez, or to the Court of the Catholic Kings, is indicated only by the appearance on stage of the relevant characters. Sometimes the location of a scene is pinpointed as well in the dialogue, as in Act One of The Knight from Olmedo when Rodrigo and Fernando keep watch on Inés's house: 'Why come here merely to see the house?' (1.514). Again, the fact that in Act Three Alonso travels to Olmedo not long before dawn is suggested by the text: 'How dark it is! So full | Of fearful shadows till the dawn | Begins to place its golden feet | On bright and flowered carpets' (3.461-4). In this context it is, of course, important to remember that, in the absence of stagelighting, the performances of plays in the corrales took place during daytime. Audiences were therefore required to imagine that the stage-action in a particular scene was set at night, and were clearly attuned to doing so.

  Although use could be made of the balconies and windows of the buildings immediately behind the stage of the corrales, the three

  ____________________ 1 The most detailed studies of the physical characteristics of the Spanish stage, as well as of its development during the Golden Age, are those by H. A. Rennert, The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de Vega ( New York, 1909; 2nd edn. 1963), and N. D. Shergold , A History of the Spanish Stage from Medieval Times until the End of the Seventeenth Century ( Oxford, 1967).

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  plays translated here suggest that only the main stage was used for their performance. This said, there are several occasions when the curtained 'discovery space' at the back of the stage might have been used. At the end of Act One of Fuente Ovejuna, for example, Frondoso could have hidden there from the Commander, as could Frondoso and Laurencia in Act Two when her father and uncle approach. In the final act of Punishment Without Revenge, the Duke may have hidden there to listen to the conversation of Federico and Casandra, and later in the act it was probably the place where "The bodies are revealed" (3.978), the curtains being dramatically pulled back to reveal the bloodstained corpses.

  Stage furniture, like scenery, was reduced to a minimum. In Fuente Ovejuna it seems likely that the only furniture required would have been benches on which the villagers would sit at the beginning of Act Two and for the council meeting in Act Three, and more impressive chairs for the Catholic Kings in the scenes at Court. Much more importance, however, would have been given to the visual and symbolic impact of costumes. The Commander's red cross, embroidered on his doublet, would have been a vivid visual reminder of the Order to which he belongs and of the ideals he fails to put into practice. The Master would also have been richly dressed, and the Catholic Kings, of course, would have worn costumes appropriate to their station and intended to impress a contemporary audience. The peasants, by contrast, would have worn simple costumes, reflecting their way of life, except for the wedding at the end of Act Two. At the beginning of Punishment Without Revenge the Duke appears 'disguised' (1.89), undoubtedly dressed in dark clothes which are not merely suited to the late hour at which he is consorting with prostitutes, but are also a symbolic pointer to the darker side of his nature. In Act Three, by contrast, he is 'handsomely dressed as a soldier' (3.255), his military uniform a visual image of his role on the battlefield as the 'mighty lion of the Church' and also of the victory which he claims to have won over his baser instincts. In The Knight from Olmedothe dark clothing worn by Alonso when he visits Inés at night in Act One, and by Rodrigo when he watches her house, are traditional enough, but also point, in Alonso's case, to the less-thaninnocent nature of his behaviour, and in Rodrigo's, to the dangerous character of his jealousy. And in Act Two, when Fabia enters 'with a rosary and walking-stick and wearing spectacles' (2.451) and Tello

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  'wearing a scholar's cap' (2.491), the effect may be comic, but their costumes also suggest the disparity between what the two individuals are and what they are pretending to be.

  In Golden Age theatre music also played a significant part. During the interval between the acts of plays musical interludes were often introduced, but the plays themselves also contained music of different kinds. In Act One of Fuente Ovejuna the peasants sing a song of welcome to the Commander
(1.405-19); in Act Two they have two songs in celebration of the wedding of Laurencia and Frondoso (2.509-16, 546-69); and in Act Three, after the Commander's death, their song expresses their loyalty to the Catholic Kings and wishes them a long life. In each case, music is used in order to celebrate love and harmony and, to that extent, is an earthly image of that perfect harmony which characterizes a divinely inspired universe. 2 The Knight from Olmedo has fewer songs, but all are important, in particular the doom-laden song sung by the peasant in Act Three (3.473-6, 484-9). In Punishment Without Revenge the Duke alludes in Act One to music as a remedy for melancholy (1.184). Towards the end of the act music would undoubtedly have accompanied the arrival of Casandra at the Duke's estate when the party enters 'with pomp and splendour' (1.809). Its suggestion of the harmony which ought to accompany their marriage is, of course, ironically at odds with the private feelings of the individuals concerned.

  ____________________ 2 See Victor Dixon, Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna ( Warminster, 1989), 29-30.

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  TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

  Spanish Golden Age drama is written almost entirely in verse. Unlike their Elizabethan counterparts, Lope de Vega and his contemporaries favoured an octosyllabic line, in part because it allowed for lightness and speed and enabled the play to unfold with the pace which restless and easily bored Spanish audiences demanded. In addition, all the Spanish playwrights, following Lope's example, employed a variety of stanza forms, which ranged from three to ten lines and which were characterized by complex rhyme schemes, or else by a pattern of assonance in the last word of alternate lines which was easily achieved in Spanish and which also had a rhyming effect. English translators of Spanish plays have frequently abandoned both the octosyllabic line and rhyme in the belief that unrhymed iambic pentameter is more suited to English or British actors, but this only creates further problems. In general, Spanish words are longer than their English equivalents, which means that in translation there would be more English than Spanish words in a line of eight syllables, and more again in a line of ten syllables. To opt for the latter invariably means that the translator has to introduce unecessary extra words.