ART. VII. THE INFLUENCE OF THE SPANISH ON THE FRENCH LITERATURE.

IT

It goes without saying, that no two nations could be so long and so closely associated as France and Spain have been without shedding a reflex influence upon the civil, the social, and the literary life of each other. Adjacent in territory, neither nation has found the Pyrenees an impassable barrier: there are French foot-prints on the southern mountain slope, and Spanish on the northern. Embraced once under a common government, and more frequently under similar administrations, sharing many ethnic peculiarities of temperament and of custom, linked together in the bonds of commercial interchange and social intermarriage, and bowing for centuries at the shrine of a common religious faith, these two have been as children nurtured in one household. Naturally, then, one would expect to find the results of this influence in the literature of Spain and of France, the more especially because the languages of the two countries are co-ordinate branches of the same common stock; and though they may have been touched and modified by diverse causes which have served to give to each the stamp of its own individuality, they have still retained much in common with regard to linguistic structure, vernacular usage, popular idiom. rhetorical expression, and literary subject-matter.

As to the influence of the Spanish upon the French literature, it is not until a comparatively modern date that it becomes sufficiently evident to afford any room for satisfactory analysis or systematic record. French literature, indeed, began only with the eleventh century. In its first stages it consisted of poems relating to early French history, poems based on classical historic events, and poems of the Arthurian cycle. These chansons de geste amounted to some two or three millions of lines, and ran through a wide range of topic and of style; but in the constituent elements of thought and of fact which go to compose them the Spanish bears an inconsiderable part. The same may be said of the fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and of the one hundred thousand lines of the Roman du Renart, extending from the close of the twelfth to the middle of the fourteenth century.

Upon the immediately succeeding periods, during which the literature of France rapidly assumed a permanent, tangible, and organic form, the limits of this discussion render it scarcely advisable to attempt any thing approaching an elaborate comment or criticism; and they are briefly noticed here rather for the purpose of remarking the absence of Spanish influence than of attempting to trace it. A satisfactory analysis of the fifteenth century, indeed, would be difficult, even if made in an extended form; much more, then, in summary. It has been variously regarded by literary authorities; some pronouncing it the final period of mediaval times, others calling it the dawn of the modern, "wherein the first gray streaks of the Italian Renaissance were peeping forth," while still others have classed it conveniently as a transition period. In our present study we are content to observe two facts: First, this century marked the zenith of what may be called the early French drama, and witnessed the origin of the prose tale; second, in neither of these departments of letters is there any noteworthy appearance of Spanish influence. The close of the century, it is true, saw the conquest of Granada and the final overthrow of the Moorish civilization; but the newly established supremacy of Spain was not yet sufficiently complete, compact, and mature either to generate or to project into other lands any great force in the empire of letters.

With the seventeenth century came a revolution in French. literature. The close of the preceding century had seen erected a standard of criticism and a trend of literary performance the influence of which was destined to project itself far into the future—which was, in fact, to determine largely both the form and the substance of French literature for two centuries. The chief instrument that figured in the establishment of so marked an era was Malherbe, and the resulting form of production was the drama, outside of the range of which the seventeenth century produces nothing higher than the fabliaux of La Fontaine and the weak lines of Boileau; while the eighteenth century. offers a scarcely better supplement in the cold artificiality of J. B. Rousseau and the somewhat remarkable productions of Voltaire.

It is, then, to the drama that we must look for the most complete embodiment and expression of French literary taste and

execution at this period. And in looking at its development out of the ruins of what has already been noticed as the early French drama-the abolition of Mysteries in 1588 and the suspension of the passion play of the Confraternity—we are at once struck with the variety and the extent of Spanish traits and incidents interwoven into the revived or newly created dramas. In order that this may be more fully appreciated it is perhaps necessary to glance for a moment at the contemporaneous state of the drama as presented by Ticknor.

The theater in Spain, as in most other European countries, was early called upon to contend with formidable difficulties, says Ticknor; and he then proceeds to mention some of these difficulties. Dramatic representations in Spain, perhaps more than elsewhere, had been for centuries in the hands of the Church; and the Church was not willing to give them up, especially for such secular and irreligious purposes as were set forth in plays like those of Naharro. The Inquisition, therefore, laid its strong hands upon the doors of the theater, and, shortly after the publication of the Seville edition of the "Propaladia" in 1520, the representation of its dramas was forbidden, and the interdict was continued till 1573. Of the few pieces written during the first part of the reign of Charles V., nearly all, except those on strictly religious subjects, were put under ban of the Church, while the very names of some plays of this period are preserved only in the Index Expurgatorius.

Besides this, it is necessary to consider the obstacles and embarrassments arising from rude facilities for the presentation of plays, and the incomplete and utterly irregular method of organization. Ticknor tells us that the entire apparatus of the stage was miserably defective and insufficient. Plays were presented either in the churches, in private houses, or in the open air on temporary scaffolds; and in either place, the dress, the stage fixtures, and the scenery were primitive and imperfect in the extreme. The highest character in the way of an actor was that of the strolling player, who stayed but a few days even in the largest cities. The audiences were altogether of the lowest classes of society, and so small, that among the largest receipts for a single performance the sums of eight and ten dollars are mentioned.

Such was the condition of affairs as late as 1586; but in

Spain, as in France, the opening of the seventeenth century saw the drama revived. Under the influence of a more centralized national life, the establishment of Madrid as a common capital of the various provinces, the building of theaters, and the patronage of letters, the clouds which had so long obscured the sky of dramatic authorship rolled gradually away, and as the sun of prosperity came forth it shone upon a multitude of earnest and willing workers in the new field. It will best serve our purpose here to note in detail the individual productions of several of these dramatists.

Upon the very threshold of the century stands the colossal figure of Lope de Vega, the founder of the national Spanish theater, which has since rested substantially on the basis where he left it. He began his work "without precedent and almost without predecessor;" but, as an index to what he accomplished, may be mentioned the well-attested fact that he wrote eighteen hundred plays and four hundred autos, more than five hundred of which were preserved in printed form. His topics were almost infinite in variety, running from the deepest tragedy to the broadest farce, and from the most sacred mysteries of religion down to the loosest frolics of common life. His style, with wonderful diversity, seems to have adapted itself readily to any one of the various lines on which he chose to write. Among his many productions he wrote a class of plays which were known among the pleasure-loving Spaniards as "Dramas with Cloak and Sword," a designation rendered appropriate by the fact that the dramatis persona are selected from the genteel class of society, whose picturesque dress was not complete without cloak and sword. Among this class of Lope's plays is his "El Azero de Madrid" (The Madrid Steel). It takes it name from the preparation of steel for medicinal purposes, which at that time had just come into fashion; but "the main story is that of a lighthearted girl who deceives her father and an old aunt by pretending to be ill and taking steel medicaments from a pretended physician, who is really a friend of her lover, and who prescribes walking abroad and such other out-door exercises as may best afford opportunities for the attentions of her admirer."

With this outline in mind, those who have read Molière's "Médecin Malgré Lui" will be at no loss to guess where the great comedist found the materials for his play. It is, more

over, noteworthy that in the opinion of a competent critic, although the full success of Molière's original wit is not to be questioned, still the happiest portions of his comedy can do no more than come into competition with some passages in that of Lope. The character of the heroine, for instance, Ticknor thinks, is drawn with more spirit in the Spanish than in the French play; while that of the devoted aunt, who plays the part of duenna to the love-lorn maiden, is one which "Molière might well have envied.”

Among those who labored in this field, and whose works we must regard as having exerted an influence upon the French drama, is Gabriel Tellez, an ecclesiastic of rank, better known by his nom de plume, Tirso de Molina. Perhaps the most celebrated of his plays, "El Burlador de Seville" (The Seville Deceiver), furnishes, as Saintsbury points out, the earliest conception of that "Don Juan" who is now seen on every stage of Europe. A true child of Spanish tradition, the character of El Burlador laid claim to an ancestry no less renowned than the great Tenorio family of Seville. Lope de Vega had already drawn from the same source a character which, in the second and third acts of his "Money Makes the Man," shows a similar firmness and wit amid the most awful visitations of the unseen world. But Tirso took up this cold and naked figure, inspired it with vital warmth, and arrayed it in the depraved but fascinating costume which perhaps the public taste of his day demanded. A character so strongly drawn, "uniting undaunted courage to an unmitigated depravity that asks only for selfish gratification, and a cold, relentless humor that continues to jest even when surrounded by the terrors of supernatural retribution," could not fail to make an impression. It was accordingly carried to Naples, and thence to Paris, where an Italian translation of the play of "El Burlador" was produced by a company of Italian actors in 1656. This representation was succeeded by two or three French translations, and in 1665 Molière brought out his "Festin de Pierre," in which, taking not only the incidents of Tirso, but often, as Ticknor shows, his very dialogue, he made the real Spanish fiction known to Europe as it had not been known before. Sung by Zamora, by Thomas Corneille and by Byron, with the melody of Mozart married to * See Ticknor, ii, chap. xxi, p. 309.