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Background
Information
SIXTEENTH CENTURY
SPAIN
THE AGE OF CERVANTES
INTRODUCTION
During the sixteenth century it could truly be said that the sun never
set on the Spanish Empire. Yet Spain itself was a poor country with limited
arable soil. It was isolated from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees and
there was no political unity. Until the time of Ferdinand and Isabella,
it consisted of many independent states, many under Moorish control. Their
marriage, and the Reconquista (reconquest of Spain from the Moors)
brought some unity but "Spain" was still a loose confederation
of almost independent states. What held the realm together was a common
faith. There were 9,088 monasteries and about 32,000 Dominican and Franciscan
friars. This unity was threatened by the Reformation, and Spain was literally
held together by the Inquisition.
It was the riches pouring in from the New World which enabled the Spanish
Empire to become the greatest power of the sixteenth century. Yet ironically,
these riches led to spiraling inflation.
Charles I
of Spain (and V of The Holy Roman Empire) inherited Aragón, Valencia,
Cataluña, and southern Italy and Sicily from his maternal grandfather,
Ferdinand. He inherited Castille, León, Navarre and the Spanish
possessions in the New World from his maternal grandmother, Isabella.
His inheritance from his father, Philip the Handsome, included Flanders,
Holland, Luxembourg, Franche-Comté and a claim to Burgundy as well
as the Habsburg lands of Austria, the Tirol and parts of Germany. Later
the Philippines and territories in East Africa and in the Indian Ocean
were added.
The sixteenth century also saw the flowering of Spanish
culture. It was the time of artists such as El Greco (Doménikos
Theotokópoulos) and writers such as Cervantes,
the author of Don
Quixote. The playwright Lope
de Vega was Shakespeare's contemporary and was involved with commedia
dell'arte. There were many universities and almost all gentlemen were
well-educated. However, students were not allowed to attend foreign universities
for fear they would become contaminated with heretical ideas.
HISTORY
PRELUDE TO THE AGE OF PHILIP II AND CERVANTES
Ferdinand and Isabella, who married in 1469, uniting two of Spain's largest
kingdoms, were first cousins. Their first daughter, Isabel, married the
King of Portugal. Their second daughter, Juana, married the Habsburg,
Philip the Handsome of Burgundy, and their third daughter, Catherine (of
Aragón) married England's Prince Arthur and then his brother Henry
VIII. When Isabella died in 1504, Ferdinand retired to Aragón and
Philip the Handsome took over Castile, excluding Juana from the government
but not from the title of Queen of Castile. Juana early showed signs of
'insanity', possibly schizophrenia, and although the Cortes confirmed
her as Queen of Castile, her six-year-old son Charles was made the nominal
ruler under a regency council.
CHARLES I (1500-1558)
The
son of Philip the Handsome and Juana was born in Ghent in what is now
Belgium and spent the first seventeen years of his life in the Netherlands.
He finally arrived in Spain in 1517, in forty ships and accompanied by
his Flemish court. He knew no Castilian Spanish and was completely ignorant
of Spanish affairs. Of his forty years as King, he spent only sixteen
in Spain. In 1519 he was elected, largely by massive bribery, as the Holy
Roman Emperor, Charles V. (He was crowned in 1520 and then again by the
Pope in 1530.) 1520 was a momentous year in other ways. Charles went to
England to visit Henry VIII and his aunt Catherine of Aragón and
to propose a marriage with their daughter Mary Tudor, then aged six. The
idea was that she would be sent to Spain to be brought up there. But Cardinal
Wolsey refused, saying she could be trained as a Spanish lady in England.
Charles later broke the engagement, and many years later, Mary married
his son, Philip II.
In 1526 Charles married Isabella of Portugal. They
met for the first time on March 9 in Seville and were married at 1 the
next morning! They had six legitimate children, four of whom survived
infancy. The future Philip II was born at Valladolid on May 21,
1527. Charles also had two illegitimate children, Margaret of Parma and
Don Juan of Austria. He spent
most of the rest of his life in the north, visiting all of his European
domains, leaving his wife, and later Philip, as regent. His effective
capital was Brussels.
Never very strong, Charles started to go gray at thirty-six;
by age forty he had gout. At fifty-five he was an old man. As soon as
his mother Juana died, he abdicated (1558). His son Philip inherited Spain,
its overseas territories, some of Italy, and the Netherlands. Charles's
younger brother Ferdinand, who ironically had been raised in Spain, became
the Holy Roman Emperor, keeping all the German-speaking lands.
It had been the Age of Exploration. Columbus had led the way in
1492. In 1493 the Pope issued a bull setting an imaginary line of demarcation
between the claims of Portugal and Spain. The rights to "all islands
and mainlands whatever, found or to be found" to the east of it would
belong to Portugal, those to the west to Spain. This was confirmed by
the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas when the line was moved and defined as
the "meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands". As
a result what is now Brazil became Portuguese but the rest of the Americas
became Spanish. Ponce de León landed in Florida in 1512, Cortés
entered the future Mexico City in 1519 and Magellan discovered, claimed,
and named the Philippines the same year. They were followed by Pizzaro
who conquered Peru in 1533.
PHILIP II (1527-1598)
As
a boy, the future Philip II of Spain had no real youth. When he was seven,
he was given his own household. Which grew to 191 people including 51
pages. His education included Latin, Greek, geography and history. He
particularly liked mathematics and could understand and read French, Italian
and Portuguese but not speak them very well. He loved nature, kept many
caged birds, and was happiest out-of-doors. At age thirteen he started
to buy his own books. (Some of his earlier purchases were books which
were later banned by the Inquisition.)
His library was eclectic, encompassing almost every subject including
science, architecture, religion and mathematics. There were at least two
hundred books on subjects such as magic and astrology. This gave him a
wide background, especially in history and geography, of which he often
knew more than his advisors. By the end of his life, the library contained
14,000 volumes.
Philip's first wife was Maria of Portugal who was
his double first cousin! They had one son, the future Don Carlos,
and she died a few days later. He then married Mary Tudor, the Queen of
England known as Bloody Mary. When she died, he made a bid to marry
her sister, Queen Elizabeth I, but nothing came of it.
His
third wife was Elizabeth of Valois, the sister of Francis II of
France (the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots). When she left for her new
home in Spain Elizabeth was still, at fourteen, little more than a child
who still played with dolls. She met the thirty-four-year-old Philip for
the first time at their wedding in Spain. The wedding festivities included,
jousts (relics of chivalry),
bullfights and an auto-da-fé!
Elizabeth was known at the Reina de la Paz (the Queen of Peace),
and the ten years of their marriage were some of the happiest of Philip's
life. He was very fond of her, risking his own health by insisting on
staying with her when she was ill with smallpox. Their two daughters were
the comfort of Philip's later life. Some of Cervantes's
earliest writings were four poems of remembrance at Elizabeth's death.
Finally Philip married Anne of Austria, the mother
of the future Philip III.
Religion very important to Philip. He had a deep faith
and a conviction of the truth of Roman Catholicism, and he regarded himself
as its defender, determined to extirpate all 'idolaters' from his dominions.
As self-proclaimed leader of the Counter-Reformation, he presided in person
at five autos. He thought of his power in terms of service to God.
With the Protestant Elizabeth on the throne of England, he believed its
invasion by the Spanish Armada
would meet with divine favor.
But he ruined Spain. When he died in 1598, the once
great empire was in shambles. His son Philip III was a weak ruler, his
successor Philip IV would lead the country from disaster to disaster for
forty-four years. In turn, his son Carlos II, the last Habsburg
King of Spain, was an epileptic who was called Carlos the Bewitched. All
of the unfortunate genetic traits of the Spanish Habsburgs came together
in him.
DON JUAN OF AUSTRIA
Don Juan of Austria, the natural born son of
the Emperor Charles V by Barbara Blomberg of Augsburg, Germany, was very
close to his father. Philip was not told they were brothers until Charles
died and left behind documents acknowledging Juan as his son. Philip welcomed
him to his court and, in 1568 made him captain-general of the Mediterranean
fleet. As such, he became the hero of the great battle of Lepanto
during which Cervantes
lost the use of his left hand. As many as 127 Ottoman ships were taken,
and thousands of Turkish soldiers were killed or captured. 12,000 Christian
slaves were freed from the galleys, and Philip received 3,699 Turkish
slaves in chains, 174 of whom he granted to Don Juan. It was the worst
defeat of a sultan in almost 200 years.
Handsome and healthy, Don Juan was also arrogant and
ambitious, and Philip was afraid his brother would want a throne of his
own, possibly Scotland or England, so he sent him to the Netherlands where
he was hated. When he became ill, the Dutch carried him to a hastily furnished
unused pigeon loft. There he died on October 1, 1578. His body was cut
to pieces and sewn up in three leather bags. When these reached Spain
he was reassembled, dressed, and borne in solemn procession to the Escorial
for burial.
THE SPANISH ARMADA
In 1584 Philip II, who had once been the husband of Queen Mary I of England,
decided to send a Spanish Armada against the English fleet. Its purpose
was threefold: 1) to escort a 30,000-man Spanish army from the Netherlands
in an invasion of England, 2) to then move to the Atlantic to stop the
English ships which were preying on the Spanish shipping carrying the
wealth of the Americas, and 3) to help reverse the Protestant Revolution
in the England under his former sister-in-law, Elizabeth I.
Philip at first envisioned a fleet of 94,000 men and
almost 600 vessels but, when it finally sailed in 1588, there were 22
galleons (warships) and 108 armed merchant vessels with 8,000 sailors
and 18,000 soldiers. The provisioning of the Armada was a huge job and
one of those involved was Miguel
de Cervantes who went to Seville in 1587 to participate in the requisitioning
of the necessary food supplies.
The Armada reached the English Channel where it was
met by a larger English fleet and soundly defeated. Deciding to return
home by sailing around northern Scotland rather than face the English
again, the remains of the once mighty Armada encountered fierce storms
and further losses of ships and men. In the end, 67 ships, with about
10,000 men, limped back to Spain.
THE SAN DIEGO
CONNECTION
On September 28, 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed into what is now
San Diego Bay and landed on Point Loma somewhere near Ballast Point. He
claimed the land for Spain and, since it was the eve of the feast of San
Miguel, gave that name to the surrounding area. Many years later, Sebastian
Vizcaino entered this harbor (November 12, 1602) on the eve of the day
of San Diego de Alcalá, and he changed the name of the bay. It
was over one hundred years before the site was visited again, but the
name San Diego stuck. In 1769, Father Junipero Serra built the first of
his missions there.
Just
who was the saint for which the present city was named? Early in the fifteenth
century, in a small, poor valley near Seville, Spain, a little boy was
born and named for Saint James (Santiago or San Diego). As a young man
he became a member of the Third Order of St. Francis and lived as a hermit.
Then, for thirty years as a lay brother, he worked as a porter at a monastery.
Although illiterate, he was sent to the Canary Islands where he hoped
to become a martyr to the native tribes. Instead he became the guardian
of the convent and converted many people. After Diego returned to Spain,
he went to Rome for the canonization of Saint Bernadine of Sienna. While
he was there an epidemic broke out; he cared for the sick and turned a
convent into a hospital where many miraculous cures were attributed to
him. Diego gained fame as an orator, and theologians listened in amazement
to this uneducated man. In 1456, he gained a post as a lecturer at the
University of Alcalá de Henares, the town in which Cervantes
was born. At the end of his life he worked in the infirmary and then,
once more, as a humble doorkeeper. He died on November 12, 1463, and when
he could not be buried immediately, people noted that his corpse remained
uncorrupted; they could detect the 'odor of sanctity'. The students petitioned
for beatification, but nothing came of it until Don Carlos, the son and
heir of Philip II of Spain fell down stairs in Alcalá, and injured
his head. No doctors could help, but the body of Diego, now almost one
hundred years dead, was placed in the prince's bed and 'cured' him. The
grateful Philip, convinced of a genuine miracle, petitioned Pope Sixtus
V for the canonization of the humble monk. The Pope soon complied, and
he was named Saint Didicus the Latin version of the name. In Spanish it
becomes San Diego.
Thus, if Don Carlos had not fallen down the stairs,
San Diego might still be named San Miguel.
NOTE: All of the material above is an abridgment from
articles first written for San Diego Opera in connection with the production
of Verdi's Don Carlo.
LA MANCHA
The name of the region comes from the Arabian ma-ansha which means
"no water". Ironically, in Spanish mancha means spot,
blemish or stigma, and some think Cervantes was making fun of the region
when he set Don Quixote
there. However, he probably chose it because it was plain and unromantic,
not the usual site for the heroic knight-errant of chivalric
romances.
La Mancha, south of Madrid, is in the heart of the
Iberian peninsula, part of the present day Autonomous Region of Castilla-La
Mancha with Toledo as its capital. It is mainly dry table land, and it
is still noted for its many windmills. It is . During conflicts between
the Moors and the Christians, it was a frontier region and the landscape
is still dotted with castles and their ruins. It is said that the real
Spain lives on here, but this is about to change. It is soon to become
the new home of a Las Vegas style gambling and leisure complex.
El
Toboso, the home of Don Quixote's imaginary lady Dulcinea
(portrayed in fictional real life by Aldonza Lorenzo) is a real town in
the province of Toledo. Visitors today can see statues of Dulcinea and
Don Quixote in the plaza, visit Dulcinea's house (a traditional 16th century
hidalgo palace reconstructed in 1960), and view various editions of the
novel in the Cervantes Museum. There is also the fifteenth century convent
of the Trinitarians, the order which arranged Cervantes's ransom from
Algeria. Today
El Toboso has a population of a little over 2,000
SOCIAL AND
RELIGIOUS CLIMATE
Cervantes lived from 1547-1616 during the climax
and decline of Spain's golden age. Silver from the Americas was pouring
in, and the size of the Spanish Empire rivaled that of Ancient Rome. It
was a period of social and economic change. Yet, most of Spain
was still poor,with the gap between the rich and poor steadily increasing.
Most of the roads were little more than tracks and, while more and more
land was coming under cultivation, production was low and declined during
the latter half of the century, a situation aggravated by drought and
poor management. The Church controlled twenty percent of the land. The
main "industry" was sheep raising. Prices were controlled, but
production costs spiraled and there were many shortages. It became harder
for farmers to pay taxes, and Cervantes's task of collecting supplies
for the Armada was very difficult.
The rich aristocracy was relatively small and
did not include the tens of thousands who were able to claim petty hidalgo
status. These had little money but were exempt from taxes, adding to the
poverty of those who could not claim to be "noble". Cervantes
and Don Quixote exemplify these poor hidalgos. Most of the land was owned
by the rich nobles and worked by peasant tenants. Fewer than one percent
of the peasants owned their own land. Yet, all the people of Spain, even
the poorest, in contrast to those of other European countries, had a sense
of honor, status and freedom. The poor were proud, with a sense of their
own worth and were not humble. Sancho Panza exemplifies these people.
The Protestant Reformation formed the background for
much of what was happening in Spain. When the future Charles V was nine,
Calvin was born. He was seventeen when Martin Luther posted his ninety-five
theses on the church door at Wittenberg. In response, Spain became a bastion
of Catholicism and isolated itself from the rest of Europe to sustain
its religion. Students were not allowed to study abroad. The first of
Index of forbidden books was published by the Inquisitor General in 1551*.
Religion permeated the government. The Santa Hermandad (Holy Brotherhood)
was the name of the government police force founded by Ferdinand and Isabella.
It was funded from taxes on nonnobles, and some of the funds were used
to help finance the first voyage of Columbus. They kept order on the highways
and, despite the name had no connection with the Inquisition. When the
Jews were expelled in 1492, most of the Moors also left, although their
official expulsion was not until 1609. Purity of blood (limpieza
de sangre) became more and more important. Since converso
blood was more common among the upper and middle classes, most of the
poor, like Sancho
Panza, had pure blood', another factor contributing to their
pride of status. In Don Quixote Sancho Panza boasts of his own
pure blood (Part II, Chapter IV).
* In 1632, part of one sentence was purged from Don
Quixote Book 2 Chapter 36 by the Index. ("... works of charity
performed in a lukewarm and halfhearted way have no merit or value whatsoever.")
It was not reinstated in Spanish editions until 1863. Despite how he is
portrayed in Man of La Mancha, this is the only recorded
incident of Cervantes or his work being in conflict with the Inquisition.
ARTISTIC
LIFE
The most famous "Spanish" artist of the time, a contemporary
of Cervantes, was another "Man of La Mancha" by adoption. The
Crete-born Greek, Dominos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco
(1541-1614), studied in Venice and spent time in Rome before going, in
1577, to Madrid and then Toledo. (Cervantes was in Algiers at the time.)
Toledo, the capital of La Mancha, was also the religious capital of Spain
and a prosperous city. El Greco hoped to make a living at the Spanish
Court but did not find favor with Philip II and spent the rest of his
life in Toledo. One of his best known paintings is his "View of Toledo".
LITERATURE
During Cervantes time there were some twenty universities in Spain and
it had one of most literate societies in Europe. The fact that so many
Spaniards could read, or were often read to, contributed to the success
of Don Quixote.
Cervantes was not considered an important literary
figure during his lifetime. The most revered writer was Lope de Vega
(1562-1635). It is true that he was a much better poet than Cervantes
"one of the most sublime in the Spanish language", but his prose
works were inferior. Educated at the University of Alcalá, he produced
about 1,800 comedias and 400 autos,
a prodigious output. In one of the plays, the hero, Don Ottavio duels
with a statue. One of the threads of the story was later woven into the
story of Don Juan. The paths of the two writers crossed frequently, and
they often criticized each other. Lope de Vega once said there was not
poet as bad as Cervantes nor anyone so stupid as to praise Don Quixote.
Like Cervantes he was of noble but relatively poor birth and, as Cervantes
had fought at Lepanto,
de Vega sailed with the later Spanish
Armada. In contrast to the private Cervantes, Lope de Vega was outgoing
and charming and had many friends. Notorious for his love affairs, he
became a priest in 1614. Despite the success of Don Quixote, Cervantes
often felt inferior to him.
Another, slightly later, writer was the monk Gabriel
Téllez (1583-1648), who used the pen name Tirso de Molina.
He wrote El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster
of Seville and the Stone Guest) the story of Don Juan. Born
in Madrid and also educated at Alcalá, he became a friar. He may
have met Lope de Vega while he was in Toledo in 1612-1615. In 1616 he
was sent with six other monks to the island of Santo Domingo, where he
taught theology. After his return to Spain he had a period of intense
literary activity. In 1640, a rule was made that no inhabitant of a friary
could have in his possession any book of 'profane plays' or poetry, or
write any poetry or prose which attacked the government. He ignored the
order, but he remained a monk all his life, serving as the prior of several
monasteries and as historian of the Order of Mercy. In all, he wrote over
two hundred plays, of which fifty-four exist today.
THE THEATRE
Religious Theatres
Spanish drama grew out of church pageants at religious festivals. They
were first presented in church during Mass and on special feast days such
as Christmas and Corpus Christi. Later they moved outdoors under the open
skies. Some times there were processions accompanied by such dramas as
Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In the beginning
they were acted by priests, choirboys and, sometimes, members of the congregation,
none of whom were paid. There were also medieval mysteries plays based
on the Bible, and sometimes there were comic interludes. Since there was
seldom a stage, carts with scenery on them were often used, sometimes
one on each side of the playing area. Like floats bearing tableaus they
could easily be moved to effect scene changes. Some of the effects could
be spectacular such as in a play about Samson in which the temple actually
collapsed in front of the audience.
A special type of play was the one act auto
sacramental, usually centered on the sacrament of the Eucharist,
performed on the feast of Corpus Christi, and always outdoors. Autos
were often allegorical and featured characters such as Vice, Faith, Sin,
Virtue et cetera. The name auto also became attached to the more
notorious auto-da-fé,
itself a form of a religious pageant. Lope
de Vega wrote several of these but most of his are now lost.
Early Public Theatres
By the beginning of the sixteenth century the actors in autos started
to be paid and secular plays developed. However, little documentation
about the physical theatre of the time remains. Most of what we know of
the settings must be inferred from the plays themselves, from the stage
directions and from literary references. Madrid's earliest commercial
playhouses were connected with hospitals and confraternities which used
them to raise money, and their records provide some information.
Soon after 1500 came the rise
of comedias which were written in prose rather than in the
poetry of the autos and were mostly pastorals. Lope de Rueda
(1510?-1565?) was one of the first of Spain's actor-managers and dramatists,
acknowledged by both Lope de Vega and Cervantes as the founder of Spanish
professional drama. According to Cervantes he worked as a metal beater
and started acting in autos. The works he wrote were not printed,
but we know they had about sixteen characters, some doubled, so a company
of about eight could cover them all. Many were adapted from Italian plays.
Strolling players took them all over Spain using inn courtyards and town
plazas for stages. Created to be movable, the sets were extremely simple
with little or no scenery to indicate scene changes. Plays usually called
for two entrances (either end of a curtain across the back of the stage),
and an upper window for which a nearby house could be used. Since the
characters of comedias were usually ordinary people, most wore
everyday dress appropriate to their social status with something to suggestion
an occupation, e.g. an apron for a cobbler. There were costumes
for special roles, and participants often wore masks. Such plays were
also enacted by university students and dramas inspired by the classics
began to be presented.
Cervantes wrote of Rueda's
time:
All of the impresario's stage properties fit into
a sack and were little more than a few white sheepskin coats decorated
with gilt leather and a few beards and wigs and shepherds' crooks. ...
The plays were colloquies or eclogues [short pastoral poems] between
two or three shepherds and a shepherdess; they were adorned and expanded
with two or three interludes, about a negress, a pimp, a fool or a Basque,
for all of these characters were acted by Lope [de Rueda] with the greatest
skill and excellence that can be imagined. ... At that time there was
no stage machinery or fights between Moors and Christians on foot or
on horseback; there were no characters that would come out, or appear
to come out, of the center of the earth, through the hole in a stage
which consisted for four benches set in a square, with four to six boards
on top of them. ... And there were certainly no clouds descending from
heaven and earth with angels or souls. The decoration of the theatre
was an old blanket drawn by two ropes from one side to the other which
made what they [now] call the tiring room'. The musicians, without
a guitar, stood behind it, singing some ancient ballad.
Since theatres were in the open, the audience and
players boiled in the summer, froze in the winter, and got wet in the
rain. It is just such a setting which is portrayed in the opening of the
movie version of Man of La Mancha, and "Sancho" arrives
at the prison in both the stage and movie version carrying a trunk
containing all of the company's costumes and props.
Corrales
By the time Cervantes returned
to Spain from Algiers, troops of actors had begun to look for permanent
places to play. There were now secular theatrical groups some of which
were still associated with hospitals which shared the profits or paid
a daily fee and sometimes owned the scenery. They built permanent stages
set up in the inner courtyards of blocks of houses (corrales).
The spaces were rented out by the house owners who agreed to give passageway
into the courtyard for the audiences. One of houses was sometimes used
by the troop. The stage was a rectangular platform about 22'x 13' which
backed up to a two-story facade with a dressing room below concealed behind
a curtain and a gallery above provided with openings which could serve
as windows. This gallery above the stage could also be used by spectators
when not needed by actors. The stage platform communicated with the space
below it by a trap door. The stage was framed by stepped rows of seating
for the privileged above which were grill protected windows for women.
The pit in front was for ordinary people. Many theatres had awnings to
shade the stage, and later the audiences, from sun and rain. In fact,
the Spanish theatres of Cervantes's time had many features in common with
those of his contemporary, Shakespeare.
Costumes tried to represent the
period, status and role of actors. Women sometimes dressed as men and
vice versa. The furniture was basic. The autor de comedias'
such as Lope de Rueda was author, actor and producer. Some of the actors
were professionals, paid per performance, with board, lodging, transport
and laundry paid by the company. There were often couples and even their
children. Actors were given their parts written out but not whole play.
Plays by dramatists other than the company autor were also used.
Such a dramatist would read his play to the company in an attempt to sell
it. This seems to have been the role of Cervantes since, in extant sources,
he is not described as an actor (as he is depicted in Man of La Mancha)
.
This is the theatre of Lope de Vega and these features
are reflected in the stage directions in the plays Cervantes wrote. (Note:
Most of his now known plays were not produced until after Don Quixote.)
Corrales reached Lima in 1594 and Mexico City in 1597. They were
used throughout the seventeenth century and finally replaced by modern
theatres in the early eighteenth.
In 1586 there was a ban in Madrid on women on stage
which lasted for about a year and half until there was a dispensation
for a visiting Italian company provided the women were accompanied by
their husbands and wore only feminine dress. Soon women were again permitted
in Spain. In 1598 Philip II issued a royal edict closing all of the theatres,
but Philip III authorized their reopening, justified by the the hospitals'
need to earn money. Still, no comedia could be performed during
Lent, Advent, Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, or at nunneries or monasteries
and only after 12:00 noon so people could go to Mass. The material was
censored by learned and responsible persons' and autors had
to submit lists of their companies each year.
Court Theatres
There were also Court presentations beginning in the fifteenth century.
One was Amadís
de Gaul and many were based on chivalric literature. They were usually
given to celebrate gala occasions and were pageants rather than actual
plays. Court theatres were more like those of today, constructed to give
perspective and with a proscenium arch, painted backgrounds and wings,
as well as facilities for scene changes. They performed plays of all sorts
as well as what we would call opera. La púrpura de la rosa
(The Blood of the Rose) 1660, was the first opera performed in
the Americas (in Lima Peru in 1701). The seventeenth century also saw
the birth of the zarzuela, still the Spanish form of what we call
operetta.
Note: Most of this material on the theatres was taken
from Shergold, N.D.: A History of the Spanish Stage From Medieval times
until the end of the Seventeenth Century. The Clarendon Press, 1967.
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Revised July 2009
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