La moza de cántaro | Page 4

or realized a decline of his mental faculties. He did not devote by any means all his time to his literary pursuits, but found time to attend faithfully to his religious duties and to the cares of his home, for he had gathered about him his children, Feliciana, Lope Félix and Antonia Clara, of whom the last two and Marcela, in a convent since 1621, were the gifted fruit of illicit loves. In 1627 he published his Corona Trágica, a long religious epic written on the history of the life and fate of Mary, Queen of Scots. This work won for him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, conferred with other evidences of favor by Pope Urban VIII. Three years later appeared Lope's Laurel de Apolo, a poem of some seven thousand lines describing an imaginary festival given on Mount Helicon in April, 1628, by Apollo, at which he rewards the poets of merit. The work is devoted to the praise of about three hundred contemporary poets. In 1632 the poet published his prose romance, Dorotea, written in the form of drama, but not adapted to representation on the stage. It is a very interesting work drawn from the author's youth and styled by him as "the posthumous child of my Muse, the most beloved of my long-protracted life."[2] It is most important for the light it sheds on the early years of his life, for it is largely autobiographical. Another volume, issued from the pen of Lope in 1634 under the title of Rimas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos, contains the mock-heroic, La Gatomaquia, the highly humorous account of the love of two cats for a third. Fitzmaurice-Kelly describes this poem as, "a vigorous and brilliant travesty of the Italian epics, replenished with such gay wit as suffices to keep it sweet for all time."
[Note 2: égloga á Claudio, Obras Sueltas, Vol. IX, p. 367.]
Broken in health and disappointed in some of his fondest dreams, the great poet was now rapidly approaching the end of his life. It is believed that domestic disappointments and sorrows hastened greatly his end. It would appear from some of his works that his son, Lope Félix, to whom he dedicated the last volume mentioned above, was lost at sea the same year, and that his favorite daughter, Antonia Clara, eloped with a gallant at the court of Philip IV. Four days before his death Lope composed his last work, El Siglo de Oro, and on August 27, 1635, after a brief serious illness, the prince of Spanish drama and one of the world's greatest authors, Lope Félix de Vega Carpio breathed his last in the little home in the Calle de Francos, now the Calle de Cervantes. His funeral, with the possible exception of that of Victor Hugo, was the greatest ever accorded to any man of letters, for it was made the occasion of national mourning. The funeral procession on its way to the church of San Sebastian turned aside from its course so that the poet's daughter, Marcela, might see from her cell window in the convent of the Descalzadas the remains of her great father on the way to their last resting-place.
II. THE EARLY SPANISH THEATER AND THE DRAMA OF LOPE DE VEGA
The theater of the Golden Age of Spanish letters occupies a position unique in the history of the theaters of modern Europe, for it is practically free from foreign influence and is largely the product of the popular will. Like other modern theaters, however, the Spanish theater springs directly from the Church, having its origin in the early mysteries, in which the principal themes were incidents taken from the lives of the saints and other events recorded in the Old and the New Testament, and in the moralities, in which the personages were abstract qualities of vices and virtues. These somewhat somber themes in time failed to satisfy the popular will and gradually subjects of a more secular nature were introduced. This innovation in England and France was the signal for the disappearance of the sacred plays; but not so in Spain, where they were continued several centuries, under the title of autos, after they had disappeared in other parts of Europe.
The beginnings of the Spanish secular theater were quite humble and most of them have been lost in the mists of time and indifference. The recognized founder of the modern Spanish theater appeared the same year Columbus discovered the New World. Agustín Rojas, the actor, in his Viaje entretenido, says of this glorious year: "In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella saw fall the last stronghold of the Moors in the surrender of Granada, Columbus discovered America, and Juan del Encina founded the Spanish theater." Juan del Encina was a graduate of the University of Salamanca and lived at