La moza de cántaro | Page 6

The bojiganga represented as many as six comedias and a number of autos and entremeses, had some approach at regular costumes, and traveled on horseback. (7) The farándula was composed of from ten to fifteen players, was well equipped and traveled with some ease. (8) The compa?ía was the most pretentious theatrical organization composed of thirty persons, capable of producing as many as fifty pieces and accustomed to travel with dignity due the profession. Of still greater simplicity were the theaters where these variously classified actors gave their plays. In the villages and towns they were simply the plaza or other open space in which the rude stage and paraphernalia were temporarily set up. Quoting from Cervantes, Ticknor says of the theater of Lope de Rueda: "The theater was composed of four benches, arranged in a square, with five or six boards laid across them, that were thus raised about four palms from the ground. The furniture of the theater was an old blanket drawn aside by two cords, making what they called the tiring-room, behind which were the musicians, who sang old ballads without a guitar." In the larger cities such simplicity cannot be expected in the later development of the theater, for there the interest and resources were greater. In this respect Madrid, the capital, may be considered as representative of the most advanced type. In that city the plays were given in corrales or open spaces surrounded on all sides by houses except the side nearest the street. By the beginning of the seventeenth century these corrales were reduced to two principal ones--the Corral de la Pacheca (on the site of the present Teatro Espa?ol) and the Corral de la Cruz, in the street of the same name. The windows of the houses surrounding these corrales, with the adjoining rooms, formed aposentos which were rented to individuals and which were entered from the houses themselves. At the end farthest from the entrance of the corral was the stage, which was raised above the level of the ground and covered by a roof. In front of the stage and around the walls were benches, those in the latter position rising in tiers. On the left hand and on a level with the ground was the cazuela or women's gallery. The ground to the rear of the benches in front of the stage was open and formed the "standing-room" of the theater. With the exception of the stage, a part of the benches and the aposentos, the whole was in the open air and unprotected from the weather. In such unpretentious places the masterpieces of Lope de Vega and of many of his successors were presented. With this environment in mind we shall proceed to a brief review of the dramatic works of el Fénix de los ingenios.
Lope de Vega found the Spanish drama a mass of incongruities without form, preponderating influence, or type, he left it in every detail a well-organized, national drama, so perfect that, though his successors polished it, they added nothing to its form.[3] When or how he began this great work, it is not certain. He says in his works that he wrote plays as early as his eleventh year and conceived them even younger, and we have one of his plays, El Verdadero Amante, written, as has been mentioned, when he was twelve, but corrected and published many years later. Of all his plays written before his banishment, little is known but it is natural to suppose that they resembled in a measure the works of predecessors, for this period must be considered the apprenticeship of Lope. Though written for the author's pleasure, they were evidently numerous, for Cervantes says that Lope de Vega "filled the world with his own comedias, happily and judiciously planned, and so many that they covered more than ten thousand sheets." That his merit was soon appreciated is evident from the fact that theatrical managers were anxious to have these early compositions and that during his banishment he supported himself and family in Valencia by selling plays and probably kept the best troupes of the land stocked with his works alone. Of the number of his works the figures are almost incredible. In El Peregrino en su Patria, published in 1604, he gives a list of his plays, which up to that time numbered two hundred and nineteen; in 1609 he says, in El Arte Nuevo de hacer Comedias, that the number was then four hundred and eighty-three; in prologues or prefaces of his works Lope tells us that he had written eight hundred plays in 1618, nine hundred in 1619 and one thousand and seventy in 1625. In the égloga á Claudio, written in 1632, and in the concluding lines of La Moza de Cántaro, revised probably