Modern Spanish Lyrics | Page 4

gained more
fame in the world of
letters than many better kings by
fostering the study of literature and
gathering about him
a circle of "court poets" nearly all of noble birth.
Only
two names among them all imperatively require mention.

Iñigo LÓPEZ DE MENDOZA, MARQUIS OF SANTILLANA
(1398-1458)
was the finest type of grand seigneur, protector of

letters, student, warrior, poet and politician. He wrote
verse in all
three of the manners just named, but he will
certainly be longest
remembered for his serranillas, the
fine flower of the
Provençal-Galician tradition, in which
the poet describes his meeting
with a country lass.
Santillana combined the freshest local setting
with
perfection of form and left nothing more to be desired in
that
genre. He also wrote the first sonnets in Castilian,
but they are
interesting only as an experiment, and had no
followers. Juan de
MENA (1411-1456) was purely a literary
man, without other
distinction of birth or accomplishment.
His work is mainly after the
Italian model. The _Laberinto
de fortuna_, by which he is best known,
is a dull allegory
with much of Dante's apparatus. There are historical

passages where the poet's patriotism leads him page xvii to a certain
rhetorical height, but his good intentions
are weighed down by three
millstones: slavish imitation,
the monotonous arte mayor stanza and
the deadly
earnestness of his temperament. He enjoyed great renown

and authority for many decades.
Two anonymous poems of about the same time deserve
mention. The
Danza de la muerte, the Castilian
representative of a type which
appeared all over Europe,
shows death summoning mortals from all
stations of
life with ghastly glee. The Coplas de Mingo Revulgo,

promulgated during the reign of Henry IV (1454-1474), are
a political
satire in dialogue form, and exhibit for the

first time the peculiar
peasant dialect that later became
a convention of the pastoral
eclogues and also of the
country scenes in the great drama.

The second half of the century continues the same
tendencies with a
notable development in the fluidity of
the language and an increasing
interest in popular poetry.
Gómez Manrique (d. 1491?) was another
warrior of a
literary turn whose best verses are of a severely moral

nature. His nephew JORGE MANRIQUE (1440-1478) wrote a
single
poem of the highest merit; his scanty other works
are forgotten. The
Coplas por la muerte de su padre,
beautifully translated by
Longfellow, contain some
laments for the writer's personal loss, but
more general
reflections upon the instability of worldly glory. It is

not to be thought that this famous poem is in any way
original in idea;
the theme had already been exploited to
satiety, but Manrique gave it
a superlative perfection of
form and a contemporary application
which left no room for
improvement.
There were numerous more or less successful love-poets
of the
conventional type writing in page xviii octosyllabics and the inevitable
imitators of Dante
with their unreadable allegories in arte mayor. The

repository for the short poems of these writers is the
Cancionero
general of Hernando de Castillo (1511). It
was reprinted many times
throughout the sixteenth
century. Among the writers represented in it
one should
distinguish, however, Rodrigo de Cota. His dramatic

_Diálogo entre el amor y un viejo_ has real charm, and
has saved his
name from the oblivion to which most of his
fellows have justly been
consigned. The bishop Ambrosio
Montesino (Cancionero, 1508) was
a fervent religious
poet and the precursor of the mystics of fifty years

later.
The political condition of Spain improved immensely in
the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella (1479-1516) and the
country entered upon a
period of internal homogeneity and
tranquility which might be
expected to foster artistic
production. Such was the case; but
literature was not the
first of the arts to reach a highly refined state.
The

first half of the sixteenth century is a period of
humanistic

study, and the poetical works coming from it
were still tentative.
JUAN DEL ENCINA (1469-1533?) is
important in the history of the
drama, for his _églogas,
representaciones_ and autos are practically
the first
Spanish dramas not anonymous. As a lyric poet Encina

excels in the light pastoral; he was a musician as well
as a poet, and
his bucolic villancicos_ and _glosas
in stanzas of six-and
eight-syllable lines are daintily
written and express genuine love of
nature. The Portuguese
GIL VICENTE (1470-1540?) was a follower
of Encina at
first, but a much bigger man. Like most of his
compatriots
of the sixteenth century he wrote in both Portuguese and

Castilian, though better in the former tongue. He was
close to the
people in his thinking and writing page xix and some of the songs
contained in his plays reproduce the
truest popular savor.
The intimate connection between Spain and Italy during the
period
when the armies of the Emperor Charles V (Charles I
of Spain:
reigned 1516-1555) were overrunning the latter
country gave a new
stimulus to the imitation of Italian
meters and poets which we have
seen existed in a premature
state since the reign of John II. The man
who first
achieved real success in the hendecasyllable, combined in

sonnets, octaves, terza rima and blank verse, was Juan
BOSCÁN
ALMOGAVER (1490?-1542), a Catalan of wealth and
culture.
Boscán was handicapped by writing in a tongue
not native to him and
by the constant