Background for Spanish Theatre -

Background for Spanish Theatre -

Secular theatre, as well as religious, has also been visible in parts of Spain since the thirteenth century as has some form of acting as a profession. It may be that the strong Roman presence in Spain helped maintain performance activities through the Dark Ages when the rest of Europe was repeatedly assaulted by successions of barbarian invasions. At any rate it becomes a going concern as the Spanish forces eliminate the Moors. With the discovery of the New World and all that lovely new money coming in, Court productions and popular theatre boom. Secular performances are forbidden on Church holidays (the number of these will increase over the next hundred years) but can be held two or three days a week, plus, of course, during the big Corpus Christi* festival.

1492 - Juan del Encina* (1469-c. 1539), Spanish playwright, is working for the Duke of Alba as a playwright, musician, actor and director of entertainments. He has studied in Italy and brings the Italian style of writing pastoral dialogues to his Spanish pieces. He is one of the three men credited with founding the Spanish Renaissance theatre.

1499 - Earliest surviving edition of Fernando de Rojas'*s (c. 1465-1541) Celestina* (La comedia de Calisto y Melibea). This is an unperformed 16 act dialogue novel which he will rewrite in 1502 with 21 acts and a new Miles Gloriosus* character. This work is immensely popular with at least 60 reprints in the sixteenth century alone. It will be translated into English in 1631 (as The Spanish Bawd*). Playwright will borrow plots, scenes, characters and speeches from it as well as writing sequels to it.

1502 - Gil Vicente* (c. 1465-c. 1536), a Portuguese playwright, is the Court poet for the next

34 years. He is the second of the three men credited with founding the Spanish Renaissance theatre. He writes in a number of dramatic forms, eclogues, moralities, farces, allegorical spectacles and romantic plays. We have 44 of his works extant, 17 in Portuguese and 11 in Spanish. The rest are in both languages. He is inventive, developing these forms from several earlier types and excelling in the morality play and romantic comedy. His last 12 years are devoted to really extravagant secular allegorical fantasies full of uninhibited satire and lyricism.

1513 - An influential Spanish playwright, Bartolome de Torres Naharro* (c. 1485 - c. 1524) is writing in Rome where he did most of his plays. He is regarded as the third (and last) of the three founders of the Spanish Renaissance theatre. He writes novelesque plays dealing with the conflicts of love and honor.

1552 - Back in France they are coming up with the first classical (this means it is modeled on Seneca*) tragedy, Cleopatre Captive*, by Etinne Jodelle* (1532-73). It is really very dreary but it's a beginning for the French.

1552 - We find the first really important Spanish theatrical figure who puts it all together. Lope de Rueda* (c. 1505-65) is a professional actor-manager and author, contracting with Valladolid (the capital of Spain at the moment) to be the pageant master for the Farce Festival. Spanish theatre is often regarded as beginning with his career. His plays are performed by his own company as he tours all over Spain playing in inns and courtyards for the public and in palaces and the great houses of the nobility. He writes mainly in natural, idiomatic prose, making fun of the manners of his day. He comes up with an indigenous kind of play, the paso*, which is a short comic interlude. His best known one is called The Olives*. Like everybody else he also writes plays based on Italian originals. [He and Shakespeare* used the same two original Italian plays. This is the usual thing for Renaissance playwrights.]

As an actor his characterizations of comic fools and rascals are so well regarded that they encourage an Italian Commedia dell'Arte* troupe to come to Spain. His company includes women and is usually made up of thirteen or fourteen people in addition to the actor-author- manager.

Meanwhile, events go on -

1552 In Eastern Europe Russia's Ivan IV* is busy conquering Kazan and Astrakan. 1553 Things are not too stable in England as Edward VI* dies and Lady Jane Grey* is Queen

for nine days. Then Mary I* comes to the throne. You may remember that she is the daughter of the Spanish Catherine of Aragon* and strongly Catholic in Anglican England. She wants to reverse the religious changes in England. Things get so messy under her rule that we know her better as Bloody Mary*.

1553 - Over in Germany Hans Sachs* continues his busy career writing Tristan und Isolde*. The college playwrights in England are beginning to get into the theatre business and the

second full-length English comedy, Gammer Gurton's Needle* is produced at Christ's College, Cambridge. They are not sure who the author is (a Mr. S) but assume it is William Stevenson* who's a fellow there.

1554 In England Mary I* puts Elizabeth* in the tower and marries Philip* of Spain, son of Charles V* (Holy Roman Emperor*). The English really don't like this.

1555 The Peace of Augsburg* (ending that fight between Charles and the Protestants) gives all German governments the right to choose Lutheran* or Catholic and all their subjects have to agree or move elsewhere. However, this is only a momentary lull. Eventually the problem will crop up again and become the Thirty Years War*. In other parts of Europe religious arguments are motivating civil wars and these are moving into international conflicts.

Tobacco begins to move from the Americas to Spain. The French found a colony in the Americas on the Bay of Rio de Janerio.

Charles V* (Holy Roman Emperor*), sick of endless struggle, abdicates his rights to his domains in the Netherlands, Italy and Spain in favor of his son, Philip II*.

In the area of art Michelangelo* is sculpting the Pieta*. Big trade in slaves between Africa and Mexico. The English establish the Muscovy Company to trade with Ivan IV* in Russia. They also send

out trading ventures to Africa and the Orient, going in search of the legendary southern continent "Terra australis incognits" (as you can tell nobody's stumbled on Australia yet.) Unfortunately for them, one of their traders, John Hawkins*' ships, are captured. They will keep on doing this trade stuff wherever they get a toehold.

In India the Mongols return to Delhi and gradually take northern India (Bengal.) 1555 - Back in Italy the Olympic Academy of Vicenza* is founded to study Greek drama. At

the beginning they use temporary stages, but soon they will work up to a building of their own.

In Mantua the second big name (Italian, naturally) in theatrical design, Leone di Somi* (1527- 1592) is in charge of theatrical entertainment. In about 1556 he writes a marvelous treatise on production and staging called Four Dialogues Concerning Theatrical Performance*. This work deals with playwrighting, acting, lighting, costume and staging. It is the first work dealing with acting* and a real landmark. He is interested in setting the mood of scenes by how much light is used, bright for most things and darkening when tragedy strikes.

Those Jesuits* are getting into the theatre business with a Jesuit play, Euripus*, by Lewis Brecht* in Vienna. They will lay some useful foundations for the eventual German and Austrian theatre.

1556 Charles V* (Holy Roman Emperor*) retires to a Spanish monastery in Yuste and gives the Holy Roman Empire* to his brother Ferdinand I*.

In England a printing monopoly is granted to the Stationer's company of London. In Russia Ivan IV* takes Astrakhan and opens the Volga trade route to the Caspian Sea. 1557 State bankruptcy in Spain and France and a really bad influenza epidemic all over

Europe. 1557 - The most famous German playwright, Hans Sachs* (1494 - 1576) rewrites the may

play into a Shrovetide Schwank*. He is a shoemaker and a master singer who turned out 198 dramatic works, including The Wandering Scholar* and the Exorcist*. With a company of amateur actors he presents plays twice a week between twelfth night and Lent. This year he becomes the leader of the Nuremberg Mastersingers*.

In England we have the first English play to be censored, Sack-Full of Newes*. 1558 Finally,with the death of Mary I*, Elizabeth I* comes to the English throne and we enter

the Elizabethan* period.

In the art world Brueghel* (Pieter the Elder, c. 1520-1569) is busy painting. He will also father three generations of painters.

1558 - Elizabeth I*, having seen how much trouble religious controversy caused in England, forbids production of religious plays.

1559 - In England one the earliest organized continuing company of actors is founded. Because of the English laws requiring actors to be under patronage, they are organized as the players of Lord Robert Dudley. He will become an Earl later (1564) and then they will be under the name by which they are best known, The Earl of Leicester's Men*.

1559 Francis II* ascends the throne of France and his wife, Mary* Queen of Scots, calls herself Queen of England, but nobody much cares. In England Elizabeth I* is busy governing. She puts out an Act of Supremacy making her the head of the Church, an Act of Uniformity setting out approved forms of worship (trying to balance the Catholics and the Puritans) with

a new English prayer book and making church attendance compulsory. She reforms the currency, ends hostilities with France and Scotland, and requires all able-bodied men not specifically permitted to engage in other trades to work the land. This affects traveling players who are "masterless" men. Remember that at this time England is an agrarian society with special emphasis on wool and textiles.

1560 By the 1560's only Italy, Spain and Portugal are not affected by the rising tide of the Reformation* which is going hand in hand with rising nationalism and interest in local heritage.

Madrid becomes the capital of Spain. The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian*) is founded and the reform parliament abolishes papal

authority and forbids the celebration of mass. In England there is the beginning of Puritanism* which will make things increasingly difficult

for the theatre. In France Francis II* dies and his widow, Mary* Queen of Scots, tries to go home. She is

becoming more and more a political pawn. Things will go from bad to worse for her. 1560 - The modern innovation of the proscenium arch* shows up for the first time in a

drawing made around this date by Bartolomeo Neroni* (c. 1500-1571.) It is still a temporary thing.

1561 Remember those Teutonic knights who became secularized in Prussia? Well, now those in the Baltic States do the same thing.

The first Calvinist* refugees from Flanders settle in England. Tulips from the Near East arrive in Europe for the first time. The forerunners of hand grenades are made for the first time.

1561 - In England the first surviving English historical tragedy Gorboduc* is written by a couple of students of the Inner Temple (Thomas Norton* 1532-84 and Thomas Sackville* 1536-1608.) The play is performed before Elizabeth I* on New Year's Day.

In the Low Countries the Chambers of Rhetoric* reach the peak of lavishness of their productions at a contest in Antwerp* lasting a month. At this event there are nine societies involved in the competition. They use twenty-three triumphal chariots and 197 pageant wagons. It takes fifteen days to perform the plays and cost the city a bundle, over and above the money allotted by the societies.

There is a posthumous publication of an influential critical work called Poetics* (just like everybody elses) by Julius Caesar Scaliger* (c. 1484-1558). This is the first work (written in Latin) to attempt to standardize literary form and content. As usual it misinterprets Aristotle. It also influences generations of European playwrights.

1562 An interesting year. Elizabeth I* is seriously ill with small pox. There is plague in Paris. The first War of Religion* starts in France with the massacre of 1200 Huguenots in Vassy. The first great violin maker, Gasparo Bertolotti*, is doing his thing in Italy.

In the New World the French try to colonize Florida and the slave business is picking up as John Hawkins* begins slave trade between Guinea and the West Indies.

Ivan IV* of Russia tries to take over Livonia and ends up at war with Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and Denmark.