Three Major Plays (4 page)

In Act One he complains to Inés of her coldness towards him: 'I pray
that either Love | Or Death provide me with a remedy | For your
disdain' (1.377-80), adding, a few lines later: 'If you'll not be | My
life, then be my death!' (1.391-2). He is, of course, oblivious to
the fact that in the end his feelings of rejection and his hatred of
Alonso will, in fact, bring about his death. The love-triangle of Inés,
Alonso, and Rodrigo is thus imbued with a linguistic irony whose
tragic resonance becomes increasingly clear as the three characters
are engulfed by events.

It is also
worth noting that, although The Knight from Olmedo lacks the grim and
horrific character of the final act of Punishment Without Revenge, it
nevertheless satisfies many of the requirements of tragedy set out by
Aristotle and inherited by the Renaissance. Spanish Golden Age
theorists, such as Alonso López Pinciano in his Philosophía antigua
poética (Ancient Poetic Philosophy) of 1596, and Francisco Cascales in
his Tablas poéticas (Poetic Manual) of 1617, favoured
tragedia patética,
the kind of tragedy which moves the spectator through the spectacle
of human suffering, and in this context considered that the tragic
hero should be neither wholly good nor wholly bad but a mixture of the
two, a rounded character whose good qualities will arouse admiration
and whose downfall will therefore awaken a sense of pity.
¹⁷
Moreover, that downfall should come about not as the result of a
deliberate error on his or her part, but as the consequence of some
involuntary act or acts, which will in turn deepen feelings of pity
and compassion and in which such outside influences as fortune or
chance may play their part. In The Knight from Olmedo, Alonso is
clearly such a character.

As far as
good qualities are concerned, Alonso is a young man distinguished by
his good looks, nobility of character, honest love for Inés, filial
concerns, and, in particular, his bravery -- the latter most evident
in the bullfight. Indeed, he is acclaimed by everyone, including the
King, and is fully worthy of our admiration. Against this, his
attraction to Inés seems to blind him to the imprudence of conducting
his relationship with her in secret, and equally to the folly of
employing a go-between, who has a reputation for witchcraft, to further
that relationship -- though this mistake on his part

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seems attributable less to a dishonest intention than to the force of
his passion and a certain lack of foresight. Again, though brave, he
seems to be over-conscious of his good name and reputation, and it is a
fear of possibly being branded a coward which leads him to ignore all
the warnings against venturing forth on the road to Olmedo, and which
therefore leads to his death. In short, the spectacle of an
essentially good man destroyed by flaws in his character which are in
no way evil and a combination of circumstances -- his falling in love
with Inés, which in turn fires the hatred of Rodrigo -- allows us to
feel for him that deep sense of pity demanded by tragedy. The same is
largely true of Inés, for she is an essentially good and beautiful young
woman, yet such is the strength of her feelings for Alonso and her
dislike of Rodrigo, that she engages in a duplicity which, though
understandable in the circumstances, ultimately contributes to Alonso's
death and her own empty future. Lope concluded the play with the words:
'So ends the tragic history of | The Knight from Olmedo' (3.759-60), a
clear enough indication of how he intended his play to be regarded.

Another much-discussed aspect of the play concerns the time in which
it is set: the reign of Juan II of Castile in the first half of the
fifteenth century. As far as history is concerned, the period from
1420 to 1445 was one in which Juan II constantly faced the threat of
attack from the Infante Enrique of Aragon and King Juan II of Navarre,
and in which Castilian nobles began to support either Juan II of
Castile or his enemies. Throughout this period Medina, one of the two
focal points of the play, was often visited by the Castilian King and
became a centre of support for him, while Olmedo became associated with
support for the Infante of Aragon and the King of Navarre. The outcome
of this rivalry proved to be the first Battle of Olmedo, which took
place in 1445 on the plains between Olmedo and Medina.

In The Knight from Olmedo Lope emphasizes the fact that Alonso's
presence distinguished the marriage celebrations of Juan II of Castile
(1.688-700), which points, perhaps, to the fact that Alonso, unlike
most people from Olmedo, was a supporter of the Castilian King.
Indeed, in the course of the play Alonso travels from Olmedo to Medina
specifically in order to pay homage to him, as the Constable indicates:
'He comes to | The fiesta, I believe, intent | On serving you'
(2.604-6). And the King, in turn, thinks highly of Alonso's

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loyalty, bravery, and sense of honour. It has been suggested,
therefore, that Lope clearly wished to establish a link between Alonso
and the King in terms of those particular qualities.
¹⁸
The argument has also been advanced that the envy and jealousy of
Rodrigo towards Alonso, the principal source of which is the latter's
love for Inés, are further fanned by the very fact that Alonso comes
from Olmedo, which was traditionally hostile to Juan II of Castile. In
these circumstances it would be particularly galling for Rodrigo to
discover that Alonso has not only stolen the affections of Inés, but
has also been favoured and honoured by the King. In short, Lope has
placed the traditional story of a knight from Olmedo murdered by an
enemy from Medina in the context of the historical rivalry between the
two towns, accounts of which he would have found in various
chronicles of the time. Although the historical background to the play
is neither as extensive nor as crucially important as that of
Fuente Ovejuna,
it nevertheless serves to link the various elements of the plot, as
well as to highlight particular themes -- honour, loyalty to the King,
political divisions -- which were just as relevant to the Spain in
which Lope lived.

As far as
characterization is concerned, Alonso is to some extent a stereotype
-- the traditional lover, noble, dashing, good-looking, and
courageous. On the other hand, Lope constantly fills out the
stereotype with touches which make him a truly interesting character. He
is, despite the attributes outlined above, somewhat unworldly: an
aspect of his character which explains why he employs Fabia, a woman
of the world, to conduct his love-affair, and which also, in a sense,
leads him to ignore the warnings he receives about proceeding on the
journey to Olmedo, for he rather naively believes that Rodrigo will do
him no harm. Again, it seems quite possible that the shadowy figure
who appears to him as he sets out for Olmedo, as well as the Peasant
who later sings the ominous song, are not so much figures of flesh and
blood as projections of his own fearful imagination, already evident
in the dream which he has at the end of Act Two. In this context, his
refusal to listen to the warning could be seen to be an attempt to
still the voice of his own fears, and therefore a pointer to the
complexity of his character.

Of the other major characters, Fabia is the most memorable. In

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many ways she is like Fernando de Rojas's Celestina: a go-between
delivering messages for lovers and arranging their meetings; a sharp
and cunning individual, well-known for her activities; an old woman
who, no longer active herself in matters of love, takes delight in the
relationships of others. On the other hand, although there are in the
play various references to Fabia's spells and belief in her magical
powers, she is a far less sinister character than Celestina. She is
'mischievous rather than devilish', and, as the episode involving the
extraction of the tooth from the corpse of a highwayman suggests in
Act One, the episodes involving her are often intended to be more
comic than sinister.
¹⁹
Indeed, one of
the most striking aspects of The Knight from Olmedo is the way in
which the tragic tone of its final act are preceded in Acts One and
Two by events which are markedly comic, and which largely derive from
Fabia's scheming.

Tello, Alonso's servant, is, for the most part the traditional
gracioso.
Thus, in the incident involving the dead man's tooth he displays the
cowardice associated with such a character and which is calculated
to amuse the audience. He is also, in the same vein, materialistic. He
is, however, like Mengo in
Fuente Ovejuna,
rather different from the traditional
gracioso,
for he is able to see things rather more clearly than his master and
often advises him of the risks and hazards which accompany his affair
with Inés -- not so much from a moral point of view, but so that his
master might negotiate those dangers in a more practical way. To this
extent he can be seen as a foil to his less pragmatic master.

Rodrigo too is in some respects a stereotype: the traditional rejected
lover cast into despair. But in this case his feelings go much deeper
and are transformed in the course of the play's action into
desperation, hatred of Alonso, and a growing resolve to murder him.
This said, it can be argued that Rodrigo is not so much a coldblooded
villain as a man driven by his passions and overwhelmed by events over
which he has no control. He can do nothing to oblige Inés to love
him; he cannot prevent her from falling in love with Alonso; he finds
himself in a situation in which he owes his life to his rival and in
which, as a result of his heroism, Alonso also finds favour with the
King. To this extent, Rodrigo is a victim of circumstance as well as a
prisoner of his passions, and cannot but invite a

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certain sympathy. The fact that he murders Alonso in the way he does
-- treacherously, with the assistance of accomplices -- is in one
sense a condemnation of his character, but it illustrates too the
degree of desperation which has transformed a man of nobility into
someone who is out of control. In a way, the tragedy which occurs is
as much his as Alonso's.

The other characters have fairly standard roles, but the play as a whole points to the fact that, as in
Fuente Ovejuna,
Lope was fully capable of putting on stage characters who are not
only lively and credible but who also, in many cases, have
considerable depth.

Punishment Without Revenge, as the autograph manuscript proves, was
written in 1631 and is therefore one of Lope de Vega's late and truly
mature plays. First published in Barcelona in 1634 in the form of a
suelta
(a single play), it appeared in 1635, the year of his death, in
Volume 21 of his works. In a prologue to the 1634 edition Lope states
that the play received only one performance. He does not specify the
date nor give the reason for its withdrawal, but it is generally
agreed that it was probably staged in the middle of May 1632, by the
company of Manuel Vallejo, the latter also playing the part of the
Duke. As for its withdrawal, several reasons have been suggested, in
particular the possibility that in 1632 the subject matter proved
offensive to a Spanish audience. It was an age, after all, in which
standards of propriety were -- at least officially -- very vigorously
enforced, and in which decorum on the stage was strictly observed. A
play in which a newly married woman has a sexual relationship with her
stepson must clearly have been somewhat sensational, though against
this it has to be noted that in May 1632 a licence for the first
performance had been granted by the censor Pedro Vargas de Machuca.
Another possible reason for the play's suppression is that its subject
matter was regarded as reflecting, albeit implicitly, on the actions
of royal personages. In this respect the King himself, Philip IV, was
not unlike Lope de Vega's Duke in seeking the company of women of
ill-repute. Furthermore, the relationship in the play between Casandra,
the Duke's wife, and his son Federico was not unlike that between
Prince Carlos, son of Philip II, and Isabel, who became Philip's wife
and Carlos's step-

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mother. Even though these events -- the subject of Schiller's play,
Don Carlos and Verdi's opera of the same name -- belonged to the past,
they were still sufficiently recent to have been a cause of possible
embarrassment to the royal family. In this context it should also be
borne in mind that, even if the action of the play is located in
Italy, the actors would have worn contemporary Spanish costumes, which
would have given the subject a decidedly Spanish flavour and
resonance.
²⁰

The plot of Punishment Without Revenge derives, directly or indirectly, from
a novella
by the Italian writer Matteo Bandello ( 14851561) entitled
How
Niccolò III, Marquis of Este, having found his son in an adulterous
liaison with his stepmother, had them both beheaded on the same day in
Ferrara
. A French version of Bandello's story had appeared in 1567 in
Histoires tragiques
by Bouistau and Belleforest, which in 1603 was published in a Spanish translation:
Historias trágicas exemplares de Pedro Bouistan y Francisco de Belleforest,
a book which Lope may well have read.
²¹
There may, of course, have been additional literary sources, and it
is equally possible that Lope may have seen a dramatic performance of
the story by one of the Italian theatre companies which during his
lifetime often performed in Madrid.

Whatever Lope's source, he clearly followed the broad outline of the
story but also introduced important changes. Apart from giving the
characters names which are essentially Spanish -- Bandello's Ugo
became Federico, his stepmother Casandra (she is simply the Marchioness
in the original story) -- and elevating the Marquis to the status of
Duke of Ferrara, Lope's innovations were intended to create more
dramatic and theatrical situations. In Bandello, for example, Ugo and
the Marchioness know each other before she resolves to seduce him in
order to take revenge on her wayward husband. In Lope's Act One they
meet suddenly, before the Duke's marriage, and also without knowing
one another's identity -- Federico rescues her when her carriage
becomes stuck in a ford -- and are immediately attracted to each other: a
case of 'love at first sight'. There is thus an instinctive mutual
attraction between the two young people

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