Lope de Vega and William Shakespeare: Comparing Elizabethan & Spanish Golden Age Drama
– by Jaime Bell (B.A./English, ’07)Prior to the early sixteenth century, the dramatic literature of Western Europe was based in and drew from the texts, parables, and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church; although the playwrights of these plays were anonymous, most were undoubtedly Church personnel writing for amateur actors. Itinerant acting troupes did tour Western Europe, performing in small towns, growing cities, and lords’ manors, as well as in religious festivals. However, the Renaissance brought about a change in the theatre of Western Europe. Plays became forms of mainstream entertainment for all classes of society, and professional acting companies began building permanent theatres in large cities like Paris, London, and Madrid rather than continually touring. This change initiated a flood of new plays, no longer written in Latin but in the native languages of major European countries including France, Italy, Spain, and England.
There are strong points of comparison between the dramatic literature in Spain and in England. One factor in the simultaneous emergence of Spanish and English drama is that “between 1490 and 1575, a concurrence of social and political force—most notable among them in the early growth of capitalism and absolutism—helped foster the development of professional acting troupes.” Other factors that triggered these new forms of theatre were the political and religious stability in both countries during the period of 1550 to 1640, the celebration of new forms of literature including poetry and the novel, and the period’s focus on language as a form of communication and aesthetic expression.
Dramatic Literature of Elizabethan England
The term Elizabethan refers to the time of Queen Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558-1603; thus, any play that was written, produced, or performed during this time is referred to as “Elizabethan theatre.” However, in practice, “‘Elizabethan theatre’ is often used as a general term for all English drama from the Reformation to the closure of the theatre in 1642.”
Dramatic literature written during this time in England fit into essentially three categories: history, tragedy, and comedy. Playwrights wrote in five acts and both prose and verse. Christopher Marlowe was the playwright who established the use of verse and specifically iambic pentameter in English drama of the period. The standard Elizabethan verse form iambic pentameter is a verse form of five pairs of alternating unstressed/stressed syllables; it does not require rhyming, although the rhymed couplet does appear, often for emphasis. Here is an example of iambic pentameter from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Iambic pentameter was said to represent the “heartbeat” of the English language, meaning it was a verse form close to the natural rhythm of the English language. All three major genres utilized iambic pentameter.
History plays were a new genre of the Elizabethan era; in 1559, Elizabeth I banned the use of religious and political content in dramatic literature, and simultaneously banned English mystery or cycle plays, one of the most popular forms of medieval drama. Instead, Elizabethan playwrights drew from the source material of English history of the medieval and early Renaissance periods for their stories—for example, three of Shakespeare’s histories are Henry VI, Parts I-III (1590-01), The Tragedy of Richard III (1592), and The Famous History of the Life of Henry VIII (1612). Of course, any playwright who wrote a history play and any company that produced it had to be wary of offending the reigning monarch. For example, Shakespeare’s Henry VIII completely ignored the details about his marital indiscretions and his problems with the Catholic Church because Elizabeth I, his daughter, was queen.
The genre of tragedy, and specifically revenge tragedy, became popular following the London production of Thomas Kyd’s play The Spanish Tragedy in 1587. Tragedy based on the example of Roman playwright Seneca became increasingly fashionable with London audiences; tragedy competed with the history play for audience appreciation until the early seventeenth century when writers “[abandoned] history for tragedy…this shift proved a turning point in English Renaissance drama: in subsequent years tragedy maintained its promise while the national history play all but disappeared.” Tragedies focused on characters from royalty and nobility and involved the struggle of the protagonist and the downfall of tragic hero or heroine. Elizabethan tragedy embraced swordplay, bloody murder, ghosts, and, in the end, the death of the main character. Shakespeare’s tragedies include The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus (1593), The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (1594), The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1600), The Tragedy of Othello, Moor of Venice (1604), and The Tragedy of King Lear (1605).
The last of the three Elizabethan dramatic genres is comedy; Shakespeare and his peers drew on the domestic comedy, comic character types, and love triangles of Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence. Comedies combine humorous language and situations with specific techniques like cross-gendered disguise (for example, Rosalind in As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night), unlikely couples who find themselves in love (Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing), and fairies (Oberon, Titania, and Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Comedies end happily, in reconciliation, celebration, and—usually—at least one marriage.
Shakespeare, like the rest of his Elizabethan writing peers, did not treat the three genres as discrete genres. In a tragedy like Romeo & Juliet one still find elements of comedy. Tthis is not only true in terms of character types—like the Nurse—but the ways in which Shakespeare handled the story. If one reads Romeo and Juliet only to the end of Act II, the play appears to be a comedy: there is significant focus on an “unlikely couple,” there is disguise, magic, a ball, bawdy humor, and a discussion of love. There is even a marriage. However, with Act III, the play quickly transforms from comedy to tragedy. Within the first scene of Act III, Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt, and the Prince banishes Romeo. The death of Mercutio, the central comic character, signifies the banishing of comedy from the play. The plot follows inevitably to the double death of the star-crossed lovers, and thus the play ends as a tragedy. Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, either read or in performance, exposes the reader or spectator to both the elements of Elizabethan comedy and the elements of Elizabethan tragedy.
The Drama of the Siglo del Oro or Spanish Golden Age
While the Elizabethan audiences were applauding Shakespeare and Marlowe in London, the Spanish Golden Age was in full swing in the theatres of Madrid and other cities on the Iberian peninsula. The term “Spanish Golden Age” refers to the plays “written during the century which ran from the start of the career of Lope de Vega in the 1580’s to the death of Pedro Calderón de la Barca in 1681” these plays are “said to constitute a genre of their own.”
The Spanish Golden Age is measured by the lives of these two men because of the contributions these they made to the dramatic literature of the era. Lope de Vega contributed the initial plot construction, spectacle, and themes of the era’s popular comedias, while Calderón’s fame rests specifically on a type of religious play known as the auto sacramental. These two types of plays make up the largest categories of plays that were produced during the Spanish Golden Age. Comedia is actually Spanish for “play” without the distinction of tragedy or comedy and refers to full-length pieces, but it also refers to the specific form written by Lope de Vega and other playwrights of this time. It was “always in three acts, and in verse” but not the iambic pentameter of Elizabethan drama. Within a single act, there might be as many as eight or nine changes in rhythm; therefore, there is no “standard” Spanish verse scheme like in Elizabethan drama. However, the main verse scheme used in comedia is the referred to as the octosyllable, an eight-syllable line found in the normal Spanish language:
If God, with singular insight,
Used his limitless, sacred might.
The comedia incorporated three other types of performing arts: song, dance, and instrumental music, which is why La Enamorada Discreta, not considered a musical by modern definitions, includes elements of musical activity within the play. In this, Spanish drama found a likeness to Elizabethan theatre, which often included musical elements as well (for example, Feste’s songs from Twelfth Night, the dances in Romeo and Juliet, and simply the presence in the Elizabethan playhouse of musicians on the third tier of the tiring house). The other type of popular play written during this time was the auto sacramental. Although it was not prevalent until Calderón, his skill in writing these short plays made them popular. The playwright received an annual commission to write two autos from 1648 until 1681. This kind of drama is “an allegorical type of religious drama which always ends in the celebrating the importance of the Eucharist (communion);” it was also performed “during Corpus Christi week and was the major form of Christian festival drama.” An important difference between the comedia and the auto sacramental play is the length; while a comedia is a full three acts, the auto sacramental is much shorter, only one act long. Autos are also always allegorical and uses subject matter from Bible stories and parables. The government of Spain used this type of play to present and enforce Christian morals to its citizens.
Lope de Vega’s La Enamorada Discreta follows the standard conventions of Spanish comedia. The plot focuses on love—in particular, the love of a young woman for a man. Like many other comedies of this time both in Spain and in other countries, it is the young woman who must use her wit and intelligence to find a way for the couple to be together. They must battle authority figures and social convention. Thus, the play also served (and still serves) as a comment on the values and morality of Renaissance Spain. The themes of La Discreta Enamorada are very similar to those found in Shakespeare’s comedies, but unlike Shakespeare’s plays, the piece appears in three acts.
Conclusion
Spain and England realized important advances in the forms and genres of dramatic literature during the decades from 1570 to 1650, resulting in of some of the most respected and celebrated drama known the world over. The comparisons between the two countries are clear through the work of the playwrights of Elizabethan England and the Spanish Golden Age, especially William Shakespeare and Lope de Vega.