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The Chronology of the Plays of Juan Pérez de Montalván

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 August 2021

Jack Horace Parker
Jack Horace Parker*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto Toronto 5, Canada
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Extract

During a short life of great activity, in emulation of his friend and master, Lope de Vega Carpio, Juan Pérez de Montalván (1602-38) wrote a considerable number of plays, wide in their variety of subject matter and diverse in verse structure. The study of the latter phenomenon, in imitation of distinguished treatises for other dramatists of the Golden Age, will form the chief criterion in this presentation of chronology. That a serious consideration of Montalván's versification is long overdue is evident. As early as 1919, S. G. Morley, in referring to the authorship of La lindona de Galicia, remarked: “Then, one important factor, Montalván's formula [of versification], is practically an unknown quantity . . . ” More recently, Irving A. Leonard in his article, “Montalbán's El valor perseguido and the Mexican Inquisition, 1682,” spoke of the problem of authorship in the case of a play attributed to both Lope de Vega and Montalván. It is hoped that future studies of the authorship and chronology of plays associated in any way with the name of Juan Pérez de Montalván will be facilitated by the facts presented here.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , March 1952 , pp. 186 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952

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References

Notes

1 I am grateful to Dr. Courtney Bruerton, who very kindly read this article in MS. and made extremely valuable suggestions. Also, indebtedness is due to Dr. Bruerton's study of “The Chronology of the Comedias of Guillén de Castro,” HR, xii (1944), 89-151, which has served me as a model. In addition, I wish to express my thanks to Professors Robert H. Williams and Walter T. Pattison, former Chairmen of the MLA Committee on Photographic Reproductions, who, over a period of some years, arranged for the reproduction of many of Montalván's plays in American and European libraries.

2 M P, xvii, 116.

3 HR, xi (1943), 47-56, esp. n. 2.

4 Bacon, “The Life and Dramatic Works of Doctor Juan Pérez de Montalván (1602-1638),” Revue Hispanique, xxvi (1912), 1-474. For the list of titles of plays and location of copies, see pp. 428-431. The later study by Ada Godinez de Batlle, “Labor literaria del Dr. Juan Pérez de Montalván.” Revista de la Facultad de Letras y Ciencias (Universidad de la Habana), xxx (1920), 1-151, adds little.

5 Para Todos, Exemplos Morales, Humanos, y Divinos . .. Por el Doctor Juan Pérez de Montalván, natural de Madrid, y Notario del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición. For an analysis of this work, see Bacon, p. 15.

6 Primero tomo de las Comedias del Doctor Juan Pérez de Montalván, . . . natural de Madrid. En la imprenta del Reyno. Año 1635. For an analysis, see Bacon, pp. 17-18.

7 Segundo tomo de las Comedias del Dr. Juan Pérez de Montalván . . . En Madrid, en la Imprenta del Reyno, año 1638. For an analysis, see Bacon, p. 18.

8 H. A. Rennert, “Notes on the Chronology of the Spanish Drama,” MLR, n (1907), 331-341, and iii (1907), 43-55.

9 Abbreviations used are as follows: Redondillas, red.; romance, rom.; quintillas, qu.; décimas, déc; silvas, sil.; octavas, oct.; sonnet, son.; tercetos, ter.; sueltos, su.; pareados, par.; miscellaneous, Misc.; endechas, end.; canción, canc.; Total Italianate, Tot. Ital.

10 A. Paz y Mélia, Catálogo de las piezas de teatro que se conservan en el departamento de manuscritos de la Biblioteca Nacional, Tomo i, segunda edición (Madrid, 1934).

11 A. Schaeffer, Geschichte des Spanischen Nationaldramas (Leipzig, 1890), i, 444.

12 H. Mérimée, Spectacles et comédiens à Valencia (1580-1630) (Toulouse-Paris, 1913), p. 169.

13 C. A. de la Barrera y Leirado, Catálogo bibliográfico y biográfico del teatro antiguo español, desde sus orígenes hasta mediados del siglo xvii (Madrid, 1860).

14 S. Griswold Morley and Courtney Bruerton, The Chronology of Lope de Vega's Comedias (New York, 1940).

15 “La gala del nadar—Date and Authorship,” MLN, liv (1939), 516.

16 See M. Flores Calderón, “La sala de varios en la Biblioteca Nacional—II,” Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, v (1901), 765.

17 Obras escogidas, ed. J. M. de Cossío (Madrid, 1931), p. 191.

18 C. Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos acerca del histrionismo español en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1901).

19 See Cuatro comedias, ed. Hill and Harlan (New York, 1941), p. 187.

20 Tirso de Molina, Obras dramáticas completas, ed. Blanca de los Ríos, i (Madrid, 1946).

21 H. W. Hilborn, A Chronology of the Plays of D. Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Toronto, 1938).

22 C. Pérez Pastor, Nuevos datos acerca del histrionismo español en los siglos XVI y XVII, segunda serie pub. por G. Cirot (Bordeaux, 1914).

23 Since Montalván's last two or three years were darkened by mental attacks, it is unlikely that he wrote a great deal after Lope's death.

24 Here mention should be made also of the length of Montalván's plays (see numbers in the Tables following titles). The contemporary Pellicer speaks of this matter: “Cada jornada debe constar de tres scenas, que vulgarmente se dicen salidas. A cada scena daba Montalbán trecientos versos, porque decía que novecientos eran círculo suficiente a cada jornada, y la brevedad en las representaciones le añadía gravedad y donaire.” (See Idea de la comedia de Castilla, deducida de las obras cómicas del Doctor Juan Pérez de Montalbán en honor de su fama póstuma por D. Joseph Pellicer de Tobar Abarca, Madrid, 9 de agosto de 1639, p. 151. This essay forms pp. 146-152 of Lágrimas panegíricas a la temprana muerte del gran poeta y teólogo insigne Doctor Juan Pérez de Montalbán. Recogidas . . . por . . . don Pedro Grande de Tena, su más aficionado amigo [Madrid, 1639].) The general rule is not entirely kept, of course, but many of Montalván's acts do run about 900 lines, some more and some less, and a good many comedias do contain about 2,700 lines. The longest of those being studied in this section is La ganancia por la mano, with 3,442 lines (text used: that of the Valencia, 1652 edition of the Segundo tomo, British Museum copy); the shortest is El segundo Séneca de España—Part ii, with 2,295 lines (text used: same Segundo tomo as above). The grand average, for the 28 comedias, is 2,807 lines.

25 For Lope de Vega, the “grand average” for the period 1620-25 is 34.5%; for 1626-35, the “grand average” is 29.2% (Morley and Bruerton, pp. 51 and 53 resp.).

26 See “Strophes in the Spanish Drama before Lope,” in Homenaje a Menéndez Pidal (Madrid, 1925), i, 508.

27 Courtney Bruerton, H R, xii (1944), 99.

28 For Lope de Vega, the “grand average,” in the period 1620-25, is 37%; for 1626-35, 43.5% (Morley and Bruerton, pp. 64 and 65 resp.). Of the general trend in Lope's use of rom., Morley and Bruerton say (p. 65) : “Thus rom., steadily increasing from 1604 on, ends by accounting for practically half of the lines of the plays of the last period.”

29 This form is noted by S. G. Morley in “Studies in Spanish Dramatic Versification of the siglo de oro: Alarcón and Moreto,” Univ. of Calif. Publ. in Mod. Philol., vii (1919), 163.

30 See Morley and Bruerton, p. 12.

31 In “Strophes in the Spanish Drama before Lope,” p. 506.

32 Morley and Bruerton, p. 53.

33 For classification of sil., see Morley and Bruerton, p. 12. In my Tables, the type is indicated by the number in brackets.

34 “The simple truth about silva Io (aAbBcC, etc.) is that it does not occur once in any extant authentic play of Lope de Vega. This is perhaps the most extraordinary single fact which our investigation has revealed” (Morley and Bruerton, p. 74).

35 For Lope de Vega, in 1620-25 only 3 of 14 plays contain su. “There are no su. in 1626-35” (Morley and Bruerton, p. 95).

36 M P, xvii (1919), 117.

37 See The Nun Ensign, ed. J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly (London, 1908), pp. xxii and 287.

38 Joseph Antonio Álvarez y Baena, Hijos de Madrid (Madrid, 1790), iii, 157.

39 It is unusual to find a Spanish 17th-century comedia using red. only in a whole act. See the comments of Morley in “Studies in Spanish Dramatic Versification of the siglo de oro: Alarcón and Moreto,” p. 140. In the case of Lope de Vega, “Seven plays, all before 1604, have acts entirely in the meter” (Morley and Bruerton, p. 49).

40 E. Cotarelo y Mori, “Ensayo sobre la vida y obras de don Pedro Calderón de la Barca” (Chs. 5 and 6), Boletín de la Real Academia Española, ix (1922), 41-70 and 163-208.

41 Hilborn (see n. 21, above), p. 13, has remarked that the analysis of one act of a play cannot be fairly compared with the percentages of metrical forms of complete plays. And it is difficult also to compare the verse structure of the autos with Montalván's comedias. Consequently little need be said about the schemes of versification of the autos and of the comedias in collaboration (analysed as to the acts by Montalván only) beyond the information presented in Table C. The canc. (9.2% or 70 lines) at the beginning of the Montalván's Act ii of Polifemo y Circe is interesting, being made up of five 14-line stanzas (with slight variations): ABCABCcdDEEFGG; ABCBaCcddEEFGG; ABCABCcdDEEFGG; ABCABCcddEEFGG; and ABCABCcddEEFGG.

42 See Joaquín de Entrambasaguas, Estudios sobre Lope de Vega (Madrid, 1947), ii, 600.