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The Search for a Dramatic Formula for the Auto Sacramental

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Bruce W. Wardropper
Bruce W. Wardropper*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University Baltimore 18, Md.
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Extract

The Corpus Christi play in sixteenth-century Spain evolved as it did because poets were consciously searching for a dramatic formula which should be appropriate to a sacramental play. The idea of a sacramental play, an auto sacramental, was new at that time. A sacramental drama had never before been attempted, either in Spain or elsewhere. Corpus Christi was celebrated, in. Spain as in Europe at large, with performances of mystery-type plays derived from the tropes of the liturgy. The earliest Corpus plays in Spain were Nativity plays which dramatists scarcely troubled to adapt. As the problem of making the Christmas play appropriate to Corpus Christi forced itself on the attention of dramatists a new idea of religious drama emerged.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 6 , December 1950 , pp. 1196 - 1211
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 Lope de Vega, in his well-known definition and in practice, failed to sense the significance of the adjective sacramental: “Y qué son autos?—Comedias / a honor y gloria del pan, / que tan devota célébra / esta coronada villa, / porque su alabanza sea / confusión de la herejía / y gloria de la fe nuestra, / todas de historias divinas.” Obras de Lope de Vega, ed. Real Academia Española (Madrid, 1892), ii, 141.

2 Cited by E. González Pedroso, BAE, lviii, xii.

3 Summa Theologica iii, Q. lx, Art. ii.

4 The Allegorical Drama of Calderôn (Oxford-London, 1943), p. 66.

5 Cf. Dora Anscar Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (London, 1925), p. 32: “We can never insist enough on this aspect of sacramental theology: before all things and above all things we are dealing with signs and symbols, not with things in their own nature, in propria specie.”

6 Summa Theologica iii, Q. lx, Art. iii.

7 I accept fully Parker's argument that the Corpus plays in Valencia and Catalonia developed independently of those in Castile and Andalusia. I am therefore disregarding the Valencian misteris. See “Notes on the Religious Drama in Mediœval Spain and the Origins of the Auto Sacramental”, MLR, xxx (1935), 170-182.

8 Encina's disregard for the conventions of historical truth is further shown in his blending of the two Johns: the Evangelist and the Baptist.

9 At Matins on the day of Corpus Christi reference is made to the Paschal Lamb, manna, and Elias' hearth-cake as préfigurations of the Eucharist. Saint Thomas' Lauda Sion sequence, incorporated into his Mass for Corpus Christi, contains the lines: “In figuris praesignatur, / Cum Isaac immolatur: / Agnus Paschae deputatur, / Datur manna patribus.” In the Sixth Lesson the Sacrament is described as “figurarum veterum impletivum.”

10 The problems of préfiguration are studied in a broad semantic context in Erich Auer-bach, “Figura”, Archivum Romanum, xxii (1938), 436-489.

11 See Lucas Fernández, Églogas y farsas, ed. Real Academia Española (Madrid, 1867), p. 224. The entire reference forms a single quintilla: “Sufrió hambre y mucho afán / por nos dar él a comer / su santo Cuerpo por Pan, / el cual siempre adoraran / los cielos sin fenescer.”

12 Pilgrims replace the angel in Torres Naharro, Diálogo del Nascimiento. According to J. E. Gillet, this play may date in part from 1504.

13 I. S. Révah, Deux “auios” de Gil Vicente restitués à leur auteur (Lisboa, 1949). The text of the play is in the same author's Deux “autos” méconnus de Gil Vicente (Lisboa, 1948).

14 See Eugen Kohler, Sieben spanische dramatische Eklogen (Dresden, 1911), pp. 146-147.

16 My interpretation of the development of the auto sacramental as a gradual reaching out for a formula cannot be reconciled with Cotarelo's claim that Yanguas' play is the first auto sacramental. See E. Cotarelo y Mori, “El primer auto sacramental del teatro espanol y noticia de su autor el Bachiller Hernán López de Yanguas”, RABM, vii (1902), 251-272.

16 Transcribed by M. Serrano y Sanz, “Farsa sacramental compuesta en el año 1521”, RABM, x (1904), 67-71, 447-450.

17 Allegorical figures had been previously used in the religious drama, but this is their first appearance in a Corpus play.

18 Diego Sánchez de Badajoz. Estudio crítico, biográfico y bibliográfico (Madrid), p. 142.

19 “Essai d'explication de l'auto sacramental”, BE, xlii, 198.

20 Diego Sánchez de Badajoz, Recopilación en metro, ed. D. V. Barrantes (Madrid, 1886), i, 298; ii, 105.

21 Ibid., ii, 99.

22 Op. cit., p. 218: “La farsa acaba por un villancico que parece alusivo a la Nochebuena, aunque la farsa, por su principio, desarrollo, y corte, más bien parece ser sacramental.” See also p. 217.

23 Florence Whyte éd., PMLA, xliii (1928), 953-989.

24 Conjectures that Lope de Rueda, Carvajal, Díaz Tanco, et al., may have composed certain of the Rouanet plays appear to me to be ill-founded.

25 See P. Félix G. Olmedo, “Un nuevo ternario de Juan de Timoneda”, Razón y Fe, xlvii (1917), 277-296, 483-497, and xlviii (1917), 219-227,489-496. In this reprint of the Ternario espiritual of 1558 La oveja perdida may be read in its earliest version by Timoneda. It was later touched up again very slightly for use in the Ternarios sacramentales of 1575.

26 Vera Helen Buck, ed. Four Autos Sacramentales of 1590 (Iowa City, 1937); Alice Bow-doin Kemp, ed. Three Autos Sacramentales of 1590 (Toronto, 1936); Carl A. Tyre. ed. Religious Plays of 1590 (Iowa City, 1938).

27 Bataillon, e.g., describes the typical Lope auto as “prime-sautier, décousu, débordant de poésie amoureuse, et rustique, plein d'échos de chansons populaires” (art. cit., p. 206).

28 The last verse of the auto gives an honor-play subtitle: La dementia en la venganza.

29 See esp. Parker, The Allegorical Drama, and Ángel Valbuena Prat, “Los autos sacra-mentales de Calderón (classficación y análisis)”, RB, lxi (1924), 1-302.

30 There are no monographs or articles devoted to Valdivielso. He has been the subject of merely superficial study in some manuals of literary history.