Three Major Plays (37 page)

5
Isabel:
Isabel of Castile was half-sister to King Henry. In 1469 she married
Fernando of Aragon and succeeded to the throne of Castile ten years
later.
Almagro . . . Ciudad Real:
Almagro is a town in the
province of Ciudad Real, about 10 miles from the latter. Ciudad Real,
in New Castile, is the capital of the province, and at the time in
question was an important strategic position.

6
Urueña:
Don Pedro Girón, Rodrigo's father, had been invested with the title of Count of Urueña in 1464.
Villena's Marquesses:
one of these was Juan Pacheco, Rodrigo's uncle. See note on
Paul,
p. 5 above.

7
Fuente Ovejuna:
the town is situated in the province of Córdoba, some 55 miles to the
north-west of that city. At the time of the events dramatized in Lope's
play, its population was less than one thousand inhabitants. Until 1468
it owed allegiance to the city of Córdoba, but in that year was
seized by Fernàn Gómez.

S.D.
They exit
.
. .: in a seventeenth-century production there would have been no
shifting of scenery. The exit of the Commander and the Master and the
entrance of Pascuala and Laurencia, given the differences in costume and
speech, would have been sufficient to indicate the change in location
from the house of a nobleman to the village.

8
the stream:
the place where Spanish village-women traditionally washed their clothes. Cf. Federico García Lorca
Yerma
, Act II, Scene i.
merry, bubbling tune:
the musical allusion suggests the harmony which exists in Laurencia's
life, soon to be disrupted by the discord which the Commander
represents. The description of the meal as a whole evokes the
simplicity and wholesomeness of country life, so different from the
refinement and artificiality of the nobility and the Court. See the
Introduction, pp. xiv-xv.

9
Twerp, twerp:
in Lope's play the sparrows initially call out
tío, tío
('mister, mister'), and later on
judío, judío
('Jew, Jew'). This would have been an insult at the time in question, particularly to Old Christians (see note on less
pure,
p.
31 below), who prided themselves on having pure blood. To translate
the joke into English is almost impossible. sparrows: the sparrow is
traditionally associated with lechery.

10
fiddle: rabel,
a small instrument with three strings and a bow. It was a favourite with shepherds.

11
city talk:
Frondoso's speech (212-39) follows a pattern used earlier by Antonio de Guevara in
Menosprecio de corte y alabanza de aldea
(Contempt for the Court and Praise of the Village), written in 1539, in
which the euphemisms employed by city flatterers are described.

12
saltier than water:
the Spanish word sal means both 'salt' and 'wit'. Mengo is suggesting
that the priest, in christening Laurencia, must have used not only
water but wit. In the Roman Catholic baptism the priest

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rubs a few grains of salt on the child's lips, but Mengo implies that, in Laurencia's case, he used much more.

12
blood \ Phlegm, melancholy, choler:
blood, phlegm, melancholy (black bile), and choler (bile) constituted
the four bodily humours. Good health ensued if they existed in a
state of balance, bad health if one were predominant. The doctrine of
the humours had initially been set out by the Pythagorean school of
Greek physicians and applied by Hippocrates in the fourth century BC.
The elements alluded to in I.282 are the four elements of earth, air,
fire, and water, of which the material world was thought to be
composed.

13
perfect harmony:
a
Platonic concept according to which the world of man is but an
imperfect copy of a higher, perfect world. Thus, the beauty of woman
is but the earthly form of a higher, perfect beauty; earthly music and
harmony the same; the harmonious love of man and woman the worldly
manifestation of an underlying, supreme harmony.

14
Plato:
the theories on love of the Greek philosopher Plato had been set out in his
Symposium,
and during the Renaissance were taken up again, in particular during
the fifteenth-century revival of Neoplatonism in Italy. Marsilio
Ficino's commentary on the
Symposium
was the first in a
succession of reinterpretations of Plato's ideas on love which extended
through the sixteenth century. Since Plato and the Neoplatonists
emphasized the spiritual nature of love, it was logical that that aspect
of it should be seized upon and emphasized in their sermons by
priests, as Barrildo recalls here. Leone Ebreo
Dialoghi d'amore
,
which also expounded Neoplatonic ideas on love, was published in 1535
and twice translated into Spanish in the sixteenth century. The debate
conducted by the village characters here is much livelier and
down-to-earth than the high-flown discussions on love which formed
part of the pastoral novels of the sixteenth century.

15
falcon:
Flores, the Commander's servant, is a bird of prey in the sense that
the village girls are the victims of the predatory instincts of the
Commander and his henchmen. But the falcon was also associated with
the love chase. So, at the beginning of Fernando de Rojas
La Celestina
(see Introduction, p. xxiv), Calisto pursues his falcon into
Melibea's garden and meets for the first time the young woman whom he
will now begin to pursue.

friars:
in the Order of Calatrava there were friars who were devoted to the
active life, which meant principally the employment of arms against
the Moors and other enemies of Catholicism.

Guadalquivir:
one of the largest and most important Spanish rivers, though some 60 miles south of Ciudad Real.

16
Granada:
the action of the play takes place in 1476. By this time Moorish
domination of Spain had been virtually ended and only the kingdom of
Granada remained in their hands. The city itself surrendered to the
Catholic Kings in 1492.

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17
carts:
Esteban clearly indicates the carts. They were either off-stage or in the discovery space.

19
Whoa now:
because Flores treats the two women as animals, Pascuala responds in
kind. The attitude of Flores and the Commander towards the women is in
marked contrast to the respect shown by the villagers towards the
Commander a few minutes earlier.

22
Extremadura:
the region between Portugal and Castile and therefore the 'door'
whereby Alfonso of Portugal could advance against the Catholic Kings.

Córdoba:
Diego de Córdoba, Count of Cabra.

people love to talk:
although Laurencia is teasing Frondoso to some extent, her remark has
to do with the concept of honour and with the belief that public
gossip may damage one's reputation. Although she is only a village
girl, Laurencia is a proud and dignified young woman, conscious of her
good name. On the honour theme in the play, see the Introduction, pp.
xv-xvi.

23
A single person in the place:
the fact that everyone in the village believes that Laurencia and
Frondoso are suited to each other, suggests that between them there is
that natural correspondence of which Alonso also speaks in the
opening scene of
The Knight from Olmedo
. This natural
correspondence and harmony between Laurencia and Frondoso exists too
between Fernando and Isabel (3.338), and is something which, in both
cases, the Commander threatens to undermine.

This coldness:
to some extent Laurencia's coldness brings to mind the traditional
disdainful shepherdess of sixteenth-century pastoral novels, while
Frondoso is, by the same token, the unhappy, rejected lover. But
Lope's characters are, of course, much more human and credible.

an angel's face:
a similar example of a young woman who is physically beautiful but
emotionally cold occurs in Tirso de Molina's famous play, The
Trickster of Seville (
El burlador de Sevilla
) in which the
fishergirl Tisbea attracts men by means of her good looks but delights
in rejecting them. In modern terms Laurencia and Tisbea are
interesting psychological studies.

turtle-doves:
traditionally associated with Venus and thus with love, doves had the reputation of being always faithful.

24
frightened deer:
the theme of the love chase hinted at earlier (see note on
falcon,
p. 15 above) is now developed at greater length. This was a common
enough literary theme in many countries. A traditional Spanish ballad
contains the lines: 'The King went out to hunt . . . and met instead a
pretty girl . . .'.

25
bow:
the Commander's bow also brings to mind Cupid's bow and further
underlines the contrast between the genuine love of Frondoso for
Laurencia, and the Commander's lust. When Frondoso aims the bow at

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the Commander, making his breast 'the arrow's target' (1.641), the contrast is even clearer.

26
tying together
: the word
spoliar
meant 'to fasten feet', as of falcons or dead game. Since the
Commander is hunting Laurencia, Frondoso's comment has a certain
irony.

The rules of chivalry
:
the Commander means that, according to the code of honour, it would
demean him to turn his back on or run away from a peasant. There is,
of course, a deep irony in the sense that, morally, his treatment of
Laurencia has been the opposite of chivalrous.

27 S.D.
First Alderman
: the alderman mentioned here, though not by name, is Cuadrado. A second alderman, Juan Rojo, enters later, see 2.77.

these forecasters
:
prophecy was a frequent topic in Golden Age drama and was often part
of the contemporary debate on the extent to which events and human
lives are predestined. Lope made many attacks on astrologers. See F.
G. Halstead, "The Attitude of Lope de Vega toward Astrology and
Astronomy",
Hispanic Review
, 7 ( 1939), 205-19. Lope clearly favoured the down-to-earth practicality exemplified in Esteban.
Transylvania
: in Lope's time this part of present-day Romania was regarded as both distant and dangerous.

28
Hircania
: part of ancient Persia and south-east of the Caspian Sea, famous for its tigers since Antiquity.

Salamanca
:
the University of Salamanca was established in the thirteenth century
and subsequently became one of the most famous in Europe, attracting
many students from outside Spain. By 1552 it had 6,328 students -- a
number which hardly any other university in Europe could match.

Bartolo
: Bartolus of Sassoferrato, an Italian jurist of the fourteenth century.

Gutenberg from Mainz
: Johann Gutenberg of Mainz is usually regarded as the European inventor of printing from movable types.

29
publish in the name
:
Lope frequently complained about inferior playwrights who, in the
highly competitive theatre of his day, passed off their works as his.

30
do not rise!
: there are clearly benches on an otherwise bare stage. See 'On the Staging of Golden Age Plays', p. xxxii.

the greyhound
:
this is probably one of the gifts given by the villagers to the
Commander, but it also allows Lope to reintroduce and develop the
theme of the hunt in which a woman replaces an animal as the object of
the chase.

A hare
: the hare, apart from being renowned for its speed in escaping from its pursuers, was also a medieval symbol for the vagina.

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31
Aristotle's Politics
:
the Commander is probably name-dropping in order to impress both the
villagers and his servants, but the importance of Aristotle's writings
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries cannot be
over-emphasized. His
Politics
was a treatise on civil government in the Greek city-state.

honour?
: on the theme of honour, see the
Introduction
,
p. xv. The Commander's statement that peasants cannot have honour is
based entirely on his belief that it is solely derived from noble birth
and social position.

less pure
:
the presence of many Muslims and Jews in Spain over a long period of
time meant inevitably that mixed marriages were common and that even
those who claimed to be Christian, such as the knights of Calatrava,
could not be sure that they did not have Muslim or Jewish blood in
their veins. Pure blood belonged to those who were Old Christians, who
were often the peasant class.

33
Granada and Córdoba
:
on Granada see note to p. 16. Córdoba was also a city which for a
very long time was dominated by the Moors. Its most famous monument to
this day is the great mosque which was completed in the last quarter
of the tenth century. The city was finally conquered by the Christians
in 1236.

Pascuala
: this does not seem to be the Pascuala who is
Laurencia
's friend, unless, of course, she has fobbed off Flores with a lie.

34
Aristotle
: on this occasion the reference is to Aristotle's
Physics
, i. 9. Flores's statement is, of course, a distortion of Aristotle's meaning.

35
The Master of Santiago
:
just as Rodrigo Téllez Girón, Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava,
supports Alonso of Portugal, so the Grand Master of the Order of
Santiago supports the cause of Isabel of Castile. The Order of
Santiago, the most powerful of the three orders, was founded in the
twelfth century.

the lions | And castles of Castile, the bars | Of Aragon
:
the coat of arms of León consisted of a red lion rampant on a silver
ground, that of Castile of a gold castle on a silver ground. The coat
of arms of Aragon, consisting of four vertical bars on a gold ground,
was originally that of the Counts of Barcelona and became that of
Aragon in 1162 when the region was annexed by the then Count of
Barcelona, Ramón Berenguer.

36
The devil's
:
the comparison of the Commander to the devil is strikingly at odds
with the Christian obligations required of him as a knight of
Calatrava. As the action unfolds, he is also described more and more in
terms of predatory beasts and birds.

37
my sling
:
although the image of Mengo as the biblical David is a comic one, the
suggestion that the Commander is another Goliath reinforces his evil
nature, as well as pointing to his ultimate downfall.

Heliogabalus
: Emperor of Rome from AD 218 to 222 (properly 'Elagabalus', a name derived from the Syrian sun-god Elah-Gabal).

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