Three Major Plays (42 page)

a delightful contrast to the overweight Lucrecia, carried with some effort by a breathless Batín.

183
Fortune's wheel:
the image of Fortune's wheel, constantly turning, was an extremely
common one in literature of the medieval and Renaissance periods. As
it turned, a man might find himself at one moment at the very peak of
good fortune only to be plunged at the next moment to the depths of
misfortune.

184
Let me embrace you!:
a pointer, perhaps, to Casandra's youthful impetuosity and imprudence,
as well as an ironic anticipation of her subsequent relationship with
Federico.

Your excellency:
Lope frequently made fun of the rules governing the different forms of address.

185
Not her from Rome?:
the wife of Collatinus, Lucretia, was raped by Sextus Tarquinius and,
in consequence, committed suicide in 510 BC. She thus became a symbol
of female chastity.

greatly fancied:
Batín distorts the traditional story, assuming, of course, that he
knows it, in order to persuade the 'chaste' modern Lucrecia to succumb
to him, just as, he suggests, the Roman epitome of chastity yielded
to Tarquin.

186
A timely error:
Lope seems to be using the word
errar
('to err') here not in a moral sense but in the Aristotelian sense of
error or accident, whereby the paths of individuals may accidentally
cross, and that coincidence leads subsequently to tragedy.

St Elmo's fire:
after violent storms an unusual light, of an electrical nature, which appears in the masts and rigging of ships.

188
turn the happy stream to snow:
the effect upon the water of the whiteness of her feet and the
perfection of her skin. This is a variant of the notion of a beautiful
woman's feet making the grass grow more abundantly as she walks on
it. See note to p. 105 above.

189
Jupiter:
in Greek mythology Zeus -- the Roman Jupiter -- transformed himself
into an eagle and carried the handsome boy, Ganymede, up to Olympus so
that he could succeed Hebe as cupbearer to the Gods.

Phaethon's pride:
in Greek mythology Phaethon, son of Helios and Clymene, was allowed
to guide the chariot of the sun for one day. Unable to control the
horses, he would have set the heavens and the earth on fire had not
Zeus destroyed him with a thunderbolt.

a golden fleece:
in Greek mythology the fleece of gold owned by Aetes, King of Colchis, guarded by a dragon and taken by Jason.

190
A topic for the idle tongues:
and thus a source of dishonour. See note to p. 108.

191
she is a lily:
Batín, as is the custom of the comic character, the
gracioso,
in Golden Age plays, is here mocking the flowery language of lovers of noble origin.

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191 This Helen?:
Helen of Troy, according to legend the most beautiful woman in the world.

193
labyrinth:
in Greek mythology the maze built by Daedalus for King Minos of
Crete. It contained the Minotaur to which human sacrifice was made.
Theseus, having killed the Minotaur, found his way out of the
labyrinth by means of a thread of gold.

194
Aurora:
her name is, of course, suggestive of the dawn and, inasmuch as the
dawn brings light, Aurora is also the light of reason. In Calderón
famous play, La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream), the name Rosaura has a
similar symbolic function.

195
stepmothers and step- ¶ Sons:
echoing the earlier comment on this notoriously difficult relationship
in ll. 577-80, but with a possible reference to Phaedra who, in Greek
mythology, fell in love with her stepson Hippolytus, bringing about
his death and her own suicide.

199
These arms become a chain:
a moment of supreme irony in the sense that Casandra's growing
attraction to Federico will indeed prove to be inescapable. Her
embracing of him is also a pointer to her youthful, unthinking
indiscretion.

200
For you to rest:
the Duke's remark is to Casandra. The 'mistake' which other husbands
make, to which he refers in the following lines, is the mistake of
prolonging the welcome to the newly arrived wife-to-be instead of
letting her rest after a long journey.

life's a dream:
see note to p. 194 above. Calderón Life is a Dream was probably
written a few years after Punishment Without Revenge, but the theme of
life as a dream was, of course, a commonplace. At the same time,
there are in Lope's play a number of allusions -- to the labyrinth,
for example -- which are typically Calderonian and which may point to
the influence of the younger dramatist on Lope's later theatre.

to seeing things:
the speech which follows describes those things which Batín imagines
doing but never has the courage to do. In one way the comic character
in Golden Age plays is often his master in a lower key. The difference
between Federico and Batín is, of course, that Federico realizes his
imaginings.

201
I know exactly:
see note to p. 180. Since the comic characters in Golden Age
literature in general are constantly concerned with material things
-food, money, sex -- they are generally more down-to-earth than their
masters and quick to see to the heart of things, as is the case with
Batín here.

202
ablaze with flowers:
Federico points to the unlikelihood of Batín's being able to guess
the nature of his secret thoughts, but the concepts alluded to here --
the sky ablaze with flowers, the grass covered with stars -- were
also characteristic of poets such as Luis de Góngora, to whom Lope was
initially opposed. See note to p. 171.

more suitable:
there is between Casandra and Federico the natural corre-

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spondence of youth which we have seen in
The Knight from Olmedo
in the mutual attraction of Inés and Alonso.

203
honest countryman:
Casandra praises the simplicity and honesty of country life much as does Laurencia in
Fuente Ovejuna
: see the Introduction, pp. xiv-xv.

doubly blind:
if love is traditionally blind, it is logically doubly blind in the dark.

204
however much | They try to change:
the notion of the extent to which a man's life is predestined or not
was much discussed in the Golden Age. In relation to the Duke, the
question arises of whether his conversion in Act Three to a new,
Christian way of life is genuine or whether, beneath that appearance,
he is still the old Duke.

freedom to indulge | Himself:
in this context it is worth bearing in mind Lope's many affairs,
including his extra-marital relationship with the actress Micaela de
Luján. See the Introduction, pp. ix-x.

206
playthings of our destiny:
although Casandra's conclusion here is coloured by her unhappiness,
there are throughout the text references to the role of fate in the
lives of these characters which contradicts A. A. Parker's argument
that in Golden Age plays the characters are in control of their
decisions and thus their lives. See A. A. Parker,
The Approach to the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age
( London, 1957).

208
to keep them safe:
in the theatre of the Golden Age, and to a degree in real life,
husbands and fathers lived in constant fear of their wives or
daughters attracting the attention of some unscrupulous male who would
seek to seduce them and thus bring about the dishonour of the family.
Consequently, women were closely guarded. The most extreme example of
this occurs in Cervantes's short story,
The Jealous Extremaduran (El celoso extremeño)
,
in which the old husband, Carrizales, seeks to hide his wife from the
world at large by blocking up the windows of his house.

209
burns my honour:
Federico's argument is that, if his father obliges him to marry
Aurora, this will merely inflame her passion for the Marquis, just as
water, instead of putting out a fire, makes it blaze even more fiercely.
The consequences of her attraction to the Marquis might then be the
cause of Federico's dishonour.

The depth of my despair:
as the action of Act Two unfolds, Federico is overtaken more and more by unnatural melancholy. See note to p. 138.

210
hermaphrodite:
originally the name of the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who,
according to myth, grew together with the nymph Salmacis. By
extension, the word came to mean a human being or animal in which
parts characteristic of both sexes are combined.

211
that still brighter dawn:
Aurora herself.

212
duke to my duchess:
the meaning here is that if Federico were granted such a title, he would not then be able to kneel before her.

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213
one night with me:
the point here is that the marriage has been consummated, which in turn
means that any sexual relationship between Casandra and Federico
would be adulterous.

214
the honour:
in spite of Casandra's opinion, it is doubtful that in the society of
the time the Duke would be regarded as staining the honour of his
family as a result of his activities. While such behaviour in men was
accepted, a man could be considered as dishonoured if his wife or
daughter was seduced or raped. Thus, the Duke's honour is endangered
much more by Casandra's attraction to Federico than by his own affairs.

216
Phaethon:
see note to p. 189.

Icarus:
in Greek mythology the son of Daedalus, who made him wings fastened
on with wax. Icarus flew too near the sun, which melted the wax and
caused him to fall to his death in the sea.

Bellerophon:
in Greek mythology he slew the Chimera with the aid of the winged
horse Pegasus, but subsequently died in his attempt to scale the
heavens.

217
Sinon:
the Greek who induced the Trojans to drag the wooden horse into Troy. See Virgil,
Aeneid
, ii. 57 ff.

Jason:
in Greek mythology leader of the Argonauts, sent by his uncle Pelias to fetch the Golden Fleece from Colchis.

Endymion's love:
in Greek legend a handsome hunter whom the moon goddess Selene --
Roman Diana -- visited every night in a mountain grotto. He was the
subject of John Keats poem,
Endymion
.

218
safeguard them:
the origin of this story may lie in the fact that the pelican,
according to legend, sacrificed itself for its young, allowing them to
feed on blood from her breast.

220
honour clearly does not:
a man's honour could only be tarnished if the offence done to him
became public knowledge. Private thoughts could therefore dishonour no
one.

221
lovely as the dawn:
see note to p. 194. The Marquis may, in Casandra's opinion, be 'more |
The soldier than the dashing courtier' (2.337-8), but his words here
certainly contradict this, rivalling Federico's earlier in the act
(2.435-40).

222
Jacob:
see
Genesis, 29: 18. The 'precious jewel' alluded to here was Rachel.
Jacob was obliged to wait for seven years before her father, Laban,
gave him permission to marry her.

Tantalus:
in Greek legend he was the son of Zeus. As a punishment for revealing
his father's secrets, he was placed in water up to his chin and
immediately beneath delicious fruits, unable to taste either.

223
The wars in Italy:
it is difficult to know which wars are being alluded to here. One
possibility is that the Pope in question is Pope Martin V ( 1417-31),
who was much concerned with making the Papacy a power-

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ful force, but there were other Popes too who were involved in military
struggles in Italy, such as Pope Clement VII, at different times an
ally and an enemy of the Spanish King, Charles V ( 1516-56).

224
this ribbon:
the ribbon as a token of love also plays an important part in
The Knight from Olmedo
(1.472 ff.), when, intended by Inés for Alonso, it is taken and worn the following day by Rodrigo and Fernando.

225
Paris:
in Greek legend, the son of King Priam of Troy and Hecuba. Called
upon by the three goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena, to decide
who was the most beautiful, he chose Aphrodite, awarding her the
golden apple because she had promised him the most beautiful woman in
the world for his wife. With Aphrodite's help, he abducted Helen, wife
of Menelaus, thereby causing the Trojan War.

Barbarossa:
the name given by Christians to a family of sixteenthcentury Turkish
admirals and pirates, possibly on account of the fact that they had
red beards -- in Spanish 'red beard' is
barba roja.
The reference here is, of course, to the cockerel's red comb.

227
The sweet revenge:
Casandra sees an affair with Federico as an appropriate revenge against
her husband for the affairs in which he has been involved since their
marriage.

228
In history:
Lope possibly has in mind Genesis 19, relating the story of Lot, who
fled with his daughters during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
and who subsequently lay with them and made them pregnant, and 2 Samuel
13, which recounts the incestuous relationship between Amnon, son of
David, and his half-sister, Tamar.

229
Antiochus:
the story is told in Valerius Maximus.

230
Erasistratus:
Lope made an error in the spelling of the name, writing it as
'Eróstrato'. He was a Greek physician, grandson of Aristotle, and
believed to be the doctor to have introduced dissection.

Galen and even great Hippocrates:
Galen ( AD 131-210) was a Greek physician whose importance remained
undiminished until the seventeenth century. His fame equalled that of
his predecessor, Hippocrates ( 460357 BC), usually regarded as the
father of medicine.

231
of self, | Of God, of you . . . someone else:
these lines represent a traditional theme in Spanish poetry from the
fifteenth century which had been elaborated upon before Lope's time by
poets such as Garcilaso de la Vega ( 1501-36). Lope proceeds to
develop the short poem through the whole of Federico's speech much as
he had done in
The Knight from Olmedo
in the case of Alonso's
farewell to Inés (see note to p. 150). The speech is notable for the
way in which Lope plays with ideas, a characteristic of the
seventeenth-century Spanish literary movement known as
conceptismo,
whose exponents aimed to appeal to the intellect, in contrast to
culteranismo,
whose practitioners emphasized style and imagery. See note to p. 171.

233
the siren:
in Greek legend the Sirens were nymphs who lived on an island and
lured sailors to their death with the beauty of their singing.

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