Don Quixote_ Translation by Edith Grossman (HarperCollins) - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra [252]
‘No doubt,’ said the author I am telling you about, ‘your grace is referring to Isabela, Filis, and Alejandra.’
‘Precisely,’ I replied, ‘and consider whether they followed the precepts of the art, and if following them prevented them from being what they were and pleasing everyone. Which means the fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else. For there was no foolishness in Ingratitude Avenged,3 Numantia 4 had none, none was found in The Merchant Lover,5 or in The Kindly Enemy,6 or in some others composed by certain talented poets who gained fame and renown for themselves and profit for those who produced them.’
I said some other things that I think left him confused, but not persuaded or convinced enough to change his erroneous opinion.”
“Your grace has touched on a subject, Señor Canon,” said the priest, “that has awakened my long-standing rancor toward the plays that are popular now, one that is equal to my dislike of novels of chivalry; for drama, according to Marcus Tullius Cicero, should be a mirror of human life, an example of customs, and an image of truth, but those that are produced these days are mirrors of nonsense, examples of foolishness, and images of lewdness. For what greater nonsense can there be than for a child to appear in the first scene of the first act in his swaddling clothes, and in the second scene to be a full-grown man with a beard? Or to present to us a valiant old man and a cowardly youth, an eloquent lackey, a wise page, a king who is a laborer, and a princess who is a scullery maid? And what shall I say about their observance of the time in which the actions they represent take place? I have seen plays in which the first act began in Europe, the second in Asia, and the third concluded in Africa, and if there had been four acts, the fourth would have ended in America, making it a play that took place in all four corners of the globe.
And if mimesis is the principal quality a play should have, how can it possibly satisfy anyone of even average intelligence if the action is supposed to occur in the days of King Pepin and Charlemagne, but the central character is the Emperor Heraclius, who entered Jerusalem bearing the cross, and conquered the Holy Sepulchre, like Godfrey of Bouillon, when there is an infinite number of years between one and the other; if the play is based on fictions, historical truths are introduced and parts of others are combined, though they occurred to different people and at different times, and this is done not with any effort at verisimilitude, but with glaring errors that are completely unforgiveable. The worst thing is the ignorant folk who say that this is perfect, and that wanting anything else is pretentious and whimsical. Well then, what shall we say about sacred plays? What a number of false miracles and apocryphal, poorly understood stories they invent, attributing the miracles of one saint to another! And even in their secular plays they dare perform miracles, with no other concern or consideration than thinking that some miracle or stage effect, as they call it, would be a good idea at that point so the ignorant will marvel and come to the theater; all of this is prejudicial to the truth, and damaging to history, and even a discredit to the intelligence of Spaniards, because foreigners, who are punctilious in obeying the rules of drama, think of us as ignorant barbarians, seeing the absurdities and idiocies in the plays we produce.7
It would not be a sufficient excuse to say that the principal intention of well-ordered states in allowing the public performance of plays is to entertain the common folk with some honest recreation and distract them from the harmful humors born in idleness, and since this can be achieved with any play, good or bad, there is no reason to impose laws or to oblige those who write and act in them to make