Part 2

The culminating disasters began to arrive in 1640 with the rebellion of Catalonia. The determination of the Catalans in 1626 to grant Philip no more arbitrary taxes marks the beginning of the revolt that ended with the entire loss of Catalonia. Olivares could never forget its opposition to his will. While the Catalans in 1639 were bravely resisting the entrance of French troops into Roussillon, Santa Coloma, the viceroy of Olivares, made even more severe his policy of sternness and repression. The Catalans were to be driven against the French and to be made to understand by the application of brute force that the welfare of their particular province was of small importance beside the prosperity of the kingdom in general. The Spanish soldiers quartered upon them behaved with such lawlessness that in May of 1640 the population of Barcelona broke into open rebellion. Santa Coloma was cut down in his attempt to escape the consequences of his lack of diplomacy and tact. From Barcelona the revolt soon spread through the entire province. It has been said that the gentle measures of repression inaugurated by the new viceroy, the Duke of Cardona, particularly displeased Olivares, who saw at last what he believed to be his opportunity utterly to crush Catalan liberty. The answer of the Catalans was to throw themselves into the hands of the French and Richelieu, by seeking foreign aid against Castile.

In September 1640 an army under the Marqués de los Vélez was sent north to straighten out the tangled affairs of Catalonia. At first he was successful, but in January 1641 he was beaten back from Barcelona itself after a bloody defeat at the hands of the local soldiery.

To make sure of French aid the rebels offered their allegiance to Louis XIII of France, and the revolt was kept alive with French money and soldiers, while Philip's armies were invariably defeated.

To complete our picture of the political situation we must turn for a moment to Portugal. There reluctant allegiance to the Spanish crown had already been severely strained during the previous reign by the high-handed procedure of Lerma, the favorite of Philip III. Portuguese administrative offices had been filled in Madrid, and the country was inconsiderately taxed to maintain Castilian sovereignty. Under Philip IV the regent of the kingdom was Doña Margarita, Duchess of Mantua and granddaughter of Philip II.[8] While she was ostensibly in control of the difficult Portuguese situation, the real ruler was Don Miguel Vasconcellos, a Portuguese of scant ability and bloodthirsty instincts; he was kept in command by Olivares dictating from Madrid. The announcement of Vasconcellos to the nation that it was the intention of Olivares to remove the last vestige of constitutional rule in Portugal by the suppression of the Portuguese Cortes drove the patriots to rally about the Duke of Braganza. A well-planned conspiracy was set on foot to place Braganza on the throne of Portugal and thus to rid the country forever of the hated Castilian sovereignty.

[Footnote 8: Philip II had married his daughter, the infanta Catalina, to Charles Emmanuel of Savoy.]

After the failure of all his attempts to bring Braganza to Madrid, Olivares tried desperately to win his favor by apparently putting the fate of Portugal entirely in his hands. It was a fatal course. Olivares sent him large sums of money to raise troops to keep the Portuguese situation in control and help in the repression of the Catalans; then he put Braganza at the head of them.

In November of 1640 Braganza proclaimed himself king. The regent Margaret was imprisoned. Vasconcellos was killed by the mob.

The news was received in Madrid with the deepest dismay. Pellicer[9] wrote: "These announcements should be written with blood, and deserve to be wept over rather than written, for they contain nothing less than the rebellion of Portugal and the coronation of Don Juan, whom they call Juan IV, the Duke of Braganza." It is commonly stated that Olivares announced the news of the rebellion to Philip by congratulating him upon the opportunity thus offered to seize the property of Braganza.

[Footnote 9: _Avisos de 11 de Diciembre de 1640._]

To add to the troubles in Portugal and Catalonia just described, a plot by the Duke of Medina Sidonia to make himself independent sovereign of Andalusia was discovered only just in time to prevent a serious rising.

The advisability of Philip's putting himself in person at the head of the troops in the north had long been the subject of earnest and bitter discussion between Olivares and his enemies. The latter had urged upon Philip the necessity of seeing with his own eyes the pass to which matters had been brought by the ineptitude and recklessness of his minister. This could best be accomplished by a visit of inspection to the revolted provinces. Moreover, with Philip and Olivares away from the capital the queen and those of the nobility who were working for the downfall of Olivares could proceed with a freer hand.

When once the royal party had left, Doña Isabel set about her task with true nobility and great energy. She was almost heroic in her efforts to encourage and inspire with loyalty to the crown the troops garrisoned in Madrid. She even sold her jewels to raise money for the campaign in Aragon.

Philip, meanwhile, was traveling slowly northward with great pomp and ceremony. Olivares was straining every nerve to prevent the king's realizing the desperateness of the situation. The monarch was denied to all visitors, and his attention was distracted by elaborate hunting expeditions. As he progressed toward Aragon, the French, moving southward, occupied Monzón.

December of 1642 found Philip again in Madrid. Portugal was hopelessly lost, Roussillon was in the hands of the French, while Catalonia and Aragon were in open revolt. Briefly sketched, this was the political situation at the opening of our play.

* * * * *

While Spain was at this time economically bankrupt, the reigns of Philip III and Philip IV comprise nevertheless the most brilliant decades of the Golden Century. These are the years that are marked by the greatest literary activity of Lope de Vega, Cervantes, and Quevedo. Lope had made the theater national and had prepared the way for the romantic genius of Calderón, while a throng of lesser lights, such as Tirso de Molina and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, were delighting the capital with plays in great profusion. For all this a great stimulus had come from the theater-loving Philip III, who lavished money without stint upon the gorgeous production of comedies, pageants, and masques.

Cervantes had shown the way to the novelists. In prose fiction true characterization had developed to keep pace with extensive and elaborate narrative elements. At the same time the outburst of lyric poetry was no less striking. The ability to write verse had become truly a necessary qualification for social success and even for political advancement. Great magnates surrounded themselves with a retinue of poets and men of letters who depended upon them for their support.

Don Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, the central figure of our play, was one of the greatest personalities in this brilliant court. He was born in 1580. At barely twenty he left the University of Alcalá and plunged immediately into the life of the magnificently corrupt court of Philip III at Valladolid. When the capital was moved to Madrid in 1606 he had already won fame as a poet. The manuscripts of his satirical writings in prose and verse were eagerly sought and widely read. His thrusts were aimed at the ridiculous aspects of court life. His own indulgence in a career of thorough dissipation filled him with contempt for his wretched companions. Intimate association with men in high positions reached by either noble birth or corrupt influence made him familiar with the vices of Philip's government and with the ineffectiveness of the Spanish bureaucratic administration. In his "Sueños" (Visions) he satirized unsparingly men from all the walks of life. His attacks were at times mocking jeers at human weaknesses and at others outbursts of desperate fury against current injustice and stupidity.

After a short period of retirement from the capital he became the firm friend of Don Pedro Téllez Girón, Duke of Osuna, who had been named viceroy of Sicily in 1610. The uncommonly strong bond of friendship between these two men was founded upon mutual admiration of common qualities of fearlessness and red-blooded dash and spirit. In 1616 Quevedo followed Osuna to Naples, where he was of great service to him as adviser and confidential emissary. These years of semi-official activity brought Quevedo into the very midst of the tangle of politics involving France, Italy, and Spain, and above all into the bog of bureaucratic corruption. Osuna's business in Madrid with the prime minister, Lerma, was managed by Quevedo. Now Lerma and his creatures were amenable to reason only when accompanied by bribes. Access to him was denied to all who brought no gifts. Quevedo's disgust at these methods was boundless, but there was no avoiding them.[10] In recognition of his distinguished services Quevedo was made a knight of the order of St. James in 1618.[11]

[Footnote 10: No less a person than the Attorney General wrote to Osuna of a prominent person at court, "Your Excellency may be quite sure of M. He wants a carpet; send him two, and pray God that some one else does not give him three."]

[Footnote 11: In the play there is a trifling anachronism according to which we are to believe that in 1643 Quevedo had not yet received this honor.]

In 1620 Osuna came to Madrid to answer the charge of having conspired to make himself independent viceroy of Naples. On his arrival he was thrown into prison, while Quevedo was held in custody at a distance from Madrid. Osuna died in 1624 before his guilt or innocence could be clearly proved. Quevedo afterward fought to clear his protector's name. At least he has secured his fame to posterity by the famous sonnet,

Faltar pudo su patria al grande Osuna, Pero no a su defensa sus hazañas; Diéronle muerte y carcel las Españas, De quien el hizo esclava la Fortuna. Lloraron sus invidias una a una Con las propias naciones las extrañas; Su tumba son de Flandes las campañas, Y su epitafio la sangrienta luna.

* * * * *

While Quevedo was enduring his enforced retirement Philip III died (March, 1621) and was succeeded by his son Philip IV. Uceda, the former's minister, was sent to follow his father Lerma into retirement and disgrace. Olivares, who had already won the confidence of young Philip, was installed as prime minister.

Superficial reforms by which Olivares signalized his arrival momentarily led Quevedo to hope for better things. He wrote to celebrate the wisdom of the new minister and to assure him of his loyalty. He was soon at liberty to enjoy the fame and wholesome respect that his political prominence and keen satire had won him. His enemies were numerous, but they dared not attack him. Olivares himself courted Quevedo, but the latter, grown discreet for the moment, lent his ear and not his heart: he could not give himself to a minister who was already beginning to show his unwillingness to go to the root of the evils that were ruining the country.

During these years of comparative political inactivity Quevedo had greater opportunity to study the vicious standards of living that stain this period of Spanish history. His writings are full of the scathing irony of his youth on the one hand, or of passionate religious fervor on the other. At other moments he indulges his tendency to seek refuge and comfort in the gentle stoicism of Seneca.

His reckless slurs on women did not prevent his taking a wife in 1633. Perhaps Doña Esperanza de Aragón possessed the qualities that Quevedo had flippantly demanded:

Noble, virtuous, and of good understanding, neither ugly nor beautiful; of these two extremes I prefer her beautiful, because it is better to have something to guard than some one to flee from. Neither rich nor poor, that she may not be buying me, nor I her. I desire her cheerful, for in our daily life we shall not lack for gloom. I wish her neither a young girl nor an old woman, cradle nor coffin, because I have forgotten my lullabies and not yet learned the prayers for the dying. I should thank God infinitely if she were deaf and a stammerer. But after all I shall esteem a woman such as I desire _y sabré sufrir la que fuere como yo la merezco_.

Their married life was cut short by the death of Doña Esperanza in the middle of the following year.

There can be no doubt of Quevedo's thinly-veiled distrust of the administration of Olivares during these years, nor that he foresaw the impending catastrophe. The campaign which he was now carrying on against the favorite drew upon him not only the fear but the hatred of Olivares. Philip himself was blind to the state of the peninsula, thanks to Olivares' successful efforts to keep him amused.

Finally one day early in December of 1639 Philip found in his napkin a petition in verse. It contained an eloquent description of the wretched condition of the country and a bitter arraignment of Olivares. Every circumstance pointed to Quevedo as the author. On the seventh of December he was arrested and his papers were confiscated. His disappearance was so sudden and complete that it was generally believed that he had been summarily done to death, but in reality he had been rushed to a dungeon in the monastery of San Marcos just outside the walls of the city of León. Here he received treatment probably intended to cause his death, for he wrote to his friend Adán de la Parra:

Although at first I had a tower of this holy dwelling for my prison... within a short time I was brought to another a great deal more comfortless. There I remain. It is nothing more than an underground room, as damp as a spring, so dark that it is almost always night in it, and so cold that it never ceases to seem January. Clear enough! they that take pleasure in seeing me suffer do not wish to cut once for all that which they must finally cut, but they wish rather that the frequency of their blows may make my martyrdom more painful by its longer continuance; for thus their satisfaction gains in length.

The tomb where I am buried alive is barely twenty-four feet long and nineteen wide. The vault and walls are in many places crumbling with dampness, and everything is so miserable that it appears rather the refuge of outlaw robbers than the prison of an honest man.

To enter it one must pass through two doors equally strong. One is at the level of the monastery floor and the other at the level of my cell, after twenty-eight steps that have the look of a precipice. Both are always closed except at moments when, more by courtesy than through confidence, they leave one open but the other doubly guarded.

In the middle of the room there stands a table where I am writing. It is large enough to permit of thirty or more books, with which my holy brothers keep me provided. At the right (to the south) I have my neither very comfortable nor extremely wretched bed.

The furniture of this miserable habitation consists of four chairs, a brasier, and a lamp. There is always noise enough, for the sound of my fetters drowns other greater ones, if not by its volume, by its pitifulness.... Not long ago I had two pairs, but one of the monks obtained permission to leave me with only one pair. Those that I am wearing now weigh about eight or nine pounds; the ones they took off were much heavier.... Such is the life to which I have been reduced by him who because I would not be his favorite is to-day my enemy.

He endured his confinement with fortitude, sustained by the conviction that he had given his best for the cause of justice.

The series of disasters that ultimately caused the fall of Olivares on January 23, 1643, has been discussed in another part of this introduction. Quevedo's release followed in June, but the iron had already entered his soul. A little more than two weeks before his death he wrote to his friend Francisco de Oviedo in a tone of profound discouragement:

They write bad news from everywhere, desperate news; and the worst of it is that every one expected it. All this, Don Francisco, I know not if it be drawing to its close or if it be already ended. God knows, for there are many things which, though they seem to exist and to have being, are no longer more than a word and a form.

He died at the age of sixty-five on September 8, 1645, at Villanueva de los Infantes.

Even the bare enumeration of the more important events of Quevedo's life suggests his eager activity. This characteristic is the most striking feature of his style. An idea is no sooner suggested than it is left undeveloped to make way for another, set down often in a sentence which in its turn is without a satisfactory conclusion; or the expression of it is so condensed that we marvel at its retaining any lucidity. Many of his earlier writings are little more than a series of sketches that appear to have been written with feverish impatience but at the same time with great penetration. In his satirical verses there is a world of double meanings and allusions that leaves the reader's mind dizzy. The variety of his works is great. His facile creative brain passed from a ribald ballad or _letrilla_ to a life of St. Francis de Sales or a treatise on Divine Providence. But through them all one can discern the motif of patriotism in the form of virulent satire against the vices that were gnawing at the life of the nation, or of a fervent plea for better standards in public and private life. When he felt the impotence of his rage or the fruitlessness of his pleas he turned earnestly and longingly to his cherished Seneca. But even in this frame of mind we cannot help feeling that there is something intensely passionate in his very patience. He gave his best years to the battle against national decay. Perhaps it is not too much to say that he died of disappointment and disgust.

Quevedo's life, then, is by no means devoid of aspects that would appeal strongly to a romantic poet like Florentino Sanz. The most striking feature, of course, is his struggle with Olivares, followed by apparent defeat and imprisonment at San Marcos de León, which in reality meant a moral victory in the face of persecution. This in itself was an ideal situation to call forth the heroics of a romantic poet. Furthermore, Quevedo could properly complain that he had been misunderstood. He was giving himself to a great cause while many of his contemporaries recognized only the superficial wit or the obscenity of his satire. His proud scorn of stupidity and all mediocrity was easily susceptible of a romantic twist into a lofty contempt for the miserable human creatures that drag out their darkened groveling lives. To make the play an unqualified success it was necessary that Quevedo succumb to the gentle passion, although in reality Quevedo's stern heart had little room for it. There can be no denying his cynical disbelief in feminine virtue. Associations of his own choice gave him little opportunity for illusions on that score. To be sure, he married at fifty-two, but circumstances lead us to doubt his happiness. Quevedo in love is thorny ground for any author. It is difficult to understand how Sanz succeeded in making this innovation as plausible as it is. It is his surrender to virtues so sterling as those of Margarita de Saboya that saves him from being ridiculous. Perhaps one may be pardoned for a furtive smile at the implication that Quevedo must depart to mope in his tower, while Margarita, herself a widow, pines in the convent.

The name Quevedo has come to connote vaguely a personage of achievements as fabulous as those of Robin Hood. His undoubted skill as a swordsman has made him the hero of a thousand nocturnal escapades. His proverbial wit has forced upon him the responsibility for doubtful puns and innumerable bits of repartee. Unfortunately this is true to such a degree that to the uninitiated Quevedo is little more than a buffoon or a swaggering swordsman. It is easy to see that in his play Sanz intended to combat this mistaken conception. When it was first presented in 1848 there existed no authoritative and accessible edition of Quevedo's works[12] where he could be adequately studied and a fair estimate of him made. Such works of his as were spread broad-cast were usually the more objectionable excerpts from his less creditable works. They appeared in wretched volumes bearing a close resemblance to some that are published even now under such titles as "Quevedo, His Wittiest Prose, His Funniest Verses." Sanz felt the injustice deeply and set about its correction.

[Footnote 12: The first volume of Fernández-Guerra's splendid edition appeared in 1852.]

Those who knew Sanz personally[13] have been left with the clear impression that through the medium of Quevedo, Sanz poured forth his invective against those that refused to recognize his own ability.

[Footnote 13: I speak especially of Don Juan Perez de Guzman and Don Julio Nombela, both of whom have been kind enough to give me all the data at their disposal.]

There can be no doubt that the ultimate source, or rather the inspiration, of the play was the appeal to Sanz of the personality of Quevedo. There are other more tangible sources that may be briefly indicated. An important element in the plot is Queen Isabel's struggle to obtain from Olivares a certain letter which had been written in blood by the Conde de Villamediana and which would prove her fidelity to her husband, Philip. The existence of such a valuable document is pure invention. Villamediana's contemporaries are unanimous in saying that after being stabbed he died almost instantly and that his only words were "Esto es hecho." The romantic circumstances of Villamediana's attachment to the queen had been rehearsed to the public only a few years before the production of "Don Francisco de Quevedo." In 1841 the Duke of Rivas had published his four ballads, "Los Toros," "Las Máscaras y Cañas," "El Sarao," and "Final," under the title "El Conde de Villamediana." The affair then would be fresh in the minds of Sanz and his public. Don Juan de Tassis y Peralta, Count of Villamediana, was born in Lisbon in 1580, and was brought up in the court of Philip III. In 1614 he served in Italy, and the end of 1618 found him again in Madrid, where he lived magnificently, indulging freely his tastes for paintings, jewels, and horses. His satirical pen, attacking even the Duke of Lerma and the royal confessor, Fray Luis de Aliaga, was the cause of his exile from Madrid in 1618. At the accession of Philip IV he was recalled to Madrid and made a gentleman in waiting to the queen. Fallen ministers and the favorites of Philip III continued to be marks for his attacks. Olivares, the enemy of Villamediana and Doña Isabel, probably brought his libels to the attention of Philip. On August 21, 1622, as Villamediana was driving through the Calle Mayor, a man halted his coach, and, as the count was descending, ran him through the heart. The gossips of Madrid attributed the murder to Olivares, giving as his motive his hatred and fear of Villamediana. Others laid the blame upon Philip, whose jealousy had been aroused, they said, by Villamediana's marked attentions to Doña Isabel.