Fearful symmetry: the poetic world of Lope'sEl castigo sin venganza

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: CASTIGO SIN VENGANZA, EL [LOPE DE VEGA]VEGA, LOPE DE (1562–1635) - PLAYS Notes 1. El castigo sin venganza (Groningen 1928). In the prefatory study to his edition van Dam remarks that ‘el espectador moderno no asistirá a este cruel desenlace sin sentirse profundamente ofendido’ (92). 2. RFE, XVI (1929), 179–88. 3. Vossler's appraisal of the play is found in his Lope de Vega y su tiempo, trans. Ramón de la Serna (Madrid 1933), 283–88; Menéndez Pidal reviews the work in España y su historia (Madrid 1957), II, 372–95. 4. ‘Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza: The idolatry of the Duke of Ferrara’, BHS, XXXVII (1960), 154–82. 5. ‘Cuando Lope quiere, quiere’, CHA, 161–62 (1963), 265–98. More recently, Everett W. Hesse expands the findings of Wilson and May in his ‘The perversion of love in Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza’, Hispania, LX (1977), 430–35. 6. ‘Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza: its composition and presentation’, KRQ, XXIII (1976), 357–64. Wade refutes the notion that El castigo was performed only once in seventeenth-century Spain, some time after May 9, 1632. His conclusion confirms the one reached earlier by E. Gigas, ‘Études sur quelques Comedias de Lope de Vega,’ RHi, LIII (1921), 557–604. Also dealing with El castigo is Wade's article studying this play, among others, in the light of Feibleman's works: ‘A philosophic basis for drama, including the comedia’, BCom, XXVIII (1976), 59–88. 7. ‘The rehabilitation of the Duke of Ferrara’, JHP, I (1977), 209–30. 8. The Honor Plays of Lope de Vega (Cambridge, Mass. 1977), 131–58. Also concerned with the tragic possibilities of the play are Arnold G. Reichenberger (‘The uniqueness of the Comedia’, HR, XXVII [1959], 303–16) and Margaret Wilson (Spanish Drama of the Golden Age [Oxford 1969], 80–82 and 207–08). 9. Jones includes this remark in the introduction to his edition of El castigo (Oxford 1966), 10. 10. For a study of the extensive verbal motifs of ‘confusión’ and ‘errar’, see Larson, 133–35. 11. Although many critics have noted in passing the importance of the mirror in Lope's play, no one has studied the figure systematically until quite recently. In a perceptive essay entitled ‘Lope through the looking-glass: metaphor and meaning in El castigo sin venganza’ (BHS, LVI [1979], 17–29), Janet Horowitz Murray investigates the elaborate mirror-patterns which emerge from the dramatic poetry of the text, in order to demonstrate that the play reveals, ‘as in a mirror, the sins of the characters’. 12. Irony and Drama (Ithaca, N. Y. 1971), 13. In the preface to his book States declares that one of his aims is to ‘gloss’ Burke's essay ‘Four master tropes’. 13. The adjectives are employed by R. D. F. Pring-Mill in his introduction to Lope de Vega, Five Plays, trans. Jill Booty (New York 1961 ), xxxiv and xxxv. May similarly insists that the Duke is ‘vicious, tyrannical, and pompous’, as well as ‘wicked’ (154). 14. This is the vision of the Duke shared by Nichols and A. David Kossoff (in the introduction to his edition of the play [Madrid 1970]). In his note to 11. 2890–92, Kossoff summarizes: ‘el duque no es un monstruo, es un David, roto por el amor paterno y por la obligación a su casa y estado. Como David, el duque fue pecador y ahora tiene que aceptar las consecuencias de su pecado.’ All quotations of the play are taken from this edition. The numbers in parenthesis refer to the lines. 15. In the following discussion of the Duke's counterproductive actions, I am indebted to Professor Currie K. Thompson, who has been kind enough to discuss the play with me at length and to share his own article in preparation on El castigo. I am grateful also to Professors Bruce W. Wardropper and John W. Kronik, who have thoughtfully read the first draft of my article and offered helpful suggestions for its improvement. 16. The term belongs to States, as he asserts that ‘the extreme potentiality of the dramatic situation is the promise of a paradox in the making, and the secret of drama's appeal lies precisely in the unfolding of this paradox’ (227). In this light we might take issue with Alexander A. Parker's discussion of El castigo as illustrative of the principle of ‘causality’ (The Approach to Spanish Drama ofthe Golden Age [London 1957], now considerably revised as ‘The Spanish drama of the Golden Age: a method of analysis and interpretation’, in The Great Playwrights, ed. Eric Bentley [Garden City, N.Y. 1970], I, 679–707). As we shall see, one event does not inevitably lead to another; it tends rather to generate another contradictory or opposing act. 17. Although the Duke does not openly state his reasons for abandoning Casandra, he does, on occasion, suggest that his self-indulgent propensities alone do not account for the progressive weakening of the conjugal bond. Federico's troubled emotional state, as the Duke carefully explains to his servants, also plays a decisive rôle in the ruler's philandering ( 165–70). Later, when discussing Federico's distress with Aurora, the Duke again focuses upon the needs of his son, betrayed by his own decision to wed (665–71). Finally, face to face with the unhappy Count, the Duke admits that his repentance is complete: ‘ … esa obediencia, Federico, pago / con estar de casarme arrepentido’ (1154–55). 18. The evidence that Federico, like his father, represents an embodiment of ironic tension is so overwhelming as to merit a separate study. The Count's two welcoming speeches to Casandra suggest most concisely his inner division. When he first meets the lady on the road to Ferrara, he remarks: ‘Hoy el duque, mi señor, / en dos divide mi ser, /que del cuerpo pudo hacer / que mi ser primero fuese, / para que el alma debiese / a mi segundo nacer’ (502–07). Later, at the official ceremonies to greet Casandra, Federico offers three symbolic kisses, the first as her subservient vassal, the second as his father's obedient son and the third as loving stepchild of the new Duchess (870–86). The major ironies which stem from the Count's efforts to integrate these discordant rôles concern his two attempts to prove filial obedience. His remaining at home while the Duke fights in the Papal Wars results in the ultimate disobedience of becoming the lover of his father's wife; his reluctant complicity in his father's plan to execute a disguised plotter against the State similarly leads him to murder the woman he loves. 19. Casandra's remark refers ostensibly to the Count's successful governance during his father's absence at war. The Duke's response plays upon the dramatic irony of the moment. He has learned of the adultery and threatens his wife obliquely with the violence and retribution to come: ‘Ya sé que [Federico] me ha retratado / tan igual en todo estado, / que por mí le habéis tenido; / de que os prometo, señora, / debida satisfacción’ (2657–61). 20. On Federico's glosa, see J. M. de Cossío, ‘El mote Sin mí, sin vos y sin Dios glosado por Lope de Vega’, RFE, XX (1933), 379–400. Rafael Lapesa studies the evolution of the theme of the gloss in ‘Poesía de cancionero y poesía italianizante’, in De la Edad Media a nuestros días (Madrid 1967), 145–71, and Victor Dixon discusses the glosa as part of the ‘love-duet’ with which the second act of the play comes to a close. See ‘El castigo sin venganza: the artistry of Lope de Vega’, in Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age Presented to Edward M. Wilson, ed. R. O.Jones (London 1973), 63–81. 21. Until recently, the source of the pelican fable has eluded the critics, who believed it to be an invention of Lope. See Mitchell D. Triwedi, ‘The source and meaning of the pelican fable in El castigo sin venganza’, MLN, XCII (1977), 326–29. 22. The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts, trans. T. H. White (New York 1960), 132. 23. An interesting and related image is that of the tiger employed by the Marqués de Mantua to predict the certain rage of the dishonoured Duke: ‘ … si se arroja en el mar, / con el dolor insufrible / de los hijos que le quitan / los cazadores, el tigre, / cuando no puede alcanzarlos, / ¿qué hará el ferrarés Aquiles / por el honor y la fama?’ (2121–27). Like the pelicans of Federico's fable, the tiger and its cubs are victims of the hunt. Like the parent pelican too, the tiger loses its precious young through its heroic yet counterproductive attempts to subvert the hunter's ploy. A ‘globo cristalino’, as Covarrubias notes, is crucial to the hunter's success, for as the tiger approaches, the clever hunter throws the ‘globo’ into the enraged parent's path: ‘ía tigre cariñosa le da bueltas y acaricia su misma imagen que representa en pequeña forma el espejo’, foolishly believing that it is the stolen cub ( Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Martín de Riquer [Barcelona 1943], 962a). Like the tiger, the Duke loses his son because of his inability to recognize his own mirror image. Thus, the Marqués's allusion to the tiger, like Federico's fable of the hunted bird, underscores the symbolic identity and common plight of father and son. 24. Nichols (215–19) concerns herself with certain aspects of this shift, primarily to relate the image of the lion (and other felines) to the Duke-David conceit, also studied by Kossoff. Murray's treatment of the lion and the horse is more satisfying. She sees these metaphorical beasts together as ‘another important example of the mirror patterns’, which also include the repetitive images of sea, storm, light and flight, running throughout the play. 25. Casandra's sin not only duplicates the Duke's but also grotesquely parodies it. Her adultery with Federico is complicated by two sorts of treason: personal (they betray a father and a husband) and lèse-majesté (because the father/husband is head of State, they betray the State). 26. There is another, larger, irony underlying Federico's fear that the lioness, Casandra, will tear him to shreds by bringing about his disinheritance. The Count expects to perish of hatred at the Duchess’ hands, but instead goes forth to die, both literally and metaphorically, of love. 27. In the bestiary translated by White, we read that the lion, ‘like the King he is, disdains to have a lot of different wives’ (7). The Duke himself, in a conversation with Batin, insists upon his new dedication to the love of his wife: ‘Yo pienso de hoy más quererla / sola en el mundo, obligado / desta discreta fineza, / y cansado juntamente / de mis mocedades necias’ (2438–43). 28. In the dramatic poetry of the crucial, although consistently overlooked, scene in which Aurora discloses the adultery of Casandra and the Count, the play's constant tendency towards symmetry, opposition and reversal significantly approaches the level of a visual reality on the stage. Architecturally, Casandra's boudoir, site of the lover's tryst, is a symmetrical construction. ‘Espejos’, instead of tapestries, hang upon the walls. A spying Aurora reports: ‘En correspondencia tiene, / sirviéndole de tapices, vidrios y espejos, / dos iguales camarines / el tocador de Casandra; / y como sospechas pisen / tan quedo, dos cuadras antes / miré y vi ¡caso terrible: / en el cristal de un espejo / que el conde las rosas mide / de Casandra con los labios’ (2066–76). For a cursory discussion of the symbolism of Aurora's ‘espejo’, see C. B. Morris, ‘Lope de Vega's El castigo sin venganza and poetic tradition’, BHS, XL (1963), 68–78. Other brief treatments of Aurora's rôle in this scene are offered by Wilson, Nichols and Murray. 29. Pring-Mill aptly summarizes the conflict of truth and appearance in the final moments of the play: ‘ [In reality] Federico is punished for a crime he did not commit in revenge for a crime which he did. But as far as ‘appearances’ are concerned, he is killed for killing Casandra, and although he is not morally guilty of the intention to do so … he has in fact done so. … So there is both a sense in which justice is ‘seen to be done‘ when it is not really being done at all, and a real sense in which it is being done when it is not being seen to be done’ (xxxiii–iv). 30. ‘El castigo sin venganza: two lines, two interpretations’, MLN, LXXXV (1970), 157–66. As its title suggests, the article by Dixon and Parker is a perfect example of critical dividedness surrounding El castigo. Concerned specifically with 11. 2844–45, they study the Duke's statement to the heavens that ‘Este ha de ser un castigo / vuestro no más, porque valga / para que perdone el cielo / el rigor por la templanza’ (2842–45). Each argues cogently for a different reading of the lines to conclude that ‘either interpretation of these two difficult lines is tenable’ and that their ‘inherent ambiguity is left open either way’ (165). 31. The same intermingling of the contradictory notions of justice and honour, punishment and revenge is found in the Duke's aside as Federico is sent off to murder his stepmother: ‘Ejecute mi justicia / quien ejecutó mi infamia’ (2974–75). 32. The first to propose the reversal of the title's ‘castigo’ and ‘venganza’ was J. L. Klein, Das spanische Drama, III [Geschichte des Drama's, X] (Leipzig 1874) (cited by Jones, 9). Van Dam, Pring-Mill, May and Jones devote considerable attention to the investigation of both possibilities. Menéndez Pidal suggests that Lope's original title might have been ‘Venganza como castigo’; Wilson provides an explanatory gloss: ‘Castigo divino, no humana venganza’; and Parker and Dixon cautiously note that Lope ‘might almost have entitled his play El rigor sin destemplanza’. The French translators of the work have similarly seen fit to alter Lope's title as well as his text. They replaced the play's opening scene with a prologue recounting the fable of a monkey whose mother punished him for picking his nose and added to the concluding scene a speech in which Batin objects to the title of the work in which he appears: ‘Mais que beaucoup plus justement / Moi l'humble Bettino, j'appelle / ‘La Vengeance sans Châtiment’ / Puisqu'elle unit dans la mort belle / Pour l’éternité deux amants!’ (See van Dam, 48–50 and 93).