HONORIN SPANISH GOLDEN-AGE DRAMA: ITS RELATION TO REAL LIFE AND TO MORALS

Abstract

Since the critical study of honour in Golden-Age drama began early in the nineteenth century, the question whether the sentiment of honour in the plays was compatible with Christian morality has, as Don Americo Castro pointed out, been one of those which have most frequently occupied the minds of those scholars who have given their attention to the theme. Generally, it has been the foreign critics who have been most violent in their condemnation of the immorality of the Spanish code of honour, as it is seen in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century drama. A. F. von Schack, writing in 1845, pointed out the incompatibility of the law of honour with “true”, i.e., with Christian morality. Ticknor, in 1849, wrote in typically robust style of “an exaggerated sense of honour”, and found an explanation of it in the “wild laws” inherited from Gothic times, laws whose “fearful principles” were still preserved in poetic drama. Other critics, chiefly Spanish, have often felt it necessary to defend the morality of the dra...