El castigo sin venganza: The Character, Role and Function of Batín

Abstract

The outstanding merit of Lope's tragedy ‘al estilo español’ lies in his depiction of its trio of protagonists, but almost all its critics have overlooked his innovative and complex uses of its gracioso, Batín, who is present for 42% of the action, and whose successive appearances are analysed here. Though he starts, as usual, as the down-to-earth companion and counterpart of the play's young hero, he is forced by his master's repeated refusals to confide in him to renounce that role in favour of others: in interaction with other characters, as Lope's alter ego, and above all as a constant observer and commentator, akin to a Chorus. The depiction of Batín disproves the notions that the gracioso developed by Lope was never a fully-fledged character, and that his humour was bound to dilute an overall sense of tragedy.

Key words:

• Golden-Age tragedy
• Lope de Vega
• El castigo sin venganza
• gracioso

Notes

1 Ann L. Mackenzie, ‘Hacia una interpretación de El castigo sin venganza’, Canente. Revista Literaria, 9 (1991), 15–23.

2 In a recent collection of essays on Golden-Age tragedy, five deal directly with El castigo, and three others include significant references to it. See La Tragédie espagnole et son contexte européen, XVI^e–XVII^e siècles, ed. Christophe Couderc & Hélène Tropé (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013).

3 See especially E. S. Morby, ‘Some Observations on tragedia and tragicomedia in Lope’, Hispanic Review, 11:3 (1943), 185–209. Those, apart from El castigo, that Lope labelled tragedias (though some he called tragicomedias too) were his Adonis y Venus, Las almenas de Toro, La bella Aurora, El caballero de Olmedo, La desdichada Estefanía, El duque de Viseo, El Hamete de Toledo, El marido más firme, El mayordomo de la duquesa de Amalfi, Roma abrasada and La tragedia del rey don Sebastián. They had to be based on history or myths, have exalted characters, be noble in style and end in death.

4 See Lope de Vega, Novelas a Marcia Leonarda, ed., intro. & notas de Marco Presotto (Madrid: Castalia, 2007), 152.

5 La vida de San Pedro Nolasco, No son todos ruiseñores, La noche de San Juan, El castigo sin venganza, ¡Si no vieran las mujeres!, El desprecio agradecido, Las bizarrías de Belisa, El amor enamorado and El guante de doña Blanca. See S. Griswold Morley & Courtney Bruerton, Cronología de las comedias de Lope de Vega (Madrid: Gredos, 1968).

6 Lope de Vega, Cartas, ed., intro. & notas de Nicolás Marín (Madrid: Castalia, 1985), 285.

7 It was performed en Palacio then by the company of Manuel Vallejo; see N. D. Shergold & J. E. Varey, ‘Some Palace Performances of Seventeenth-Century Plays’, BHS, XL:4 (1963), 212–44 (p. 220). It may have been seen before in a public theatre, for it had been licensed for performance on 9 May 1632; in the prologue to the suelta of 1634 Lope tells the reader, mysteriously, that ‘esta tragedia se hizo en la corte sólo vn día, por causas que a vuesamerced le importan poco’.

8 Montalbán's play was probably written in 1630, the date which heads, in a manuscript copy at the Biblioteca Nacional, a list of the members of Vallejo's company who were to perform it. Calderón's was dated by H. W. Hilborn c.1628, and a surviving manuscript has been assigned by Gary Bigelow to 1628–32 (see Don W. Cruickshank, Don Pedro Calderón [Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2009], 77–78, 95).

9 Victor Dixon & Isabel Torres, ‘La madrastra enamorada: ¿una tragedia de Séneca refundida por Lope de Vega?’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos,19:1 (1994), 39–60.

10 See Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, ed. José María Díez Borque, Clásicos Castellanos 10 (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1987), 112; my quotations from the text are also taken from this edition.

11 It was discussed at length by Domingo Ynduráin in ‘El castigo sin venganza como género literario’, in ‘El castigo sin venganza’ y el teatro de Lope de Vega, ed. Ricardo Doménech (Madrid: Cátedra/Teatro Español, 1987), 141–61, but I would dissent from some of his interpretations.

12 Edward H. Friedman, ‘El castigo sin venganza and the Ironies of Rhetoric’, in A Companion to Lope de Vega, ed. Alexander Samson & Jonathan Thacker (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008), 215–25.

13 Bruce W. Wardropper, ‘Civilización y barbarie en El castigo sin venganza’, in ‘El castigo sin venganza’ y el teatro de Lope de Vega, ed. Doménech, 191–205.

14 Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez, ‘Variedades de la tragedia en el universo de la comedia española’, in La Tragédie espagnole et son contexte européen, ed. Couderc & Tropé, 145–58 (p. 154).

15 Juan Manuel Rozas, ‘Texto y contexto en El castigo sin venganza’, in ‘El castigo sin venganza’ y el teatro de Lope de Vega, ed. Doménech, 163–205 (p. 184). The distribution of their ‘soliloquios reales’ (in which the speaker is alone or not heard by others on stage) is none the less worthy of note. In Act II Casandra has two, comprising 105 lines (1532–91, 1811–55), but Federico has the play's only single sonnet (1797–1800); by contrast, in Act III the Duke has five, a total of 234 lines (2467–551, 2612–35, 2738–59, 2811–23, 2835–914).

16 Two of the rare exceptions are Donald McGrady, ‘Sentido y función de los cuentecillos en El castigo sin venganza de Lope’, Bulletin Hispanique, 85:1–2 (1983), 45–64; and María Luisa Lobato, ‘ “Minotauro de Pasife”: la mezcla de lo trágico y lo cómico en El castigo sin venganza de Lope y El médico de su honra de Calderón’, in La Tragédie espagnole et son contexte européen, ed. Couderc & Tropé, 217–28.

17 My calculations are: the Duke 40%, Federico 58%, Casandra 45% and Batín 42%. In Act I, Batín is on stage for 637 of its 993 lines, the Duke for 507, Federico for 591 and Casandra for 401.

18 Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo, ed. políglota de Felipe Pedraza (Madrid: Festival de Teatro Clásico de Almagro, 2009), 91, vv. 377–89.

19 Rozas, ‘Texto y contexto en El castigo sin venganza’, 177.

20 Rozas, ‘Texto y contexto en El castigo sin venganza’, 187.

21 Lobato, ‘ “Minotauro de Pasife” ’, 227, 222.

22 Philippe Meunier, ‘Dans la famille de Ferrare je demande le père ou le fils: réflexions sur les ambiguïtés et les ambivalences du couple Luis-Federico dans El castigo sin venganza de Lope de Vega’, in La Tragédie espagnole et son contexte européen, ed. Couderc & Tropé, 181–93 (p. 191).

23 Lobato, ‘ “Mintauro de Pasife” ’, 225.

24 Of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife’, Alonso de Orozco wrote: ‘No se defienden los primeros movimientos de nuestra sensualidad estragada por el pecado […] porque los tales no están en nuestra mano’. See Examen de la conciencia (Alcalá, 1570), ed. Luciano Rubio, intro. de Rafael Lazcano, in Alonso de Orozco, Obras completas, I, ed. Rafael Lazcano (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2001), 845–932 (p. 879). I am grateful to my friend Terence O'Reilly for this note and the next in support of my interpretation.

25 St Ignatius of Loyola, in his Examen de conciencia (which Lope undoubtedly knew), had set out the stages—resistance (initial and repeated), delectation, consent and execution—by which such thoughts could ultimately lead to mortal sin. See Santiago Arzubialde, S.J., ‘Ejercicios espirituales’ de S. Ignacio: historia y análisis (Burgos: Ediciones Mensajero, 2009), 143–44.

26 Rozas interpreted this as another attack by Lope on Pellicer; he used the same fable again in a sonnet, addressed to a Ricardo, that he published in 1634, and when the Duke appears Batín is to call Ricardo his ‘gran coronista’ (2406–09). For the sonnet, see Lope de Vega, Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos, ed., intro. & notas de Juan Manuel Rozas & Jesús Cañas Murillo (Madrid: Castalia, 2005), 294–95. Headed ‘Casóse un galán con su dama y después andaba celoso’, it ends: ‘¿De qué tienes, Ricardo, pesadumbre? / Que Cloris ha de ser lo que solía, / porque es naturaleza la costumbre’.

27 Note that after Act I Federico and Casandra never truly confide in anyone except each other, and that the Duke confides in no-one after he receives the anonymous accusation. They fully reveal their thoughts and feelings only in the soliloquies I have referred to.

28 Lope de Vega, El perro del hortelano; El castigo sin venganza, ed., intro. & notas de A. David Kossoff (Madrid: Castalia, 1970), 358.

29 Lope's autograph shows that at this point he initially had the Duke say: ‘Aurora, ¿cuál quieres más, / ser duquesa de Ferrara / o ir a Mantua con Carlos?’, but that later he decided that this had been an aberration and changed those lines to read: ‘Tú, Aurora, con este ejemplo, / parte con Carlos a Mantua; / que él te merece, y yo gusto’ (see Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, ed. de PROLOPE [Barcelona: PPU, 2011], 251–72).

30 Of these two lines Lobato says: ‘Esta escena de cierta distracción en un momento terrible de la obra, rebaja el tono trágico’. To my mind Batín's evident terror at the death of his master has the opposite effect. More broadly, in what she insists on calling a ‘tragicomedia’, she claims that ‘el clima trágico aparece a menudo interrumpido por el carácter jovial y dicharachero de este gracioso’; again I cannot agree. On the other hand, I accept her conclusion that ‘el gracioso con sus chanzas alarga la expectación ante la desgracia que está por venir de forma inexorable […] Esta función que podríamos llamar retardadora no hace sino incrementar la expectación trágica que mantiene en vilo a los espectadores’ (Lobato, ‘ “Minotauro de Pasife” ’, 222, 225–26, 227–28).

31 Lope de Vega, El castigo sin venganza, ed. Antonio Carreño (Madrid: Cátedra, 1990), 78.

32 Melveena McKendrick, ‘Language and Silence in El castigo sin venganza’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 35:1 (1983), 79–95 (p. 93) (italics in original).

33 Mackenzie, ‘Hacia una interpretación de El castigo sin venganza’, 23, n. 22.

34 ‘Guárdese de imposibles, porque es máxima / que solo ha de imitar lo verisímil’. See Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo, ed. Pedraza, 86, vv. 284–85.

35 Fernando Lázaro Carreter, ‘Funciones de la figura del donaire en el teatro de Lope’, in ‘El castigo sin venganza’ y el teatro de Lope de Vega, ed. Doménech, 31–48.

36 Jesús Gómez, La figura del donaire o el gracioso en las comedias de Lope de Vega (Sevilla: Alfar, 2006), 133. Similarly McGrady wrote (though I would demur in some respects) that ‘Batín constituye un personaje muy complejo, bien distinto del criado gracioso y leal’, that he is ‘inteligente, astuto, reservado, hasta calculador y taimado, harto diferente del usual contador de historietas’, and that ‘tal complejidad de caracterización (ante todo en un mero criado) se da en Lope únicamente en las obras maestras’ (‘Sentido y función de los cuentecillos en El castigo sin venganza’, 48, n. 6, 59, n. 18).

37 José María Ruano de la Haza, ‘Un gracioso en busca de un actor: La villana de Getafe, de Lope de Vega’, en La construcción de un personaje, el gracioso, ed. Luciano García Lorenzo (Madrid: Fundamentos, 2005), 111–22.

38 See Lope de Vega, Comedias Parte XII, ed. crítica de PROLOPE, coord. José Enrique Laplana Gil, 3 vols (Madrid: Gredos, 2013), I, 49.

39 Happily no such advice was needed by Simon Scardifield, who gave a sensitive portrayal in an excellent production of El castigo directed by Laurence Boswell as one of three Golden-Age plays in English translation first presented in Bath in September 2013.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.