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Abstract
This essay looks at two of the best-known Golden-Age plays from the point of view of moral behaviour. More particularly it considers the way in which the conduct of the major characters is represented conceptually, that is to say, the justifications offered for their actions. A comparison of the two plays suggests that the Calderonian concept of moral conduct is more in tune with emerging concepts of the self in the seventeenth century than is Lope's. Whereas Lope appeals to the emotions and to traditional codes of social status, Calderón, in dealing with similar issues, relies far more on reasoned argument than on emotional response, drawing on Plato and St Augustine for his presentation. Virtue is seen not as attached to a class or social group but as inhering in the self and revealed through reason. In particular we observe how a private and traditional code of behaviour is superseded by a new universal contract and by the idea of good citizenship based on the appeal to the intrinsic moral worth of the person, which was one of the central ideas to emerge in the political philosophy of Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe: the entitlements of a good citizen were increasingly seen to be more important than those of birth or social status. Compared to his famous predecessor, Calderón seems fully modern in this respect.
Notes
1 Could Peribánez be seen as a medieval caballero villano, one of a class of mounted warriors unique to Castile who stood somewhere between the nobility proper and the commoners? Peribáñez does not provide and ride his own war-horse, an indispensable requirement for joining the war effort as a villein knight. All he has is his faithful yegua which brings him home on the fateful night.
2 A long time ago John T. Boorman pointed out that in Peribáñez we find the ‘interweaving of human and divine authority’. His point was that divine law and human justice are presented in the play as closely connected values (John T. Boorman, ‘Divina ley and derecho humano in Peribáñez’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 12:2 [1960], 12–14 [p. 13]).
3 It would not be the only play in which Lope suggests a parallelism between a royal couple and a peasant couple. Commenting on his 1989 production of Fuenteovejuna for a Dublin audience, and specifically on allocating multiple roles to a reduced number of actors, Victor Dixon writes: ‘E insistimos, sobre todo, en doblar a Frondoso con Fernando y a Laurencia con Isabel. En muchos momentos del drama queda patente que Lope deseaba que se comparase a la pareja real, la más famosa de la historia (y cuyos amores había dramatizado poco antes en El mejor mozo de España), con la de los también jóvenes campesinos en un rincón remoto de sus reinos' (Victor Dixon, ‘Arte nuevo de traducir comedias en este tiempo: hacia una versión inglesa de Fuenteovejuna’, Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, 4 [1989], 11–25; reproduced in Dixon, En busca del Fénix: quince estudios sobre Lope de Vega y su teatro, al cuidado de Almudena García González [Madrid: Iberoamericana/Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2013], 199–216 [p. 215]).
4 Crespo's famous words ‘Al rey la hacienda y la vida / se ha de dar’ seem to come straight out of St Augustine, who advocated obedience to the earthly Ruler in everything that pertained to the mortal body and obedience to God in everything that pertained to the eternal soul (De civitate Dei, Book XIX, ch. 17). But see also Peter N. Dunn, ‘Patrimonio del Alma’, BHS, XLI:2 (1964), 78–85, in which Calderón's use of the word patrimonio is seen in a legal context, that is, by analogy to what it conveyed in Roman Law (inheritance of wealth). For a recent survey of the role of the Law (and the consequential issue of justice) in five Calderonian plays, see Margaret R. Greer, ‘The Weight of Law in Calderón’, in Golden-Age Essays in Honour of Don W. Cruickshank, ed. with an intro., by Martin Cunningham, Grace Magnier & Aengus Ward, BSS, XC:4–5 (2013), 651–78.
5 ‘[…] que ningún soldado ni otra persona de cualquier grado ni condición que sea ose ni se atreva a hacer violencia ninguna de mujeres, de cualquier calidad que sea, so pena de la vida’ (Antonio Herrera, Cinco libros de la historia de Portugal y conquista de las islas Azores [1591], cited in El alcalde de Zalamea, ed. & intro. Ángel J. Valbuena Briones [Madrid: Cátedra, 1980], 26; my translation).
6 The words ‘Dios', ‘Cristo’ and ‘Jesús' appear no fewer than sixty-seven times in the play.
7 See Dean Ebner, Autobiography in Seventeenth-Century England: Theology and the Self (The Hague/Paris: Mouton, 1971).
8 Aristotle took over this notion of a just man and gave King Priam as an example. A virtuous man brought down by adverse circumstances, he could no longer exercise virtuous deeds but nevertheless remained a virtuous man in himself (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, ch. 10). In both Plato and Aristotle (more so in the latter) the good person is subject to the twists of fortune, but one's conviction of what is good is not subject to fortune. It is a permanent state of affairs independent of circumstances.
9 The idea of the irrationality of sin reappeared in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part II (1), 71.1.
10 But Calderón would have come across the teachings of both St Augustine and St Thomas at the University of Salamanca, where both theologians were officially taught. It may be worth adding that the accusation made against the Jesuits in the Molina/Báñez controversy over free will and predestination, that they were in breach of St Augustine's teaching, is probably unwarranted (as indeed Cardinal Bellarmine argued). Augustine was very clear that God's grace is necessary for acts of goodness to be of value, but such grace is freely given through the link with Christ and in no way contradicts the inherent liberum arbitrium of the soul. The appropriation of St Augustine for the predestination cause is therefore somewhat tendentious and based exclusively on his Pelagian disputation towards the end of his life rather than on his earlier and more moderate position, especially that in De libero arbitrio, which states very clearly that man is endowed with free will and furthermore is required to use it. St Thomas Aquinas for his part declares that the deterministic rules that govern nature come from the Creator Himself, so that even our acts of free will are caused by God, that is, we act freely but within divine providence. There is little to choose here between the two great theologians. They share the view that divine intervention and human free will are perfectly compatible. Sensu lato, this is of course a recurrent motif in Calderonian drama.
11 Cf. Peter N. Dunn: ‘Crespo sees that the bounds of Nature are set by Law and approved by Reason’ (‘Patrimonio del Alma’, 82).
12 This too is precisely the lesson that Segismundo has to learn in La vida es sueño. Cf. Plato: ‘We must accept what has happened as we would accept the fall of the dice, and then arrange our affairs in whatever way reason determines to be best’ (Republic, X, 604c).
13 Interestingly, the example of this ‘evil turning’ that St Augustine goes on to give is precisely that of a man who lusts after a beautiful woman and seeks to enjoy her unlawfully.
14 St Thomas Aquinas repeats what St Augustine said about capital punishment.
15 Pedro Crespo's acceptance of his magistracy is exactly in line with St Augustine's instruction that a wise Christian has a moral obligation to accept the ‘unavoidable duty of judging’ if offered such a position, despite the difficulty of establishing the truth and thus of pronouncing judgment (De civitate Dei, XIX, 6). Crespo's concern on first hearing of his election mirrors that of Augustine's hypothetical judge who, while acknowledging the necessity of judging, cries out to God ‘Deliver me from my necessities!’ (De civitate Dei, XIX, 6).
16 I wish to express my deep gratitude to Professor Don W. Cruickshank for his encouragement and bibliographical help with the preparation of this article.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.