Three Major Plays (39 page)

71 S.D.
Enter Frondoso:
sufficient time has passed since the arrival of the judge -- see
3.409 -- for him to have tortured many of the villagers. Hence
Laurencia's concern for Frondoso.

73
Fuente Ovejuna! Our little town:
the name spoken by Mendo in the original is 'Fuente Ovejunica', the
diminutive form, which cannot be translated into English in the same
way. The Spanish diminutive form is used not only to describe
smallness but also as a term of endearment.

74
Lemon curd:
in Spanish diacitrón, a kind of confection made of citrus.

75
A joy to see you once again!:
the expression of love between Laurencia and Frondoso immediately
gives way to a display of affection -- more formal, of course --
between Fernando and Isabel, once more creating a link between the two
couples in terms of the harmony of their relationship.

76
Granada:
the events of the play take place in 1476. By 1489 the Christians had
already captured from the Moors all the important fortresses and
cities of the kingdom of Granada, until only the city of Granada
itself remained in their power. It eventually capitulated under siege
and the Catholic Kings entered it in 1492. By this time Rodrigo Téllez
Girón was dead, killed near Loja in a campaign against the Moors.

77
The lovely Esther, the mighty Xerxes:
Xerxes was King of Persia from 485 to 465 BC, and a noted warrior.
Esther was the favourite wife of Ahasuerus, King of Persia, in the
sixth century BC, noted for her compassion. Her story is told in the
Book of Esther. Lope play, The Beautiful Esther (La bella Ester) was
written in 1610.

78
Saint Anthony:
Saint Anthony of Padua is the patron saint of lovers and marriage, appropriately invoked by Laurencia.

villains:
Fernando (3.591) has alluded to the villagers as 'assassins'. Although
the reaction of the Catholic Kings can hardly be described as
regarding the peasants as innocent until proved guilty, Lope is perhaps
over-emphasizing it in order to show subsequently how they are willing
to listen to reason.

79
Nero:
Emperor of Rome from AD 54 to 68, and noted for his cruelty.

a serious crime:
Fernando pardons the villagers because there is insufficient evidence
to prove their guilt, but he makes them well aware of the seriousness
of their crime and himself takes temporary control of Fuente Ovejuna.
The ending of the play represents, therefore, not the triumph of the
rebels but the restitution of the authority of the crown and upholds the
status quo. Certain modern productions, particularly in the former
Soviet Union, have represented the actions of the villagers as the
overthrow of tyranny and therefore changed the ending. The great Spanish
dramatist Lorca, directing the play with his student company 'La
Barraca' in the 1930s, also emphasized its revolutionary character by
presenting the uprising of the villagers against the Commander in the
context of the oppression of twentieth-century Spanish peasants by a
tyrannical landowner.

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79
my friends:
Golden Age plays frequently end with one of the characters addressing the audience.

[A Tragicomedy]:
on this point, see the Introduction.

83
correspondence:
as in the case of Laurencia and Frondoso in
Fuente Ovejuna
,
there may be, Alonso thinks, a natural correspondence between himself
and Inés which is part of the underlying, perfect harmony of
creation.

blind Cupid:
Cupid
was often depicted as blindfolded and equipped with two kinds of
arrow: one of gold which awakened love; the other of lead which
inspired disdain.

84
Hippocrates:
(c. 460-357 BC), Greek physician, generally regarded as the father of medicine.

caresses:
in the original
caricias,
though in seventeenth-century Spanish this also had the more general meaning of flattery.

Bewitched:
the Spanish word
aojado
suggests someone who is the victim of the evil eye. If Alonso is
truly bewitched, it suggests that his life is ruled by forces which he
cannot control, though, given Fabia's interest in spells, the word is
one which she would use quite commonly and may signify little.

85
feria:
the 'fair' mentioned here might be the weekly market, but since Inés,
a young woman of noble birth, is dressed in peasant costume, the
occasion is more likely to be a carnival.

Medina:
Medina del Campo
is to be found in the province of Valladolid, north-west of Madrid.

it was afternoon:
much of the ballad or
romance
which follows appeared in the
Primavera y flor de los mejores romances
,
a collection of the best Spanish ballads which was published in
Madrid in 1621. This version, intended to be sung, seems to have been
taken from Lope's play. The Spanish ballad is characterized by
assonance in the final word of alternate lines, which in Lope's original
consists of an i-a pattern: ' Medina', 'amanecía', 'liga' . . . I
have not attempted to reproduce this in the translation.

ruffles:
a collar of silk or fine linen which was attached to the dress and
which, at the back, fell over the shoulders and, at the front,
half-covered the breast.

86
Coral and pearl:
an elaboration on the kind of imagery to be found in the love poetry
of the Italian poet Petrarch ( 1304-74) and his followers, in which
the lady's eyes are brighter than the sun, her skin whiter than snow,
her teeth more beautiful than pearls.

The slippers:
in Spanish, chinelas, which are soft shoes without a heel.

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86
imprisoned in their ribbons:
the ribbons and laces of women's shoes as a trap for men's souls is a
common image in Lope's work. It is a variation on the earlier
reference to Inés's hair as a trap (see 1.66).

deaf.
it was traditionally thought that the asp or adder was deaf, as in,
for example, Psalm 58: 4, 'they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth
her ear . . .'.

Olmedo:
the town is about 10 miles from Medina.

unicorn:
according to legend, the inhabitants of the desert regions of Africa
feared that their pools of water might be contaminated by snakes and
other poisonous creatures. They would therefore wait for the arrival
of the unicorn whose horn, they believed, purified the water.

A basilisk:
the basilisk was a fabled, serpent-like creature which lived in the
African desert and whose gaze was considered fatal. The effect of
Alonso's eyes upon Inés is, therefore, fatal in the sense that she
immediately falls in love with him.

87
Worship:
in the double sense, of course, of worshipping in church and
worshipping Inés. The mixture of religion and eroticism frequently goes
hand in hand in Spanish culture.

It shall ennoble:
in the same way that the cross worn on the breast of the master or
commander of one of the religious-military orders gave him a special
distinction.

88
killing him:
Golden Age literature is full of attacks on doctors who kill their patients. In Francisco de Quevedo
Los sueños (Dreams)
, published in 1627, doctors are condemned to hell for their crimes.

mother:
the word was often used when addressing older and respected women.

a girl:
in Rojas
La Celestina
the procuress similarly tempts the servants Pármeno and Sempronio with the promise of two of her girls.

89
Determined by the stars:
the discussion between Inés and Leonor about the extent to which
one's falling in love is determined by the stars is, to an extent,
part of the Golden Age debate between free will and predestination.

Fabiana:
the form of the name with a suffix was, until fairly recently,
preferred in Castilian to the shorter form. Other examples are Juliana
and Emiliana.

90
the Phoenix of Medina:
in comparing the mother of Inés and Leonor with the mythical bird
which was reborn from its own ashes, Fabia presumably means that she
remains alive in the beauty of her daughters, or indeed in the memory
of those who knew her.

Saint Catalina:
this refers to the virgin and martyr, Saint Catalina of Alexandria.
The phrase used by Fabia was applied to anyone who was pure and good.

93
camphor and mercury:
camphor was used in ointments and mercury was

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an important ingredient in facial make-up.

common sickness:
menstruation.

to help her:
to apply to the girl some remedy which will give her husband, on their
wedding night, the impression that she is still a virgin.

94
satanic flames:
a suggestion that Fabia, as well as being a go-between, is associated
with witchcraft. At the time Lope wrote the play there was a
considerable preoccupation in Spain with witches. In Madrid one of the
most notorious was a woman known as La Margaritona, who would then
have been in her fifties. At the age of 88, in 1656, she was arrested,
exhibited publicly, and sentenced to death. As well as being a witch
she was a renowned procuress.

To suffer:
to a certain extent Don Rodrigo is the typical unrequited lover and
Inés the disdainful lady so common in the literature of the time,
though the traditional unhappy lover did not usually murder his rival.
More often than not, he died himself of a broken heart.

96
the agent of my death:
because he loves Inés, she is the source of his life, but because she
does not love him, he has no life and she is thus the agent of his
death. The life-death contrast within the context of love had been a
central concept in the poetry of Petrarch and was much imitated and
elaborated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later in Lope's
play it is an important element in Alonso's speeches.

97
At Medina's fair:
in the original this poem is in the form of a sonnet: two stanzas of
four lines each, followed by two stanzas of three lines each, and a
rhyming pattern throughout. In the translation I have not attempted to
follow the form, but the sense is the same.

slender pillar:
a traditional image for the leg of a beautiful young woman, again part of the poetic language of love.

lovely eyes?:
the last line of the sonnet contains a sudden twist or surprise, much
loved and sought after by those seventeenth-century Spanish poets who
delighted in the play of words and ideas.

98
When Nature rules:
see note to p. 89 above. Inés may, of course, be speaking flippantly,
but for the audience of the play her words suggest that not only are
she and Alonso destined for each other, but that their destiny is also
ruled by forces beyond their control.

99
A pulpit of your back?:
a reference to the way in which the sacristan beats the pulpit or lectern when leading the congregation in prayer.

100
Eager to know:
in his plays Lope de Vega used prose only for letters or messages of
this kind. night-watchman's duties: the job of the sereno was to walk
the streets of a particular area at night in order to safeguard
properties and raise the alarm in case of fires.

101
a tooth:
traditionally witches used for their spells the teeth of criminals
who had been hanged. See, for example, the etching 'A caza de dientes'
('Tooth Hunting') from Goya's series of prints,
Los Caprichos
( 1797-8).

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105
give more light:
the exterior of Inés's house would not, of course, be suggested by
any set, nor would there be windows giving more light. Indeed, the
performance of the play would have taken place in broad daylight. As
Alonso and Tello exit here and are replaced on stage by Inés and
Leonor, the setting of the action immediately changes from outside to
inside the house and from night to the following morning. The lines
spoken by Inés contain all the information required by an audience
which was accustomed to using its imagination.

bright April's flowers:
the comparison of the ground covered with flowers to a beautiful
carpet trodden by lovely feet was common enough in the poetry of the
time. Frequently, contact with a lady's lovely feet ensured that the
flowers flourished in greater abundance.

106
I come on his behalf:
in matters of courtship and marriage, it was the custom for an
intermediary to act on behalf of the suitor. The fact that the custom
persisted well into the twentieth century is suggested in Lorca
The House of Bernarda Alba (La casa de Bernarda Alba)
,
written in 1936, when, in relation to the forthcoming marriage of
Bernarda Alba's eldest daughter Angustias, it is said that: 'They'll
be coming to make a formal request in the next three days.'

107
Inés:
the conversation between Inés and Leonor clearly takes the form of an aside, though asides are rarely indicated in the text.

108
My father's reputation:
if it became known publicly that Inés were meeting Alonso secretly when
Rodrigo is, as it were, her official suitor, this would doubtless
become a topic of common gossip and therefore a slur upon the good
name of Don Pedro. Secret affairs were much frowned upon for this
reason. Inés is well aware of the danger involved in a secret
relationship, but ignores the dictate of common sense.

FABIA:
this is another aside. On the question of spells, Fabia evidently believes that they work for her.

109
Cupid's bow:
Inés's arched eyebrows call to mind the shape of a bow, while the
brilliance of her gaze has the effect of Cupid's arrow, fatally
wounding its victim with love. ducats: the ducat was the most valuable
gold coin of the time. The fact that Don Alonso will inherit ten
thousand points to his considerable potential wealth.

The royal wedding:
the King, Juan II of Castile, married Doña María of Aragon at Medina del Campo in 1418.

Hector:
in Homer
Iliad
, the Trojan hero of the siege of Troy, son of Priam and Hecuba.

Achilles:
the Greek hero of Homer
Iliad
, son of Peleus and Thetis, slayer of Hector.

Adonis:
the young man adored by Aphrodite, or Venus, for his good looks. When
he was killed by a wild boar, such was the grief of Venus that the
gods allowed him to return to earth for six months each year.

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