36   CHARACTER OF SPANISH

instinct remains admirably faithful both to the literary tradition of the country, and, what is far more important, to artistic truth. It is mainly due to the consistency of the literary instinct of the people that a continuous thread runs through the whole history of Spanish literature, from the first epics to the romantic school of the nineteenth century and certain varieties of the poetry and theatre of the present day. For when the old epics were displaced in the favour of the great by the learned poems (mester de clerecia), it was the people's appetite for real epic poetry which caused the growth of the old Romancero, as it were on the ruins of the epic poems. When the first Spanish Italianates, disciples of Dante and Boccaccio, were carried off their feet by the new Italian forms, it was again the people's loyalty to the old romances—not merely as forms, but because they were vessels too straight and simple for the refined complications of Italian poetry, and could hold nothing but the direct, dramatic spirit of the race—which brought forth the second crop of romances, thus providing a direct link between the epic period and the dramatic period which was about to set in during the sixteenth century.' The Spanish drama, in its turn, was to a great extent a popular creation. The cultivated taste of the age led towards a neo-classical theatre, in imitation of the Greeks and in strict obedience to Aristotelian rules. Popular favour, however, went to the plays which disregarded the rules and revelled in romantic liberty. Soon this tendency found its champion in Juan de la Cueva and its poet in Lope de Vega. But it is worth while pointing out that Lope de Vega himself, who, in his creative capacity, was the very incarnation of the romantic spirit of the people, was by no means, as

L'E1 On this and other points of fact mentioned in this article see popee castillane d travers la litterature espagnole, by Ram6n Menendez Pidal.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 37

a critic, so sure of his creed as might be expected. Far from it. In a somewhat depreciatory passage, which has become famous, he lays on the people ' who pay ' the responsibility for his own violations of the rules. Thus Lope the critic misunderstands Lope the creator, and indirectly shows how much the latter owed to the inspiring influence of the people. Sustained by the enthusiasm of the people for their favourite sport, the theatre lived as a creative force for nearly a century. Nor did its popularity abate when its development came to an end. When Calderon, the last of the great dramatists, disappeared, and the vicissitudes of political history working in secret harmony with the evolution of European thought placed Spanish culture under the direct influence of France, the Spanish people gave a fresh proof of the toughness of their national character. Critic after critic condemned the theatre of Lope, Tirso, and Calderon in the name of the principles which Boileau had defined with geometric precision in his Art poetique. Lope, Tirso, and Calderon, however, continued to be popular, much to the indignation of the learned gentlemen who preferred to them Voltaire and even Crebillon, so long as the three unities were respected. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the divergence between the instinct of the nation, true to itself, and its intellect,, infatuated with foreign fashions, reached its maximum and gave rise to a truly paradoxical situation. The classicists succeeded in influencing the Government in their favour, and a law was passed prohibiting the representation of six hundred Spanish comedias, while the staging of new tragedies on the French model was subsidized by the State. But even this act of literary tyranny, so characteristic of the intellectual type of mind, was defeated by the passive resistance of the people. While the neo-classic tragedies were played before