cities and states in the matter of public health administration, each proudly pointing to its guardian of the health, and publishing its health records in evidence of the high character of the work done by the respective organizations. Our universities too are competing with each other in their educational effort in their efforts to equip men to perform the functions of public hygiene to the highest degree of efficiency.

The education of the public through the newspapers, the magazines, lectures and special meetings has had an enormous influence in stimulating an interest in a subject so closely related to its every day life.

With an informed public cooperating with the medical profession and with a health department worthy of confidence and respect, there is every justification for the predication that the days of epidemics of the common diseases have passed. Outbreaks of exotic diseases may occur from time to time but as our knowledge grows, I think it safe to say that they are apt to be rare and need cause no undue apprehension.

THEATRICAL REPRESENTATIONS IN SPAIN IN THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

BY HUGO A. RENNERT

Professor of Romanic Languages and Literatures

In the following pages the term theatrical representation is confined to the performance of secular plays, the drama of the people by professional players, in the Corrales or innyards, and later in the public play-houses. At first bands of strolling players acted upon an improvised stage in the public square, and employed only the simplest and most obvious stage accessories.

To these beginnings, both in Spain and England, we may roughly assign the date 1560. It is about this time that we first hear of the performances of Lope de Rueda in Spain, while the first mention of a company of professional actors in England, the Earl of Leicester's, falls in the same year.

With private representations in the presence of royalty or in the houses of the nobility, we are not concerned, Here, there can be no doubt, the Italians lead the way, both in splendor of scenic arrangement and in ingenuity of theatrical machinery. Famous Italian engineers, like Fontana, Cosme Lotti (who was in the service of the Grand Duke of Florence in 1618), Bianco, and Antonozzi were brought to Spain by the king to exercise their ingenuity and skill for the amusement of the Court. With these Italians we may compare the famous English architect Inigo Jones, who, however, derived his inspiration from Italy, a country he visited more than once.

Lope de Rueda is the first professional actor-manager whose name has been preserved in the theatrical annals of Spain. To him, and to Torres Naharro, Lope de Vega, the great creator of the Spanish national drama, has ascribed

the beginnings of the comedia. As a boy, Cervantes, (born in 1547), saw the primitive performances of Lope de Rueda and his little band of strollers, and gives an animated description of them more than half a century later in the Prologue to his Comedias (1615): "The stage consisted of four benches arranged in a square, with four or five boards upon them, raised about four spans from the ground. The furnishings of the stage consisted of an old woolen blanket, drawn by two cords from one side to the other, which formed what is called a dressing-room, behind which were the musicians, singing some old ballad, without the accompaniment of a guitar." The earliest notice of Rueda is dated 1551, when we find him in Valladolid, where he took part in the Corpus Christi festivals for several years thereafter. The performances of Rueda were given in the open square of the towns, subject to all the extremes of heat and cold, before the establishment of the corral or inn-yard, to which we now turn.

It is an interesting fact that, in the case of the only two nations of modern Europe that possess a truly national theatre, the representation of plays in fixed public buildings provided for the purpose, was, at the beginning connected with the public hospitals, and for the relief of the poor. This connection was, moreover, quite natural, for, the theatre being supported by the public, it was not unreasonable that it should contribute to the public charities. In both London and Madrid a portion of the proceeds of the public theatres was devoted to the relief of the poor in the hospitals. In Madrid the theatres continued to be an important source of revenue for the charities for more than a century after their first establishment. In Madrid, as well as in London, the fixed localities for theatrical representations were, at first, corrales as they were called, or inn-yards. In Spain the first corral for representing plays was built primarily for the purpose of increasing the funds of the hospital established under the auspices of a pious brotherhood called the Brotherhood of the Passion, which was founded in 1565. To this fraternity the city granted the privilege of providing a place for the exclusive

representation of all comedias in Madrid, the funds thus obtained being appropriated to its pious purposes.

In 1567 another fraternity called the Brotherhood of our Lady of Solitude was also founded with charitable aims of somewhat wider scope. The places designated by this Brotherhood of the Passion were three: a yard or corral in the calle del Sol, another called the Corral de la Pacheca, in a house belonging to one Isabel Pacheco in the calle del Principe, and a third called the corral de Burguillos. In 1574 the Brotherhood of our Lady of Solitude also petitioned for the right to furnish a place for the performance of plays, in order to maintain its hospital, and the matter ended in a compromise, the Brotherhood of Solitude acquiring the corral de Burguillos. In this year both brotherhoods decided to join their interests, and agreed that 2% of the profits accruing from the corrales should go to the Brotherhood of the Passion and to the Brotherhood of Solitude. This agreement was approved on June 7, 1574.

In Spain these corrales, a name that has remained synonymous with play-house down to our own day, were originally the yards of houses. In the rear was the stage; the larger part of the audience viewed the performance standing in the court-yard, while the windows of the principal building, and of the surrounding houses served as boxes, for the more distinguished spectators. Arrangements for the comfort of actors and audience were at first, naturally, very crude. The stage, as well as the whole court-yard, had no roof nor any kind of protection against sunshine or rain. If the weather was unfavorable the representation was either suspended or brought suddenly to a close.1

In 1574 a company of Italian players under Ganasa2 presented plays (doubtless the commedia dell'arte), in Madrid, and in the same year Ganasa succeeded in having a theatre

1 Rennert, The Spanish Stage, New York, 1909, p. 28.

2 Concerning Ganasa, who had a company of players in France in 1571, and to whom is probably due the invention of the second Zanni or arlecchino, see Cotarelo, in the Revista de Archivos (1908), p. 42.