The Spanish Curate
Encyclopedia
The Spanish Curate is a late Jacobean era stage play, a comedy
written by John Fletcher
and Philip Massinger
. It premiered on the stage in 1622
, and was first published in 1647
.
, on 24 October 1622. The dramatists' source for their plot, the Spanish novel Gerardo, the Unfortunate Spaniard by Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses
, was first published in English, in a translation by Leonard Digges
, earlier in the same year.
, and was performed by that troupe at Court on St. Stephen's Day
, 26 December 1622. The partial cast list of the premiere production, published in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679
, includes Joseph Taylor
, William Ecclestone
, John Lowin
, Thomas Pollard
, Nicholas Tooley
, and Robert Benfield
.
The play received its initial publication in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio
of 1647. It was likely set into type from a prompt-book manuscript that was the work of Ralph Crane
, the scribe who, in the same era, was preparing texts for the First Folio
of Shakespeare's
plays.
, in his major study of authorship problems in Fletcher's canon, arrived at this differentiation, which largely agrees with the work of previous critics:
Massinger took primary responsibility for the main plot, while Fletcher handled the subplot.
era, and was popular. Samuel Pepys
saw it performed on 16 March 1661 by the King's Company
, and again on 17 May 1669; productions continued into the 1670s and 1680s. Adapted forms of the play were staged at Drury Lane
in 1749, and at Covent Garden
in 1783 and as late as 1840.
, Henrique is the heir to their father's estate. The late father's will gives Jamie a small income, but Henrique treats his younger brother with rudeness and condescension, breeding a hostile relationship between the two. The problem is that Henrique and his wife, Violante, have been married for a dozen years but have no children—leaving Jamie as Henrique's heir.
Jamie is a member of a circle of aristocratic friends, which includes a boy named Ascanio. The boy is the son of poor parents, but is admired for his grace and nobility of character. Among Jamie's friends is Leandro, a lusty young man who is interested in the beautiful Amaranta. She is the wife of the rapacious lawyer Bartolus; the attorney keeps his wife closely watched, and Leandro has developed a scheme to seduce her. He masquerades as a wealthy law student come to take instruction from Bartolus. The go-between in this is Lopez, the local curate and the title character.
Don Henrique, angered over Jamie's status as his heir, makes a radical move to change the situation: he files a legal suit (Bartolus is his lawyer) to have the boy Ascanio declared his heir. Henrique testifies that before he married Violante, he was engaged or "precontracted" to Ascanio's mother Jacinta, and that the boy is his natural son. (Like other plays of the era, The Spanish Curate exploits the legal and ethical ambiguity of the precontract, which in some interpretations was like a demi-marriage...but not quite.) After the child's birth, Henrique had second thoughts about the social gap between himself and Jacinta, and got the precontract cancelled. Jacinta can only affirm the basic truth of Henrique's testimony; and on that basis, Henrique wins his suit. Ascanio is now his legal heir, and Jamie is out.
Violante, however, is outraged that Henrique has exposed this shameful affair and effectively thrown her infertility in her face. She bullies her husband into reversing course and driving Ascanio out of his house; Henrique offers the boy financial support, but the child returns to Jacinta and his pretended father Octavio. Violante is not satisfied with this, however; she reveals herself to be a truly ruthless person when she solicits Jamie to murder both Henrique and Ascanio and so come into his family fortune immediately.
Leandro works his way into the trust of Bartolus, and tries to seduce Amaranta; she is tempted by him, but stands on her virtue and fidelity. When Bartolus finally becomes suspicious, Amaranta can show that she and Leandro have been in church, and not having a sexual assignation.
The plot comes to a head in the final act: Violante meets Jamie and his pretended accomplices for the double murder—only to have her plot exposed. Henrique is shocked into penitence by the exposure of his wife's murder plot—and reveals that he and Violante are not actually, fully legally, married after all. Bartolus too is cowed by his involvement in the matter, and vows to change his ways. Jamie has no problem accepting Ascanio as his nephew, now that their family relations are better ordered. Massinger ends the play with a couplet extolling the middle way in marital relations, between too much pliability in a husband (like Henrique) and too little (like Bartolus)—much like the concluding couplet in Massinger's later play The Picture.
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
written by John Fletcher
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...
and Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.-Early life:The son of Arthur Massinger or Messenger, he was baptized at St....
. It premiered on the stage in 1622
1622 in literature
The year 1622 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*February 28 - Loiola, a Latin comedy mocking the Jesuits, is acted at Cambridge; the performance is repeated before King James I on March 12.*March 12 - Teresa of Ávila The year 1622 in literature involved some significant...
, and was first published in 1647
1647 in literature
The year 1647 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Thomas Hobbes becomes tutor to the future Charles II of England.* Plagiarist Robert Baron publishes his Deorum Dona, a masque, and Gripus and Hegio, a pastoral, which draw heavily on the poems of Edmund Waller and John Webster's...
.
Date and source
The play was licensed for production by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the RevelsMaster of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, on 24 October 1622. The dramatists' source for their plot, the Spanish novel Gerardo, the Unfortunate Spaniard by Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses
Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses
Gonzalo de Céspedes y Meneses was a Spanish novelist.-Biography:He was born at Madrid about 1585. Nothing positive is known of him before the publication of his celebrated romance, the Poema trágico del español Gerardo, y desengaño del amor lascivo...
, was first published in English, in a translation by Leonard Digges
Leonard Digges (writer)
Leonard Digges was an accomplished Hispanist and minor poet, a younger son of the astronomer Thomas Digges Leonard Digges (1588 – 7 April 1635) was an accomplished Hispanist and minor poet, a younger son of the astronomer Thomas Digges Leonard Digges (1588 – 7 April 1635) was an...
, earlier in the same year.
Performance and publication
The Spanish Curate was acted by the King's MenKing's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...
, and was performed by that troupe at Court on St. Stephen's Day
St. Stephen's Day
St. Stephen's Day, or the Feast of St. Stephen, is a Christian saint's day celebrated on 26 December in the Western Church and 27 December in the Eastern Church. Many Eastern Orthodox churches adhere to the Julian calendar and mark St. Stephen's Day on 27 December according to that calendar, which...
, 26 December 1622. The partial cast list of the premiere production, published in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679
1679 in literature
This article lists some of the most significant events of the year 1679 in literature.-Events:*John Locke returns to England from France.*Étienne Baluze becomes almoner to King Louis XIV of France....
, includes Joseph Taylor
Joseph Taylor (17th-century actor)
Joseph Taylor was a 17th-century actor. As the successor of Richard Burbage with the King's Men, he was arguably the most important actor in the later Jacobean and the Caroline eras....
, William Ecclestone
William Ecclestone
William Ecclestone or Egglestone was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a member of Shakespeare's company the King's Men.Nothing is known with certainty about Ecclestone's early life...
, John Lowin
John Lowin
John Lowin was an English actor born in the St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London, the son of a tanner. Like Robert Armin, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. While he is not recorded as a free citizen of this company, he did perform as a goldsmith, Leofstane, in a 1611 city pageant written by...
, Thomas Pollard
Thomas Pollard
Thomas Pollard was an actor in the King's Men — a prominent comedian in the acting troupe of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage....
, Nicholas Tooley
Nicholas Tooley
Nicholas Tooley was a Renaissance actor in the King's Men, the acting company of William Shakespeare.Recent research has shown that Tooley was born in late 1582 or early 1583; his birth name was not Tooley but Wilkinson...
, and Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield was a seventeenth-century actor, noted for his longtime membership in the King's Men in the years and decades after William Shakespeare's retirement and death.Nothing is known of Benfield's early life...
.
The play received its initial publication in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio
Beaumont and Fletcher folios
The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.-The first folio, 1647:The 1647...
of 1647. It was likely set into type from a prompt-book manuscript that was the work of Ralph Crane
Ralph Crane
Ralph Crane was a professional scrivener or scribe in early seventeenth-century London. His close connection with some of the First Folio texts of the plays of William Shakespeare has led to his being called "Shakespeare's first editor."-Life:What little is known of Crane's life comes from his own...
, the scribe who, in the same era, was preparing texts for the First Folio
First Folio
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
of Shakespeare's
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
plays.
Authorship
Given the highly distinctive profile of Fletcher's literary style, critics have found it relatively easy to distinguish between the respective shares of the two authors. Cyrus HoyCyrus Hoy
Cyrus Hoy was a literary scholar of the English Renaissance stage who taught at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, and was the John B. Trevor Professor of English at the University of Rochester...
, in his major study of authorship problems in Fletcher's canon, arrived at this differentiation, which largely agrees with the work of previous critics:
- Massinger — Act I; Act III, scene 3; Act IV, 1, 2, and 4; Act V, 1 and 3;
- Fletcher — Act II; Act III, scenes 1, 2, and 4; Act IV, 3 and 5-7; Act V, 2.
Massinger took primary responsibility for the main plot, while Fletcher handled the subplot.
In the Restoration
The play was revived during the RestorationEnglish Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
era, and was popular. Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
saw it performed on 16 March 1661 by the King's Company
King's Company
The King's Company was one of two enterprises granted the rights to mount theatrical productions in London at the start of the English Restoration. It existed from 1660 to 1682.-History:...
, and again on 17 May 1669; productions continued into the 1670s and 1680s. Adapted forms of the play were staged at Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
in 1749, and at Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
in 1783 and as late as 1840.
Synopsis
Set in Spain, the play deals with a conflict between two brothers over their inheritance. Don Henrique is older than Don Jamie by a year; under the system of primogeniturePrimogeniture
Primogeniture is the right, by law or custom, of the firstborn to inherit the entire estate, to the exclusion of younger siblings . Historically, the term implied male primogeniture, to the exclusion of females...
, Henrique is the heir to their father's estate. The late father's will gives Jamie a small income, but Henrique treats his younger brother with rudeness and condescension, breeding a hostile relationship between the two. The problem is that Henrique and his wife, Violante, have been married for a dozen years but have no children—leaving Jamie as Henrique's heir.
Jamie is a member of a circle of aristocratic friends, which includes a boy named Ascanio. The boy is the son of poor parents, but is admired for his grace and nobility of character. Among Jamie's friends is Leandro, a lusty young man who is interested in the beautiful Amaranta. She is the wife of the rapacious lawyer Bartolus; the attorney keeps his wife closely watched, and Leandro has developed a scheme to seduce her. He masquerades as a wealthy law student come to take instruction from Bartolus. The go-between in this is Lopez, the local curate and the title character.
Don Henrique, angered over Jamie's status as his heir, makes a radical move to change the situation: he files a legal suit (Bartolus is his lawyer) to have the boy Ascanio declared his heir. Henrique testifies that before he married Violante, he was engaged or "precontracted" to Ascanio's mother Jacinta, and that the boy is his natural son. (Like other plays of the era, The Spanish Curate exploits the legal and ethical ambiguity of the precontract, which in some interpretations was like a demi-marriage...but not quite.) After the child's birth, Henrique had second thoughts about the social gap between himself and Jacinta, and got the precontract cancelled. Jacinta can only affirm the basic truth of Henrique's testimony; and on that basis, Henrique wins his suit. Ascanio is now his legal heir, and Jamie is out.
Violante, however, is outraged that Henrique has exposed this shameful affair and effectively thrown her infertility in her face. She bullies her husband into reversing course and driving Ascanio out of his house; Henrique offers the boy financial support, but the child returns to Jacinta and his pretended father Octavio. Violante is not satisfied with this, however; she reveals herself to be a truly ruthless person when she solicits Jamie to murder both Henrique and Ascanio and so come into his family fortune immediately.
Leandro works his way into the trust of Bartolus, and tries to seduce Amaranta; she is tempted by him, but stands on her virtue and fidelity. When Bartolus finally becomes suspicious, Amaranta can show that she and Leandro have been in church, and not having a sexual assignation.
The plot comes to a head in the final act: Violante meets Jamie and his pretended accomplices for the double murder—only to have her plot exposed. Henrique is shocked into penitence by the exposure of his wife's murder plot—and reveals that he and Violante are not actually, fully legally, married after all. Bartolus too is cowed by his involvement in the matter, and vows to change his ways. Jamie has no problem accepting Ascanio as his nephew, now that their family relations are better ordered. Massinger ends the play with a couplet extolling the middle way in marital relations, between too much pliability in a husband (like Henrique) and too little (like Bartolus)—much like the concluding couplet in Massinger's later play The Picture.