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The comedias of Don Pedro Francisco Lanini Sagredo (?1640–?1715)

1991; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 68; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382912000368139

1469-3550

ANN L. MACKENZIE,

Historical Art and Architecture Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: LANINI SAGREDO, PEDRO FRANCISCO (1640?–1715?) Notes 1. A document, ‘Información de la calidad y limpieza de D. Pedro Francisco Lanini Sagredo …’, dated Madrid, 16 July 1664, gives Lanini's parentage, and confirms the place, but does not reveal the year, in which he was born (see Cristóbal Pérez Pastor, ‘Noticias y documentos relativos a varios escritores españoles de los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII’, Memorias de la R.A.E., X (1910), 9–307; p. 228. Interestingly, this document refers to Lanini's father as ‘familiar de la Inquisición de Toledo’. The document lists Lanini's brothers and sisters, one of whom was Jacinto Lanini Sagredo, also a poet. Known sometimes as Jacinto Alonso Lanini, this younger brother participated in a certamen in 1660 (see Cayetano Alberto de La Barrera y Leirado, Catálogo bibliográfico y biográfico del teatro antiguo español [Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1860], p. 200). 2. For still useful introductory comments on Lanini's life and works see La Barrera, op. cit., 200–01. See also Pérez Pastor, op. cit., 228–30. Important additional information is given by Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, in Colección de entremeses, loas, bailes, jácaras y mogigangas, NBAE, XVII (Madrid: Casa Editorial Bailly/Baillière, 1911), vol. I, cxv—cxvii. 3. Most of these manuscripts are the property of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid. For details see A. Paz y Mélia, Catálogo de las piezas de teatro que se conservan en el Departamento de Manuscritos de la Biblioteca Nacional (2a ed. [by Julián Paz]; Madrid: Blass, S.A., 1934–35), 2 vols.; esp. vol. I. Exceptionally, the autograph-manuscript of El hijo del carpintero (El niño de Zaragoza) (B.N. MS. 14.811) bears the signature ‘Pedro Lanine Sagredo’. However, in documents relating to the theatres, one of which is a receipt signed by the dramatist himself, in 1707, as censor de comedias, his name is given as: ‘Pedro Francisco Lanini Sagredo’. (See N. D. Shergold, J. E. Varey and C. Davis, Teatros y comedias en Madrid: 1699–1719. Estudio y documentos, Fuentes para la Historia del Teatro en España XI [London: Tamesis Books, 1986], 90–91). 4. The form ‘Lanini y Sagredo’, accepted and generalized by La Barrera, is rarely found in early editions. See, however, Santa Rosa del Perú, in Escogidas XXXVI (Madrid, 1671). 5. El apóstol de Valencia, written in collaboration with Juan Bautista Diamante, seems to have survived only in manuscript. There is an early eighteenth-century manuscript in the Biblioteca del Instituto del Teatro de Barcelona (see María del Carmen Simón Palmer, Manuscritos dramáticos del Siglo de Oro de la Biblioteca del Instituto del Teatro de Barcelona. Cuadernos Bibliográficos, XXXIV [1977], p. 15, no. 159). El monstruo de la amistad was published as a suelta (Valencia: Viuda de Joseph de Orga, 1768). 6. ‘En 1676, obtuvo el privilegio real, por diez años, para la impresión de la Parte cuarenta y dos de comedias escogidas’ (La Barrera, op. cit., p. 200). 7. Printed in the edition of Santa Rosa del Perú, Escogidas, XXXVI, is the following explanation: ‘Las dos jornadas de D. Agustín Moreto (que fueron las últimas que escribió en el curso de su vida). Acabóla Don Pedro Francisco Lanini y Sagredo’. Ruth Lee Kennedy indeed finds the third act uncharacteristic of Moreto in both thought-content and structure: ‘it is more gangling in construction than those which precede’ (see The Dramatic Art of Moreto [Philadelphia, 1932], [repr. from Smith College Studies in Modern Languages, XIII, Nos. 1–4], 151–52). Nevertheless, she is inclined to doubt ‘that Moreto was working on Santa Rosa del Perú when he died and that Lanini finished the play for him’ (‘Moreto's Span of Dramatic Activity’, HR, V [1937], 170–72; at p. 172). 8. El sol del Oriente, San Basilio Magno and El ángel de las escuelas, Santo Tomás de Aquino were published as sueltas (Sevilla: Francisco de Leefdael, n.d.). A play entitled San Basilio (probably Lanini's comedia) was performed at the palace in 1685 (see J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Comedias en Madrid: 1603–1709. Repertorio y estudio bibliográfico. Fuentes … IX [London: Tamesis, 1989], p. 209). El gran cardenal de España is a two-part work which Lanini composed together with Diamante. The Biblioteca Nacional possesses manuscripts of both parts, one of which (Primera parte, MS. 17.042) contains an interesting censura (1699) by Francisco Bueno, who found in the play ‘mucho que aplaudir’. Both parts, attributed to ‘un ingenio’ were published as sueltas (Madrid: Antonio Sanz, 1740 and 1742; Valencia: Joseph y Thomás de Orga, 1777), the first part with the title, Pluma, púrpura y espada sólo en Cisneros se halla, y restauración de Orán. 9. The Biblioteca Nacional possesses, besides published versions, a collection of manuscripts of Lanini's teatro menor (for details see Paz, Catálogo … For comments on his loas and entremeses see Cotarelo, op. cit., pp. xlviii-xlix, cxvi-cxvii.) Cotarelo sums up Lanini's talent as a writer of one-act comic pieces as follows: ‘aunque carece de invención y de originalidad, es buen entremesista en los de costumbres madrileñas, pues su observación era penetrante y clara y tiene mucha habilidad para reproducir lo que había visto’ (cxvii). 10. See La Barrera, op. cit., p. 200. Lanini's poem was republished in Comedias de D. Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, ed. J. E. Hartzenbusch, BAE, XX (Madrid: Rivadeneira; rept. 1946), p. xxxvii. 11. See Edward M. Wilson, ‘Calderón and the Stage-censor in the Seventeenth Century. A Provisional Study’, Symposium (Fall 1961), 165–84; at p. 175. 12. Published in Escogidas, XL (1675). It was also printed suelta, with the double title, La batalla de las Navas, y el rey don Alfonso el Bueno (Valencia: Viuda de Joseph de Orga, 1761). 13. See J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Comedias en Madrid: 1603–1709, pp. 201–02, 203, 214. 14. See J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Comedias en Madrid: 1603–1709, pp. 88, 90. Lanini wrote La coronación del rey de Polonia in collaboration with José Navarro. Los cuatro prodigios de amor is presumably the same play as Los cuatro milagros de amor (ascribed to Lanini by Medel, Durán and García de la Huerta). Mira de Amescua also composed a play with this title. 15. The autograph-manuscript of this play, dated 1701, and with censuras of that year, is in the Biblioteca Nacional (MS. 16.773). La Barrera lists this work, but without identifying its author. 16. The Biblioteca Municipal, Madrid, possesses the autograph-manuscript of this play (1–4–3). The manuscript, which has several titles: El africano Nerón. Muley Ismael, sitiador de Ceuta, and is described as a ‘Primera parte’, contains a censura, by Francisco Bueno, dated Madrid, 24 August 1702, which praises the play and allows its performance. The second part, promised in the last lines, if the first part proved successful, was evidently never written. La Barrera did not know the authorship of this rare work, which was apparently never printed. 17. The Biblioteca Nacional possesses the signed autograph-manuscript, dated 1706. There is a censura, by Cañizares, allowing its performance in that year. For details of this performance, and other information about the play, see J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Comedias en Madrid: 1603–1709, p. 126. On the autograph-manuscript there is an allusion to ‘la compañía del Sr. Juan Baptista Chavarria, autor por su mag. año 1709’, indicating that the play was performed again in that year. 18. See Pérez Pastor, op. cit., p. 229. The autograph-manuscript of Saber obligar a Dios para llegar a ser rey is in the Biblioteca Nacional (MS. 15.846). There is a manuscript copy of this play in the Biblioteca Municipal de Madrid, with censuras dated 1713. Allá van leyes donde quieren reyes is a comedia so rare it is not listed by La Barrera. It appears to have survived in a single manuscript, which is an autograph (B.N. MS. 14.887). This manuscript is wrongly described by Paz (op. cit., I, p. 15) as probably the second part of Allá van leyes do quieren reyes (MS. 16.943), which he ascribes to Lanini, but is Guillén de Castro's play with that title. 19. The partially autograph-manuscript of this play is in the Biblioteca Nacional (MS. 16.965), containing censuras, dated 1714. 20. See Pérez Pastor, op. cit., p. 229. There is a manuscript copy of this play (unattributed) in the Biblioteca Municipal de Madrid. 21. The words quoted, written in a seventeenth-century hand, describe La nueva maravilla de la gracia on p. 346 of a copy of Escogidas, XLIII, in the Biblioteca Nacional (R. 22696). The title of the work is deleted on the page of contents. At least, however, the comedia itself still figures in this copy. In another copy of Escogidas XLIII, in the same library, T.i.16, the text of La nueva maravilla de la gracia has been completely excised. Often people were allowed to read what they had been forbidden to see performed on the stage, because, as Wilson says, ‘the word spoken in public was always thought to be more scandalous than what might quite legitimately be read in private’ (art. cit., p. 170). Cf. La Barrera, p. 200. 22. This censura is written on a manuscript copy of Diamante's play made by Juan de España in 1684 (B.N., MS. 16.945). 23. See, for instance: Calderón, El galán fantasma (B.N., MS. 15.672) (1689); Pedro Rosete Niño, Sólo en Dios la confianza (B.N., MS. 14.904) (1689); entremés, La sombra y el sacristán (B.N., MS. 18.312) (1691); Andrés González de Barcia Carballido y Zúñiga, El saco de la gran Casa de Meca (MS., in the Collection of the Hispanic Society of America; see J. M. Regueiro and A. G. Reichenberger, Spanish Drama of the Golden Age. A Catalogue of the Manuscript Collection at the Hispanic Society of America [New York: The Hispanic Society of America, 1984], vol. I, 269–70) (1695); Francisco Bances Candamo, Más vale el hombre que el nombre (B.M.M., 1–128–13; see J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Comedias en Madrid: 1603–1709, p. 156) (1696); Pablo de Polope y Valdés, entremés, La Pandera (B.N., MS. 15.602) (1701); José de Cañizares, El más valiente extremeño, Bernardo del Montijo (B.N., MS. 15.136) (1704); Juan de Matos Fragoso, Agustín Moreto, El mejor par de los doce (B.M.M., suelta, n.d., with censuras, in manuscript, by Lanini, 1699, 1701, 1704; see J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Comedias en Madrid: 1603–1709, p. 162). See also La Barrera, op. cit., p. 201. 24. The entire document is reproduced in J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Teatros y comedias en Madrid: 1699–1719, pp. 90–91. 25. This document is reproduced in Cotarelo, op. cit., p. cxvi. 26. See, for this article, Homenaje a Kurt y Roswitha Reichenberger. Estudios sobre Calderón y el teatro de la Edad de Oro, ed. Francisco Mundi Pedret et al. (Barcelona: PPU, 1989), 201–29; at p. 229. 27. See Edward M. Wilson, art. cit., 176–77. Wilson reproduces the censuras of Lanini and Vera Tassis and comments on their opposing attitudes. 28. See this censura, dated 8 September 1689, written on the manuscript (B.N., MS. 14.904), and also La Barrera, op. cit., p. 345. 29. For this comment, and the censura by Cañizares (1 December 1706), see the autograph-manuscript (B.N., MS. 15.126). Not surprisingly, Cañizares gave permission for performance: ‘He visto esta comedia de Habladme en entrando, y está muy bien escrita y muy conforme a nra política y buenas costumbres …’ 30. See Paz, op. cit., I, p. 273; and B.N., MS. RES. 70. 31. See the autograph-manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional (MS. 16.965). 32. See Pérez Pastor, op. cit., p. 229, and Cotarelo, op. cit., p. cxvi. 33. Será lo que Dios quisiere figures as a character in Tomás Pinto Brandāo's La comedia de comedias, a ‘play of plays’ composed in Lisbon in the 1720s (see the edition of this piece by Mercedes de los Reyes Peña and Piedad Bolaños Donoso in Criticón, XL (1987), esp. p. 144; see also pp. 104–06, in which the editors reproduce Sainete de palacio, a shorter and earlier piece (1687), likewise made up of titles of plays, one of them Será lo que Dios quisiere. 34. See E. Juliá Martínez, ‘Preferencias teatrales del público valenciano en el siglo XVIII’, RFE, XX (1933), 113–59. He lists one performance of Del arado a la corona, y mejor rey de los godos, Wamba (127). This play, also known as Labrador, rey y monje, was composed in collaboration with Isidoro de Burgos Mantilla y Bárcena—Lanini wrote Acts I and III. Under this title the play was also performed in Seville (January 1774) (see Francisco Aguilar Piñal, Sevilla y el teatro en el siglo XVIII [Oviedo: Cátedra Feijoo, Universidad de Oviedo, 1974], p. 288). The play was apparently never printed, but there are three manuscript copies in the Biblioteca Nacional (16.971, 15.193, 15.829). Juliá Martínez (op. cit.) also records two performances of La Eneas de la Virgen (128), El rey don Alfonso el Bueno, and El deseado príncipe de Asturias (127). A play entitled La restauración de Orán, y gran cardenal de España, which Juliá Martínez believed was the play by Esclapés de Guilló, but which might have been the comedia which Lanini composed with Diamante, was performed five times (cf. note 8). 35. See Ada M. Coe, Catálogo bibliográfico y crítico de las comedias anunciadas en los periódicos de Madrid desde 1661–1819 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1935), pp. 26, 94. There are interesting reviews of both plays in El Memorial Literario, quoted by Coe. 36. See Lázaro Montero de la Puente, ‘El teatro en Toledo durante el siglo XVIII (1762–1776)’, RFE, XXVI (1942), 411–68; at p. 447; A. Par, ‘Representaciones teatrales en Barcelona durante el siglo XVIII’, BRAE, XVI (1929), 326–46, 492–513; at pp. 340, 503; Ada M. Coe, op. cit., 65–66. 37. Evidently the only scholarly study of Lanini's comedias undertaken to date is an unpublished doctoral thesis, by Mercedes Alcaraz Lledo, Pedro Francisco Lanini y Sagredo, dramaturgo del siglo XVII. Estudio bibliográfico-crítico, tesis, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, 1983. I am currently completing a catalogue, with analyses, of the comedias of Lanini, to be published in 1992. 38. See, for instance, the critical edition by Donald E. Schmiedel of Antonio Coello, El conde de Sex (New York: Plaza Mayor Ediciones, 1972); the recent edition by Michael G. Paulson and Tamara Alvarez-Detrell of Diamante's La reina María Estuarda (Potomac, MD: Scripta Humanistica, 1989); and Shirley B. Whitaker, The Dramatic Works of Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina, 1975). 39. Elsa Ma. Domínguez de Paz published the first detailed study of La obra dramática de Juan de la Hoz y Mota (Universidad de Valladolid: Secretariado de Publicaciones, 1986). The book by Alva V. Ebersole on José de Cañizares, dramaturgo olvidado del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Ínsula, 1975), though descriptive, rather than critical, in content, also deserves mention. 40. Lanini wrote the first two acts, and the final act was composed by Hoz. The play is discussed in Domínguez de Paz, op. cit., 73–77. 41. There is a manuscript of this play in the Biblioteca Nacional, entitled Antonio Roca, o la muerte más venturosa, the third act of which is apparently in Lanini's handwriting and bears his signature (MS. 15.205). Cotarelo believed this adaptation to be Lope's original play (with some modifications by Lanini to the final act), and published it in his edition of Lope's plays (Real Academia Española). However, S. Griswold Morley and Courtney Bruerton (The Chronology of Lope de Vega's ‘Comedias’ [New York/London: The Modern Language Association of America/Oxford U.P., 1940], p. 258), confirm that it is a refundición of the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. They judge that ‘the entire play may well be by Lanini’. Given Lanini's fondness for collaboration, however, it is possible that the play is the work of more than one dramatist. As for Lope's original drama, a manuscript is now known to have survived (and is to be found in the Holland Collection) (see Victor Dixon, ‘El auténtico Antonio Roca de Lope’, in Homenaje a William L. Fichter, ed. A. David Kossoff and J. Amor Vázquez [Madrid: Castalia, 1971], 175–88). 42. These lines were written by Huerta in a burlesque poem called La dulciada (see Anthony J. Farrell, ‘Imitación o debilitación? La viva imagen de Cristo de José de Cañizares y Juan de la Hoz y Mota’, in El teatro española fines del siglo XVII. Historia, cultura y teatro en la España de Carlos II. Volumen II: Dramaturgos y géneros de las postrimerías, ed. Javier Huerta Calvo, Harm den Boer, Fermín Sierra Martínez. Diálogos Hispánicos de Amsterdam 8/II [Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1989], 359–67; at p. 359). 43. For the appropriate verses in Cáncer's Vejamen see Frank P. Casa, The Dramatic Craftsmanship of Moreto (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1966), Preface, note 1 (p. 169). 44. See, especially, Frank P. Casa, The Dramatic Craftsmanship of Moreto. 45. For a detailed comparison of both plays see Ann L. Mackenzie, ‘The “Deadly” Relationship of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots Dramatized for the Spanish Stage: Diamante's La reina María Estuarda and Cañizares' [?] Lo que va de cetro a cetro, y crueldad de Inglaterra’, in Studies for I. L. McClelland, ed. David T. Gies, Dieciocho, IX (1986), Nos. 1–2, 201–18. 46. See I. L. McClelland, Spanish Drama of Pathos 1750–1808 (Liverpool: Liverpool U.P., 1970), vol. I, pp. 31, 203. Francisco Aguilar Piñal comments illuminatingly on adaptations by Zamora and Cañizares of Golden-Age plays in ‘Las refundiciones en el siglo XVIII' (Clásicos después de los clásicos)’, Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, V (1990), 33–41. 47. Cf. note 7 above. 48. The poem is reproduced in Francisco Bances Candamo, Theatro de los theatros de los passados y presentes siglos, ed. Duncan W. Moir (London: Tamesis, 1970), Appendix I (see p. 141). According to Moir, ‘el Químico Iuanini’ is Giovanni Battista Joannini, a Milanese doctor of medicine and surgery (see p. 147). 49. Lanini's ‘Dos curiosas loas de presentación’, discussed by Cotarelo (op. cit., p. xlviii), are remarkable for their noise-effects. In one loa ‘sale toda la compañía cantando y bailando con diferentes instrumentos’. 50. There is a partially autograph-manuscript of El sitio y toma de Namur in the Biblioteca Nacional (MS. 18.317). The play was also printed suelta (Madrid: Francisco Sanz, n.d.). For information about this play, which was performed in 1695 (Corral del Príncipe) and 1696 (Palacio, salón), see J. E. Varey, N. D. Shergold and C. Davis, Comedias en Madrid 1603–1709:, p. 81. 51. Other plays by Lanini in which ‘la claraboya del cielo’ is mentioned include Será lo que Dios quisiere, El Lucero de Madrid and La Eneas de la Virgen (see N. D. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage [London: Oxford U.P., 1967], p. 380). 52. See N. D. Shergold, A History of the Spanish Stage, p. 379. 53. For a perceptive evaluation of Cañizares and Zamora, ‘two of the most popular dramatists of the early decades’, who ‘were also the most artistic in their conservatism’, see I. L. McClelland, Ideological Hesitancy in Spain 1700–1750 (Liverpool: Liverpool U.P., 1991), Chapter 5, ‘Witness of the Popular Stage’. 54. See Donald C. Buck, ‘Administrative Reform in Madrid's Theaters: The Montero Report of 1720’, in Studies for I. L. McClelland, Dieciocho, IX (1986), Nos. 1–2, 35–50; at p. 42.