What is an honor play?
Paper delivered at the MLA
Annual Convention,
session organized by the Division on Sixteenth- and
Seventh-Century Spanish Drama,
December , 1992.
Lope de Vega, in his
Arte nuevo... , tells us that, for the practicing dramatist "los casos de
honra son mejores,/ porque mueven con más fuerza a toda gente." But Lope never
really defines what he means by a caso de honra. Blecua's annotation of these
lines simply tells the reader that Lope's reference is to "las llamadas
'comedias de honra', tan de moda en el siglo XVII." (266)
Some definitions of honor
plays are broader than others, but most focus on plays in which a male character
is threatened with dishonor by the real or apparent behavior of his wife.
Studies of these conjugal honor plays actually helped us define honor in a more
general sense. We saw that honor in the comedia had more to do with reputation,
public opinion, and appearances, than with any notion of merit or value. We
learned that honor "belongs" to men, who might lose it through the actions of
the women for whom they are responsible. We noted that honor becomes an
obsession more in terms of its loss than in terms of its acquisition. Honor, in
this sense, resembles one of those competitions in which each participant begins
with a perfect score -- which will then be irrevocably reduced with each error
or slip as the event proceeds.
I now believe that our definitions of the
honor play, while useful, were inadequate. Our focus on the honor conflict that
involved a man's sexual designs on a woman or a woman's willing participation in
an adulterous relationship led us to focus our attentions on the so-called
"honor code." A play's adherence or non-adherence to this rigid code of conjugal
or family behavior served as our yardstick to determine its conventionality or
unconventionality. But the conjugal honor conflict rarely appears in isolation.
Instead, it is part of --and often subordinate to-- a much broader presentation
of honor.
The obsession with honor in
Golden Age life and literature was not limited to questions of conjugal honor,
and this generalized obsession with honor of any sort is also a major
characteristic of the comedia as a genre. Non-conjugal aspects of honor in the
comedia have been studied extensively, though generally outside the context of
the "honor play." A character's reputation could be damaged by the actions of
his wife, sister, daughter, and even mother, but it could also be irreparably
damaged by a mentís, or an accusation of cowardice, or the suspicion of impure
blood or otherwise tainted ancestry. A character's position in the social
hierarchy guaranteed him a measure of honor that established his privileges over
those of lower rank, and any action that undermined such privileges constituted
an agravio de honra. Those who found themselves lowest on the social scale, the
peasants, based their own claim to honor on the assumption that peasant blood
was pure by definition.
One area of disagreement among scholars who have
written about honor in the comedia has been the question of whether we should be
studying honor as a formal, literary motif largely divorced from social reality
or as a literary representation that reflects real conflicts and concerns within
Golden Age society. This disagreement probably originates from the fact that
honor has been divided into so many distinct categories. While the code of
conjugal honor clearly operates as a useful dramatic motif, conjugal honor
conflicts are rarely studied in the context of the broader, and often multiple
honor conflicts that may occur within a single play.
Those who agree
that honor in the comedia does reflect social reality do not necessarily agree
about the nature of that reality, or the attitude of the dramatists towards it:
did the comedia's focus on honor make it an ideal vehicle for social control by
an intolerant orthodoxy, or did Golden Age playwrights, at least in some cases,
use dramatic honor as a means of questioning and even subverting the values on
which such orthodoxy was based?
All comedias are honor plays to one extent or another. Characters in these plays never ask themselves what kind of honor problems they are having: honor is honor, and its loss or diminution, whatever the reason, must be avoided at all costs. We need to look more generally at all honor --whether it be conjugal, familial, social, or racial-- and how it functions in a series of Golden Age plays, to determine whether this broader perspective will yield any new insights into the comedia as a popular and literary genre and into honor as the expression and/or subversion of the ideology of the day.
My approach today will be to
examine the way honor works in seven well-known plays, all of which appear in
the anthology, Diez comedias del siglo de oro. My selection includes one
conjugal honor play: Del rey abajo, ninguno; three plays in which honor
is generally considered to play a central role: Las mocedades del Cid,
Fuenteovejuna, and La Estrella de Sevilla; and three plays not
generally considered when we talk about honor in the comedia: El burlador de
Sevilla, La verdad sospechosa, and La vida es
sueño.
For each play I shall consider the following hypotheses:
1. That most comedias deal in
some significant way with honor.
2. That conjugal honor, and, more generally,
family honor related to the behavior of women, does not appear isolated from
other honor-related concerns, and is often presented as being part of broader or
more important issues.
3. That Golden Age plays generally set honor against
honor, often producing multiple honor conflicts that at times can only be
resolved with "trick" solutions.
Del rey abajo, ninguno
is the only play that contains a "traditional" conjugal honor conflict, but the
play's opening scenes actually serve to foreground questions of social honor and
blood purity rather than conjugal honor. Don Mendo insists that the King make
him a Knight of la Banda immediately, because long delays in the granting of
honors that involve blood-purity investigations can themselves be the cause of
dishonor. Shortly thereafter, the King sees his own omnipotence challenged by
the generous peasant García's refusal to see him, and it is the King's
insistence on a secret visit to García that will allow the conjugal honor
conflict to arise.
In addition to this, the first time we meet García we
learn that he is not really a peasant, but a nobleman hiding his identity for
reasons that go unexplained until the final scene. And while he has taken on the
identity of a peasant, García's compliance with the demands of rank is no
different from that of any member of the nobility: he only married Blanca, for
example, after making certain that she too, although she did not know it, was of
noble birth.
The conjugal conflict itself is the least problematic of the
play's honor conflicts. The impossibility of vengeance against an abusive King
and the need, under such circumstances, to kill an innocent wife, are fairly
conventional in the comedia. But around this well-known motif are woven a series
of variations: the king who isn't a king, the peasant who isn't a peasant, the
nobleman whose blood purity is suspect, and the king who sees his royal
authority and will challenged by a peasant. García, Mendo, and the King all
operate as their honor dictates, and the clash of these different needs is in
fact the source of the conjugal honor conflict. Moreover, this is a play with a
"trick solution" that raises real questions about the comedia's portrayal of
peasant honor. García and Blanca are portrayed simultaneously as peasants and
nobles. As peasants, they entertain us with many lines of conventional
menosprecio de corte verse and serve to counterbalance the suspect lineage of
the noble Mendo. But if on the one hand the play is said to extoll the virtues
of the peasant because he is assumed to be pure of blood, it simultaneously
rejoices in the pretend-peasant who regains his noble rank.
In Fuenteovejuna the
primary conflict involves the Comendador's refusal to recognize the peasants'
claim to honor. Secondary conflicts in this play, the growing love between
Laurencia and Frondoso and the political conflicts involving the Maestre and los
Reyes Católicos are directly related to the Comendador's insistence on placing
his own honor above that of all others. This pressure produces additional honor
conflicts within the groupings of nobles and peasants.
Here, once again,
the play's opening scenes foreground a secondary honor conflict, as the
Comendador uses deliberately offensive language with the Maestre in order to
establish his own control over his young superior and, through him, over the
entire Order of Calatrava. Language, in fact, plays a vital role in all of
Fuenteovejuna's honor conflicts. Language that offends honor is used not only by
the Comendador, but by Laurencia as well: it is only when she impugns the
manhood of the town's elders that they finally decide to take action against the
Comendador.
Language is also used in
Fuenteovejuna by both nobles and peasants to mask offended honor. When
the Comendador arrests Frondoso for having threatened him, the crime he cites
--without ever referring to himself in the first person-- is Frondoso's attack
on the Order of Calatrava and its Maestre through a threat to the Order's
Comendador Mayor. And when the elders of Fuenteovejuna finally decide to act,
they do so not in the name of their own threatened honor but rather, they say,
to avenge the Comendador's acts of treason against the monarchy.
One
interesting aspect of honor in this play is what we might call the generation
gap motif, which appears in many of the plays under discussion. This motif
assigns the primary obsession with the most formalized types of honor to older
male characters, while other, younger characters, both male and female, struggle
to exist in a world constrained by the honor of their elders. Frondoso's desire
to marry Laurencia is important to Esteban not because he wants to see his
daughter happy, but because it transfers the potential honor threat from father
to son-in-law. In a similar fashion, the Comendador's manipulation of the young
Maestre subordinates the whole Order of Calatrava to the needs of the older
man's honor.
Las mocedades del Cid presents another common type of honor conflict: the incompatibility of love and honor, traced here through the experiences of Rodrigo and Ximena after he murders her father. As in Del rey abajo, the honor conflict introduced in this play's early scenes is different from but actually gives rise to the main conflict involving Rodrigo and Ximena. A dispute between the lovers' fathers provoked by an insult in the King's presence leads the elderly Diego Laínez to insist that his son Rodrigo restore his family's good name by murdering Ximena's father. Dramatic tension thus passes from old vs old, to old vs young, and finally produces the primary honor conflict between the play's two young protagonists, whose struggles are played out against the backdrop of old men making bad decisions in the name of honor. The generation gap motif is further developed in this play with an additional secondary plot based on the King's decision to divide his kingdom among his children, a decision that will inevitably lead to war and, quite possibly, fratricide.
Las mocedades del Cid is another play with a "trick solution": Rodrigo overcomes Ximena's demand for his death and wins her hand in marriage when he responds to her call for a man who will bring her the head of Rodrigo: after killing his rival he brings her his head, still, of course, firmly affixed to his shoulders.
La Estrella de Sevilla is a play with a fairly well-integrated action based on a series of honor obsessions whose incompatibility leads to disaster: the King --like the Comendador in Fuenteovejuna-- insists on his right to offend his vassals as an aspect of his honor as monarch; Busto's highly developed sense of family honor cannot distinguish between a real threat (the King) and words designed to provoke a fight that will bring about his own death; Sancho observes blind loyalty to a King whose motives he knows are dishonorable; Estrella, whose brother has been killed by the man she loves, struggles with the same type of love/honor conflict suffered by Ximena in Las mocedades del Cid.
An intriguing minor character in this play is don Arias, the King's privado, who advises the monarch in all aspects of his duties and his social life, and has a particularly cynical view of honor. In the first act he tells the King that it will be easy to overcome Busto's suspicions by offering him honors far above what he deserves. Later on, when Busto discovers the King's attempts to enter his house, it is don Arias who advises the King that Busto must be killed, and that for the sake of the King's reputation he must be killed in secret. As the play ends neither love nor honor has emerged victorious, and don Arias, who has finally advised the King to tell the truth, is never required to take responsibility for his earlier disastrous advice.
In El burlador de Sevilla don Juan moves and sins in a society not very different from the one we observed in Las mocedades del Cid: a society ruled by old men who are concerned primarily with their reputations, a world in which young men and women find themselves caught between love and the rules of honor. The obsession of old men with honor is not limited to nobles but extends into the peasant world with Gaseno, who believes that don Juan will marry his daughter and make her noble.
While don Juan himself seems
singularly unpreoccupied with honor in any conventional sense, it is the other
characters' preocupation with honor over and above morality that allows don
Juan's escapades to continue unchecked. Don Juan's treachery is discovered at
the very beginning of the play, but a trio of old men --his uncle, his father,
and the King of Castilla-- protect and even reward don Juan in the name of the
honor of the Tenorios. Their actions produce additional --though only
temporary-- victims: Octavio, who is made the scapegoat for the seduction of
Isabela, and Mota, who is blamed for don Gonzalo's death. The King continues to
protect don Juan until the play's very last scene, even making him a Count so
Isabela will lose nothing by marrying him.
Don Juan's sins against God
are also sins against honor --and he is adept at manipulating the honor of
others, kings and peasants alike.
In La verdad
sospechosa old men again manipulate young people in order to insure family
honor. Don Beltrán needs to have García safely married before his habitual lying
is discovered and destroys the family's reputation -- and this despite don
Beltrán's own insistence that "Sólo consiste en obrar / como cavallero el serlo.
(558)."
Don Sancho, Jacinta's uncle, is intent on delaying his daughter's
engagement to don Juan until don Juan's long-awaited hábito is granted: as we
saw in Del rey abajo... failure to receive the hábito after so long a
wait would suggest that don Juan's purity of blood had been called into
question. And the women's schemes to conceal their identities are based on their
own sense of honor, since eligibility for a good marriage requires that they not
be seen talking to young men.
García, new to the life of
the court, lies so that others will notice him, so that he will have a
reputation to be proud of. He has not yet learned that it is more prudent to
protect the honor one has than it is to seek to gain new honor.
Just as
in Fuenteovejuna and Las mocedades del Cid, the generation gap
motif in La verdad sospechosa merges with conflicts between individual senses of
honor and the question of lineage. García's need for a reputation is
incompatible with his father's need to keep the family name unblemished; fathers
want their children to marry with honor, and daughters must conceal their
identities with men (thus providing much of the play's confusion) in order to
protect their own good name.
While the primary action of La vida es sueño traces Segismundo's struggle to overcome the prophecy of the stars, a secondary line of action traces Clotaldo's often absurd confusion over his own honor, as he weighs his loyalty to the King and his obligation to Astolfo against his duty to Rosaura.
Clotaldo's multiple honor conflicts could almost be seen to constitute a kind of comic relief in the play. His view that "un hombre bien nacido, / si está agraviado no vive; (634)" puts him in a state of constant confusion that takes on a rather frenetic and even ridiculous quality.
Rosaura's own honor concerns
are more straightforward. As a woman offended, she moves through the play's
action looking for a solution. Her seducer, Astolfo, exhibits more superficial
concerns in his angry response when Segismundo, who has just awakened in the
palace and has no idea what is happening to him, is not as flowery in his
greeting as Astolfo would like, merely offering his cousin a perfunctory "Dios
os guarde." Segismundo learns fast, and he is offended in return by the fact
that Astolfo leaves his hat on, not knowing that Astolfo's rank gives him that
privilege.
An examination of the way honor functions in La vida es
sueño actually gives us an interesting perspective on the play as a whole.
If we consider the play's action as building to those moments when Segismundo,
having learned from the dream that was not a dream, finally proves himself a
worthy heir to the crown, we discover that in each of these moments Segismundo's
real accomplishment is the rejection of personal honor in favor of an obligation
to the well-being or honor of others: he understands Clotaldo's loyalty to the
King, rather than to himself; he accepts Rosaura's cause at the very moment he
wants her the most and feels that he has a right to force her; he forgives his
father; and he finally condemns the mutinous soldier who claims a reward for
having freed him from the tower.
Calderón's play thus offers a fairly direct rejection of honor, while El burlador de Sevilla, the other play that deals with the question of free will, uses honor more subtly as a human environment within which evil thrives.
So what is an honor
play? Our examination of these seven plays suggests that honor was a dramatic
motif of enormous versatility that could entertain audiences and also lead the
thoughtful spectator to think about the values upon which life in Golden Age
Spain was based. Honor in the comedia functions as a vehicle for social control
that, by virtue of the very control it exerts, could become at the same time a
vehicle for social disintegration.
Just what real-life
obsessions did the comedia seek to dramatize with so many casos de honra that
relate to so many different aspects of life? While the answer to that question
does not fall within the scope of these remarks, I shall conclude by offering a
number of observations that may suggest directions we might wish to explore
further:
1) Honor permeates the comedia. It rarely appears as a single
preoccupation but instead forms the basis for a kind of collective psyche and
serves as the ultimate measure of almost every action and event. No one type of
honor in the comedia seems to be given greater importance than any other.
Conjugal honor is simply one of many incarnations of the honor theme. Conflicts
between individuals are often presented as conflicts in which each character's
efforts to maintain honor are incompatible with similar efforts by others.
2) There is no particular reason to assume that the restoration of honor is the accepted good to which all honor plays strive. If in some plays honor is indeed served, in others it is avoided and in still others it is rejected.
3) Honor is possessed by individuals and is frequently threatened through family connections. Honor of this sort can be endangered in two contradictory ways: if in questions of blood purity the sins of fathers and forefathers are passed on to their children, many comedia fathers are in return obsessed with the sins of their children being passed back to them, just as many comedia husbands may be dishonored by the actions of their wives.
4) Honor based on lineage is
also portrayed in a contradictory fashion: the noblity's claim to the honor of
rank is offset by the peasant's claim to blood purity.
5) Honor appears
as both a value and a problem: it is an ideal that becomes an incredible burden
that must be borne and served by every character.
Alix Ingber
Sweet Briar College