Bartolomé de Torres Naharro

• Born: c. 1485
• Birthplace: Torre de Miguel Sesmero, Spain
• Died: c. 1524
• Place of death: Seville?, Spain

Other Literary Forms

On March 26, 1517, Bartolomé de Torres Naharro’s collection of previously unedited plays and poetry appeared in published form in his Propalladia (the first fruits of Pallas). Several other poetic works, published separately after this date, were incorporated in subsequent editions of this collection. The total number of extant poems is fifty. (One of the difficulties in fixing the date of Torres Naharro’s death arises from the circulation of certain of his poems in contents until 1530.)

Most of his poetry seems to date from the period 1513-1516 and is quite closely related to his drama. Comparable themes and modes of expression appear in both literary forms. Themes common throughout his Cancionero (songbook), which makes up the first part of Propalladia, are love, disenchantment with life, respect for great men and sincere patriotism for Spain, and devotion to Christ, the Virgin, and God.

Achievements

Bartolomé de Torres Naharro was a quintessential Renaissance man: soldier, writer, thinker, and social critic. His was the age of Spanish maritime and overland expansion, the age of Castilian political unification, and the age of the influence of the Italian Humanists. The critic Joseph E. Gillet, who prepared a scholarly edition of the playwright’s works, credits Torres Naharro with bringing “form to the inchoate half-medieval drama of his predecessors.” Before this time, Spanish drama consisted largely of ritualistic religious and devotional plays, more static than dramatic, more intent on educating the ignorant masses in liturgical dogma than on entertaining with novel artistic experiments. Torres Naharro, with Juan del Encina (the “father” of Spanish secular drama), Lucas Fernández (author of several quasi-religious plays that incorporate farcical scenes), Gil Vicente (the “father” of the Portuguese theater), and Diego Sánchez de Badajoz, attended the University of Salamanca at the end of the fifteenth century. At this university, humanistic ideas fresh from Italy were debated, imitated, and commented; it was here that the new Spanish drama was to emerge. Encina, several years older than the others, staged plays for the household of the dukes of Alba and enlisted young actor-students from the university population to perform his pastoral eclogues for palace audiences. Undoubtedly, Torres Naharro and his friends were initiated into the theater spirit under Encina’s tutelage.

If Encina began the development of Spanish drama from religious to a predominantly secular stage, Torres Naharro was to advance it much further, creating a finely wrought body of drama surpassed only by Lope de Vega Carpio.

Torres Naharro is the first Spanish playwright and critic to express his ideas on drama in a treatise. In his “Prohemio” (“Prologue”) to Propalladia, Torres Naharro formulated his own dramatic theory, one based in part on acute observation of the Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence in Italian translation. It should be noted that Aristotle’s enormously influential precepts on the theater were not readily available in the vernacular until well into the decade of the 1530’s, some twenty years after Torres Naharro published his theory of drama.

In the “Prologue,” Torres Naharro proposes the following concepts: that a play be divided into five acts (following Horace’s advice in the “Epistle to the Pisos”), with intermission periods between acts providing “resting places” for both actors and audiences; that there be a limited number of actors—between six and twelve, he suggests—so as neither to bore with too few nor to overwhelm with too many; that decorum reign in a play—rustics and aristocrats should speak and act according to their various places in society (a theory not consistently practiced in his own plays); that the term comedia e used to designate a work encompassing both potentially tragic and obviously comic elements; that drama be performed and not read; that plot predominate over character; that drama-comedias be reduced to comedias a noticia (realistic vignettes of life) and to equally believable comedias a fantasía (invented plots); that the comedias have a happy ending; that a play be divided into two basic parts: the introit and fable (plot); and that a play present a variety of notable and enjoyable events in its plot structure. What Torres is postulating in his “Prologue” is, in effect, a formula for the Spanish comedia, which was to assume its definitive form with Lope de Vega at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Another of Torres Naharro’s contributions to Hispanic letters is clarity of expression and precision in language. Torres Naharro’s writing was instrumental in making Castilian the accepted linguistic vehicle for lucid communication; Castilian’s supremacy over Latin was only a recent development.

Although Torres Naharro was not recalled in the later years of the sixteenth century as a precursor and theorizer of the comedia, he created the comedia or tragicomedy undercurrent that pervades the theater in Spain during that century. He left a group of servile imitators but no school of dramaturgy. In his age, permanent theaters were nonexistent in Spain; Kings Charles V and Phillip II provided little encouragement for writing “frivolous” literature. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation were enemies of fictional fantasies, and advocates, instead, of doctrinal pieces. Thus, Torres Naharro was born too soon and in a sense, forgotten too early. Yet his works have survived; their immense popularity attests their influence on the continued development of Spanish theater.

Biography

Bartolomé de Torres Naharro was born in the second half of the fifteenth century; the precise date of his birth is unknown. On the evidence of certain references in the Comedia jacinta, scholars have assumed that Torres Naharro attended the University of Salamanca, either as a full-time student or as a servant to a wealthy boy, at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries.

In several of his poems, Juan del Encina indicates a friendly relationship with one Bartolo, a priest from Extremadura. He is no doubt referring to Bartolomé de Torres Naharro, whom he most assuredly first met in Salamanca at some point in the 1490’s in his capacity as a producer-director, with Torres Naharro a student-actor. Both playwrights undertook their real apprenticeship in humanistic studies at Rome during the period 1503-1512.

A mecca for the adventuresome, a haven for religious outcasts, a battleground for the Spanish soldier, and the center for Renaissance thought, Italy proved a powerful magnet for the young Torres Naharro. The route to Rome was, however, indirect; Torres Naharro could very possibly have entered the military in the service of the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, before arriving there. It has been suggested that military expeditions took him first to Andalusia, Valencia, and Catalonia. In his diverse travels in Spain and Italy, Torres Naharro likely acquired his knowledge of the Valencian dialect of Catalan, and of various dialects of Italian. These languages, in addition to classical and vulgar Latin, a smattering of Portuguese and French, and, naturally, Castilian, found their way into Comedia seraphina and The Buttery. Torres Naharro’s Italian experience began in 1503-1507. As a soldier, he may have served in squadrons in the employ of Cesare Borgia, at Faenza, Forli, and Rimini. In his play Comedia soldadesca, the playwright provides one with ample, firsthand information concerning many facets of Spanish military life in Italy.

A few years after arriving in Italy, Torres Naharro probably staged a wedding play, Comedia jacinta, as entertainment for the 1509 marriage ceremony of Fernando de Avalos and Vittoria Colonna, held on the Italian isle of Ischia. By 1510, Torres Naharro had firmly established residence in Rome and was producing and acting in his first full-length plays: Comedia seraphina and Comedia soldadesca. His first known performed play, however, is Diálogo del nascimiento (the Christmas dialogue), with its accompanying Addición del diálogo (addition to the dialogue), performed for a non-Roman theater audience at a Yuletide marriage festival.

By 1513, Gillet conjectures, Torres Naharro had secured a literary patron in the person of either Giulio de Medici or Giovanni de Medici, the latter of whom became Pope Leo X (1513-1523). To have secured such favors means that Torres Naharro must have already proven his ability as both poet and dramatist.

Torres Naharro’s performance places would have been palace meeting halls visited while accompanying his first protector throughout Italy. For many Renaissance playwrights, noble marriages and inaugural ceremonies for public officials provided occasions to display dramatic talents. In addition to reading, attending, and acting in neoclassical, humanistic comedies, Torres Naharro would have had the opportunity to be in the presence of such literary figures as Ludovico Ariosto, Niccolò Machiavelli, Pietro Aretino, and Alessandro Piccolomini. Ultimately, however, he rejected such influences, essentially becoming an anticlassicist.

In 1515-1516, Torres Naharro served in the employ of Cardinal Bernardino de Carvajal, a fellow Spaniard living in Rome. At this time, Torres Naharro and Juan del Encina were competing for “acceptance and favor” with other artists in numerous Roman Spanish colonies. A year later, Torres Naharro left Rome and arrived in Naples, where he had secured the favors of Fabrizio Colonna. He was also in the employ of Fernando de Avalos, marquis of Pescara, husband of Fabrizio Colonna’s daughter, Vittoria. It was in Naples, on the twenty-sixth of March, 1517, that the editio princeps of Propalladia appeared, dedicated to Fabrizio Colonna.

Biographer John Lihani supposes that Torres Naharro’s constant dissatisfaction with life, his hypersensitive cynicism, and “an inborn wanderlust” compelled the writer to abandon Naples and return to his homeland. He took up temporary residence in Seville, and in 1520, a new edition of Propalladia appeared in that city.

From available documents (later family wills), Gillet surmises that Torres Naharro died in Seville either in 1520 or 1524. Some of Torres Naharro’s poems, however, were circulating in poetic contests during the 1520’s, a fact that suggests 1530 as a possible date of death. Torres Naharro may have retired to a monastic life for the remaining years of his life.

Analysis

Unconventional in his theater, philosophical if not truly lyrical in his nondramatic verse, universal in spirit and expression, Bartolomé de Torres Naharro is one of those rare individuals who advances art to a new level of awareness and social consciousness.

Hymen

Hymen is divided according to Torres Naharro’s simplistic pre-Aristotelian formula for composition: introit and plot. Following a pattern that Torres Naharro establishes for the majority of his introits—or dramatic prologues—a rustic enters speaking in Sayagués (a dialect of northwestern Spain), greets his public, and—although it is Christmas Eve—proceeds to boast of his erotic exploits with various country wenches.

The rustic in Hymen recounts his only marriage; his only child resembled the village priest, who obviously frequented their home with more than purely religious intentions. His most ardent extramarital affair was with Juana the Washerwoman, a soapmaker. The rustic describes their lovemaking in graphic and playful detail, then realizes that perhaps he is straying too far from his proposed intentions; he asks pardon for his rude and gross speech, and announces the play to be performed. The play will be divided into five acts, a comedia, though not a hilarious comedy (comedia de risadas). It will be subtle, something unexplainable, something completely novel. What Hymen is, indeed, is a tragicomedy, in which plot predominates over character, in which ethics and morality predominate over fortune or fate. It is the prototype of what was to be known as the Spanish comedia in the seventeenth century.

The introit completed, the plot begins. Act 1 opens on a night scene, possibly the first in Castilian theater. Ymeneo, a young aristocrat, approaches Phebea’s window in order to woo her. It is love at first sight for Ymeneo. He pines, laments, and suffers the severe pangs of lovesickness, for his “lady” does not answer his calls. His two manservants, Eliso and Boreas, advise him to return home, while they stand vigil over the home of the beloved. Ymeneo leaves in a crazed state, but his men are more fearful of the Marquis, Phebea’s brother, who carefully guards his sister’s reputation. The two servants then talk of love; Boreas, the selfish and astute servant, is deeply in love with Doresta, Phebea’s handmaiden. Both men depart, as the Marquis and his manservant, Turpedio, enter. Though it is still night, the presumably decent Marquis, on the alert for the suspected Ymeneo, retires to a girlfriend’s house for breakfast; obviously, he maintains a double standard for sexual behavior, prohibiting his sister from practicing precisely what he does.

Act 2 evolves later that same night. Ymeneo has returned to serenade Phebea. His love song, well suited for the occasion, tells of the glory in suffering for his belle dame sans merci. Phebea now approaches her jalousied window. She shows some compassion for Ymeneo, whose sadness would soften even the hardest of hearts. He entreats her to give him entry to her boudoir. She, in turn, attempts to protect her public reputation, rejecting such advances as scandalous and lascivious, but more swooning by Ymeneo breaks her hold, and she finally capitulates: Ymeneo can come the following evening. Content, Ymeneo offers his belongings to his men. Eliso, however, denies the favor, for he believes in loyalty to master and not in self-interest. His master appreciates the gesture and will offer brotherly love in its place. Ymeneo’s departure is immediately followed by the entrance of the Marquis and Turpedio: The Marquis vows that Ymeneo and Phebea must be killed in order to preserve the family’s “unblemished” honor.

It is late afternoon when act 3 commences. Eliso and Boreas are arguing about Eliso’s refusal to accept gifts from Ymeneo. Boreas’s philosophy is to take whatever one can whenever possible. Eliso accedes to Boreas’s line of reasoning because he knows that the worthy are often left unrewarded. Doresta enters and Boreas proceeds to woo her in cavalier fashion. She, a bit ugly in appearance and gross in expression, is convinced, like her mistress, by the courtly hyperbolic metaphors. Doresta will also open her door for new love. The exit of Ymeneo’s manservants is followed by the entrance of the Marquis’s manservant Turpedio. He too attempts to woo Phebea’s servant, who effectively parries his advances. Doresta spurns his attempt by insulting his masculinity; Turpedio hurls rough and sexual insults at her.

Act 4 is set that night, the “appointed night” for the important rendezvous. As Ymeneo makes his way to Phebea’s bedroom, the dramatic action itself develops in the street. Boreas and Eliso flee for their lives, as they fear impending death at the hands of the Marquis. The Marquis and Turpedio enter; their trap for the lovers is set, for Ymeneo and Phebea are now together. The front door is locked, however, so it will have to be broken down.

Act 5 opens with a confrontation scene between the Marquis and Phebea. Ymeneo has escaped. She is to confess her sexual sins before her death. Although accepting her brother’s authority in family affairs, Phebea makes a tearful, emotional peroration to unfulfilled love desire: Nature will turn unnatural on learning of her unfortunate and unfair death. Ready to strike the mortal blow, the Marquis is stopped by the gallant Ymeneo, sword in hand, ready to save his beloved. Phebea is his wife, he contends. Furthermore, no intermediaries were needed in this honest arrangement, because the two are in love and because Ymeneo decides for himself in such matters. The Marquis has little recourse but to bless the couple, who in turn vow to love their respective servants as family members, not as hired help. Doresta is to choose a husband, but the end is left ambiguous, for the choice is to be made in the future, outside the frame of action of this comedia a fantasía (play of invented plots).

Hymen is the quintessence of Torres Naharro’s theatrical and lyric art. In this play, elements from his previous comedias a fantasía, such as Comedia seraphina and Comedia jacinta, from his semirealistic commentary plays (comedias a noticia), such as Comedia soldadesca and The Buttery, from his farcical medieval Diálogo del nascimiento and from Comedia trophea (a type of medieval mummer’s representation in which illusion appears as reality), are blended masterfully. Elements that existed separately and in less polished form in Torres Naharro’s earlier theater, such as comic relief, repartee, lyric fluidity, foreshadowing, asides, song, the use of a gracioso (servant-confidant schemer), courtly love themes, and appropriate language for characters of differing sociointellectual levels, fuse in Hymen. His later plays, including the longer and more complex Comedia Calamita, are basically imitations of the Hymen formula. In Hymen, there are none of the static, irregularly long, prolix monologues characteristic of most of Encina’s and, to some degree, Torres Naharro’s earlier theater. Language moves briskly forward. The hilariously gross introit, with its scatological references, is quite appropriate for a wedding festivity—references to fertility and to sexual practices equally shock and instruct the audience.

Boreas and Eliso are graciosos, earlier versions of a character type that was to become second only to the major protagonist in the comedia of Spain’s seventeenth century. Before Torres Naharro’s expert and more complex handling, earlier Spanish dramatists had characters of the gracioso type in a simplistic fashion, as mere country bumpkins, dolts, or humorous shepherds.

In terms of theme, Hymen reflects many of its author’s fundamental values: It mocks the concept of courtly lovesickness; it criticizes the aristocracy’s typical ingratitude for the work of menials; it condemns the double standard for the sexes; it advocates a free choice of a marriage partner; and it scorns the absurdity of the archaic and rigid Spanish code of family honor. Torres Naharro’s plays should be considered early examples of social theater; they have a didactic as well as entertainment function. Torres Naharro advocates a humanistic egalitarianism in Hymen: Aristocrats and plebeians will be brothers before God and among themselves.

Comedia soldadesca

Comedia soldadesca (the military comedy) is a plotless, near-realistic comedia a noticia, or “documentary play.” Comedia soldadesca is Torres Naharro’s exploration into the scheming, corrupt, and “inglorious” transactions of characters employed in the Spanish military stationed in Italy. What Torres Naharro offers his audience in this early play is an attempt at representing realistic vignettes of corrupt soldiering. He employs here some of the techniques tested in his earlier Comedia seraphina, particularly the use of several different languages—Castilian, Italian, and Latin—no doubt to satisfy the linguistic appetites of his multilingual audience.

The structure is binary, divided into introit and a five-act body. In the introit an anonymous shepherd, probably the author-playwright himself, addressed the princely audience in Sayagués. He insults the courtiers, most of whom are learned; they are presumptuous, he says. One might be surprised at such license, but Torres Naharro is closely following the medieval court jester tradition, whereby the jester was immune to criticism and punishment for playing the fool. The Naharresque jester thus condemns the courtiers’ lack of common sense. In order to prove his point, he begins to test their so-called knowledge by posing absurd, self-answering enigmas, such as: “In what month do we celebrate Saint Mary of August?” The courtiers are the real fools, for they are insulted. He, the poor peasant, sleeps more soundly than they, and enjoys his hardy meals more than does the Pope, a man blessed with a thousand preoccupations. According to this character, simple country life is superior to that of the court, where intrigue and anxiety reign.

The rustic then recounts the dramatic action, a procedure quite helpful to an audience unaccustomed to sitting and paying attention to a dramatic performance for two hours. The synopsis also offers the audience the opportunity to appreciate those technical subtleties that Torres Naharro was beginning consciously to employ in his theater.

Comedia soldadesca presents a realistic picture of a corrupt Spanish army corps in service in Italy in the first decade of the sixteenth century. Torres Naharro attacks both the aristocratic establishment in his introit as well as the military in the play proper. This critical perspective is surely humanistic in scope, and represents one of the many “modern” aspects of his worldview. The employment of different languages in the work offers evidence of Torres Naharro’s linguistic awareness and desire for greater realism on stage. Italians must speak in their native tongue; so must Spaniards, men of the Church, and country bumpkins. The impetus of Comedia soldadesca is obviously not generated by plot structure in the conventional sense; rather, the play is a vignette of realistic, rather loosely connected scenes. Indeed, in addition to its value as a work of art, Comedia soldadesca has significance as a historical document, recording early sixteenth century military customs and practices—the first such document in Castilian literature.

It is ironic that those members of the military class to benefit least from the spoils of glorious war were the foot soldiers, for whom Torres Naharro shows little sympathy. The playwright is cold, starkly realistic; he is telling his audience that “this is the way things are.” One must fend for oneself. Torres Naharro exposes the ills of society but does not always provide a cure for them, as his major artistic purpose at this early stage of his career was to delight his audience, rather than to shock them. In Horatian terms, his play is more dulce (entertaining) than utile (edifying). As the critic Lihani concludes, “He felt the need to make the risible deliberately clear in a time of economic distress and social chaos. . . . The Comedia soldadesca is a drama of radical, combined with Christian, inspiration, decrying injustices inherent in human systems.”

Diálogo del nascimiento

In the Nativity play and farcical epilogue, Diálogo del nascimiento and Addición del diálogo, Torres Naharro follows patterns established by the Salamancan school of playwrights: Gil Vicente, Lucas Fernández, Juan del Encina, and Diego Sánchez de Badajoz. It is Torres Naharro’s earliest known play.

The introit speaker, not a rustic, pleads for decorum: Those with donkeys must tie them up. This indicates that the play was performed outdoors and in a semirustic environment. He proceeds to recount his sexual exploits with a country girl. She had evaded him once, but they had met again at a wedding ceremony (not unlike that for which this playlet was to be performed). Deeply in love, he had sent this “dog-faced, cat-eyed wench” a love epistle, in which he had expressed his devotion to her, swearing by his guts, skin, flesh, and blood. She had responded in an equally uncouth fashion. They were to meet at an upcoming wedding ceremony where he could tickle her as much as he wished, so long as her father did not catch them. The prologuist was drawn into a marriage with the girl, even though Miguel the sexton was said to have slept with her on occasion.

The mock courtly tradition gives way to more pressing matters: The play to be performed will tell of “news from Spain” and “all of the mysteries surrounding the life of Christ.” In the epilogue, two yokels will entertain with their nonsense. The author demands silence; the play is to begin.

Patrispano, a Spanish pilgrim, enters, having returned from Jerusalem. In an extremely long monologue, he asks God when he may rest at Christ’s side after having suffered so much on the way of life. It is a lovely December evening, one apt for recalling the beauty involved in the virgin birth. Past then becomes present, and evangelical legend or history becomes participatory reality as Patrispano speaks in present tense of Christ’s coming. It will cause special wonder and happiness. At the conclusion of his speech, Patrispano rests beside a font. Betiseo, a fellow Spaniard, now enters. He has been robbed of his most prized possession: a wine jug. Patrispano shares his jug with this new friend, and as they drink, they philosophize on the simple virtues of Christianity and the beneficence of God. Of peace, there is none this Yuletide. Patrispano describes the manger scene, explains the mystery of the Trinity, and discusses with his friend biblical events in the life of Christ. They will continue on to Rome; on their way, they sing the popular ballad, “Sad was Adam the Father,” which tells of Christ’s triumph over the forces of evil in the world.

Addición del diálogo

Here Diálogo del nascimiento ends and its continuation, Addición del diálogo, commences. Two shepherds enter: Herrando and Garrapata. According to Herrando, Christ has been born wearing a skirt. He then corrects the absurdity by stating that the child has been born in his mother’s lap. Furthermore, he has been born holding a shield and a sword, symbolizing “patience and justice,” respectively. What follows are a series of questions and answers regarding the birth: Why was Christ crying at birth? Why did Mary give birth unaided? Why does one mourn the death of Christ if one has already mourned the year before? Herrando explains that the enactment of the mysteries is part of a ritualistic ceremony; this play, too, is a ritualistic, participatory exercise. The yokels follow with a series of pullas or “debasing witticisms,” absurd remarks and questions intended to weaken one’s opponent by ridiculing him. After this section, the two agree to attend midnight mass. When asked how he will reply to the village abbot, Hernando answers with more absurdities, from gross mispronunciations of Latin incipits and the liturgy to other silly offenses. For common man he wishes an unfaithful wife and the pox. As for woman, he wishes to have her first and then leave her to his friends. The epilogue finishes with a humorous hymn of praise to the Virgin.

On either side of the devotional scene of this Christmas play are bits of slapstick. At this very early stage in Torres Naharro’s theatrical career, the playwright had learned, if in a rather primitive, schematic way, one of the most important of dramaturgical skills: to keep one’s audience amused and interested at all times. He had learned well from his predecessors: the use of the introit from Lucas Fernández, from Italian drama, and possibly from Latin plays being performed in Italian translation. Encina’s eclogues and Fernández’s farces taught the young Torres Naharro how to entertain with rustic humor: One could play with words, speak in a peasant dialect, or talk of sex in animalistic, crude terms. The themes in this Diálogo del nascimiento include a satire of the clergy, a call for peace, and the beauty of essential Christianity and sharing with one’s fellowman. All of these subjects find expression in more sophisticated ways in Torres Naharro’s later theater.

Bibliography

Gillet, Joseph E., ed. “Propalladia” and Other Works of Bartolomé de Torres Naharro. 4 vols. Bryn Mawr, Pa.: George Banta, 1943-1951. This collection of Torres Naharro’s works details his life and provides critical analysis of his works.

Lihani, John. Bartolomé de Torres Naharro. Boston: Twayne, 1979. A basic biography of Torres Naharro that addresses both his life and works.

Stern, Charolotte. “The Early Spanish Drama: From Medieval Ritual to Renaissance Art.” Renaissance Drama no. 6 (1974): 177-201. This essay examines how Spanish drama changed from Medieval times to the Renaissance. Contains some discussion of Torres Naharro.