The Carpenters Were Busy Behind The
Scenes Building The Mountain.
When the curtain rose, it was worth
waiting for.
It was an admirable scene. A genuine Spanish mountain,
great humpy undulations of rock and sand, gigantic cacti for all
vegetation, a lurid sky behind, but not over-colored. A group of Roman
soldiers in the foreground, in the rear the hill, and the executioners
busily employed in nailing the three victims to their crosses. Demas was
fastened first; then Gestas, who, when undressed for execution, was a
superb model of a youthful Hercules. But the third cross still lay on
the ground; the hammering and disputing and coming and going were
horribly lifelike and real.
At last the victim is securely nailed to the wood, and the cross is
slowly and clumsily lifted and falls with a shock into its socket. The
soldiers huzza., the fiend in the tin barrel and another in a tin hat
come down to the footlights and throw dice for the raiment. "Caramba!
curse my luck!" says our friend in the tin case, and the other walks off
with the vestment.
The Passion begins, and lasts an interminable time. The grouping is
admirable, every shifting of the crowd in the foreground produces a new
and finished picture, with always the same background of the three high
crosses and their agonizing burdens against that lurid sky. The
impenitent Gestas curses and dies; the penitent Demas believes and
receives eternal rest. The Holy Women come in and group themselves in
picturesque despair at the foot of the cross. The awful drama goes on
with no detail omitted, - the thirst the sponge dipped in vinegar, the
cry of desolation, the spear-thrust, the giving up of the ghost. The
stage-lights are lowered. A thick darkness - of crape - comes down over
the sky. Horror falls on the impious multitude, and the scene is
deserted save by the faithful.
The closing act opens with a fine effect of moon and stars. "Que linda
luna!" sighed a young woman beside me, drying her tears, comforted by
the beauty of the scene. The central cross is bathed in the full
splendor that is denied the others. Joseph of Abarimathea (as he is here
called) comes in with ladders and winding-sheets, and the dead Christ is
taken from the cross. The Descent is managed with singular skill and
genuine artistic feeling. The principal actor, who has been suspended
for an hour in a most painful and constrained posture, has a corpse-like
rigidity and numbness. There is one moment when you can almost imagine
yourself in Antwerp, looking at that sublimest work of Rubens. The
Entombment ends, and the last tableau is of the Mater Dolorosa in the
Solitude. I have rarely seen an effect so simple, and yet so
striking, - the darkened stage, the softened moonlight, the now Holy Rood
spectral and tall against the starry sky, and the Dolorous Mother, alone
in her sublime sorrow, as she will be worshipped and revered for coming
aeons.
A curious observation is made by all foreigners, of the absence of the
apostles from the drama. They appear from time to time, but merely as
supernumeraries. One would think that the character of Judas was
especially fitted for dramatic use. I spoke of this to a friend, and he
said that formerly the false apostle was introduced in the play, but
that the sight of him so fired the Spanish heart that not only his life,
but the success of the piece was endangered. This reminds one of Mr. A.
Ward's account of a high-handed outrage at "Utiky," where a young
gentleman of good family stove in the wax head of "Jewdas Iscarrit,"
characterizing him at the same time as a "pew-serlanimous cuss."
"To see these Mysteries in their glory," continued my friend, "you
should go into the small towns in the provinces, uncontaminated with
railroads or unbelief. There they last several days The stage is the
town, the Temple scene takes place in the church, the Judgment at the
city hall, and the procession of the Via Crucis moves through all the
principal streets. The leading roles are no joke, - carrying fifty kilos
of wood over the mud and cobble-stones for half a day. The Judas or
Gestas must be paid double for the kicks and cuffs he gets from
tender-hearted spectators, - the curses he accepts willingly as a tribute
to his dramatic ability. His proudest boast in the evening is Querian
matarme, - 'They wanted to kill me!' I once saw the hero of the drama
stop before a wine-shop, sweating like rain, and positively swear by the
life of the Devil, he would not carry his gallows a step farther unless
he had a drink. They brought him a bottle of Valdepenas, and he drained
it before resuming his way to Golgotha. Some of us laughed
thoughtlessly, and narrowly escaped the knives of the orthodox ruffians
who followed the procession."
The most striking fact in this species of exhibition is the evident and
unquestioning faith of the audience. To all foreigners the show is at
first shocking and then tedious; to the good people of Madrid it is a
sermon, full of absolute truth and vivid reality. The class of persons
who attend these spectacles is very different from that which you find
at the Royal Theatre or the Comic Opera. They are sober, serious
bourgeois, who mind their shops and go to mass regularly, and who come
to the theatre only in Lent, when the gay world stays away. They would
not dream of such an indiscretion as reading the Bible. Their doctrinal
education consists of their catechism, the sermons of the curas, and the
traditions of the Church. The miracle of St. Veronica, who, wiping the
brow of the Saviour in the Street of Bitterness, finds his portrait on
her handkerchief, is to them as real and reverend as if it were related
by the evangelist.
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