Walking back I was struck by the presence of the scent of a French water that I knew was popular with young women in the city. At first I thought it odd that a man would wear a scent, but there were many fops who wore not just French water, but such silks and lace that on inspection of their genitals one would expect to find a witch's teat instead of a pene. That a writer of romantic poetry might be the type who found other men attractive, entering by the back door as it is said, would not surprise me. Eh, the poems came through the back door, did they not?
The poems were once again visions of love that touched my romantic soul—the one well-hidden behind my lépero's scabrous one. I put aside a deshonesto play that I had been checking Juan's typesetting on and began typesetting the poems. No profit was made from the poet's books, but what a pleasure to lose one's self in the images of lovers in a heat of passion. Printing his works of honest passions, I felt that I was making amends for the works of lesser quality—and lesser morality—that I printed only to make money. It was much work for me to set the type for all of the poet's works, but I had found it very rewarding.
As I set the type, I thought about the play we were surreptitiously publishing. We printed more plays than books. While comedias were rarely performed in New Spain, they were more popular to read than books.
It occurred to me that money could be had quicker and easier simply by putting on plays, rather than selling printed copies. Plays had not reached the level of popularity or profitability in New Spain that they had in the mother country because those the Holy Office approved for the colonies were insipid comedies of manners or religious works. To have even submitted a play like the ones we print to the Holy Office for a permit to perform would have resulted in our immediate arrest.
I wondered if there was a play we could present that would prove popular yet yield the needed approval. A group of actors had come to town to present a play in a vacant area between the mint building and residences, but the play had only lasted a few performances. I watched the play while Mateo was in Acapulco and found it to be a very uninteresting rendition of Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna. I had been forewarned that the censor's knife had cut the heart from Vega's brilliant work and that a familiar would be in the audience with a copy to ensure that the deleted dialogue did not find its way back into the presentation. Added to this, the actors did not have their lines well rehearsed. I heard the actors had disagreed over which play was to be presented and who was to perform the lead roles. It was sad to watch such a wonderful, stirring play mouthed by people who were unable to instill within themselves the spirit of the character they were playing.
No nation had ever produced a writer as prolific as Vega. Cervantes called him a monster of nature because he was able to write plays in hours and had composed perhaps a couple of thousand. Fuente Ovejuna was a stirring tale, much in line with Vega's other great works that demonstrated how Spanish men and women of all classes can be honorable. I had read a true copy of the play, smuggled into the colony under the dress of an actress.
The name of the play, Fuente Ovejuna, was the name of the village where the action took place. Here again a nobleman was trying to dishonor a peasant girl, who was betrothed to a village youth. Laurencia is the peasant girl, but she is a smart, resourceful one. She knows what the nobleman, the commander, is really after when he sends his emissaries to her with gifts. He plans to dishonor her and cast her aside after he has had his pleasure. As she says about men in general, "All they want, after giving us much trouble, is their pleasure at night and our sorrow in the morning."
She can be a sharp-tongued wench. As one character puts it, "I bet the priest poured salt on her as he christened her."
When the commander returns triumphant from war, the village greets him with gifts. But the gift he wants are Laurencia and another peasant girl. Struggling against his adjutant who is trying to pull her into a room where the commander can take advantage of her, Laurencia says, "Isn't your master satisfied with all the meat he was given today?"
"He seems to prefer yours," the servant says.
"Then he can starve!"
The commander catches Laurencia in the forest and tries to take her by force, when a peasant boy who loves her, Frondoso, grabs a bow and arrow the commander had laid down, and holds off the knight until the girl escapes.
The commander is disgusted by the way the peasant girl resists him. "What boors these peasants are. Ah, give me the cities, where nobody hinders the pleasures of lofty men, and husbands are glad when we make love to their wives."
He discusses women with his aide, speaking of the women who will surrender themselves to him without a struggle. "Easy girls I love dearly and repay poorly. Ah, Flores, if they only knew their worth."
The cruel nobleman takes village girls by force as he pleases, but Laurencia manages to avoid him. He shows up at her wedding and has her bridegroom, Frondoso, arrested. The commander carries off Laurencia and beats her when she resists his rape.
She returns to her father and the men in the village, calling them "sheep" for permitting the commander to violate village girls. She tells the men of the village that after the commander hangs Frondoso, he'll come and hang the spineless men of the village. "And I'll be glad—you race of half men—that this honorable town will be rid of effeminate men and the age of Amazons will return."
Picking up a sword Laurencia rallies the women of the village around her, and declares they must take the castle and free Frondoso before the commander kills him. She tells another woman, "When my courage is up, we don't need a Cid."
Women knock down the castle door and storm in, facing the commander, just as he's starting to have Frondoso hanged. The village men enter with their weapons to help. But a woman says, "Only women know how to take revenge. We shall drink the enemy's blood."
Jacinta, a girl raped by the commander, says, "Let us pierce his corpse with our lances."
Frondoso says, "I won't consider myself avenged until I've pulled out his soul."
The women attack the commander and his men. Laurencia says, "Com' on women, dye your swords with their vile blood!"
Vega had the literary courage to put swords in the hands of women. I suspect that was why the audience, which was composed mostly of men, did not appreciate the play as much as I did.
Another great moral point of the play was the way the villagers stood together when they are tried for the commander's death before the king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella. When the villagers are questioned and tortured to reveal who slayed the evil nobleman, each of them in turn names the culprit: Fuente Ovejuna. The village itself had taken justice in its hands.
Faced with an impossible situation, the king and queen leave the death of the commander unpunished.
From what few seats were sold for the play, I had no doubt that the rest of the city were not stirred by the actors.
The thought of putting on a comedia had been on my mind from the time I had been clandestinely printing offensive ones. But no matter how I struggled with the thought, I was always blocked by how I knew Mateo would react. He would insist that we do some foolish tale of hombria—if I had to sit through another hour of an honorable Spaniard killing an English pirate who had raped his wife...
I would have presented a play by Beelzebub if it made money, but besides their lack of artistic merit, Mateo's plays had the added disadvantage of being financial disasters.