Peribanez (NHB Classic Plays) E-Book

Лопе де Вега

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 108

Beschreibung

A gripping drama of sex, power and passion from the Spanish Golden Age. A peasant wedding. Just as Peribanez and Casilda become man and wife, the Commander of the region is carried dying to their home. His waking sight of Casilda condemns him to a desparate love. Joy turns to despair and then to revolt in this gripping rediscovery of Lope de Vega's 17th-century classic. 'A brilliant coup... outstanding. No one who sees it will forget it' - Daily Telegraph 'A superb revival ... terrific' - Independent

Leseprobe

Lope de Vega

PERIBANEZ

in an English version by

Tanya Ronder

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Lope de Vega and ‘Peribanez y el Comendador de Ocana’

Dedication

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Peribanez was first performed at the Young Vic Theatre, London, on 1 May 2003. The cast was as follows:

PERIBANEZ

Michael Nardone

CASILDA

Jackie Morrison

COMMANDER

David Harewood

INES

Mali Harries

LEONARDO

Mark Lockyer

LUJAN

Paul Hamilton

COSTANZA/QUEEN

Rhiannon Meades

ANTON/CONSTABLE

Jason Baughan

BENITO/ARCEO

Robert Willox

PRIEST/PAINTER/

Michael O’Connor

HELIPE/LISARDO

KING/MENDO/VALERIO

Gregory Fox-Murphy

LLORENTE/FLOREZ

Vincent Patrick

GIL/MASTER MUSICIAN

John A Sampson

Director

Rufus Norris

Designer

Ian MacNeil

Costumes

Tania Spooner

Lighting Designer

Rick Fisher

Sound

Paul Arditti

Music

Orlando Gough

Choreography

Scarlett Mackmin

Musical Direction

Jonathan Gill

Casting

Wendy Spon

Fight Direction

Terry King

Assistant Director

Nizar Zuabi

Lope de Vega and ‘Peribanez y el Comendador de Ocana’

Lope de Vega (1562–1635) was reading Spanish and Latin and composing verses before he was five. Meanwhile Shakespeare, age three and a half, was cutting his teeth in the English countryside.

Lope’s life was full – so full it’s hard to imagine how he fitted it all in. As an adult he was a poet, a sailor on the Spanish Armarda (using poems to a faithless lover to clean his gun), an Inquisitor, had long-lasting affairs with two actresses, married twice and became a father at least six times. He was secretary to two Dukes, killed a man, served a prison sentence, lived in the country and in the town, was an avid gardener and was exiled from Madrid for fouling his ex-lover’s name. He became a priest and then lived bigamously with two women in two homes, was widowed, brought up a household of four children from different mothers on his own – and wrote plays. As many, it’s believed, as eight hundred. Only half survive but the ones we have are as varied and full of life as his years on earth.

Lope wrote at a time of change for Spain, when towns were growing into cities. As a result of high taxes and political unrest, the population could no longer rely on the earth for their livelihood. Peasant life on the land was dwindling. Lope wasn’t the first playwright to idealise this rural life – which belonged to his grandparents’ generation – but he was one of the few to have sampled it first-hand. His peasant world, from which so many of his plays derive, is beautifully detailed. It’s an earthy world peopled with animals and characterised by a lack of guile. He places the peasant at the centre of this work politically – and emotionally too. Their inner lives and spoken word are more full of poetry, passion, intelligence and self-knowledge than his (often ridiculed) high-born Nobles, Commanders and Royals.

The landless, rural poor were his main interest and, largely, his audience. At the time of writingPeribanez y el Comendador de Ocana,somewhere between 1605 and 1614, there was no way a peasant farmer such as Peribanez could have had access to the King. He didn’t – possibly couldn’t – flout all that hissociety held dear and break such rules, so he has the Commanderknight Peribanez during the course of the action and bypasses this difficulty, allowing Peribanez and the king to meet face to face and for the King to save our hero’s life.

First and foremost Lope de Vega was a people’s playwright. He wrote to entertain. The darker strands in his work nearly always gave way to a happy outcome, even after a costly, bloody journey. He was master of the tragi-comedy. And he vigorously upheld the belief that this was a playwright’s job – to entertain the masses . . . ‘Give pleasure to the people and let art be hanged.’

In his ironic treatise about the new art of writing plays (El Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo, published 1609), he divided his audience into those who favoured either this ‘new art’ championed and created by himself, or the stiffer, literary plays of the older generation. The speed at which he wrote (he complained he spent his life sharpening quills) produced a huge range of plays without concern for consistency of subject or form. For inspiration he drew on chronicles and legends, history and myths, oriental and Italian stories, sacred and chivalrous tomes and popular songs. He did, however, develop highly sophisticated verse forms where the verbal structure helped his audience grasp what was happening. They grew to expect the witty ‘gracioso’ from the metre in the first line of his speech.

Lope filled Madrid’s two theatres, the Corral de la Cruz and Corral del Principe, year after year with rowdy and insatiable audiences. They were daytime shows, presented on a plain apron stage with audience (male) in tiers of seats on three sides, no scenery – only a curtain along the back through which actors could enter. Above the stage, held up on pillars, was a gallery for musicians where certain scenes took place. There were ‘groundlings’ (again, men only) who stood at the front and women crowded together in an enclosure at the back. The rich, male and female, watched from boxes which were the windows of houses surrounding the open courtyard.

Plays rarely ran for more than a week. Reviews were spontane­ous in the shape of orange peel and soft fruit (‘Get off!’) or rattles and whistles (‘More please’). Lope introduced onto these stages integral music, horses, dancing and other fusions of life. The sixty years during which his plays were performed (he started at twelve and wrote tirelessly, an average of twentypages a day; his contemporary biographer, Montalvan, assertingthat Lope could write a play after mass while his breakfast waswarming) forms, along with the plays of Cervantes and Calderon,the Spanish Golden Age.

Although bent on entertainment, the humanist in Lope couldn’t help but spill over every page of his work. He knew and loved people; he also knew pain, grief, torture, suffering. His worlds are full of disappointment, temptation and loss in the midst of extreme joy and irrepressible humour. A bonus for us is that his women are as rounded as his men. They are strong, full-blooded, hot-tempered and canny. They may be honest and pure-hearted but they are fallible too. Lope’s complex life of intimacy with women is thrown straight back onto the stage, breeding vivid and believable creatures, often embodying a force both natural and vital. Likewise his notion of honour. He doesn’t challenge the beliefs of the day but for Lope ‘honour’ is more ample and human than the received notion, the prerogative of Noblemen. He invests all his characters with self-respect. The central plot ofPeribanezunfurls as a result of a peasant’s sense of his offended honour.

Lope’s death prompted a state funeral that lasted nine days – long enough, I guess, for people to mourn the loss of all those different lives lived by one extremely brilliant and passionate man. ‘Es de Lope’ – ‘it’s real Lope’ – has entered the Spanish language as shorthand for anything of excellence.

Tanya Ronder

To David

with thanks

CharactersPERIBANEZ,farmer, Casilda’s husbandCASILDA,Peribanez’ wifeINES,cousin and best friend to CasildaCOSTANZA,cousin and friend to CasildaTHE PRIEST,uncle to CasildaCOMMANDERof OcanaLUJAN,looks after Commander’s animalsLEONARDO,Commander’s right-hand manFLOREZ,young servant to CommanderKINGEnrique the thirdQUEEN,his wifeARCEO,secretary to the KingCONSTABLE,the state officer of the highest rank for ToledoPAINTER,from ToledoANTON,friend and neighbour to PeribanezBENITO,older village man and harvesterGIL,village man and local musicianMENDO,harvesterHELIPE,harvesterLLORENTE,harvester and singerCHAPARRO,harvesterLISARDO,musicianVALERIO,musician

ACT ONE

Scene One

PERIBANEZ’house. A small wedding party arrives accompanied by the end of some music played byGILand otherGUESTSwho have played on their walk from Church.

INES (to the newly-marriedCASILDA). You’re married!

CASILDA. I’m married!

COSTANZA (toCASILDA).Mrs Ibanez.

INES. What can I wish you? I wish you the best of everything, hundreds of children and endless years of happiness together.

COSTANZA. ’Til you’re almost immortal!

CASILDA. Years full of friendship with you my cousins.

THE PRIEST. I don’t want to throw water on the fire, I’m sure you don’t mean to insult God but it’s unnecessary, this over baking the pudding. Nothing means more than the marriage ceremony, no amount of compliments – I’ve said words enough – there’s nothing more to be said, by family or friend. Or Priest.

INES. We’re just adding ‘good luck’ Father . . . ’though of course you know best.

THE PRIEST. Send your wishes up to Heaven! He’s the one who’ll answer your prayers. He rewards the virtuous and my niece is a good, sensible girl.

ANTON. Ah but will she be a jealous wife?

CASILDA. Ah but will she need to be?

INES. God made jealousy as the price you pay for love.

PERIBANEZ(toCASILDA). You won’t know the meaning of the word.

THE PRIEST. Well I’ve done my bit. I’m going to sit myself down and enjoy the rest of the day. When you two became one.

PERIBANEZ (still toCASILDA). Look at you. I can’t believe God has found me such a friend.

THE PRIEST. I’m glad you mention God there – yes – it is God’s work. It’s He who makes this beautiful face – unmatched in the whole of Toledo.

CASILDA(toPERIBANEZ). You can’t be as proud as I am to have you. If love was gold, husband, you’d be rich as a King!

PERIBANEZ. You can’t outweigh my love Casilda. My mouth will speak my heart and meet you anywhere, everywhere. I’d take the whole of Ocana and lay it at your feet. The entire town and every bit of land, field after field ’til the river’s washed through all Portugal and disappeared into the Spanish sea.

What could be more beautiful than you? I can’t think of anything. A grove of olive trees, heaving with olives, curling down with fruit? A meadow in early May, first light, when tiny flowers burst open, seeing the world for the first time? Or an apple – shiny and ripe? Thick golden oil, rich and clean in its clay pot? Everything pales, Casilda, next to you. I smell your lips, I can’t imagine a better smell. Not even a wine that’s been asleep in a tall dark cellar – white, crisp, perfect to drink. I’d compare you to roses if I were a gentleman, but I’m a worker and wine’s the thing – but nowhere near as good as you. Could mushroom picking in December, the rain in Spring, the miracle of wheat in August or October’s grape-juice come near to the treasure I’ll have in my house? Who cares if the summer roasts me or the winter numbs me? I’m complete. I just have to look after this (Indicates his chest.) – it’s your home – it needs to be worthy of you.

D’you think a Peasant can become a King through the peace in his heart? I think yes. Which means you’re a Queen, Casilda. My Queen.

I want to bring you such happiness. Everybody’ll wonder how did it happen? How did perfect Casilda turn out to have the Devil’s own Luck? That’s how happy Heaven will make you, wife, if I have anything to do with it.

CASILDA. Now where do I start? How can I even begin to say everything I feel without my heart breaking open? You make me feel more alive than anything in the world – more than dancing, the music, my pulse, feet racing, drum pounding, the drummer yelling and whooping with all the strength in his throat, my muscles aching from smiling happiness . . . Your voice, the words you choose, lift me more than Midsummer’s Day – hearing the cheers come up from the village, smelling lemon verbena and myrtle. What guitar that squeezes my heart could reach me as you do? In your ‘how-d’you-do’ hat? You mean more to me than my brand new shoes!

You’re better than the best banner in the parade, better than the crumbly bread Uncle hands round at Baptisms, better than the Resurrection candle that never goes out. Out of a thousand boys you are the Easter cake covered all over with marzipan chicks and chocolate eggs. No.

She thinks, then she speaks.

You’re a young bull in a green field or a clean white shirt folded in a basket of jasmine flowers. You – you’re my Pedro. You’re you. That’s it, I’ve nothing left to compare you with.

Somebody blows a note or two on their instrument.

THE PRIEST. Right, well I think that’s probably enough talk of these loving matters. The youngsters want to dance.

PERIBANEZ(to their guests). Please forgive us . . . love makes us rude.

GIL. You carry on!