This is a crash course theater, and that's right, pile.

Today we're gonna be discussing the Golden Age of Spanish drama.

And Spaniards are prolific like tens of thousands of plays prolific, and we have lots of, um so hey, that's fun.

We'll examine the origins and style of a Spanish drama.

Check out its unique theater design and, uh, cucumber throwing.

We'll meet a couple of golden age literary heavyweights and take a closer look at life is a dream.

Pedro Calderon de la Barca's beautiful allegorical mind mash of a play.

Get your cloaks, your swords and your pageant wagons ready?

Vamanos!

Sal Espana.

The Spanish Renaissance starts in the 15th century, when Isabella of Castile, Mary's Ferdinand, the second of Aragon and humanism, really comes into vogue.

You may remember humanism from our Italian Renaissance episode as the idea that earthly life isn't just some garbage that happens on the way to heaven, but maybe, like, kind of cool in its own right.

So make a few things and be good to each other.

Yeah, except then, in this case, we immediately get the Spanish Inquisition.

So yes, art and literature, but also the prosecution of 150,000 and execution of thousands of Jews and Moors in the name of Christian orthodoxy, which is the opposite of being good to each other.

What this meant for theater was that while England's stages saw a disconnect from religion with plays on spiritually themes explicitly outlawed in Spain, a sacred and secular drama remained closely intertwined, most playwrights wrote.

In both genres, the most active genre was a religious drama called the Ottos Sacramental Is or sacramental acts.

Altos originated in the late medieval period and have some serious overlap with English morality plays.

Their allegorical dramas concerned with Virtue and Vice Altos were supposed to focus on the mystery of the Eucharist, or communion, and how bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

But topics varied a lot.

Trade guilds staged plays at first, then cities took over, hiring professional troops and encouraging playwrights to create new scripts.

In Madrid, which became the capital of Spain in 15 60 three or four autos were produced every year, usually a mix of new plays and revivals.

The plays were performed using elaborate two story pageant wagons called Carlos Thes would parade around the city, pulled by bulls with gilded horns and accompanied by musicians, jugglers and giant paper puppets.

When the car office reached a playing site, they were joined by another wagon, which opened and became the stage.

The altos were performed in Spain until 17 65.

When really shocker.

Here they were outlawed for being unholy, too much dancing, too many farcical interludes, too much fun.

While the outpost we're going strong Though secular drama began to crystallize, the first important play was not actually a play.

It was Callisto and Mel Libya, a k a.

La Celestina.

A novel in dialogue written around 1500 innit?

A bachelor enlists a procure s, a k a.

Madame Toe Woo.

A young sheltered woman.

The bachelor servants kill the madam in a botched sort of double cross.

The bachelor then falls off a letter and dies while visiting his love, and she commits suicide in despair.

This takes 16 acts 21 in the revised edition.

So yeah, no one's gonna be staging that.

But it was widely read, and other writers were inspired by its mix of high drama and low comedy around the same time, a few Spanish dramatists who'd spent some time in Italy, started writing comedies and Pastora.

Lt's thes plays were about shepherds and shepherdesses and Country Life, though, were only ever presented at the court, so their influence was limited.

But late in the 16th century, a professional theater emerged alongside countless new forms.

Spanish playwrights loved new forms.

We've got chivalric plays about knights and ladies.

We got plays about the minor nobility.

We got situation comedies and comedies of manners.

We got mythology, plays and miracle plays and a whole genre of plays about corpses.

Yeah, I bet you could get a part.

I mean, you'd have to work on your range a little bit and, you know, like delivering lines.

Spain also had a pretty unusual theater design.

Some of the best seats in the house were actually in ah house.

The first professional theaters were built in the 15 seventies, and they're called core Alice or courtyards because they were built in courtyards.

The houses on either side were the walls of the theater, and the middle patio was for standing Spectators, and if you had a little bit more money, you could sit in the grotto us rows of seats with roofs or briefs roof roof roofs, whichever one you like either way covered covers overhead.

In the back of the theater was a snack bar that sold fruit and drinks and above it, a gallery where women sat and sometimes through fruit, also cucumbers.

Sometimes there were police to keep the women from getting too rowdy.

The windows of the house is helped to form private boxes or oppose Santos.

Usually, grills were placed over the windows so that residents couldn't sneak in.

Though some homeowners made special arrangements for box seats.

The boxes were the only places where men and women could sit together, and even then they had to prove they were members of the same family.

And even then, the women still usually wore masks.

Audiences were lively and noisy, and if they liked a performance, they would shout Victor.

They brought whistles and rattles with them.

Plays were scheduled every day except Saturday, beginning in the afternoon.

They usually featured a bunch of singing and dancing.

Before the action, there were 8 to 12 professional companies licensed by the court.

Most of them had about 20 actors and a few young apprentices.

Women acted, though sometimes there were laws against it.

And the church remained worried about immorality and cross dressing.

Spain had a lot of playwrights, and you're gonna need a lot of playwrights if you're gonna write 30,000 plays in 100 years.

Yeah, you heard right.

That's one estimate of the Spanish Golden Age or Siglo de Oro.

And guess what?

We have most of them.

There are so many that scholars haven't even studied the malls like Frank Zappa Records or R.

L.

Stein novels.

Fans of the Spanish golden age are spoiled for choice.

Sir Von Takes, when he wasn't writing both parts of Donkey Ho Tae wrote some great plays.

So did tears today Molina, who gave us our version of the Don Juan legend.

But today we're gonna take a brief look at two dramatists, Felix Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderon de la Barca.

Low Pay was born in Madrid in 15 62.

Cervantes called him the Phoenix of wits for his unparalleled output.

He's one of the most prolific literary figures in all of history.

Having written nearly 1000 plays, of which we have 450 he also wrote 3000 Assan.

It's Shakespeare only wrote 154.

Would a slacker remember how I said that most Spanish plays were about love and honor?

Yeah, that was because of low pay.

That's his bag.

He was in tow, juicy female roles, funny low life characters and suspenseful plots that magically end happily.

A few of his plays air still performed, including 20 Over Houna or the Sheep Well, where some abused Villagers come together to Kill a Rape e ruler.

Calderone, born in 1600 eventually became even more popular than low pay.

We have, ah 100 of his plays, and 80 of those were out of Sacramento.

Alice.

For more than 30 years, his outlaws were the only ones performed in Madrid, and they are beautiful in terms of secular plays.

He specialized in Cape and sword comedies and philosophical dramas.

His plays aren't as light or eventful as low pace, but they aren't Maur thoughtful and often more elegant.

They have really beautiful poetry, so we're gonna look more closely at one of Calderon's plays.

16 35 Life is a Dream or la vida es sueno that scream together thought bubble a woman disguised as a man is wandering through the hills of Poland as you d'oh When she finds a man chained to a tower that bearded guy Che Sei goes Mondo.

It turns out that he is the heir to the Polish throne.

Congrats.

Meanwhile, back at the palace, King Basilio is conveniently explaining why he had to chain a dude up.

When Sagas Window was born.

The king received a prophecy that sagas Mondo would kill him and destroy the country.

So he tried to prevent it.

Haven't we seen this in Greek tragedy somewhere, King Basilio has decided to give Segundo a chance.

He has a tutor drug sagas Mondo and carry him to the palace.

When sagas window wakes up, he's told that he's a prince and should go and do some princely things.

And it doesn't go so well.

He gets lustful, he gets angry.

He throws a servant off of a balcony.

He challenges a nobleman to a duel.

So the king has him sedated again and returned to his tower sagas.

Mondo wakes up believing that his time at the palace was just a dream.

He tells his tutor about the dream and the Tudor tells him that even in dreams, we have to try to act nobly and not throw people off balconies.

The people find out about the king's experiment and that they have a prince.

They rebel because succession super important to them, I guess, and say Ghost.

Bondo gets a chance for revenge and his royal right.

But sagas window spares the king.

So the king, realizing that sagas window has changed, acknowledges him as a son and heir and sagas.

Mondo promises to behave with goodness and virtue, asleep or awake.

Thanks that bubble at the end, Segundo says.

What is life?

A frenzy?

What is life?

An illusion, a shadow off fiction and the greatest good is small for all of life is a dream, and dreams are only dreams.

It's nice, right?

This is a religious allegory based on the idea that life is a dream until death awakens us to a greater life with God.

It's also an invitation.

Tow us the audience to think about our own lives and how we should conduct them, whether we're directing our actions towards an eventual heaven or working towards making life better here on earth.

Calderone died in 16 81 and the golden age of Spanish theater kind of died with him.

But don't start crying into your monte a just yet, because next time we're gonna drop in on France, where neoclassicism, based on some pretty weird readings of Aristotle, is going strong.

But until then, curtain Crash Course Theater is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios over to their channel to check out some of their shows, like the art Assignment and Eons, and it's okay to be smart Crash course.

Peter is filming the Chat and Stacy Emma Gold Studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is produced with the help of all of these very nice people.

Our animation team crash course exists thanks to the generous support our patrons.

Patriot is a voluntary subscription service where you can support the content you love through a monthly donation and help keep crash course free for everyone forever.