University of Virginia Library

Towards a New Chronology for the Dramatic Eclogues of Juan Del Encina
by
Henry W. Sullivan

In spite of a growing modern interest in the varied artistic achievements of the noted poet, playwright and composer of the Spanish Renaissance, Juan del Encina (1468-1529?), the lopsided picture of his evolution and creative growth established by Don Emilio Cotarelo y Mori has remained the standard, largely unchallenged one for nearly half a century.[1] Increased interest in Encina's multiple talents over the last two decades has taken numerous forms: re-editings of his influential drama in sound, inexpensive volumes,[2] editions of his poetry,[3] musical criticism and performance of his music live or on long-playing records,[4] and new monographic studies in

English.[5] Cotarelo's picture of Encina's growth, however, might be summed up by comparing his precocious career to a firework display that had all but guttered out by the poet's twenty-eighth birthday. It will be our modest purpose in this article to question and modify the reasoning by which Cotarelo came to this view of Encina's life and work. In 1496, the year of the first publication of Encina's Cancionero at Salamanca, the vast bulk of the poet's writings, it is true, some sixteen thousand lines of lyric verse, a prose Arte de poesía castellana, an idiosyncratic rendering of Virgil's Bucolics, sundry prologues and the first eight eclogues written for the Duke of Alba's court, had already appeared. Since Cotarelo dated most of the dramas that figured for the first time in subsequent reprints of the Cancionero as works produced by Encina prior to 1497 and published later, it would be possible to come to the conclusion with Don Emilio that the Salamancan's talent had indeed deserted him by the time he passed thirty. Obliged by the evidence of his questionable dating procedures to view Encina's career in two discrete halves, Cotarelo could write in 1928: "Juan del Encina compuso todas sus obras conocidas, menos dos, la Trivagia y la Farsa de Plácida y Victoriano, antes de su primer viaje a Italia y apenas cumplidos los treinta años de edad. Y al considerar que su vida alcanzó la cifra casi normal de sesenta y un años, el hecho nos produce el efecto como de un autor malogrado, tanto más cuanto podemos comprender el número y variedad de sus obras y dada su gran facilidad para componer lo mucho que pudo haber producido en los otros treinta años de su existencia" (Prólogo, p. 28; my emphasis). As recently as 1972, Anthony van Beysterveldt has repeated Cotarelo's perception of the matter as if that critic's informed opinion were actually an objective fact. In a monograph quite masterful in other respects, the Dutch critic unreservedly states: "Todo lo que se ha conservado de su obra literaria fue escrito antes de cumplir el autor los treinta años descontando la Egloga de Plácida y Victoriano y la ya mencionada Trivagia, obra esta última compuesta cuando ya tenía cumplidos los cincuenta años."[6] Neither critic can then repress the impulse to wag an admonishing finger at Encina across time for having wasted his energies in hedonistic revelry instead of sticking to his writing.[7]

Such a picture is not only inaccurate and unjust, it is misleading with regard to Encina's steady maturation and psychological integrity as an artist and, worse still, palpably distorts the story of Spanish secular drama's experimental but lusty beginnings. Cotarelo's widely accepted chronology is very far from definitive and the steps of reasoning employed to sustain it are on occasion so complicated that Cotarelo's virtuosity may easily baffle the reader into silently consenting to positive distortions. To modify this picture, it will be necessary to recapitulate the interesting evidence suggested by J. Caso González for a revised chronology of the early eclogues I-VIII,[8] and advance original arguments building on Crawford's and Kohler's work to revise the order of eclogues IX-XIV forward in time.[9] We also plan to include the controversial Egloga interlocutoria in this series and round out our revision with some closing remarks on Encina's later poetry. This patient sifting of evidence and minutiae will necessarily be set against the background of Encina's professional and intellectual growth and peripatetic shifts of domicile; consequently, problems of dating, bibliography, and biography will assume a dimension of prime importance. From the synthesis of these results, a very different Juan del Encina emerges both as man and artist.

I. The Sequence of Eclogues I-VIII

The first eight eclogues appeared together in the princeps edition of Encina's Cancionero published under the poet's own supervision at Salamanca in 1496, though they do not follow the sequence of the festivals in the Christian calendar which they celebrate (that is, Christmas, nos. I-II; Easter, nos. III-IV; Carnival and Lent, nos. V-VI). The four pairs of plays also form complementary units as to dramatic sense since the

second playlet always acts as a sequel to the first. Taking the traditional date of 1492 for Encina's dramatic beginnings, Cotarelo situated the Christmas eclogues I and II on Christmas Eve, 1492, the Easter pair III and IV in Holy Week of the following Spring, 1493, the Carnival eclogues V and VI in Shrovetide of the next year 1494. Erroneously supposing that Eclogues VII and VIII also celebrated Christmas (there is no mention of anything to do with Christmas in either!), Cotarelo assigned VII to Christmas of 1494 and VIII, said numerous times in the text iself to take place exactly a year later, to Christmas of 1495. The Cancionero left the press on June 20, 1496, according to its colophon.

Now this chronology takes two very important things for granted: (1) that 1492 was the date of Encina's first plays, and (2) the sequence in the printed Cancionero is the actual sequence of composition. The traditional date of 1492 for Encina's dramatic début has no documentary basis in fact and derives from the well-known passage in Agustín de Rojas' loa on the origins of the Spanish theater in his Viaje entretenido of 1603. Commenting on the year of the fall of Granada, Rojas wrote:

Now while the Moorish capitulation and Columbus' landfall in America both took place in 1492, the Inquisition had been established already by 1478 and the campaigns of Gonzalo de Córdoba ("el Gran Capitán") against the French in the kingdom of Naples did not begin till after the death of Ferdinand I of Naples in 1494. Kohler, writing on the rather blurry historicism of Rojas and the unreliability of the date 1492 for Encina's début, accurately observed: "Offenbar hat Rojas, wenn er von dem ersten berühmten spanischen Dichter, Juan de la Ençina spricht, der in den Tagen des Columbus und Ferdinands des Katholischen lebt, nicht ein bestimmtes Jahr im Auge, sondern will nur eine Epoche allgemein charakterisieren" (Sieben Eklogen, p. 20). Menéndez y Pelayo actually took this arbitrary date to "fix" the entry of Encina into Alba's household. He writes: "La más antigua de estas composiciones escénicas, que es una égloga de noche de Navidad representada en 1492, nos permite fijar la fecha en que Juan del Encina entró como familiar en el castillo de Alba de Tormes."[11] This "fact" has been mechanically repeated ever since.

As to our second reservation, J. Caso González has adduced convincing historical evidence to suggest that the eight eclogues were actually written within a year of each other and in the sequence of the festivals of the Christian calendar, not in the order printed. Basing his argument primarily on the references in Carnival eclogue V to imminent war with France, Caso González fixed the year of the piece as 1496. Beneyto grieves in the play over the departure of the Duke of Alba ". . . antes mucho de mes muerto, / y que al marzo ha de partir" (Eglogas completas, V, ll. 39-40). Beneyto is later overjoyed to hear that a cessation of hostilities has been declared (ll. 197-205). Against the suggestion of Crawford and others that the pact referred to in Encina's text was the peaceful transfer of Roussillon and Sardinia to Ferdinand by Charles VIII of France on September 10, 1493, Caso suggests that Encina referred to troop movements under way in the spring of 1496. At that time, Ferdinand the Catholic was engaged in campaigns in the kingdom of Naples, as we have seen above. Towards the end of 1495 and especially in the early months of the following year, Ferdinand built up a diversionary campaign against his adversary attacking France from the frontiers of Roussillon. He instructed the various military Orders and certain grandees of Spain to muster in the war zone by June. Alba may have been among them, but decided to leave somewhat earlier in March (as Bras' words in lines 39-40 would seem to indicate). Charles, however, beleaguered on two fronts, opened convincing overtures of peace at about this time and the Castilians felt confident enough to begin demobilization procedures. Though the French king later proved treacherous, it would have appeared highly probable at Carnival time in 1496 that the risk of open war near Spanish soil had palpably diminished.

A closer examination of dates for the year 1496 bears out the plausibility of Caso's contentions. In the year 1496, Easter Sunday fell on April 3 and Carnival was celebrated the customary forty-odd days earlier in mid-February.[12] Precisely speaking, Shrove Tuesday of the leap year 1496 was February 16 and Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of Lent, fell on February 17. Prior to the Tuesday night of the performance of V, then, it is common knowledge that the Duke of Alba has been summoned to appear in Roussillon by June, but plans to leave earlier, ". . . y que al

marzo ha de partir." Early word arrives of a truce and the alarm of the Alba household passes. Commenting on the raids into France of the commander Enrique Enriquez de Guzmán in 1496, the historian Prescott confirms: "The French, who had concentrated a considerable force in the south, retaliated by similar inroads, in one of which they succeeded in surprising the fortified town of Salsas. The works, however, were in so dilapidated a state, that the place was scarcely tenable, and it was abandoned on the approach of the Spanish army. A truce soon followed, which put an end to further operations in that quarter" (my emphasis).[13]

Caso fixed the dates of the two Christmas eclogues by a reference (Eglogas completas, I, ll. 28-31) to the fear in which Alba was supposedly held by France and Portugal. The latter fact, connected with the demise of João II of Portugal on October 25, 1495, and the military support provided by Alba to his successor Prince Don Manuel, suggested the date of I and II, therefore, as December 24, 1495. In the prose preface to the First Eclogue, there also occurs an important reference to the Cancionero of 1496: ". . . prometió que venido el mayo, sacaría la copilación de todas sus obras porque se las usurpavan y corrompían" (Eglogas completas, p. 69). The "following May" would be only a month short of the precise date on the Cancionero's colophon of June 20. If, as seems unlikely, 1492 were the true year for Eclogue I's composition, then the promised deadline would have been missed by a highly improbable three and a half years. In the Eighth Eclogue, Encina speaking in the guise of Mingo actually does present the promised Cancionero to the Duke and Duchess of Alba. Since Eclogue VIII was necessarily written before it went to press, the presentation scene here must refer to the gift of Encina's collected plays, poems, prologues and so on, written out in fair copy and ready for the printer, not to the handing over of the Cancionero as such. The poems are referred to by Mingo thus: "que trayo para les dar, / agora, por cabo de año, / el esquilmo del rebaño / quanto pude arrebañar" (ll. 53-56). The image of sheep-shearing in late Spring and the reference previously to "este verano" (l. 40) harmonize perfectly with the period May-June under discussion, and the phrase "por cabo de año" (preposterously construed by Cotarelo as a reference to Christmastime) can be viewed, with Caso, as a reference to the end of Encina's first year of service at Alba's court.[14]

No critical authority has questioned the relationship, proclaimed numerous

times in the text, of Eclogue VIII to Eclogue VII. The latter was performed one year earlier than the former. Hence, if VIII dates from late Spring of 1496, VII must have been written in late Spring of 1495. By process of elimination, the two Holy Week eclogues, III and IV, must fall within the single, twelve-month span during which I-VIII came into being, that is Easter of 1496. In that year Good Friday fell on April 1 and Easter Sunday (the possible day of the performances of both plays) on April 3. Adding these specifics to Caso's proposed new chronology, the following composite picture emerges:

• (1) Eclogue VII (en reqüesta de unos amores), late Spring—early Summer of 1495,
• (2) the Christmas eclogues I and II, December 24, 1495,
• (3) the Carnival eclogues V and VI, Shrove Tuesday, February 16, 1496,
• (4) the Holy Week eclogues III and IV, April 1 and 3, 1496, and
• (5) Eclogue VIII, a year later than VII, late Spring—early Summer of 1496, but necessarily prior to June 20.

Before leaving the issue of Eclogues I-VIII, certain new implications raised by these chronological revisions must be examined. Foremost among these is the obvious gap created in Encina's biography. Where would he have been between roughly 1490, the date his studies at Salamanca terminated at around age twenty-two, and the summer of 1495? Moreover in whose service was he during this period? To fill this gap, José Luis Varela has adduced fascinating new evidence concerning Encina's possible activity as a corregidor and circuit judge in Aguayo (Santander) early in 1495.[15] According to a document in the Simancas archives, one Juan del Enzina was designated by the Catholic Kings to recruit troops for the war brewing with France and had discovered his agent, Alonso de San Pedro, to be guilty of bribery and fraud in receiving pay-offs from men of military age wishing to avoid the draft. The document bears the date March 23, 1495. Since Encina's patron, the Chancellor of Salamanca University Don Gutierre Alvarez de Toledo, was related to the royal family, and since Encina (described in a papal bull of 1500 as "vir dominus Johannes del Enzina clericus Salmantinus Bachelarius in legibus") had studied law,[16] there is nothing intrinsically improbable in his having worked for Ferdinand and Isabella in a legal capacity early in 1495.

A second important consideration revolves around Encina's activity as a musician and composer. According to Mons. Higinio Anglès, Encina's

music was composed for Alba's court in the 1490's and transmitted to the royal repertoires in Castile via the regular interchange of minstrels and musicians.[17] Now if in the early 1490's Encina was actually in the service of the Catholic Monarchs, his musical settings may have passed in the other direction, that is from the royal chapels to the Duke's scribes who collected the Cancionero musical de palacio largely from scores in the court of Alba de Tormes.[18] Certain of Encina's sixty-two extant compositions may also have been penned after his appointment as resident dramatist in 1495.

In a third consideration, evidence suggests Encina was in the service of the Catholic Kings since before the capitulation of Granada on January 2, 1492. In the prologue to his paraphrase of Virgil's Bucolics addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, Encina claims that no one can adequately express the greatness of their deeds. Then he adds: "¿Quanto más yo, que aun agora soy nueuo en las armas e muy flaco para nauegar por el gran mar de vuestras alabanças?"[19] The use of armas here could, of course, be merely a trope in such an encomiastic context. The recital of campaign victories on this page and the specific reference to Granada two lines further down, however, heighten the possibilities for its literalness. Did he then serve in the Granada campaign in some capacity? In his Trivagia (1521) Encina compares the sparse and level landscape of Jericho to the Vale of Granada in language suggesting he had visited the Moorish stronghold. He comments: "Que propio semeja, si buen viso tengo, / la vega en España, que vi de Granada."[20] Finally, in one of Encina's finest villancicos, the opening refrain runs: "Levanta Pascual levanta / aballemos a Granada / que se suena ques tomada."[21] Was this poem written at the time and place of the events which its evergreen air of topicality suggests? Marshaling these conjectures in chronological order, Encina's early career might have evolved thus: graduation in law and minor orders from Salamanca in 1490-91; part of the retinue of the Catholic Kings at the fall of Granada, January 2, 1492; a period of artistic activity, chiefly musical, at the royal court, 1492-94; a period as circuit judge for the same monarchs, spring, 1495; entry into the Alba household and promotion to master of ceremonies and resident dramatist in early summer, 1495.

II. Encina's Professional Troubles. Eclogue IX and the Egloga interlocutoria

No doubt whatever exists concerning the date of Encina's so-called Egloga de las grandes lluvias, assigned by López-Morales the number IX. The nickname was conferred on it by the nineteenth-century German hispanist, J. N. Böhl von Faber, and refers to the storms that hit western Castile in the Christmas season of 1498. Encina himself records the fact in a passage where the shepherd Juan talks of ". . . el año noventa y ocho, / entrando en noventa y nueve" (ll. 83-84). In those days, Spaniards still reckoned the New Year from December 25 onward. This eclogue makes the first mention of a crucial incident in Encina's career: the bitter battle for the cantorship of the Cathedral of Salamanca, a vacancy created by the death of Encina's old music teacher, Fernando de Torrijos, late in 1498. In the middle of this Christmas eclogue there occurs a twenty-five line digression on Encina's musical career and his ambitions for the post. In December he still aspired to succeed Torrijos but feared the post would not fall to himself since the appointment was by election and the majority of votes were against him.

Encina's main rival for the cantorship was his fellow Salamancan, Lucas Fernández, a man of similar talents. Both he and his uncle, Alonso González de Cantalapiedra, are obliquely referred to in the First Eclogue. Lucas Fernández could count on the support of his uncle, who held the influential post of Archpriest of Alba, as well as on one Francisco de Salamanca, another member of the chapter. Encina enjoyed the backing of the Archdeacon of Camases, Bernadino López de Logroño, who on October 24, 1498, had formulated an opinion urging Encina's candidacy should no external candidate be found to take charge of the contested vacancy. In view of this split vote, the chapter compromised by nominating a committee which, in 1499, gave the position not to one person but to three, one of whom was Lucas Fernández. Incensed at the outcome of the matter, Encina decided to quit the Salamanca region and left for Rome, probably later in 1499, to plot his revenge.[22]

Now further light is shed on this incident in the disputed Egloga interlocutoria, to which we have conveniently assigned the arabic numeral 11. This eclogue was first recorded by Salvá in his Catálogo, where he stated that it was bound with four other eclogues of Encina, though unfortunately he did not mention which.[23] Salvá was convinced that the work came from the pen of Encina; and Urban Cronan, who published the text in 1916,

also supposed him to be the author.[24] Ralph E. House, writing in the same year, supported Cronan's contention and Cotarelo accepted the Encinian paternity of the eclogue in 1928.[25] S. Griswold Morley rejected these findings in 1925, however, on metrical grounds. He closed his prosodic analysis with the words: "Observe that Encina never used quintillas, nor changed meters within one piece. The strophic evidence points, then, to another authorship."[26] López-Morales does not consider Encina the author (Eglogas completas, p. 46) and O. T. Myers did not include the work in his study of Encina's language.[27]

Despite the current climate of opinion, it is difficult to imagine anyone other than Encina as the play's author. The rubric of the prose preface strongly resembles the wording and style of Encina's other prologues, though in this case its preface does contain inaccuracies of plot summary. The shepherd names Gil, Benito and Pascuala had already been used before; only Pascual (representing the author) is new. We find the Duke and Duchess of Alba sitting in their hall as in previous eclogues and they are the subject of a long eulogy at the end. We also find similarities of phrasing and language with earlier plays. Ralph E. House, commenting on these various parallels, concluded: "The structure of the play, its inclusion of heterogeneous themes, and the development of each theme are identical with Encina's earlier style. Reference has . . . been made to the structural similarity of the first part with Eglogas I and II. In its entirety it may be compared also to Egloga IX. This play shows likewise a distinct tripartite division. The first part is made up largely of references to the personal affairs of Juan, the second is the game of pares y nones, while the concluding scenes treat of the birth of Christ. These are substantially the themes of Egloga IX taken in reverse order."[28]

As far as Morley's arguments go concerning the atypical strophic practices in the play, these seem insufficient to us to warrant denying Encina's paternity. Since Encina used a considerable variety of octosyllabic arrangements, including some five-line patterns, there is nothing intrinsically extraordinary in his employing quintillas in most of the Egloga interlocutoria. As far as arte mayor is concerned, Encina employed it throughout the Egloga de los tres pastores in three different rhyme-schemes. As regards changes of meter within one play, contrary to the impression

created by Morley, they occur frequently in Plácida y Victoriano. Finally, to deny Encina the paternity of the work in question because he attempted something new in the matter of strophic form seems an extraordinary slap in the face to the very initiator of Spanish drama itself. Certainly it does not appear to us a strong enough argument on its own to outweigh the heavy balance of evidence that favors Encina's authorship.

The most important consequences of ascribing 11 to Encina concern his biography and the problem of dating. It is really a deposition in dramatic form that deals another blow in the wrangle over the Salamanca cantorship. Pascual clearly stands for Encina and Benito is Lucas Fernández. Pascual's harsh words to Benito in the opening lines and the references to his uncle (ll. 33-40) leave little doubt about the matter. Pascual's remarks may also furnish us with material on which to base a date for the play's composition. Since the shepherd expressly states that it is "now in the summer" and the winter season is still several months away, this might suggest that Christmas was the pretext for writing the work rather than the occasion. Now since the Fernández affair blew up in the Fall of 1498 and the Salamanca chapter decided to divided the controversial post three ways on January 11, 1499, giving Encina's rival one third, it seems reasonable to suppose that Encina composed the play in the summer of 1499. He would still be seething from the humiliation of his abortive candidacy, hoping desperately for Alba to make more supportive gestures toward him and tempted already perhaps by the prospect of greener pastures in Italy. Kohler, in his discussion of the play's possible date (Sieben Eklogen, p. 34), noted that Encina probably abandoned Spain shortly after 1498.

Further evidence of the polemical nature of this eclogue is furnished by the title, for which no critic has offered any explanation. The term 'interlocutory' is a legal one and still in use in modern times. In law one may still refer to an interlocutory decree, for example. An obvious reflection of Encina's student training as an attorney, the term denotes rulings in cases still in contention which are not definitive, merely intermediate or temporary. The meaning of the title becomes clear if Encina did not regard the cantorship battle as having been definitively decided. And indeed the matter was not settled, since in 1502 Encina succeeded in getting himself nominated to the self-same post through the papal intervention of Alexander VI. This eclogue, then, should be viewed as a dramaticolegal maneuver, an 'interlocutory' statement pending a final ruling. Though Francisco de Madrid had used his primitive Egloga around 1495 to attack the political ambitions of Charles VIII of France, it took the irrepressible Encina to angle the eclogue format to further his own political ends.

According to Georges Cirot, there might be a curious postscript to Encina's Salamancan career. He noted in 1941: 'Il n'est pas hors de propos de rappeler ici ce que le duc de Berwick y Alba faisait connaître dans son discours de réception à l'Academia de la Historia: de juin 1498 à juillet 1500, Encina fut pensionné par le duc d'Albe (3,000 maravedis) pour

étudier à Salamanque; donc après que ses huit premières pièces (églogas ou representaciones) eurent été présentées et même publiées (1496)."[29] What Encina could have wished to study at Salamanca at age thirty is a difficult question to answer. If the plan to seek his fortune in Italy had been brewing in his mind for some time, then he might have undertaken the study of Italian. Some elements in the maturer plays suggest he had a more than common knowledge of Greek. In XII, all three shepherds have names of Greek origin. Fileno's derives from philo, to love, Cardonio's from cardios, the heart, and Zambardo's probably from zampoña (<Gk. symphonia). In XI, Febea probably derives from phoebe and the old procuress, Eritea, in XIV must get her name from the Greek eritheia meaning 'working for hire.' Encina could well have felt the desire to acquire either or both of these languages before making his move. Whatever the truth of the matter, Encina clearly did not avail himself of the stipend up to July of 1500, since he had established himself in Rome by at least the spring of that year and had most probably arrived in the course of the previous year 1499. We must presume a certain interval of time which even the astute social climber Juan del Encina would have needed to ingratiate himself so fully with the reigning Spanish pope.

III. Encina's Remove to Italy: Eclogues X and XI-XIV

The play nicknamed El triunfo del Amor by Bartolomé José Gallardo and assigned the number X by López-Morales offers no problems as to dating. The 1507 Salamanca printing of Encina's Cancionero contains this eclogue and two separate editions have survived: one at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, another at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. But the real date of the play is clear from its context and original title: Representacion ante el muy esclarecido y muy ilustre principe don Juan, nuestro soberano señor. Prince Don Juan, who we must suppose presided at its performance, was married in Burgos on April 2, 1497, to Margarita of Austria, the daughter of Emperor Maximilian. By October 4 of the same year, in Salamanca, the Prince had gone to a tragically early grave. It seems logical that, at the suggestion of the Duke of Alba, Encina composed the work as a festivity to entertain the royal newly-weds.

Now the date of this play, 1497, proves crucial in the chronology of Cotarelo which we are attempting to discredit and will be dealt with in due course. Meanwhile it provides the basis for a second point of disagreement. Cotarelo always contended that Encina only saw the princeps edition of his Cancionero (1496) through the press and that all subsequent editions (1501, 1505, 1507, 1509, 1516) were done during Encina's absence in Rome.

Dismissing for bibliographical and chronological purposes the validity of any subsequent re-editing, he writes: ". . . no tiene valor ninguno, porque ENCINA estaba fuera de España y no intervino en ninguna de las impresiones de su compilación, que los editores enriquecieron a su gusto" (Prólogo, p. 25).

This is far from certain, however. When Encina's Cancionero was reprinted at Seville in 1501 and at Burgos in 1505, it contained no new additions with respect to dramatic content. But the 1507 Cancionero, printed in Encina's native Salamanca, contained two new additions: IX, the Egloga de las grandes lluvias, and X, El triunfo del Amor. We can only speculate as to how these works were introduced into the 1507 edition, as Encina was indeed in Rome at the time. They date, as we have seen, from 1498 and 1497 respectively. Encina may conceivably have conveyed the manuscripts to one of his brothers (Pedro de Hermosilla perhaps?), since his family frequently acted on his behalf in legal and other business matters. And it is a very different matter with the 1509 edition, also published at Salamanca. Encina had suceeded in winning the favors of Pope Alexander VI shortly after his arrival in Rome late in 1499 or in 1500. Encina's fortunes grew still further under Alexander's successor, Julius II. Probably towards the end of 1508, Pope Julius conferred on Encina the dignity of the archdeaconry of Málaga in southern Spain. Encina ensured that nothing would go wrong with this appointment by obtaining signatures from King Ferdinand himself and an authorization for the papal bull from Don Diego Ramírez de Villaescusa, Bishop of Málaga (1500-1508). Encina's brother, Pedro de Hermosilla, acted as his attorney and presented the documents to the chapter at Málaga on April 11, 1509. Encina could have arrived in person at any time after this date. He signed his first extant capitular act on January 2 of the following year, 1510.

There is, therefore, no valid reason to suppose that Encina was not in Spain in the summer of 1509. The colophon of the 1509 Cancionero reads as follows: "Fue esta presente obra empri-/mida por Hans gysser aleman / de Silgenstat en la muy noble / & leal cibdad de Salamanca: la / qual dicha obra se acabo a. vij. / del mes d'agosto del año de mil / & quinientos & nueve años." Between the act of possession by proxy on April 11 and the date of the new edition, August 7, 1509, almost four full months were available to Encina to travel to his native city, consult with Hans Gysser the printer, and leave him the two new eclogues for inclusion in the Cancionero: XI, the Egloga de los tres pastores, and XIII, the Aucto del repelón. He would then have traveled south to take up his post in Málaga as archdeacon.

Given that the plausible scenario suggested above is the true one, we must conclude that Encina brought the two new plays with him from Italy and that he almost certainly composed them there. Cotarelo opined differently, insisting that both had been composed in Spain before the

year 1497. It is to this difficult and controversial problem that we must now turn.

Writing in 1894,[30] and repeating his argument in 1928 to refute Crawford's specific findings concerning the indebtedness of Encina's Egloga de los tres pastores to the Second Eclogue of Antonio Tebaldeo (1463-1537), Cotarelo asserted that a play of Lucas Fernández provided a terminus ad quem of 1497 for most of Encina's undated plays. From Fernández's Farsa o cuasi comedia del soldado published at Salamanca in 1514, Cotarelo adduces the following passage as an overt reference to Pelayo, the hero of Encina's Triunfo del Amor, struck down by an arrow from the bow of Cupid:

Elsewhere in the same play, Cotarelo emphasizes lines 392-393: "éste cuido en la montaña / ogaño a un pastor hirió." This second reference to Pelayo and the word ogaño (that is, "this year") would fix the date of the Farsa of Fernández and Encina's Triunfo del Amor as one and the same: 1497. Thus, argues Cotarelo, the other overt references to Encinian characters in Fernández's Christmas drama (Gil in Encina's Eclogues VII and VIII, Fileno in XII, Cristino in XI) fix the dates of all Encinian dramas where those characters appear as prior to Christmas of 1497.

This ingenious but circular reasoning bases the interrelationship of Encina's works and their dates upon citations from a second author, which require the known date of an Encina play as the starting-point of the argument in the first place. Moreover, all stands or falls by the literal interpretation of the word ogaño to mean 1497. Answering Don Emilio, Kohler (Sieben Eklogen, 45-46n., 58-61) observed that ogaño might be a rhetorical flourish at best. He also suggested a later date of 1509 for Fernández's Farsa; one or both of these arguments would suffice to dismantle Cotarelo's shaky scaffold of reasoning. The peril, however, lay in refusing to recognize that Encina almost certainly composed Eclogues XI-XIV after leaving for Rome and that: (1) these dramas belong to a later phase of Encina's creative career, and (2) they all show signs of Italian influence. Against Crawford's manifest textual proof that Encina had successfully plagiarized Tebaldeo in his Egloga de los tres pastores, for example, Cotarelo was forced to argue

that it was Tebaldeo who had plagiarized Encina! As Crawford himself later wrote: "Leaving out of the question, for the time being, the internal evidence to determine whether Tebaldeo's eclogue or Encina's play is earlier, how is it possible to believe that Tebaldeo, residing at Bologna or Mantua, should hear of this unpublished play of Encina (which first was printed in 1509), should make a version of it in which every diffuse element should be rigorously excluded and Encina's play of 704 lines should be cut down to 151 lines; and that the Italian version should be printed in the fall of 1498, at least two years before Encina made his first visit to Italy?"[32]

Apart from the commonsense arguments of Crawford and the probability, described by us above, that Encina brought the Tres pastores and the Aucto del repelón with him from Italy to Salamanca in summer, 1509, a long eulogy of Oriana in the Tres pastores by Cardonio (ll. 394-412) would seem to be a reminiscence of Montalvo's Amadís, the earliest known edition of which appeared at Zaragoza in 1508. As to the Aucto del repelón, its strange non-standard Spanish and modified Sayagués might point to a style aimed at wider reader comprehension by a mixed Italian-Spanish audience. Such a hypothesis might explain the continual dropping of prosthetic e before the initial group st, certain cases of the retention of initial f, and some vocabulary.

It remains to add a word on the dates of XI, the Egloga de Cristino y Febea, and XIV, the Farsa de Plácida y Victoriano. The only extant copy of the former work, preserved in Santander, bears no date or place of publication. Barbieri suggested it might have issued from a press in Salamanca some time after 1509. Eduardo Juliá Martínez has surmised of Cristino y Febea that it reflects a moment of spiritual crisis in the life of the author.[33] The play deals with the sudden and ill-advised intention of a cultured young hedonist to abandon the world and devote himself to the religious life in all its ascetic rigor. He is defeated in this design by Cupid and the beauty of the nymph Febea. Though Encina did commit himself to the cloth in 1519 by taking holy orders, he had ample reason to consider doing so already in 1511.

On July 14, 1511, Encina was virtually ousted from the archdeaconry of Málaga by his chapter, discontented at his repeated absences and his lowly status in minor orders as deacon. They decreed that he could only participate and vote in meetings or receive his full stipend if he were to be ordained in sacris. Thus Encina was on the brink of an ultimatum:

commit himself unequivocally to the cloth and the vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience, or lose his status in the Church hierarchy. His torment at this dilemma finds a clear expression in Cristino's vacillations and the play would date, then, from some period in the months around or after July, 1511. Plácida y Victoriano was performed in Rome on January 6, 1513, as attested by a letter of Stazio Gadio. L. F. Moratín stated that there was a Roman edition of the work in 1514. Since Encina left his controversial post in Málaga for a second sojourn in Rome some time after May 7, 1512, the composition of Plácida y Victoriano would have occupied him during the latter months of 1512 in Rome, before the New Year period when the play was being rehearsed for performance. Its long and elaborate nature suggests the work was in the gestation stage for a considerable time.

IV. Encina's Later Poems

When Encina was finally ordained at Rome in spring, 1519, he resolved on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the intention of celebrating his first mass there. He has left an account of this journey in his Trivagia o viage a Jerusalem, published after his return in 1521. The poem is composed in two hundred and thirteen coplas de arte mayor and evidently conceived as a major undertaking inviting comparison with the Trescientas of Encina's poetic idol, Juan de Mena. The devout travelogue was a great success and reprinted many times (1521, 1580, 1606, 1608, 1733, 1786). Encina's ambitious poem has, however, received scant attention from critics and the zealously Catholic Menéndez y Pelayo has doubtless done much to deter a proper reading by his scathing remarks about the poem's lack of true religious inspiration. This is a pity, because set beside Cotarelo's picture of Encina, the autor malogrado, Plácida and the Trivagia seem to hang in space like mere appendages, not as parts of a continuously evolving artistic consciousness. Moreover, the poem tells us the following news of yet another edition of the Cancionero, which unfortunately never left the presses:

It would appear, then, that by 1521 Encina had already begun a new compilation of his works in the region of Rome ("en Lacio nacida") and planned to bring them out shortly ("ya están á raya"). No such Cancionero has survived but we can only surmise that any unpublished works of Encina written in Rome since 1509 were destined to be included. It is certainly regrettable that this final testimony to Encina's later activity, edited with his customary care and thoroughness, is consequently unavailable for scrutiny.

The late R. O. Jones has drawn attention to a MS in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid (no. 17510 of the Gayangos collection), in which we find the Trivagia and a summary in romance of the whole voyage. These were published along with a prose narrative account of the voyage by Enríquez de Rivera, Marquess of Tarifa, in whose company Encina had traveled. In the MS version, there are also a number of villancicos connected with the trip to Jerusalem and a long poem in twenty-eight stanzas of décimas (rhymed ABAAB:CDDCC): Coplas sobre el año de quinientos y veynte y uno de Juan del Encina. The latter describes the droughts, famines, and popular disorders that plagued Seville from 1520 and reached their height in 1521. Some historical corroboration of these events survives in Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga's Annales eclesiásticos y seculares de la muy noble, y muy leal Ciudad de Seville . . . (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1677). He writes: "Pero no permitiò establecerse bien la tranquilidad de la Ciudad, la terrible carestia, que en ella, y su comarca se padecía, y falta de pan, valiendo una fanega de trigo setecientos marauedis, gran suma para aquel tiempo, con que hambrienta, y necessitada la plebe, por auer tardado granos que se esperavan de fuera del Reyno, a ocho del mes de Mayo, segun algunas memorias, que otras lo refieren mas adelante, se amotinò. . . ." (p. 477; my emphasis). Since Encina's account has an eye-witness quality to it, we must assume that he was present in Spain by the summer of 1521. He had been appointed by Pope Leo X to the priorship of the Cathedral of León as early as 1519. One Antonio de Obregón, acting as attorney, took possession of the prior's post in Encina's name on March 14, 1519. The earliest extant evidence of Encina's presence in León are certain capitular acts that he witnessed on November 20, 1523.

V. Conclusion

The poem of 1521, written almost certainly after May of that year, the publishing of the Trivagia in Rome also in 1521, and the ongoing project for a new edition of his complete works all show that Encina, only six or seven years before his death in 1529, was far from written out. By his own admission on folio ii of his 1496 Cancionero, Encina began writing at age fourteen. He tells of "obras . . . hechas por Juã del enzina desde q̃ huvo catorze años hasta los veynte y cinco primeramente." Since on the best evidence Encina was born on July 12, 1468, his poetic activity began therefore in 1482-83 and extended to at least 1521-22, a period of some forty years. Contrary to the impression created by Cotarelo, this activity

was continuous, not violently truncated after the age of thirty. Encina wrote drama steadily after 1496 and miraculously improved his own prototypes. Throughout the 1520's it doubtless remained his intention to leave a complete edition of his works, but old age, palsy and death claimed him first. If all our suggested revisions to the chronology of the Encinian canon proved correct, then, the accompanying table would more accurately portray the writer's career than does Cotarelo's standard account of 1928. We would be forced to assign works such as Fernández's Farsa del soldado a date after 1511, suggesting that Encina was a pioneer in the 1490's, as tradition insists, rather than one of a numerous Castilian "school" (Lucas Fernández, Gil Vicente, Torres Naharro, Garci Sánchez de Badajoz, etc.). We would see him as a man who followed his artistic star resolutely, learning from the Italians and attempting dramas on an ever larger scale. He did not become a mindless orgiast after 1500, but studied avidly, tending the flowers that he himself had planted.

                                     

Title of Play or Poem	No. of López Mor.	Revised Date of Composition and/or Performance	Cotarelo's No. and Date	First Published
0 First poems	--	1482-1493	--	Salamanca, 1496
1 Egloga en reqüesta de unos amores	VII	Early summer, 1495	7 Christmas, 1494	Salamanca, 1496
2 Egloga representada en la noche de la Natividad	I	December 24, 1495	1 Dec. 24, 1492	"
3 Egloga representada en la mesma noche de Navidad	II	December 24, 1495	2 Dec. 24, 1492	"
4 Egloga representada en la noche postrera de Carnal	V	Tuesday, Febr. 16, 1496	5 Shrovetide, 1494	"
5 Egloga representada en la mesma noche de Antruejo	VI	Tuesday, Febr. 16, 1496	6 Shrovetide, 1494	"
6 Representación a la muy bendita pasión	III	Friday, April 1, 1496	3 Holy Week, 1493	"
7 Representación a la santíssima resurrección	IV	Sunday, April 3, 1496	4 Holy Week, 1493	"
8 Egloga representada por las mesmas personas	VIII	Early summer, 1496	8 Christmas, 1495	"
9 El triunfo del Amor	X	April 2-Oct. 4, 1497	11 Summer, 1497	Salamanca, 1507
10 Egloga de las grandes lluvias	IX	December 24, 1498	12 Dec. 24, 1498	Salamanca, 1507
11 Egloga interlocutoria	--	Early summer, 1499	9 Christmas, 1496	Revue Hispanique, 1916 (By Cronan)
12 Egloga de los tres pastores	XII	1508-1509	13 1496	Salamanca, 1509
13 Aucto del repelón	XIII	1507-1509	10 Before 1492	Salamanca, 1509
14 Egloga de Cristino y Febea	XI	Around July, 1511	14 1497	Madrid, 1893 (By Cañete)
15 Farsa de Plácida y Victoriano	XIV	Jun.-Dec., 1512 Perf. Jan. 6, 1513	15 1513	Rome, 1514
16 Trivagia o viage a Jerusalem	--	Late in 1519	-- 1519	Rome, 1521
17 Coplas sobre el año 1521	--	After May, 1521	-- --	Bull. Hisp. Studies 1961 (By Jones)

Fig. 1. Comparative Chronology of Encina's Works

Notes