 Hello, I'm Hugh Richmond. When I first came to California and started to teach Renaissance drama I was a little nervous about how effectively I could evoke the Elizabethan theater and Shakespeare's London. Modern California seemed so remote and far away from those times even though Francis Drake did manage to reach northern California in 1579. However, I soon began to realize that the Spanish The Southwest in California does provide a link between the old world and the new. I began to see the broad outlines of a shared body of Spanish and English dramatic traditions that connects the old world and the new. Conventional history of the Renaissance usually highlights the conflicts of Protestant England and Catholic Spain, but these two seafaring nations shared many cultural affinities. What Spain brought to the new world in drama and theater had broad European roots. Let's first look at the Spanish legacy in California and the Southwest before turning to the Anglo-Hispanic traditions of Renaissance drama from which it emerged. Our Shakespearean connection begins with the religious drama that Spanish conquistadors and missionaries brought to the new world. These religious plays, the pastorellas and pastores, dramatizing stories of the Nativity, were written and performed for the indigenous communities surrounding the Spanish missions throughout California and the Southwest. I became aware of this still vibrant tradition of popular religious drama in visits to our daughter at the University of Texas. In crossing New Mexico with its ancient missions, both ruined and restored, we discovered that Santa Fe's Museum of Folklore preserves a collection of over a hundred scripts of religious Hispanic folk plays based on local oral traditions. In Texas with its many missions, we even found our son-in-law had performed in such plays as a child. These religious folk plays were an intrinsic part of Hispanic and tribal culture in the Southwest and have now been revived as shown in this recent documentary from New Mexico. Here in this remote land of magic and miracles, three distinct cultures, Indian, Hispanic and Anglo, have put generations of conflict behind them and melded in a spiritual bond that reaches its finest hour in the celebration of Christmas. Many years ago, there was another popular Christmas tradition, the performance of an ancient morality play, Los Pastores. The play, which followed the shepherd's journey to see the Christ child, was brought to the Southwest in the 17th century by Catholic missionaries as a way to teach their religion to the native people. As I was growing up, the religious aspects of my upbringing were pretty much Americanized, pretty much standard Catholic, I suppose, outside of the Luminati, yes, but there was this whole oral tradition that was expressed to me by my grandmother, my great-grandmother, of how things were in the old days. Early evidence of Los Pastores lives on in books and letters and in a handful of aging photographs. In 1905, I accompanied a friend to one of these performances. We climbed a little hill where I was surprised to see many lanterns lighting the way. I was told that they were lit every night so that if our Lord should come seeking shelter, he might be shown the way. The performance took place in the open with a large bonfire in the center, the audience on one side and the performers on the other. On Christmas Eve, 1899, we saw Los Pastores at San Rafael, a New Mexican village a hundred miles west of Albuquerque. There was no resident priest so the people were obliged to get up the play themselves without the advice or instruction of anyone in authority. The drama was freely interpreted by the players who added original songs, dialogue and local references. It was most charming. The plays went in and out of favor for over 300 years, but by the 1920s they had virtually disappeared. Then in 1981, two scholars from Taos, New Mexico, Arceño Córdova and Larry Torres, concerned about their rapidly disappearing cultural heritage, decided to restore some of the old, almost forgotten celebrations of their ancestors, including Los Pastores. It's so nice to have young people interested in it. I think that plays a big role in what happens in the community. If somebody takes the interest of the historical aspect of the community and finds out and tries to create an appreciation for culture and tradition. I want you standing all the time. From old manuscripts and fading memories, they pieced together the almost forgotten songs and speeches. I think we know all the lines and Lucifer and Bartolo think they know all the lines and all of a sudden people that are talking to us are telling us about different lines. Like for example, my uncle gave Larry and I a line on Lucifer which was mando el sol, mando la luna, mando ese cielo estrellado y el sol se verá aclizado solo con que yo le mande. And Larry looked at me, I looked at Larry, we hadn't heard that line. It just floored us. It just floored us. Where'd you get it? Where'd you get that? He said that was a standard line. I'm a very good singer because I can sing. First we started singing, hermanos pastor, hermanos querido. For performance at the Soledad Mission in 1803, this pastores or shepherd's play was translated for Christmas staging by students of Holy Names College in Oakland, California. These lyric affirmations of the nativity are disturbed by a vociferous devil trying to seduce the shepherds and their hermit. How soon? How soon you've shown just who you are. This Spanish playlet by Abanyeth includes a dialogue between the hermit and the megalomaniac devil. You need to know that I am great. Who once created heaven's gate and all within it and the stars, the moon and the sun and all earth bears. I love them all and would seek their good. I'd rescue you from those who would deceive you and I'll prove that I'm God. And what if we just arrived? What news, old fool, are your retreats? Give up your heavy sackcloth pleads and stop your lying fear of life. Accept your parents' money right with means to help your agent enjoy what I, your friend, wish you would employ. This Spanish playlet is very like the early English biblical plays of York and Chester. These plays derive from the medieval tradition of drama that once flourished throughout Europe in England as well as Spain. Here is the original Spanish text as written by Abanyeth of the devil's scene just shown. The devil, the plants, the earth and how much it was created. I'm a lover. I'm a friend. I've come here to seek your good. And not your loss. I'm here to deceive you and take you out of your mistake. With what do you want to walk to achieve greater victory? To achieve the victory of seeing me? I am the same God to whom you must make all your adoration. And you old damn? Don't you show your slyness? What have you been doing to yourself at all? Forget that heavy sackcloth pleads and that heavy sackcloth pleads and stop your lying fear of being a pervert. In early plays like this, one can already see some outlines of Renaissance drama. The didactic theme broadly played in an open-air performance for citizens with an appetite for lively spectacle. What Spain brought to the new world already embodied European theatrical traditions. In Spain and England, the open-air popular venues of the medieval religious drama lived on in the Renaissance theatres of Lopidovega and Shakespeare, which were identical in basic structure. Surviving Renaissance examples in Spain, such as this one at Almagro near Madrid, are still in use. The Almagro Theatre features open-air stage and galleries, and it brings audiences very close to the stage action. Shakespeare's Restored Globe Theatre in London, where my students performed Much Ado About Nothing, exhibits the same features and underscores the popular character of much Renaissance theatre. Lopidovega in fact provides the populist aesthetic for the Elizabethan theatres practices, which Shakespeare only implies, for Lopidovega tells us about the new art of making plays in Spain, where, he says, comedies are written contrary to ancient art. And to give my experience, I have to obey those who can command me in the audience, gilding the errors of the mob. In such popular drama, Lope says, the tragic is mixed with the comic Terence with Seneca, and this variety gives much delight. And nature, because of this kind of variety, also has beauty. Shakespeare matches Lope's populist writings in As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and What You Will, the so-called Twelfth Night. Let me bid you welcome, my lord, being reconciled to the prince, your brother. I owe you all duty. Thank you. I am not a man of many words. Shakespeare's villain, in Much Ado, illustrates the broadly European scope of Renaissance culture. Messina in Sicily is a setting for Shakespeare's comedy, and the bastard Don John is still there. His statue commemorates his fleet's great victory over the Turks at Lopanto in 1571. Don John was notorious for his savage militarism. As an early advocate of the Spanish Armada, he enjoys a special place in Spanish and English tradition, as confirmed when we found him entombed in the Escorial Palace of King Philip II of Spain, the husband of Queen Mary Tudor of England. Don John's neurotic ferocity is illustrated in a play by Calderon. Now that Galera has surrendered its heaps of ruins, breathing fire to be its own red furnace and its pyre, rest will never soothe my timeless heart, or make me falter in my quest, or from my purpose swerve apart until my enemy, dead or alive, stretches at my feet. Shakespeare portrays Don John as a grotesque villain, surely because he planned the Armada not just to dethrone Queen Elizabeth, but to ascend it himself after forcibly marrying her rival for the throne of England, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Shakespeare's view is shared by the great Spanish painter Velázquez, who shows his contempt for Don John by characterizing him as a sinister clown. Like Shakespeare, Velázquez was fascinated by such grotesque clown figures, and even played a comic countess in drag himself. With a hero or monster, the melodramatic figure of Don John suggests how much is shared in Spanish and English theatrical conventions in terms of archetypal characters and plots. Both Lope de Vega and Shakespeare wrote plays about the families of Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, Juliet's nurse has many other Spanish precedents, including the manipulative crone La Celestina, who precipitates the tragic romance of Callisto and Melibía by Fernando de Rojas. Shakespeare was no doubt familiar with the story in its English version by James Mab. She fell into swoonings and trances, hurling and rolling her eyes on every side, being struck with that golden shaft, which at the very voicing of your name had struck her to the heart. The more her throbs and pangs, the more I did laugh in my sleeve, for I knew her far would be the mirror, and her yielding the sooner. For I did dream it would come to this. Like the crone, Juliet's nurse is a go-between. Oh, the gentlewoman is young, and therefore if ye should deal double with her, truly it were an ill thing to be offered to any gentlewoman, and very weak daily. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto thee. Oh, good heart, in its faith I will tell her as much. Oh, no, not! She will be a joyful woman. What looks thou tell her? Thou dost not mark me. Bet you do protest, which as I take, it is a gentleman-like offer. Bid her devise some means to come to shrip this afternoon. There she shall at Friar Lawrence shall be shrived and married. Here's for thy penny. Oh, no, truly, sir, not so penny. Go till I say thou shall. This afternoon, sir, well, she shall be there. Both Shakespeare and the Spanish dramatists also drew deeply on history for their major characters and plots, as we saw with Don John. One of the most memorable historical queens in Shakespeare is Catherine of Aragon, whose integrity dignifies what may be Shakespeare's last play, Henry VIII, which Dr. Johnson said included Shakespeare's greatest verse. I've always loved the play, though some suggest it is partly by Shakespeare's colleague John Fletcher. Here is how my students performed this divorce scene in our production of the play. Let my behavior give into your displeasure that thus you should proceed to put me off and take your good grace from me. Heaven witness, I have been to you a true and humble wife, at all times conformable to your will, ever in fear to kindle your dislike, yea, subject to your countenance, glad or sorry as I sought inclined. When was the hour I ever contradicted your desire, or made it not mine too? What friend of yours have I strove to love, though I knew he were mine enemy? Or what friend of mine had to him derived your anger, did I continue in my liking? Nay, gave notice he was from thence discharged. Sir, call to mind I have been your wife in this obedience upward of 20 years, and have been blessed with many children by you. If in the course and process of this time you can report and prove it to. Against mine, honourot, my bond to wedlock, my duty against your sacred person, in God's name turn me away, and let the foulest contempt shut door upon me, and so give me up to the sharpest kind of justice. The same speech reappears in Calderon's schism in England, showing how both dramatists shared admiration for the Spanish heroine, less surprising in Catholic Spain than in Protestant England. Go to a convent, sir, for religious reason. Nor will I, for if I am married, I will be taken to another state. And so, in the palace, I must be at your own threshold, and you will know, dying in them, that I esteem and recognize you for my owner, for my good, for my king, for my husband. I do not deserve your face, even if I should have gone, for better, I choose not to look at you. I die, and you do not have eyes. Such archetypal roles in the history plays of England and Spain are closely comparable. Some of these roles derive from the allegorical characters of the morality plays, to which the historical plays are closely related. Renaissance humanists wrote didactic plays like every man about human vices, such as lying and pride. Shakespeare's false staff is such a morality figure in Henry IV, part one, when he lies about his robbery at Gad's Hill and his loss of the spoils to a disguised Prince Hal. But if I did not fight for fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish. Pray God you have not murdered some of them. That's past praying for. I have prepared two of them. Two, I am sure I have paid. Two rogues in Buckrum. I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee lie, spit in my face and call me ours. Thou knowest my old ward. Here I lay, and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in Buckrum that driveeth me. Four. Thou sets but two even now. Four, Hal. I told thee four. These four came at me all affront and mainly thrusted me, but I made me no more ado, but caught their seven points in my target thus. Seven. Thou sets but four even now. In Buckrum? Aye. Four in Buckrum suits. Or seven by these hilts. Or I'm Villanelles. Sir. We shall have more in none. Thus thou hear me, Hal. Aye. And mark thee two, Jack. Do so, for it is worth the listening, too. Well, these nine in Buckrum that I told thee of. So two more already. Their points being broken. Down fill their holes. Begin to give me ground, but I follow me close, came in foot and hand, and seven of the eleven I paid. Oh, monstrous! Eleven, Buckrum men, grown out of two. But as the devil would have it, three misbegotten names in Kendall Green came at my back and let flyeth me. For it was so dark, Hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand. These lies are like the father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable, wide-out clay-brained guts, thou naughty-pated fool. We, too, saw you four set on four, and you bound them, and masked them, and were masters of their wealth. Mark now how a plain tale shall put you down. Then did we, too, set on you four, and with a word, out-faced you from your prize. The Mexican-born playwright Alacon shares Shakespeare's moral judgments. Alacon's compulsive liar explains to his valid that he cannot call on the assistance of his acquaintance Don Juan de Sosa because he's just killed him, as he then describes ferociously, only for the supposed victim to walk past in good health. El presto saca como la respiración tan corta linea de tapa, la suya corriendo filos. Y como cerca me hayas porque yo busqué el estrecho por la falta de mis armas, a la cabeza viurioso me tiró una cuchillada, recibidla en el principio de su formación y baja, matándoles movimiento sobre la suya mi espada. ¡Aquí fué! ¡Troya! ¡Sáqueme, lunes! ¡Con tal pujanza! ¡Que la falta de mi acero ahí hizo muy poca falta! ¡Que abriéndole en la cabeza un palmo de cuchillada! ¡Vinos en sentido pal suelo! ¡Pobre Don Juan! ¿Más no es este que viene aquí? ¡Cosa extraña! Later, following Alacón's example, the French dramatist Pierre de Cornet developed his Le Monteur, a prototype later still for Moller's comedies of extravagant temperaments. My own awareness of the Spanish parallels was reinforced when I first saw Dakin Matthews Anteas' company stage The Liar at the Chamizal International Festival of Classical Spanish Drama held annually in El Paso since 1976. The theatrical world of dramatists such as Kidd and Shakespeare was intrinsically linked to that of their contemporary Spanish peers in aesthetic and moral values as well as literary conventions and theatrical practice. And this cultural affinity was sustained in many later eras and in many different places. In pre-Gold Rush California's Capital Monterey, early theatres like The Swan stage Shakespeare and traditional Spanish drama, both religious and swashbuckling, initiating the West Coast theatrical tradition from which we inherited the romantic figure of Zorro. The range of Spanish and American literary cultures is vast as we're beginning to appreciate. This was just a first step in a much greater exploration.